Our Hearts

Olin Hay, who taught homiletics at Atlanta Christian College for many years, often said to his preaching students, “you need a pastor’s heart.” No student could possibly have taken one of his classes without knowing that, as a preacher, “you need a pastor’s heart.”

While I certainly don’t disagree with that sentiment, I would take it a step further and say that we all need such a heart – not just pastors, preachers, missionaries, youth ministers, and the whole list of those who make ministry vocational in their lives.

I never took one of Olin Hay’s classes so I can’t say exactly how he would have defined such a heart, but for me, no text in the New Testament speaks more forcefully to that idea than 2 Corinthians 11:28. “And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” (NRSV)

What “other things?” If you read the words that precede this verse, you find Paul very uncharacteristically listing a whole host of rather dreadful “things” that have happened to him. Everything from having been stoned to ship wrecked is in the list. It’s a list that it is unlikely that anyone reading this would ever experience. 

But his heart is so devoted to the church – that he can say “besides these things” – seemingly in the sense of “even more than the awful, physical persecutions I have experienced in my walk with Christ, is my concern for the wellbeing of the church.” And it isn’t just “a church” but “all the churches.” Nothing parochial here – he seems to have this global passion for the church and its ministry.

If that isn’t a “pastor’s heart,” then I’m not sure one could be defined. Apparently Paul wasn’t one of those “evangelists” who assumed that winning people to Christ was all there was to do, and once done, to move on to something else.  He certainly is an example of an evangelist with no equal – but it didn’t stop there.

In a world where church mission ministries are often focused on finding support for those missions which are primarily evangelistic, we should rejoice because of such passion “to make disciples.” But at the same time, we can forget that the other half of the great commission is “to teach them to observe . . .” That ingredient can’t be missing if our hearts and the hearts of churches we serve are to have a “pastor’s heart.”

May God continue to use His church to not only “to win the lost,” but “to nurture the saved” so that the work of the church might continue to have an impact on the world.