A Personal Encouter With an Encourager

I had the privilege of working with at the annual vocal/instrumental solo & ensemble contest this past Saturday. A number of schools participated with hundreds of performances throughout the day.

I was a center manager for instrumental solos and ensembles. We started at 8 AM and finished at about 5 PM. In the process we heard dozens of trumpet and french horn solos, along with several brass ensembles. The students weren’t competing against each other, but for a rating. As with all contests, there were some OUTSTANDING performances, many GREAT performances, a number of GOOD performances and a couple of NOT SO GREAT performances. All in all the students did a great job and I was proud of all of them.

Each center has a judge that evaluates every performance, writes comments and instructions for improvement and then gives different aspects of the performance a numeric value. Add those numbers up and you have the final score and rating for the performance.

The reason I’m writing about this is because of the judge I worked with. His name is Jeffrey Agrell and he is a professor at the School of Music at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. I had never worked with him nor even met him prior to Saturday, but from the very first performance in the morning I was deeply impressed by this guy.

There were two things that struck me about Mr. Agrell. First, he spoke personally with every soloist following their performance, and spoke to every ensemble following theirs. He would offer words of instruction, suggestions for improvement and some technical expertise. Second, and this is the one that really impressed me, he had nothing but encouragement to offer to every single performer. I watched him closely. He wasn’t just offering "empty words". He meant every single word he spoke and he was just as sincere with the final performance as he was with the first.

All of this made me wonder.....why aren’t most of us like that? I try to be positive and upbeat and encouraging, but I don’t always achieve it. So I’ve decided I’m going to work harder to obey 1 Thessalonians 5:11 which says, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."

Can I encourage you to do the same? Be an encourager. Mr. Agrell set an excellent example for me and everyone else who stepped into our center. I hope I can do the same for someone else.
God bless, friends! Have a great week!