What Are You Doing About The Encouragement Shortage?

I heard about the most amazing blog post on the radio today. As soon as I had the chance I went straight to it online and read through the entire post. I will say that is was an emotional experience and I am so glad I did. Even though it was not directed at Christian business owners and leaders, it is a lesson about encouragement that we can all do well to learn.

Random Encouragement

The post, “217 Wrong Numbers”, was written by a guy that tried a social experiment by sending an anonymous text message to 217 wrong phone numbers. He sent the following text message to people all over his area code who had no idea who he was.

I can’t help but think you are an incredibly amazing and wonderful person. Just saying’.

At first glance, I thought that was a good idea. Surely we could all take a moment today to say something nice to someone else, even a stranger, without exerting a whole lot of effort, right? It’s like paying for the meal of the person behind you in the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. It is unexpected and pleasant. It feels good.

Bigger Lesson

However, I was wrong. No, the idea itself was not a bad one. It’s just that the idea was not the lesson we all need to learn. It wasn’t until I read the top 20 responses he received that I recognized the real lesson.

Think about it. If you received this random text from an anonymous sender, what would be your response? From what he experienced, most people simply did not respond or told him that he had the wrong number. No surprise there, right?

No, the surprise is in the other responses. They were scattered all over the board as a whole, but there was one clear theme. People need more of this kind of encouragement than many of us recognize. I am sure there are a couple of you out there that encourage like Barnabas, but the rest of us need to read these responses and take them to heart.

Serious Encouragement Needed!

You can read his post yourself, but here are a couple that initially caught my attention:

Then, I realized it could get much worse as the need became greater…

Shortage Of Encouragement

Folks, we work with people every day that need serious amounts of encouragement! We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 that we are to build each other up. As Christian business owners and leaders, we have the opportunities AND responsibility to do this regularly! Why is this so hard? Why is there such a shortage of this kind of praise?

If you read my recent post about our lack of margin for ministry, I believe you will agree that this is a big part of the problem. We are all just too busy to stop and think about creative ways to encourage those around us. We rush, rush, rush and never slow down long enough to see those around us in need of praise.

They Need It More

Another issue is that we may not need it as much as others do and therefore we don’t recognize the need in someone else. Maybe we grew up in a home that gave us a lifetime source of the encouragement we need. Maybe we are married to our biggest fan and never go a day without receiving praise like this.

Whatever the case, if we have never experienced a lack of encouragement, we probably won’t understand why others need it so much. We may even go so far as to think they are weak for their need of praise.

The problem here is that whether we need it or not, there are others who will literally die without it. We cannot judge everyone else’s need by the level of our own need. We must instead trust Scripture when it says we need to encourage and build up others.

Make The Effort

I sincerely believe you will see a dramatic difference in the morale of your staff, the performance of your business, and even a lift in your own spirit if you will make an effort to praise and encourage others more often throughout your days. It may take time to build the habit, but I am convinced it will be worth it.

Just for one last reminder, check out this last example response:

Are you already good at offering encouragement or do you struggle?

Who do you know that is always offering encouragement to you and others?

How do you think your employees would react if you offered more encouragement?

photo by Loren Kerns