Karen: Well, David, we are into December, a month marked by the thoughtful giving of gifts.

David: In this visit, Karen, we want to explore a different kind of gift, a thoughtful one.It’s possible you’ve never given anyone before.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen: Looking back on your life, David, can you come up with the time when someone encouraged you in a way that you would absolutely have missed, hadn’t even thought about, until that special person said something about this?

David: Instantly a person comes to mind.

Karen: Okay, well, who would that be? Now, what we’re doing right now is an exercise we’ve done to get ready for this podcast, and we’re recommending that everyone who listens to it does the same exercise. So go ahead. Who was that person?

David: A teacher in high school. I was in a school, there were three grades in our high school, and there were about 800 students. I know those are pretty accurate figures. I was one of those 800, and I never really thought that much about who I was or what I was doing. I was a junior, and this teacher, Mr. Perino, he was the most popular teacher on campus. There’s no question. He called me into his office, and he said, I’d like to talk to you about something. He said, you know, Al, and he gave his last name, another student. Yes, he’s going to be running for student body president. I think you could beat him. He said, I wonder if you’ve thought at all about running. I had never, ever experienced such a thing. It was, I mean, I was pretty much nondescript. I had my interest areas. And he said, “In fact, I think you’d beat him quite handily.” I was absolutely dumbstruck. It was like coming totally out of the blue. I took him seriously.

I thought about it, and he asked me later, and I said, “I think I’ll do it.” And he said, “Good. I’m glad that you’ve been open to that.” And by golly, I won in a landslide. It was amazed. But apart from that, in fact, I didn’t even have a campaign person.

Karen: Did you have a committee?

David: I made my own post-tribe to do everything.

Karen: Did your parents even know this was happening?

David: I doubt that they even would.

Karen: Oh my goodness, David.

David: That totally changed my life. I began to think different thoughts. I had one period a day. They gave me as a time to meet with other student officers.

Karen: This was after you won the election?

David: Yeah. My whole senior year, I had one period a day just to work on student council matters. I met people I never would have met before. I thought in terms of organization, it was amazing to me. And I look back, and I think, dear Dan Perino, he changed my life. Yeah. Isn’t that something?

Karen: Well, and I think that’s the moment that teachers live for, too. Sometimes maybe they don’t always know the impact of their efforts.

David: Do you have a teacher like that?

Karen: I do. I was in junior high. I can’t remember if I was. ..

David: That’s even younger.

Karen: Seventh or eighth grade. And my mother was a published writer. So she always encouraged me. I joke and say my mother never said, “Karen, how are you?” She would ask me what I was writing. I mean, this was even very young. But those are your parents. They always, mine were always extremely affirming and supportive. But this junior high teacher, we’d all done an assignment in class. I don’t even know what it was on. I think she was a social studies teacher. I don’t even remember her name. I can remember what she looked like. She had gray hair and glasses. And she called me up after class and she said, “Karen, I just want to say something to you.” And she had handed me back my paper with a very good grade on it and A or an A plus.

And she said, you’re the kind of person who is never going to be happy unless you keep writing. Isn’t that extraordinary? Now, how do you even see that in the junior high’s writing? You know, it must have been different enough from the rest of what the other students were turning in. And I suppose I’d done other pieces for her. So it wasn’t just that one piece I’d turned in, but I remembered and I never forgot it. I never forgot it. It was just one of those words fitly spoken that changed my trajectory. Now, I might have gone on and written anyway because my mother was very encouraging that way.

But having it come from an outside source, it was pretty significant for me. So again, another teacher story from our lives. And I think if we would go back into a lot of people’s lives, you would find that there were significant adults, a teacher like that as well.

David: Let’s see if we can get away from teachers. I’m thinking of another individual. He was an advertising executive. I was in my first pastorate. We were in the inner city of Chicago.

Karen: He was from New York.

David: Yeah. He came to Chicago every so often. Actually, he was a Vice President at Sachi and Sachi, which at the time was the second largest advertising firm in the country.

Karen: Maybe the world. I don’t know.

David: And I remember he pointed out ads I had seen on television that he had done. And he would come to the church when he was in Chicago and kind of come up afterward and stand around and then talk.

