Your pastor’s job comes with great responsibility — a responsibility and authority given by the Lord for “building up and not for tearing down” (2 Cor 10:8, 13:10). And it is taxing work, especially emotionally. It can regularly make him groan. These reasons are a real factor in why many pastors burn out. But when we obey our pastors and submit to their teaching — even when it causes us grief at first—we make their role a joy.

Have you heard the old joke about a pastor who has a terrifying dream that he’s in the middle of preaching to his congregation? When he wakes up, he is.
If you’re not a pastor leading a church,1 I’m going to ask you to engage in what you might also regard as a nightmare scenario: imagine for a moment that you’re the senior pastor of your own church. How do you feel about taking on that role? What do you think you might enjoy about it? What would you find hard? And what is just too horrifying to even contemplate? Take a moment. I’ll wait.
Have you ever put yourself in your pastor’s shoes like this before?
In 2 Corinthians 2 and 7, Paul gives us an insight into the emotional life of a church pastor. As he does, we learn some very helpful lessons about the qualities that make someone a good and godly pastor, as well as how we can encourage our pastor — perhaps in a richer way than with a quick throwaway line like “I enjoyed your sermon today”.
Back in chapter 2, Paul explained why he had discontinued his fruitful evangelistic ministry in Troas (which I have reflected upon in a previous article). At the time his “spirit was not at rest” because he was waiting to hear from Titus about how the Corinthian church had responded to the challenging letter Paul had sent them (2:13). He wrote that letter so that when he visited them in person he would not “suffer pain” (v 3). He had written “out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you” (v 4).
You can see in these words the deep concern Paul has for his Corinthian children in the faith, as well as the deep emotional turmoil he goes through as he waits to see whether they respond well to his letter or whether they instead double down on their withdrawal from him as their apostolic father in the faith. Paul is clearly very heavily invested emotionally in the members of this church. He says later in this letter, “You are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (7:3) and “Apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (11:28-29). That sounds like emotional investment to me!
But then he explains in chapter 7 why his disposition has changed and his anxiety has been relieved. He has been comforted by “the coming of Titus” (v 6), who has brought good news from Corinth. Titus conveys the positive response Paul’s letter has received there and the rewarming of their affection for Paul as their apostle (v 7).
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Perhaps our ministry plans don’t necessarily have to be made without any consideration of our personal wellbeing. It’s hard to operate when there is something causing our spirit not to be at rest (2:13). The making of ministry choices is clearly more complex—and God more gracious—than needing to choose the path that is hardest for us to endure (i.e. the path of the apparently greatest sacrifice).

Every now and then when I’m reading the Bible, I have a bit of a “huh?” moment. Like I did recently with 2 Corinthians 2:12–13:
When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.
Can you see the “huh?”
We know how committed the apostle Paul was to preaching the gospel. He kept going with it even in the face of all sorts of terrible challenges and hardships (2 Cor 11:23–27). But when he came to Troas, he noticed “a door was opened for me in the Lord”. That sounds pretty positive, doesn’t it? But what does he mean?
Paul has used a similar expression in his earlier letter to the church in Corinth: “But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor 16:8–9). So it seems like when the door is opened by God, it doesn’t necessarily mean all opposition ceases, but it does suggest that gospel fruit is being seen—the gospel preaching work is showing signs of being effective. People were, presumably, becoming Christians.
But, curiously, Paul decides to leave Troas. He shuts the door that God has opened there for him. Huh? What could possibly have convinced him to walk away from this fruitful and effective gospel preaching opportunity? It must surely have been something pretty big and important.
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