How to Cope With the Emotional Toll of Unpaid Preaching, and Count It as Treasure in Heaven

How to cope with the emotional toll of unpaid ministry begins with admitting the weariness before God, as Elijah, Paul and Christ did, and then keeping daily habits of prayer, rest, fellowship and thanksgiving. Scripture calls what a preacher gives for the gospel treasure laid up in heaven, and God is not unrighteous to forget the labour.

What does preaching without a salary cost a man in heart and spirit?

It costs more than money. The volunteer preacher gives his hours, his strength and his travel, and in return he often receives no wage, no title and very little notice.

Three burdens are common among those who serve this way:

• Loneliness. The preacher may study, pray and travel alone, and few people understand what the work asks of him.
• Feeling overlooked. Others in the congregation are thanked or paid for their work, while his labour passes without a word.
• Discouragement. After months of teaching, he may see little change in the people he has taught, and he begins to wonder whether he has laboured for nothing.

Age adds to these burdens. A retired man has less strength than he once had, and the same journey now tires him more. None of this means his faith is weak. It means he is a man doing hard work in a body that wears out.

Is it a sin for a volunteer preacher to feel tired, lonely or overlooked?

No. Weariness is not sin, and Scripture records it in the best of God’s servants without rebuking them for it.

Sin begins where weariness leads a man to abandon the work, to accuse God, or to nurse bitterness against the brethren. The feeling itself is a human condition. The Lord knows our frame, and the Psalmist says that “he remembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

For that reason a preacher need not hide his tiredness from God or pretend to a strength he does not have. He may bring it to the Lord plainly, as the men of Scripture did.

What did Elijah, Paul and the Lord Jesus do with their weariness?

Each of them took the weariness to God, and God answered it with care before He gave any further command. The table below sets out the three cases.

Servant The weariness What followed Elijah He sat under a juniper tree and prayed, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life” (1 Kings 19:4). An angel told him to arise and eat, and he slept and ate again (1 Kings 19:5-8). Paul He wrote of “weariness and painfulness” and of being pressed “out of measure, above strength” (2 Corinthians 11:27; 1:8). He said that God comforts the cast down (2 Corinthians 7:6). The Lord Jesus He was “wearied with his journey” and sat on the well (John 4:6); He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He withdrew to pray (Luke 5:16) and called His disciples to rest a while (Mark 6:31).

Elijah

Elijah also said, “I, even I only, am left” (1 Kings 19:10). That is the voice of loneliness. God did not argue with him. He fed him, let him rest, spoke to him in a still small voice, and told him that seven thousand in Israel had not bowed to Baal (1 Kings 19:12, 18). The prophet’s sense of being alone was not the whole truth, and God corrected it gently.

Paul

Paul worked with his hands at tentmaking (Acts 18:3) and preached the gospel without charge (1 Corinthians 9:18). Near the end of his life he wrote that at his first answer “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” He did not stop there. He added, “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me” (2 Timothy 4:16-17).

The Lord Jesus

Christ knew tiredness, sorrow and desertion. He slept in the boat (Mark 4:38), He said that the Son of man had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20), and many disciples went back and walked no more with Him (John 6:66). A preacher who feels alone in his service follows a Master who felt the same.

How does Scripture teach us to call sacrifice an investment in heaven?

Scripture teaches that whatever is given up for Christ is not lost but stored with God. The Lord said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal” (Matthew 6:20).

When Peter said that the disciples had forsaken all to follow Him, Jesus replied that everyone who has forsaken houses, family or lands for His name’s sake “shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:27-29). The sacrifice is real, and so is the answer to it.

Several other passages say the same:

• “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name” (Hebrews 6:10).
• Paul told Timothy that those who do good are “laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come” (1 Timothy 6:18-19).
• “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour” (1 Corinthians 3:8).
• Moses counted “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt,” for he “had respect unto the recompence of the reward” (Hebrews 11:26).

A preacher who gives his time and strength for nothing in return on earth has not made a poor exchange. He has made a deposit where nothing decays. To say so to himself on a heavy day is not a comforting story. It is what the Lord said.

Which daily habits keep a weary preacher’s heart steady?

Small habits kept every day steady a tired heart better than occasional bursts of effort. The following sequence is suited to an older man with limited strength.

1. Begin the day with the Lord. Read a portion of Scripture and then pray, casting the day’s burdens on Him. “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee” (Psalm 55:22).
2. Eat and rest as Elijah did. Weariness of spirit is often joined to weariness of body. Regular meals, sleep and a quiet hour in the afternoon are part of obedience, since “he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2).
3. Name the day’s labour to God. At evening, list in prayer what was done: a visit made, a verse explained, a person encouraged. Writing it on a short list keeps a record that a discouraged mind will otherwise forget.
4. Give thanks for what God has already done. Recall the times He supplied a need or opened a door. The Psalmist did this when his soul was low: “I will remember the works of the LORD” (Psalm 77:11).
5. Speak to your own soul. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? … hope thou in God” (Psalm 42:5). A man may rebuke his own discouragement with Scripture.
6. Lay the work down at night. The work belongs to the Lord. Trust Him with what remains undone, and sleep.

Where the weariness arises from the care of sick relatives or of the household, a preacher may find that the Father who sees in secret keeps the record of the preacher no one notices, including the service done at home.

Who should a preacher turn to when the burden grows heavy?

He should turn first to the Lord, and then to a fellow believer who can listen and pray with him. Scripture does not intend a man to carry such a burden alone: “Two are better than one… for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Paul’s own comfort came through the coming of Titus (2 Corinthians 7:6).

The preacher may look for help in these places:

• A fellow preacher or elder whom he trusts, and who will keep what he hears in confidence.
• The congregation, where the command to “bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2) applies to the preacher as much as to anyone.
• His family, who may not know how tired he is until he tells them.
• A physician, if the heaviness will not lift, if sleep fails for weeks, or if he loses all interest in the work. Seeking medical care for the body is no denial of faith, and the body and spirit affect one another.

A man who says “I am weary and need a brother’s prayers” is acting with humility, and God gave the brotherhood so that such words could be spoken.

What can he say to himself on the day when nothing seems to come of his labour?

He can say what the prophet said: “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and my work with my God” (Isaiah 49:4). The prophet admits the feeling and in the same breath places the outcome in God’s hands.

Other truths are fit to repeat on such a day:

• The results do not belong to the preacher. “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). His part is to be faithful in sowing.
• God’s word has its own work to do. “It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please” (Isaiah 55:11).
• The labour is seen. “Your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
• The harvest has a season. “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

David, when his own men spoke of stoning him, “encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6). The preacher may do likewise, repeating these verses aloud, and may rest in the knowledge that a faithful day is never wasted before God.

If fear for tomorrow’s bread is part of your weariness, read next: Why the Anxious Preacher Can Lay Down the Fear of Tomorrow’s Bread.