Barney [Warren] was not the only young person in that community [Bangor, Michigan, area] to experience the renewing grace of God. Others, too, had received the divine infilling. As always occurs when the Spirit of God is reviving his church, lay people, both men and women, old and young alike were moved with the burning zeal to win others to Christ. Among the young people who felt the urge to proclaim the good news were the older brothers of F.G. Smith, two or three of the Warren boys, and several of their companions. In bands of four to eight singers and workers, these young people began to hold meetings in adjoining neighborhoods, sometimes in schoolhouse, sometimes in churches, again in halls, or in homes, wherever there was an opening. Prominent in this work, both in the singing and exhorting, was sixteen-year-old Barney Warren. For a year or more these meetings went on before D.S. Warner himself came to Geneva Center Schoolhouse.

. . . . . When D.S. Warner and his company came to Geneva Center they found the ground well prepared. About eighty persons, mostly young people, had already been at the public altars, surrendering their hearts to God and putting away their sins. The community was like a plowed field ready for the sowing. And Warner knew how to sow. Slight of build and not above average height, both lungs affected by tuberculosis, when he entered the pulpit and began to speak there was such undeniable truth in what he said and such an authority in the way he said it that there was no resisting him. . . .

The schoolhouse at Geneva Center overflowed. It could not hold the crowds that came to hear the roaring of this lion of God against sin. Among those who came was Tom Warner, Barney's father. While not a professing Christian, Mr. Warren had been a student of the Bible all his life. His wife went to church; Tom Warren stayed home and read the Bible there, making up his own mind about its teachings and preparing for his next encounter with the minister or deacon. . . . One day when Barney was preparing to go to the meeting, all the rage so long pent up in his father's bosom broke loose and the man said and did things which showed him, as all the preaching could not have done, how much he needed a great salvation.

Torn between remorse and self-will, Tom Warren was soon listening to Warner's fiery denunciations of sin and persuasive offers of pardon. So intense was the conviction that seized upon this strong man that the seat shook with the trembling of his body. But he did not yield. The schoolhouse meeting closed, but another door was opened not far away. The elder Warren followed to that meeting and now found himself brought to the point of surrender. As never before in his life he saw what manner of man he was. He saw Christ dying for him. He broke down and made partial surrender. But, kneeling at the altar, he found one  point at which he rebelled. He would not give his consent for Barney to leave home and go into the gospel work.

The gospel team badly needed a bass singer, and young Barney had long felt the hand of God upon him for the work of evangelism. Not only could the young man exhort in a manner to bring men and women to  their knees, but he was also endowed with a voice of extraordinary range and power, and his soul glowed with a passion for winning others to Christ. Warner had seen the ability and spirit of the lad, and had asked the elder Warren's permission to take Barney into the evangelistic work. The father would give permission, for he needed Barner to help in the work of the farm. But Warner could use authority when he was sure that God was directing, hence he now asked Warren point-blank if would let Barney go.

God has the first claim, he pointed out, upon all his creatures. God had called Barney to go. The lad was a "natural" to the work, and to hold him back was fight against God. But Father Warren's will was strong. He said, "No," and he meant it. Arising from the altar, he started for the door. Halfway down the aisle he collapsed and sank to the floor. When he tried to rise, he found himself unable to do so. For more than two hours the struggle raged. Warner would not give up; the point of conflict must be faced and decided, and it must be decided right. . . .

Finally the victory came. Tom Warren, man of iron determination, ceased his resistance. "Barney is the Lord's," he said, and rising from the floor with perfect ease, he called his family together and went out. Almost the entire Warren family were saved during these years.

 

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A Teenaged Barney Warren when he traveled with Warner’s Evangelistic Band as singer/song writer and preacher. (Photo courtesy of Anderson University and Church of God Archives.)

Warner’s team is complete after Barney is allowed to join it.