Karen: Well, let’s paint a picture of it. We met in a Teamsters Union Hall. The average age of the congregation was 28 years of age. Eventually grew to the size of 500 people, probably in the year, year and a half. Our goal was to renovate or renew the worship form of the church and then to make the emphasis the lay people and to be interracial. So there was a buzz about what we were doing that existed in our little area of the church world.

David: Yeah, but I had never had somebody who was a Vice President at Sachi. Sachi, in Sachi. Who would stand around

Karern: Probably 20 years older than you were, maybe 15 years older.

David: And he would say, that was amazing, what you did. He said, “In fact, I don’t know anybody in my team of creative people who does the kind of thinking that you do.” And then he started to help us in terms of our lives. He would say, “You need to fly to New York and come and visit us.”

Karen: Yeah. “We’ll show you the city. Bring your kids along because I’ve got, you know, he had high schoolers and college students.” He had young college students in his family. “And they’ll do the babysitting and you and Karen and (his wife) Shirlene, and I will go to the city.” And my goodness, David, I mean, that went on for decades.

David: At least a decade. Yeah. And he had all kinds of complimentary tickets. He would take us to theater.

Karen: Because he was at Sachi and Sachi, so people wanted, you know, those top execs to attend their theater performances.

Speaker 4: We saw Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst and Amon from Miss Begotten in New York City.

David: He picked us up at the plane, whips the city, plunked us right down in those good seats which he had.

Karen: Meryl Streep in her young career. They were doing Shakespeare in Central Park. Yes. We wanted to have known about that. And so we get, you know, to go with the Dunkartons to all these extraordinary events.

David: And he did that continually. In fact, he was the reason why you were invited to be on the Intervarsity Board. And then he still wasn’t finished with it because he was saying, Karen, you have leadership skills beyond what you understand. And it was because of Tom.

Karen: My name was submitted because of Tom Dunkarton to be on the Intervarsity, which is an international student movement on their board. And I had never done any kind of really significant board work before. So, it was a big risk for him to bring me in. He just thought that I would function well that way. They needed women. They also needed verbal women because at that time women who were sitting with a group of what we’ll call them corporate princess, good people, but very, you know, high up in their organizations in the night, they just shut up at that. Those women would just shut up at the board table. They were so intimidated by it or not used to speaking out. So that was, I think, my main qualification that I was not afraid to do that. But it was just an introduction to another world.

David: I because of Tom, you were the one who eventually became Chairperson.

Karen: I became the chair of the board, the first woman chair of that board. And he would coach me after every meeting. You don’t not talking loud enough. The table. Some of those old guys can’t hear. So whatever. I mean, there’s coaching in the hallway. I just read something by Melinda Gates, the secretary of the Treasury at that time. It’s not this person is not named. So whoever was the secretary of the US Treasury at that time took her on as a mentoree and he would go around saying, this is Melinda Gates. She is a rock star on and on and on to the point that it just embarrassed her to death. So, she said to this man, “Don’t do that anymore. I can’t stand it.” And he said to Melinda, “This is how it works.”

David: Interesting.

Karen: You have a mentor and particularly a male mentor and studies have shown that male mentors are actually more valuable than female mentors because they’re being credited for encouraging diversity rather than a woman mentor who is just sort of doing her feminist thing. I mean, that’s not really true, but that’s why it’s perceived. So that’s what Tom became. And this was 20, 30 years ago. I don’t even remember how far back it was. Not only was he a mentor, he was a great friend and I teased him to death and he would hump for round. But we would also do this at the board table. And yet we demonstrated out of that relationship how much we cared for one another and how people who were distinctly different, I mean, totally different personalities could function as a team. And one of the cute stories I have is we would do executive evaluations. I’d never done an executive evaluation. I mean, what did I know about that? But he had done many. So we would, as a team, do an executive evaluation with the top introvarsity staff. And then he bragged on me afterwards. He’d say, “Yeah, yeah. I asked a question and they answered it. She asked a question totally off the wall. Next thing I got a guy sitting there all teared up.” The funny thing about that story is he couldn’t read his own handwriting, but I could.

David: Funny. He had terrible handwriting.

Karen: So that’s a picture of mentoring. That’s a picture of speaking words into someone’s life saying you are much more capable than you even know. You’re really good at this. These are words of encouragement. And that’s what we’re asking people to do today.

