Caring for Others: The Art of Encouragement - Part II

In the Caring God's Way seminar that I went for last week, I learnt that encouragement is essential and foundational to caring for people.

There are 3 levels of caring for people:

1. Encouragement
2. Exhortation
3. Enlightenment

What do these 3 mean?

1. Encouragement ministers to the feelings of people. (Supportive)
2. Exhortations ministers to their behaviour. (Directive)
3. Enlightement ministers to their thinking. (Transformative)

The reason encouragement is so critical to caring for people is because you cannot exhort an unencouraged person. Have you ever experienced a time when you were in despair or very discouraged about your failures, etc... and then a well-intentioned person came along and tried to give you advice? To quote from my notes (hey it rhymes!):

Caring begins with ENCOURAGEMENT. We can never be fully effective at the other levels until we learn how to function at the first level.