Simon Barnett: Man of God

Christine Miles looks at what’s behind the celebrity of this nice-guy.

There’s a word for people like Simon Barnett: talent! Monday to Friday, his cheerful, quickfire banter welcomes Christchurch listeners of MoreFM Canterbury Breakfast to their mornings. He’s hosted Wheel of Fortune in New Zealand and been invited to audition as a game show host for Channel 9 in Australia. And his breakfast radio show was nominated as among the top three “Best Breakfast Shows” at the NZ Radio Awards in 2005.

So when New Zealand Simon Barnett participated in Touchdown Productions’ “Celebrity Treasure Island,” he quickly caught the attention of many of New Zealand’s living-room participants: “He seemed to really care about the others on his team,” said one viewer. “Did you notice how he watched out for Lana?” observed another. [Lana Coc-Kroft developed a systemic infection resulting from a coral cut on her foot and subsequent removal from the island.] And yet another, “He was competitive without walking all over other people.” From Charlotte Dawson, a fellow competitor, high praise: “You’re a good man, you’re a man of the Lord.”
A “man of the Lord?” On popular television? Well, yes.

Another competitor, Brent Todd, also positively acknowledged Simon’s Christianity when voting against him on the show. “My mother loves you,” he said. “She’ll never forgive me for what I’m going to do to you. And you’re a man of God, but I have to do this.”
“man of God”

Simon Barnett has been in broadcasting for some 20 years, beginning as a scriptwriter for “What now?” a children’s television program. For the past eight years he’s co-hosted MoreFM Canterbury’s breakfast program in Christchurch, with Gary McCormick.

Ask Simon what he did to earn the title of “man of God”and he shrugs. “I had conversations,” he says. “When the others wanted to fight, I’d say ‘Let’s not fight,’ or something like that. Once I said [quoting the Bible], ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first,’1 and that caused a few raised eyebrows. The others wanted to know from where I got these ‘strange’ ideas.”

For a television veteran, Simon displays a remarkable naivete in respect to his reasons for wanting to be on the show in the first place.
“I thought it would be, you know, like regular television. At the end of filming they’d turn off the cameras and the gourmet meals would be brought out. And the fridges would be rolled up the beach. . . . When we started eating out of clam shells and using our fingers to spoon rice and drinking out of rusted, baked-bean cans, I thought, This could be a long stay.”

Simon remained positive throughout his sojourn on the island. “My favourite Bible verse is ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick’ [Proverbs 13:12]” he says.

“There were times I really hung onto hope, especially toward the end when homesickness began to kick in.”

Simon, a father of four daughters, says missing his wife, Jodi, and family was the hardest thing.
“I said to myself before I went on the island, ‘Don’t cry when you’re talking about your kids or your wife. End of story. Just don’t cry, because you’ll look like a sap.’ Sadly, I didn’t pass that test. And when I got home, I said that to my wife, and she said, ‘Oh, you didn’t cry!’”

Together, Simon and Jodi are a powerful parenting team. “I’m the energetic otter, ricocheting around the place, and she’s the beaver-type, who plans and looks after the schedules and details. I have ideas—lots of ideas—and she just rolls her eyes, because she knows they’re going to be a lot of work. For her! But she makes them work. I’m into parenting and being a dad, but I know it’s Jodi that keeps our household together.”

The final “Celebrity Treasure Island” challenge saw Simon and fellow competitor Josh Kronfield towed behind a boat at 30 knots across the lagoon to collect a treasure chest. “How often do you get dragged through a lagoon, shark bait-like?” Simon asks. “But I wasn’t going to let go unless someone shot me or a shark ate me.”

It was a close run, but Josh made it back first, beating a disappointed Simon. “Now I can go home and cuddle my kids,” said Simon. “That’ll be good. I’m looking forward to it.”

altruism at work
Second-placed Simon came away with $NZ12,500 for the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF). CCF, Simon explains, isn’t a project limited to benefiting Christian children alone. “The CCF helps to provide an environment of hope and respect for needy children in all cultures,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what religious group they might belong to.

