As I read this excellent post on “The Pastor’s Heavy Happy Heart”  by Thabiti Anyabwile I was reminded of John Newton’s hymn called, “A Minister’s Burden.” I posted it a few years ago—which is like a whole generation in blog life—but think it is worth highlighting again. Newton and Thabiti get it.

I am amazed that God called me into pastoral ministry and I am grateful for the immense privilege of serving a loving, patient church. But as Thabiti’s prose and Newton’s poetry make plain, there is an unavoidable mixture of contradicting emotions that pound a pastor’s heart day in and day out, regardless of how wonderful the church he serves is. Yet, every pastor that I know and respect would not have it any other way.

Paul’s description of his inner life as “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10) captured my attention when I was a young pastor. Through the years I have become convinced that learning, like Paul, to feel that way is essential to emotional health. I believe that is true for every Christian, but it is especially important for pastors to learn how to feel this way. Otherwise, we cannot fulfill our calling to preach the unsearchable riches of the joy-inducing Christ in the midst of this sin-corrupted and sorrow-inducing, broken world. If we don’t learn to feel both at the same time, it is doubtful that our ministry will ever approach the kind of authenticity that it requires.

A Minister’s Burden

What contradictions meet
In ministers’ employ!
It is a bitter sweet,
A sorrow full of joy:
No other post affords a place
For equal honor or disgrace.

Who can describe the pain
Which faithful preachers feel,
Constrained to speak in vain,
To hearts as hard as steel?
Or who can tell the pleasures felt,
When stubborn hearts begin to melt?

The Savior’s dying love,
The soul’s amazing worth,
Their utmost efforts move,
And draw their bowels forth;
They pray and strive, the rest departs,
Till Christ be formed in sinners’ hearts.

If some small hope appears,
They still are not content,
But with a jealous fear,
They watch for the event:
Too oft they find their hopes deceived.
Then how their inmost souls are grieved!

But when their pains succeed,
And from the tender blade
The ripening ears proceed,
Their toils are overpaid:
No harvest-joy can equal theirs,
To find the fruit of all their cares.

On what has now been sown,
Thy blessing, Lord, bestow;
The power is Thine alone,
To make it spring and grow:
Do Thou the gracious harvest raise,
And Thou alone shalt have the praise.