O Barnabas, Where Art Thou?

A church I once served had "Encouragement Cards" in the pews for people to write notes to members—birthday and anniversary greetings, a comforting word to someone in grief, "get well" wishes to someone in the hospital, a thank you to a worship leader or Sunday School teacher. These cards were collected and volunteers mailed them to the intended recipients. It was a wonderful ministry led by one of the sweetest, most encouraging people I have ever known.

The only problem was that some members were using the "Encouragement Cards" to express their complaints and criticisms—sometimes in rather unkind words (that's right—rude complaints written on "Encouragement Cards"!). The practice became frequent enough that the staff privately nicknamed the notes "Discouragement Cards"! We finally had to address the problem from the pulpit, and thankfully it cleared up.

One of the passages we considered in our church during the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter was Philippians 2:1-11—"If there is any encouragement in Christ…" That passage prompted me to reflect a little on the meaning of encouragement.

We all recognize encouragement. It's a little league coach urging a youngster to shake off an error and "get the next one." It's an expression of thanks to a nurse for taking good care of a loved one. It's an offer to help someone who seems a little overwhelmed by the task at hand. It's a boss praising an employee for hard work on a busy week. It's a big hug for mom when we get up from the dinner table.

And we all recognize discouragement. It's a basketball coach whose players will all graduate, whose team won more than 2/3 of their games, and made it to the NCAA tournament for the 4^th year in a row; but all he hears is people harping that they didn't make to the "Sweet Sixteen." It's a nurse who's worked double shifts covering for others who call in sick, has more patients than she knows how to manage, hasn't had time to take a 15-minute lunch break in the last 7 hours, and then has to listen to an irate family member berate her because she didn't answer a call button fast enough. It's having a boss who swears at you constantly because you can't read his mind (I actually had one of those once). It's a wife who prepares a nice dinner, only to hear her husband unthinkingly say, "It's good, but my mom's meatloaf tasted a little better . . . Wonder what she put in hers?" (And no, I never, ever said anything that ridiculously stupid to my wife. Never. Really. Just ask her . . . on second thought, don't ask her—just take my word for it.)

In a world which makes such a habit of discouragement, I wonder how we could make the church a haven of encouragement.

But that's probably a completely unrealistic wish.