The Barnabas Way: An Unexpected Path to God

by John D. Sloan

Hurting people abound–and most of them believe they’ve missed out on God’s blessings. Are they destined to doubt God’s love? Or have they missed a crucial element of the Bible’s teaching on how and when God blesses?

The Barnabas Way reveals an untapped secret of spiritual life that guarantees God’s personal, intimate presence with his people throughout each day: God blesses people with his nearness when they seek to be a blessing to others.

This revolutionary truth is vividly illustrated in the often-neglected life story of Barnabas, the New Testament model of an encourager. The Bible says he “encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (Acts 11:23,24).

In The Barnabas Way, author John Sloan introduces readers to this blessed man and reveals how they, too, can be blessed–by being encouragers. When readers start walking on The Barnabas Way, they can begin to satisfy their hunger for a deeper, richer, fuller experience of God. One that guarantees more of God’s greatest blessings: his nearness, his presence, his power at work.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2002

Reviews

[Gabe larios · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that inspires you to encourage others and look beyond their faults and mistakes just like Barnabas did.

[Tony Villatoro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good little book. Encouraged the Christian to keep encouraging others. Depicts the few instances that the New Testament lets us know of Barnabas and the encouragement he was towards people like Paul, John Mark and others. This book is not a biography of Barnabas, and frankly, it has more real life illustrations of people encouraging others more than of Barnabas (maybe because there's not much of Barnabas to be said when seen in light of other main characters like Paul).

I enjoyed chapter 4 where the author writes about the "four major landscapes in his [Barnabas'] life that reveal his character and his mission."

Chapter 5 briefly relates the "four general principles for implementing the Barnabas way."

The only negative thing that I felt while reading this book was that it seemed like if we would encourage others (and were Barnabas to them), people would be blessed by us and our deed, instead of by God and His work through us. A bit man-centered. Even if the author did not intend this to come through like this, that is the way I kept reading some of the statements the author would make.

All in all, the little book offers good things about being encouraging to others.

[Kristen Gebbia · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking for a short yet deep book to read, this is the one. It's about the size of a 5x7 portrait and a mere 108 pages long. I read it in about an hour (over a period of a few days--I rarely get to read for more than 10 minutes without being interrupted.) It seemed to flow seamlessly together with "12 Unlikely Heros", picking right up with John Mark and Barnabas' story. The premise of the book is that when we come along beside our fellow Christians and encourage them, we, too are blessed and encouraged. To quote directly from the book, "two people can both be helped when one lends a hand to the other in the middle of a tough situation." Reading this has just re-iterated an underlying theme in my life and the books I've been reading this year: people are much more important than things and to-do lists.