The one thing gospel encouragement isn’t is average, mediocre, ignorable. The ministry of encouragement is surprising, captivating, energizing. It does require effort and intentionality, but it also leaves us feeling exhilarated and uplifted. Is that how we walk out of our churches on a typical Sunday: exhilarated and uplifted? When the ministry of encouragement is allowed its actual authority, and it takes over and sets the tone in a community, that is how people do walk out of church. They leave thinking, “Man alive, I needed that! It makes me want to live for Christ this week! And I can’t wait for next Sunday!” And the word for that is revival.

Does encouragement seem to you a good, but small, thing?

To me, it’s huge. I want to explain why I think this way, and I’d like to persuade you to join me. I have never met anyone suffering from too much encouragement in Christ. Have you?

I think about the ministry of encouragement a lot, but not as much as I should. My friend Murray Harris, the New Testament scholar, said to me once, “Encouragement is one of the most important ministries in the church of the New Testament.” Our biblical authenticity is at stake here — whether we are overflowingly encouraging to one another.

Encouragement is what the gospel feels like as it moves from one believer to another. The ministry of encouragement, therefore, isn’t optional or just for people with a knack for it. Real encouragement has authority over us all. It deserves nothing less than to set the predominant tone of our churches, our homes, our ministries. So, let’s think it through. And then, let’s get after it.

What Is Encouragement?

The New Testament verb translated encourage can also mean “to comfort, cheer up, console, speak in a friendly manner.” Throughout, encouragement is about the life-giving power of our shared beliefs and our shared life in the Lord.

Jesus used the noun form of this verb when, in John 14:26, he called the Holy Spirit our “Helper” — that is, our encourager as an “empowering presence” among us (John, 260). J.B. Phillips paraphrased this title of the Holy Spirit as “someone to stand by you.”

So, we’re already seeing what our ministry of encouragement can look like: standing with one another, bringing a life-giving presence to one another. That’s a lot more than saying hi as we walk from the parking lot into the church building on a Sunday morning. Real encouragement is one way we experience the Holy Spirit together. It’s how we experience real community together. And this kind of community is not life-depleting but life-enriching, not guarded and aloof but all-in and involved, not scrutinizing and criticizing but affirming and strengthening.

Learning to One Another

The “one another” commands of the New Testament paint a picture of the beauty of human relationships. These one anothers include not only “encourage one another” but also “love one another” (John 13:34–35), “welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), “confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16), and more. It’s a total way of enjoying Christ together. Who wouldn’t love to jump in? At the same time, have we noticed the “one anothers” that do not appear in Scripture but sometimes appear among us? For example, “scold one another,” “humble one another,” “pressure one another,” for starters.

Why don’t we all back up and relearn how to live together in Christ? And is there a better starting place than “encourage one another”? The New Testament puts encouragement at the very foundation of real Christianity: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ . . .” (Philippians 2:1).

But stepping out into new relational patterns is risky — with risks worth taking! The ministry of encouragement frees us from safe neutrality, from keeping our cards close to our chest, from evaluating one another with cost-benefit calculations. Real encouragement sweeps us away into a glad-hearted, up-close engaging with one another. And when the encouragement we’re sharing back and forth gets so strong that it starts feeling awkward, then good! We’re finally getting somewhere.

Read More