David: Yeah, I have many such people who have come to mind. I’m thinking of an individual. I didn’t meet him until after I’d actually gotten into radio. I’d spoken at a rally out east and had the privilege of staying with this gentleman and his wife in their home and a friendship form. But that friendship opened up so many doors to me. In fact, in my mind, the reason we’re able to podcast right now is because of Dean. I pretty much had dropped out of. communication.

Karen: Out of the media community.

David: My ministry was over in many ways. And Dean, like he’s done so many times in my life, he said, “You know what, I believe you have something that you still want to be saying and you have a message from the Lord. Have you thought about podcasting?” That was like asking me if I thought about Chinese cooking or something, you know. I’m terrible in those areas, but he then said, “I’ll help you.” And he did and by golly now we’re podcasting and he continues to help in such a way. It is absolutely amazing to me because he believes in me in ways that I don’t even believe in me. And thank the Lord for such people, you know, they come into our lives. It’s absolutely stunning. Let’s put into a sentence what it is we’re talking about, okay?

Karen: Well, what we’re saying is this. Many of us need to practice the unique skill of encouraging others to be more than they themselves thought possible.

David: Okay, I’m gonna say it again. Many of us need to practice the unique skill of encouraging others to be more than they thought possible. I thought, is there anywhere in Scripture where I can find out where this is being taught? And I didn’t find where it’s being taught as much as where it’s being modeled. This is from the book of Acts. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas. And then it’s in parentheses, which means son of encouragement. So it was kind of a nickname. So Joseph, they didn’t call him Joseph, they called him Barnabas, which means the guy who comes and encourages us.

Karen: It’s an extraordinary moniker, isn’t it?

David: It really is. And the Scriptures show how he did this. In Acts chapter 11, it talks about the Gospel spreading because of the persecution in Jerusalem and up in areas like Antioch. So when the news of what was happening in Antioch came to Jerusalem, they sent, who? Barnabas. There to find out what was going on. When he arrived, he saw the evidence of the grace of God, and he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. So he’s keeping true to his nickname. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and great numbers of people were brought to the Lord. Then this next verse. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch, which is where they were. So Barnabas is the encourager, and he sees this new convert.

Karen: New and gifted convert, but someone’s perhaps a little unfinished, I’m guessing, or little raw in certain areas.

David: And it takes him for a period of time, I would say, mentors him, or encourages him to be all that God has put in his heart to be. Which is a very important thing. And then there’s famine down in Jerusalem. So in Antioch, they take a special offering, and they sent the offering with Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem. And then lo and behold, later on when God says, I have picked certain people for a special ministry, they set aside Barnabas and Paul, and they go on the first missionary journey.

Karen: Oh, that’s wonderful.

David: Now, there’s a breach between them that comes. Mark, who is a relative of Barnabas, had left them, deserted the first thing.

Karen: He was a young man, unformed.

David: I’m thinking. He became quite a person, one of the authors of the four gospels. Barnabas says, “Let’s take Mark. Let’s give him another go at it.”

Karen: Paul’s not going to have any of that. You can see the distinction between the two personalities, right, in that incident.

David: So, they break up.

Karen: So, Barnabas, the encourager, sees capabilities and gifts from this young man who’s disappointed them. And he chooses to go along in a mentoring, elder adult relationship with him.

David: And Barnabas and Mark go to Cyprus. And Paul takes a new partner, Silas, and then he goes on with his missionaries. But here is this Barnabas guy who has this incredible ministry of encouragement to others. Helps them to be more than they would want them to be.

Karen: And I think those people do see those realities in folk who don’t see those gifts in themselves. I mean, they have a gift, isn’t it? That’s what the gift of encouragement is. It’s not just saying nice things. It’s saying this person has possibilities.

David: And going the extra mile, so many different ways, they’re unusual people. Some people are just amazingly skilled at this. I’m thinking, Karen, in your early days of another individual, Marlene. Yes. Marlene, she was huge in terms of you becoming the writer.

