John Mark
The young Jerusalem assistant who panicked at Pamphylia and abandoned the first missionary journey — yet through Barnabas's patient restoration overcame shame to write the Gospel of Mark and hear aged Paul call him 'very useful to me for ministry.'
Growing up in Jerusalem where the early church prayed in his mother Mary's house (Acts 12:12), John Mark set out with Paul and his cousin Barnabas as their assistant on the first missionary journey (Acts 13:5). When the team crossed from Cyprus to the rugged, malaria-ridden coast of Perga in Pamphylia facing the Taurus Mountains, Mark panicked, left them, and returned home to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13).
On the eve of the second journey in Antioch, Paul refused to bring a man 'who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work' (Acts 15:38). Taken under Barnabas's wing to Cyprus and later mentored by Simon Peter ('Mark, my son,' 1 Peter 5:13), Mark refused to let his worst moment define his life. Decades later, chained in a Roman dungeon facing execution, Paul himself wrote to Timothy: 'Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful (Greek: euchrestos) to me for ministry' (2 Timothy 4:11).
Restoring John Mark — Barnabas Mentoring John Mark
Barnabas patiently mentors a panicked deserter in Cyprus until he authors the Gospel of Mark.
