Seth’s Bio: A call to missions

As I went off to college, I knew that my future lay in overseas
work. I was convicted by God’s heart for the poor and oppressed in
Isaiah 58 and determined to commit my life to helping them.

During
my senior year, a great human tragedy was unfolding. The Khmer Rouge
was killing nearly two million of their countrymen. The Cambodian
people were fleeing to the Thai border by the hundreds of thousands.
As they spilled across the border on the brink of starvation, they
were placed in large refugee camps.

So, I went to work in a refugee camp. I chose to do this in spite of
the fact that I’d recently fallen in love with my wife to be and was
earnestly courting her. As shocking as the situation in Thailand
was, it inspired me to go deeper in pursuing a life of ministry.

A call to missions

After college, Karen and I were married. We went directly to
Indonesia where I did economic development work to help the poorest
of the poor. Later, we moved to the Dominican Republic and did the
same thing there.

Barnes Family

Several years later, after business school, the crossroads couldn’t
have offered two more divergent paths. On the one hand was the more
conventional route that my peers were all choosing: a career in
business, the promise of success and material gain. The other route
made no sense to my peers: help start a mission agency with a
friend. What was that about?! For me, the decision was complicated
by the financial needs of a family with three small children.

Wanting
to trust God, but unsure as to what His will was, my wife and I put a
fleece before Him. To go into missions, we’d have to raise support.
We’d have to do it in four months. Karen said I looked like a deer in
the headlights. She suggested, “If God brings a quarter of the support
in during the first month, then that will be His sign to us to follow a
call to missions.” How did she come up with that? Just a shot in the
dark, I guess. It seemed reasonable – four months, a quarter of the
support a month.

With just one day left, we were significantly short of the goal. I
think we were a little relieved. The path of missions seemed to have
a lot of sacrifice involved. I didn’t have any plans to try and gin
up the support from other sources; Karen and I were persuaded that
God had a different path for us.

Then, before the day was over, seemingly out of left field, a number
of people contacted us with large commitments. At the last second,
God provided far more than we needed. We had opened the door to
walking the path of abandon, but hardly in a reckless manner. Still,
that was enough for God to lead us.