Acts 9:26-28

I want to describe a New Yorker and see if you can guess the name. ‘The basis of his success was a nearly infallible eye for baseball talent. Over and over again, he saw the potential in raw youth (George Sisler, Dizzy Dean), brought hidden qualities to light (Billy Cox, Preacher Roe), and calculated precisely the productive time left in a veteran (Dixie Walker, Joe Medwick).

Moving on to the Dodgers, he created the spring-training complex at Vero Beach, where players by the hundreds could be instructed, evaluated, and assigned. And he encouraged such innovations as batting cages, pitching machines, batting helmets, and a string outline of the strike zone rigged over home plate for pitchers working on control.

He is most famous for his decision to sponsor one player who would become a household name. It certainly was a brave move to sign Jackie Robinson, breaking the silently-upheld color barrier that had existed since the 1880s. The Negro League teams had stars who would transform the richer white league teams, but even a super star like Robinson had no access before Branch Rickey decided to break the barrier and sponsor him.

Branch Rickey had one special gift to look for people who were great at baseball and to come alongside them and open doors, and encourage and sponsor.

Most of us do not realize that we need a trainer to be fit for life. I don’t even mean just our spiritual lives. We are all limited to what we know from our previous experience, especially from childhood. You know what you saw your parents do, and if they didn’t do it – chances are that you don’t know it. Why is it that doctor’s children get through college more easily and go on to be doctors? Its because they saw how to get through that particular system as they grew up.

My roommate and I in college each went to college to be doctors. We both knew it took good grades and he got those and I got …. distracted. So by our senior year, Tom had a GPA of 3.6 and he applied to 15 medical schools. It seemed like a certain thing. I started to call him Dr. Kildare. And then he was turned down 15 times. He knew nothing about the old boy system and the need for recommendations. He had no mentor.

He cast about for a long time, looking for another career goal yet fearing that any other great dream would be as doomed as his first one. It took 15 years before he got into nursing and realized a new dream.

If you want to get fit for life, you need a trainer. They have them at gyms to make sure your muscles are exercised right and you need it in other areas of life. Too many people are afraid to pray for a vision because they fear failure in reaching for the dream. The trainer or mentor makes all the difference.

We’re going to look at a mentor and star performer in the Bible today. You’ll see how success so often depends on someone who knows what to do who takes you under their wing so you can see how to do it too. I pray that everyone here will leave today with a greater desire to have a dream and find a trainer to point the way to get there.

You and I are limited because there’s a lot of secrets in life that we don’t know. My father has a 10^th grade education and went on to train himself in technical writing and finally computer languages for electrical design. Yet he still felt that many areas of the company were closed to him because there was no one to show him how to develop his career.

Even his biggest break came through a trainer. My father had worked for years for a tightwad who was famous for penny an hour raises. But Dad’s dedication to hard work and attention to detail got him noticed by the head of another department who offered him two dollars an hour to change. It was one of the biggest moments of his life, but not possible without the trainer to open the door and show the steps.

Paul was going to be one of the top ten names of the Bible. We know now just how much greatest there was in him. But at the time of his conversion, 99 out of a hundred Christians would have thrown him out of their house and Im sure that some would have killed him as an enemy of faith. So I want to look with you at three ways in which Barnabas had the ministry of a trainer.

The trainer sees your problems. Paul was arrogant. When he opposed Christianity, there was a zeal in Paul that could only be arrogance. Barnabas was willing to put up with this quality for a long time. The name Barnabas means ‘Son of Encouragement.’

Many of need help seeing our problems. A lot of people come to me to tell me their problems. Except that looking at their situation from the outside, I feel like saying, you’ve got more problems than you know about. Friends, our attention is always drawn to the problems that we have that have symptoms when our deepest problems may not feel that bad. If one problem keeps you up at night or gives you a headache, don’t you say ‘that’s my problem’? We fail because of the problems we did not notice.

My spiritual gift is that of a sparkplug. But that gift gave me a problem because if I tried to be a sparkplug and it didn’t work, I’d drop the whole idea. And then a guy who was a mentor to me said one day in a gentle way that I could hear, ‘sometimes you have to keep trying the same idea until it works’ He put his finger on my problem. I knew about other problems in my life, but I was sloppy when it came to the problems connected to my spiritual gifts. I needed a trainer.

Barnabas saw Paul’s potential. A good mentor can see how your gifts will work in a situation to which you have never been exposed. Mrs. Pollifax is a series of mystery novels about a retired person who did a lot for her church and garden club and got tired of the routine after her husband’s death. She tries to volunteer to be of service to her country and draws the attention of a manager in the CIA. Yes, that’s right. He notices that her sense of intuition would be great for spying and within the day, she is off to Mexico. Mrs. Pollifax books take her all over the world. Now I have never been a spy. I have a hard time seeing how I would fit into that world. But I might have gifts that would make George Tenet realize that I could be a station chief.

Barnabas realized that Paul could lead in ways that would serve the church. In Acts 11:25, Barnabas has been asked to make a mission trip and he needs a toughness that Paul’s leadership offers. He goes to Tarsus to look for him and their great partnership began.

Do you see how our small range of experience limits our understanding of our potential? But a mentor can take the gifts we know and a context we don’t know and come up with new possibilities that we can’t guess.

And the trainer can see the power of the new situation. The spiritual power of each of our gifts is turned to high test when its combined with other gifts. We are so self centered that life is all about us. You can’t believe the number of people I meet who think that life would be perfect if everyone were like them! The trainer can take a step back and see how your gifts combine with someone who is not like you and the combination has the power.

Where do you get a mentor? I’m guessing that you don’t want to hire one. I was at this conference on Friday with Malcolm and we were discussing the future of worship. And I suddenly realized that there were worship consultants in the room. A church want to change to post modern worship such as we are experiencing this morning and you can hire a worship consultant to come in for 3 months with your leadership team and guide you through the process and give training.

I see mentoring in two ways in the church. The first is to join the choir or a disciple group or get active online here. Be looking for someone who seems to be where you would like to go – whether spiritually or professionally. Some of us have professional experience that can be helpful. If you want to succeed in college or be a pastor, those are areas that I know something about. There are doctors here, nurses, business people. Our goal as a church is help each other become Jackie Robinsons. He did not do it by himself.

I want to express a little concern. We regularly offer volunteer opportunities and training and chances for more life together and many people simply rush out after worship. I hope you want more out of a church than that. If you are only involved on Sunday, please get more involved. We want to make some star players, but we can’t be a great church unless we recruit a lot of great players.

When Jackie Robinson got started, there was tremendous racism in the early stages. Even there, Branch Rickey knew some of the things that would happen and helped Robinson prepare to live through that time and be a success in spite of it.

And then if you are a leader, I think that one of the most valuable things you can do in life is to choose two or three people in this church that you want to invest your life in. Be a Barnabas and go find a Paul. I don’t think Jackie Robinson asked Branch Rickey to play for the Dodgers. Branch Rickey first knew that he wanted Robinson.

You are more valuable than you know or believe. Its is God’s heart to help you see that and have the faith to reach out and do something about it. A mentor can help you take the next steps and you’ll enjoy this. Let’s get fit for life!