The Magic Power of Encouragement
Bob Hyatt
January 17, 2025
When I graduated from college, I moved to Alaska and took a job teaching middle school- a job I had zero business doing.
I want to give props to those of you who are teachers- it’s a fantastically important job, but also a ridiculously complex one. You must balance pedagogical skills, HOW to teach so others learn, with sociological ones, classroom management, and so much more. It was classroom management where my ineptitude really shone, though. I thought managing classrooms full of middle schoolers would be easy- just call them out when they do something wrong- make sure there are consequences in place, and the place will basically run itself. I learned that year that you cannot punish someone into good behavior. You more often just punish people into stealthier ways of misbehavior.
It wasn’t until years later that the light bulb came on for me. I was volunteering in my son’s kindergarten class, and I assumed I was going to be walking into a zoo. Contrary to my expectations, Mr. Waters, the teacher, had that place running like a well-oiled machine. And the most surprising way was how he did it. He called for reading time when all the kids were supposed to get up from their tables and sit on the reading circle. He made this call and like two kids responded. Oh man, I thought- he’s lost the room! Nope. He just stood at the front of the class and said “I see Billy doing what I asked. I see Sienna doing what I asked.” And every time he said that another few kids would look up, leave what they were doing and rush to take their place. In about 30 seconds, he had them all sitting quietly around the circle.
Blew. My. Mind.
It seemed so simple once I saw it done, but I had never realized just how big a gap there was between trying to motivate with consequences and nagging versus motivating with encouragement.
Which is funny, because as I thought about it, I realized my wife had been using this tactic on me for YEARS. I married a woman who liked to dance- swing dance, even. I grew up a Baptist, so… But whenever I would do a little two-step with her in the kitchen or just play-dance with her to music in the living room, she would go OVER THE TOP. “Bob, you are doing that really well! Bob, you’re a great dancer!” I totally knew I wasn’t, but… I sure liked to hear her say it, and so I’d do it more.
So, here’s the rule: What you criticize me for, I may stop doing. I may also just try to hide it from you. But- What you praise and encourage me in, I will continue doing.
The Apostle Paul was a master at this- just look at 1 Thess. 5:11- ”So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” What is Paul doing here?
Yes, he’s encouraging them to encourage each other by encouraging them for how they’ve already been encouraging one another! That’s a lot
of encouraging. But he’s doing what he’s asking them to do- demonstrating how it works. I’m sure not everyone in the church of Thessalonica was good at encouraging others- but those who were doing it well were heartened by Paul’s words here, and those who weren’t yet, were… encouraged to be more encouraging. Paul uses the word “encourage” 7 times in 1st Thess. alone. This command to encourage each other is central in the NT.
Hebrews 10:24-25 says this: Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 13:11 “Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.”
How long can you go on one compliment, or one word of encouragement? A few days? A week? Our words have so much power! I once had an orange t-shirt, that had a disturbingly deep V-neck. My co-pastor Dustin would laugh every time he saw me in it. But you know why I continued to wear it? Because it was literally the only shirt I ever owned that had been complimented by a woman I was not married or related to. A barista one time told me she really liked that shirt… So, what I’m saying is, you can get me to do just about anything, if you encourage me.
BUT- With great power, comes great responsibility. Notice that these verses on encouragement come in the context of helping others become the followers of Jesus they could and were meant to be. “Encourage each other and build each up.” “Motivate one another to acts of love and good works. Encourage one another.” “Grow to maturity. Encourage each other.” There’s a growth mindset behind the biblical admonitions that we ought to encourage each other. The growth mindset says “I may not be good at this or have mastered it… yet. But if I keep trying…” Unfortunately, most of us get stuck in a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset says “I'm either good at something, or I’m not. So, I’ll give myself only to things where I can show I’m good. If I must work at it, it means I’m not good at it, or smart enough for it, so why try?” Studies have shown that encouragement has a positive effect on performance, while discouragement has a negative effect. Ok- that’s obvious. But… studies have also been done about how TYPES of encouragement affect performance. Encouraging effort, for example, has a positive effect on performance, while praising ABILITY has a negative effect. One study showed that when two groups of students were presented with difficult challenges 90% of the ones who had been praised for their effort embraced the difficult tasks- while the majority of those praised for their ability resisted tackling hard things.
I probably don’t have to spell out the leadership lessons here. So, I’ll just leave you with this: I encourage you this season to be thinking about the people you work with and especially those who work under you. They are just as hungry for encouragement as you are. You have the power to give them not only what they need, but through that encouragement to spur them on to the personal and ministry growth you want to see in them.
(By the way, while we’re talking about encouragement, if you need some this season, join us Feb 25-27th in Alexandria, VA for this year’s Ecclesia National Gathering. I guarantee you and your team will leave feeling encouraged, equipped, and empowered. And think about how encouraging YOUR presence would be to everyone else!)
