Suburban, what worked for me was to play whatever I was playing very slowly. I found that my delay in getting barre chords was because I was thinking about where to put my fingers. Practice some chord changes at a really slow tempo (40 bpm or less) to where you can place all fingers at once. Think of it as training your fingers in where to go--it's muscle memory. Once you have it perfect at a slow tempo, start speeding it up.

Another technique that helped me is the "fake it till you make it". If you're strumming a chord progression at a faster tempo, keep playing even if you mess up. For example, every four beats go to the next chord, even if you didn't have the previous chord ready at beat 1. Once you get a fluid motion, your hands will start to work on their own. You'll also notice based on your strumming that your minor mistakes are covered up. Not a good performance strategy, but a good workout strategy--remember, you're building and training muscles doing this.

Finally, see if your action is set too high. Most guitars come from the store with really high strings, and it's hard for even a skilled player to get barre chords right. If you're playing with a new acoustic, your strings might be as much as 1.5 times as high as they should be for you. I recommend checking your string height and making adjustments if you're comfortable. You could always go to your guitar store and pay to have it professionally set up. Once the strings are adjusted to your play style, then you can be confident that all the hard work will come from your hands.