“We sponsor two children through CCF. Oceng’s family are from Nigeria—he’s a Christian—and Kenyanee from Thailand—she’s a Buddhist. We sponsor another child with UNICEF.

“We’ve written a couple of times, but don’t have regular contact. As a family, when the reports come, we read the letters over dinner and discuss how the children are doing and the various hardships they endure.”

on family matters
Working in a highly competitive industry and yet maintaining an actively Christian lifestyle, Simon says your Christianity “has to be real.” By way of explanation, he loosely quotes 1 Corinthians 13 of the Bible: “‘Love God . . . love people. If you do a lot of good things, but love for people doesn’t enter into it, then your actions are hollow.’
“Christians need to learn to communicate effectively. We have a lot to offer, which often isn’t recognised by those who aren’t Christian,” he laments.

His passion for effective communication spills over into family life, where, he says, “Love is spelt T-I-M-E!
“We make sure we have a family [time] every week. Occasionally it’s chaos, but it’s great. . . . With all the busy-ness, it’s important to get a break away included in your routine. We might spend holidays with family, but then 10 days just by ourselves. We’ve discovered it takes a week and a bit to unwind.”

Simon believes parenting education is essential. “We learn to drive with the road rules; we need to learn to parent in a similar way. Parents need to know the pitfalls—need a desire to get tools.

“Parenting is scary, frightening and overwhelming, but I love it. I want to be the best parent I can be. I pray that we will be a family that talks, communicates, has fun and loves each other . . . always!

Summarising John Maxwell’s Breakthrough Parenting,2 he suggests one shouldn’t strive too hard to be the “perfect” parent, “because you’ll always fall short. Instead work on being a ‘priority parent,’” he suggests. “Jodi and I might have different personalities, but we agree on our priorities. Sorting them out helped put everything into perspective. Our top priority is to love and obey God, then to live with thankful hearts, followed by having a positive outlook, being kind to others and, finally, to be the best we can.”

And, again quoting Maxwell, he says, “‘In matters of taste, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.’ A lot of stuff really isn’t worth making a big deal about, but other stuff is. Our priorities help sort that out.”

Simon, for example, stands like a rock against illicit drugs. “Don’t use drugs,” is his emphatic advice to young people. “Don’t even think about trying drugs. We lose a lot of kids to drugs. Kids are looking for leadership, guidelines and consistency, and when their parents don’t provide this, they look elsewhere.

“It strikes me that we as parents are sometimes anxious about enforcing discipline for fear that we might leave psychological scars on our children. However, my feeling is that if we don’t discipline, our children are left without boundaries, which can leave them floundering.”

circular life journey
When Simon was nine, his parents separated. Soon after, he decided church wasn’t for him, and gave it up. He did well in school, becoming head prefect of Ashburton College in 1984, then began a career in television and radio before marrying Jodi in 1991.
He says that as he matured, he began to realise the trappings of fame and fortune weren’t enough. He began to ponder the reason for his existence. So he went back to church and there rediscovered God, who filled the hole in his life.

“There’s a God-shaped vacuum in each person’s life,” he says. “I know that from first-hand experience. I owe so much to God—for freedom from comparisons, peer pressure and financial difficulty.”

And when does Simon “hang out” with God? “Every moment,” he says. “For me, personally, I put Him first in everything. Worship is every moment; it’s not just singing in church. Worship can be the songs; you can have an awesome time worshipping God with music, but it’s more than that. So, at five in the morning, when I’m heading out to work, God is there. It’s not that everything always goes right, but you know it’s going to be all right in the end. Whatever happens long term, God is in charge.”

References:
1. See Mark 9:35.
2. John Maxwell, Focus on the Family, 1996.

Sources: http://tvnz.co.nz; www.nzherald.co.nz; www.presbyterian.org.nz; Parenting with Confidence, Autumn, 2002.