“When God works in us nothing is useless, and nothing is spared.” - Jeannine Brown, Carla Dahl and Wendy Corbin Reuschling, Becoming Whole and Holy “There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment.” - Alan Redpath Here's something I've noticed about people as they get older: they tend to go one of two ways. They either get sweeter with age or they get crankier. They grow wiser and more like Jesus, or they grow bitter and more like the worst version of themselves. That's because life is formation. Everything we do and everything we go through shapes us one way or the other, mostly depending on how we respond to what happens to us, whether it's extraordinary or completely ordinary. Ministry works the same way. I've watched leaders come out of nearly identical trials in completely different shape. Some come out stronger. Others come out deeply wounded, discouraged, and ready to quit. The difference usually comes down to where they see God in the middle of the struggle, absent or present, and what questions they ask about it. Some ask, "God, why is this happening to me?" Others ask, "God, what could you want to form in me through this?" Both views of God will shape us, and so will both questions. They just shape us in very different directions. In my experience, the most common sin in church leadership is an obsession with numbers and results, paired with neglect of our own souls. On top of that, we rarely stop to notice how those numbers and results, and how ministry itself, are shaping us. So here's my suggestion: stop working so hard to develop your ministry and start noticing that your ministry is developing you. How you handle the realities of church leadership will determine not only what your church becomes but what you become. Leadership and ministry will form you. The only question is: into what? One tool God uses: the fishbowl Some people hesitate to become a pastor because it opens them up to scrutiny, and now and then to outright criticism. When I was a young leader, I hated the "fishbowl effect" of ministry. Everyone was watching me, and my mistakes seemed to count for a lot more than anyone else's. It felt deeply unfair that flaws that wouldn't even register at most people's jobs could cost me my job, my reputation, and my community. Never mind that maybe it bothered me so much because I had such a generous supply of those flaws. After years of living under the steady gaze of critics and cranks, I see the fishbowl differently. These days I actually welcome it. Richard Baxter, a Puritan pastor in the 1600s, put it this way: “While you are as lights set upon a hill, think not to lie hid... do your work as those that remember that the world looks on them... ready to make the worst of all... and to make faults where they cannot find them.”[1] Baxter understood that anyone who calls others to live like Jesus is going to get called out when they don't. His advice? Live like the world is watching, because it is. Some people in your life are ready to yell "Hypocrite!" at the first opportunity, to point out failings they share themselves, and, as Baxter says, even to invent faults when they can't find real ones. And Baxter's fishbowl had a few neighbors peering over the fence. Ours has a livestream, a comment section, and someone screenshotting the announcements. But Baxter goes further. He says we should be glad about it: “As you take yourselves for the lights of the churches, you may expect that men's eyes will be upon you. If other men may sin without observation, so cannot you. And you should thankfully consider how great a mercy this is, that you have so many eyes to watch over you, and so many ready to tell you of your faults; and thus have greater helps than others, at least for restraining you from sin. Though they may do it with a malicious mind, yet you have the advantage of it.” As a Pastor, you have more eyes on you and more people paying attention to how you live. That means you have more help than most in living well and avoiding sin. What some people mean for evil, God means for your good (Genesis 50:20). What looks like a downside of ministry turns out to be a path to maturity, to formation. In practical terms, living your life in front of others pushes you to do what you already know you should do. And it often keeps you out of things you might slide into if nobody were watching. One important caveat: embracing accountability isn't the same as tolerating abuse. Healthy scrutiny sharpens you. A congregant who attacks your spouse or treats your kids like church property is a different problem, and it calls for boundaries, not gratitude. Let's be clear, though: the fishbowl isn't enough on its own. What we're really after is internal: character, a changed heart. But knowing we're living out loud in front of a watching church and a watching world gives us structure, and that structure can help us build the habits and rhythms of holiness we want. As we try to let the heart and character of Christ take deeper root in us, we have the advantage of lots of eyes around us "encouraging" us to stay on the straight and narrow. My sense is that people who embrace this find that, over time, what starts on the outside moves more and more to the inside. Slowly, the choices we make because others are watching become, through habit, real character. Because I know people are watching, I think twice about what I say in public, what I scroll past on my phone, and how I talk to my kids at church or out on the sidewalk in front of the neighbors. More and more, those choices, first made because of an audience, become part of who I am. That's especially true when I treat those moments as kairos [2] moments: times when God breaks in and uses my awareness of a watching world to show me the character He wants to form in me and the choices He'd like me to make. But what if we don't embrace it? What about those who get shipwrecked by moral failure, character flaws, and private sins gone public? People who resent the fishbowl of ministry and the Christian life often end up living one way in public and another in private. It's as if their anger at being scrutinized pushes them into a divided life: they'll play by the rules in public but insist on their own rules in private. Frustrated with the audience around them, so eager to find fault, they forget the true Audience they live before. And as we've all seen from too many spectacular crash-and-burns, the fallout is often devastating. Families, churches, and the reputation of the whole Church take serious damage. Pastors, recognize that your formation is happening, one way or another… and make peace with the fishbowl. It's going to be there whether you like it or not. If you embrace it, you may find it spurring you on toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24) and keeping you clear of the sins that have taken down so many in ministry before you. “You should thankfully consider how great a mercy this is, that you have so many eyes to watch over you.” Let the Holy Spirit use your public life, and every eye watching it, to shape and form you. The fishbowl and the formation of a life in ministry are coming either way. Let them help answer the question: into what? To further explore your own formation through ministry, join us at the Multiply Summit with special guest Rich Villodas this coming February in the Washington, D.C. area! Adapted from Eldership and the Mission of God by Bob Hyatt and J.R. Briggs. [1] Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, London, 1657, p. 21. [2] Kairos is one of the Greek words for time, but it's different from chronos. Chronos is linear, calendar time. Kairos refers to significant moments full of possibility. Here, it means those times when God steps into chronos.
Here's a message from Ecclesia Pastor Aaron Graham