Karen: Yeah, Marlene attended our church plant in Chicago. She wasn’t married at the time, but she worked for a curriculum house. And she just identified my gifts and gave me all kinds of writing assignments. Now, we were a young couple who planted a church and sometimes we had to wait for two weeks for our paychecks. And we were not overpaid by any stretch of the imagination. So, we needed that extra money and had four kids. We had taken people in and to our home to live with us. So I basically will confess that I did the work for the money. But the assignments she gave me, because she could see in me the capability of doing creative writing, were just, they were adorable. They were for high schoolers. I just found my file with all of the things I had written for her. And they were wonderful, wonderful creative assignments. So I was able to use my imaginative capabilities, which I probably wouldn’t have found another place to use, in a way that was extraordinarily satisfactory to me as a creative person. I also got paid for it, so she professionalized my capability. I’m not sure I would have thought about myself as a writer.

David: She talked to us, Karen, in another area. She said, “We’d like to do a video series.”

Karen: Oh, that’s right.

David: Remember that?

Karen: What makes a Christian family Christian? Wasn’t that what it was?

David: It was the first thing we ever did in video. I remember, I never thought I would do that because I thought I’m not a movie star.

Karen: Well, you’re handsome as far as I’m concerned and always have been, but in your own eyes, right?

David: Thank you. See that again, would you?

Karen: After we’re done.

David: To do a series and bring camera people in. I remember talking when someone said, “You know, I’m very self-conscious. I should lose weight.” Marlene wasn’t deterred by anything. So, you just said, “You know, I got it all set. The company’s going to do it.”

Karen: “And then you just have to take instructions. You’re perfectly capable of doing this. You speak all the time. You’re a wonderful communicator. You know, don’t worry about the technology, but we’ll take care of that.”

David: That was the feeling of these people. We will get you there.

Karen: Yes, right. And they did. They did. It was a nice little series. David, there’s one verse I found. I have a book that I’ve done, Medicine for Mouth Disease, and I took all the verses out from Proverbs and made a 30-day meditation in the end. But there’s this prayer that I wrote for chapter 27 of the book of Proverbs. It’s, oh, Lord, help me to hear what people say and to say what they need to hear. So we can think of that as corrective. You know, say that you need to shape up here. But I think really it’s much more inclined to be speak those words of life, speak the words of life, identify a giftedness in someone who is not seeing their capability themselves. Say, you know, you really would be good at this. You could be much more than you know. I think you can.

David: Have you ever considered the following?

Karen: I think you could develop this gift. You know, I see a latent gift. Now that’s just as extraordinary as far as its impact on people, even when they say, “Oh, no, I don’t think.” You know, they’ll squirm around and deny it. But they’ll think about it because those words have such extraordinary power.

David: So we are asking people in this month of gift giving to consider a gift that they really haven’t thought about that much before. And I’m going to be doing this. We have one donor who has supported us for decades and she decided she would write a book. That’s an intimidating thing. And I encouraged her in it. And when she wrote the book, she sent me a copy and I said, “You know, you’re better than you think.” Guess what? She’s written two more books since then. Now see, she has self published.

Karen: There’s no shame in that at all these days.

David: But Karen, they’re good. And when this third book was sent to me and I’m two thirds of the way through the book, it’s more testimony of less than she has learned in the course of her life. I thought to myself, I’m so glad that I said to her, you know, yeah, go ahead and do this. You’re doing fine.

So we’re starting December. People have their list of individuals for whom they’re going to give gifts. And I know everyone is not going to be able to do this, but some people are in a position where I would like them to say, “Okay, who are you going to reveal to me through your spirit, Lord? A gift that I can give them, which is a verbal affirmation. And I’ll do it this December, if possible, if not, you know, until January. But I’m going to at least allow myself to be aware that my words could be very important to someone. And I can play a part in lives that will continue on beyond my life. And I’m going to say, Lord, kind of guide me in this and help me to be sensitive, help me to be a Barnabas and to encourage them for the sake of the kingdom. And also for the sake of just the great satisfaction he gives me to be able to play such a significant part in someone’s life, help me to say the words, not to push them, just to kind of plant those seeds in people and to kind of have that sense of the Holy Spirit saying to me, hey, you’re like Barnabas. Good for you.”

Karen: Okay. So what we’re saying today, and I’m saying to the listeners, are you listening? Are you really listening? Because we’re saying this to you. Many of us need to practice the unique skill of encouraging others to be more than what they thought possible.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.