He is better known these days as an evangelist and host of A Quarter Hour of Prayer Power radio show.
However, Courtney Selman first became a household name when he played cricket for one of the elite cricket clubs in the island, Empire, as well as for Barbados.
He grew up in St George and started playing cricket while attending the St Augustine Primary School, now called Cuthbert Moore Primary, before moving on to play in the Barbados Cricket League.
Selman recalled that as he developed in the game his father suggested he should join Empire, which was met by laughter by friends who surmised that he would only make it as a water boy since the club was thought at that time to be for the black elite only.
However, he was able to not only make the team but serve as captain as well.
“You should never listen to people because if they cannot see it for themselves they cannot see it for you,” Selman told the DAILY NATION.
Selman said that the fondest memory of his cricketing career was when he played for Barbados against England at Kensington Oval in 1974 when they beat England and he took the wicket of Geoffrey Boycott in both innings.
Boycott, then one of the world’s most prolific and best opening batsmen, was out for 0 and 11, caught at second slip both times by Gordon Greenidge.
Selman’s cricketing career ended in 1974, making way for him to pursue other paths, from selling insurance to real estate and eventually ministering the gospel.
When he moved to the United States, he became involved with several organizations where he volunteered his services. He served as an auxiliary police officer, as an evangelist with the prison ministry, he would feed homeless and needy people both physically and spiritually, and he was president of the Brooklyn and Staten Island Federation responsible for the evangelism and motivation of 40 churches.
Upon his return to Barbados in 2001, he found that because of the Seventh Day Adventist Church’s views on divorcees, he was unable to play as active a role as he wanted to in the church.
“God was preparing and training me for a greater ministry, and I just did not want to be sitting on a bench doing nothing,” he said. “So I started the radio ministry which has been running for the past nine years,” he said.
He admitted that initially it was a struggle.
“We achieve little because we attempt little,” Selman said. “If we serve a powerful God, a God who says to us that nothing is impossible, we have to claim the promise and do not sit back and wait for it to happen, someone has to do it.”
He is also the minister in charge of the Prayer Warriors Worship and Fellowship Centre.
“I do not like to attach any religion to my ministry, I believe that I am a Christ follower, I follow Jesus Christ and we help people from all denominations. I try to cut out the religion, I find that religion to some extent causes problems across the world, people do a lot of things in the name of religion,” he said.
His ministry is to tell the story of Jesus and to help win souls for Christ.
Through radio, Selman is able to reach those people who are not able to make it out to church anymore, as well as those who do not go to church. He said that he has heard stories from people who said that listening to the programme had led them back to church and it was in that aspect that he saw it as relevant to the society.
The programme airs on Mondays and Fridays and Sundays, when there is a special children’s programme.
