Pastoral Letter  from Revd. Louise Corke July 2010 When was the last time you received encouragement from someone which you valued hearing? You may want to think about that for a moment. That question, and your answer, begs another question: when did you last give someone encouragement which they would value receiving? And is it important anyway? Well, maybe we could start to answer that by looking at what encouragement, or the lack of it, can do. There are quite a few of us who were told by teachers that we were no good at music or sport or art, for example, and as a result we still feel we are useless at it. Many of us who think we really can’t do things could, actually, if we had been encouraged. We do have the aptitude, but we lacked the courage and we were not en-couraged when we needed it. A friend of mine recently asked some of his friends and colleagues to give him some feedback on his strengths and weaknesses; one of the weaknesses which emerged was that he was not a great encourager. Since he is a vicar, this wasn’t particularly good news and he thought long and hard about why he didn’t encourage others. He realised that in his head, he was thinking that anybody can do anything if they put their mind to it; they just need to have a go and the worst thing that could happen is that they fail. Then a friend pointed out to him that most people not only feel that there are some things they couldn’t possibly do, but also the prospect of failing is a really fearful one. So they need others to come alongside them and encourage them. Good encouragement is far from a fluffy hug once and a while, nor is it just about telling people about how great they are. Encouragement comes when we are included in a project which succeeds, or when someone tells us that we are appreciated, or when we are given the courage to do something valuable which may indeed fail but was still worth trying. Good, regular encouragement stops negativity, and a lot of us know how we can hold quite negative internal beliefs about ourselves. Really good encouragement will also challenge us and change us. Encouragement has such positive outcomes, it is valuable in every place of life and work, and certainly it ought to be part of the culture of each of our churches. So I wonder: when did you last receive encouragement, and when did you last give it?           Louise