An encouragement to encourage

Remember lockdown? As a pastor?

There were loads of things we started, stopped, twisted, invented, muddled through and got plain wrong. You too, I’m sure.

One thing I think we got right in our church, was identifying and, hopefully, meeting the need for encouragement.  And so we’ve kept it. But with a twist.

Let’s start at the start. Encouraging people is one of the things every Christian is supposed to do every day. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (Heb 3:13).

And encouraging people is something we pastors in particular are supposed to do.  Teach, rebuke, correct, train, yes – but we are also to encourage. Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction (2 Tim 4:2). 

Yes, I know it means something quite particular in each context, with a good motivation to press on to the goal, not being distracted by sin. I’m not saying our role is to put on a silly grin and tell jokes.

But consider this little sequence from Acts, and consider what would happen if you replaced the words for ‘encouraged’ with a less emotionally positive word, like ‘taught’

• Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers. Acts 9:31
• When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. Acts 11:23
• Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. Acts 15:23
• After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. Acts 16:40
• When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. Acts 18:27
• He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people. Acts 20:22
• At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged. Acts 28:15

They would all have a different feel, wouldn’t they?  There’s a flavour in there of people moving into a more definite, gospel-upbeat mood. More – of some people moving other people into that mood.

We pastors are in the encouragement business. The cheering-up and cheering-on business.

So that’s point one.  I don’t think we encourage anywhere near enough.  I don’t think people hear us encouraging them any where near enough.  Is it possible to be over-encouraged?

Point two.

During lockdown I took that idea with force, and increased intensity.  I tend to write a short email to everyone each week, heading our newsletter, and during that season I intentionally said, I have only one role in this message: to encourage.  There are multiple gospel reasons why, and multiple bible passages to use.  But at a time when the culture felt flat, and people felt wrung out, or even fearful, I needed to bring the gospel to bear with full positivity.

I topped it up with a Saturday video as well: a weekly refill. People felt isolated, so here was a way to reach out a second time, with a familiar voice and face.  

I dropped that once we started meeting again.  It was redundant.  Although I noticed that some people said they missed it.

And then I saw another church’s weekly email, and they’d done something really simple but clever.  Alongside the written message was an audio file.   Click it, and you’d get it read to you by the pastor.

I decided to give it a go. I’m not sure I’d have been as easy with this five years ago, but we’ve so got over any issue with using tech. I simply recorded a voice memo on my phone, and attached it.

Two things happened, almost immediately.  First, a small wave of thanks from our visually impaired and blind members.  I really hadn’t considered the impact it might have, but of course they run my message through software anyway, and have Siri or Alexa read to them. Now, though, they had me – and they loved it.

And then I started to receive similar messages from people who simply enjoyed listening to me, rather than reading another email.  They actively looked forward to it.  

Which was interesting. I’ve increased the impact, by a very small change.

So, if you’re thinking about doing it, let me encourage you. (You saw what I did there, right?). Because it is very simple, although I’ve added one tweak, that I’d love you to grab hold of.

Having written my 500 word piece, I simply speak it onto my phone.  Actually, this is really helpful, because it functions as a final proof read, and a check for best writing.  I spot missing words, silly spelling substitutions, and slightly sharper ways to write.  So that’s a win for me. And because I’m trying to put some energy into it, it’s a win for the listeners as well. Beat that, smart speaker.

Then I transfer the file to my laptop.  I’m Mac, so I use Airdrop – I assume there’s a seamless way to do it in PC world. I drop it into the Mac’s recording suite Garageband, where I have a standard little backing track sitting there ready (the same one, each week), and then save it as an MP3. You may have better, other ways of doing it, and you might decide that it’s over-the-top.  But in seconds I’ve given the whole thing a little bit of pro polish, and it’s good to go.  

The weekly encouragement piece is 500 words. That takes me maybe an hour and a half to write, redraft, tidy up.  For the written email I normally put in a couple of subheads, and a photo at the top (royalty free, naturally! Pixabay). A ‘think it over’ question or two.

The recording takes maybe ten minutes on top of that, of which one part is the proof read which I’d do anyway.

If I’d thought of doing this five years ago, I’d have talked myself out of it.  What kind of church does that kind of techie stuff? Who has the resources to do that kind of thing?

Well, it turns out I do.  And so do you.

Trust me, your kids are gonna to love it.

Think it through

Have you tried this? How’s it going? Pile in!