Perhaps this is an infrequently shared secret of pastoral ministry; that is, how much of it is driven not by faith in the truths of the Gospel and in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but driven by fear. It is very tempting for the pastor to load the welfare of the church on his shoulders and when he does, he ends up being burdened and motivated by an endless and every-changing catalog of “what ifs.”

He got used to the bad habits of unfaith. “They’re just my way of unwinding,” he’d tell himself. He reasoned that they didn’t get in the way of what he had been called to do. He kept telling himself that he was working hard and doing well; but he wasn’t doing well. He had more sleepless nights than he was ready to admit. He had gained thirty pounds over the last several years. He numbed his brain every night with hours upon hours of vacuous TV or internet pop culture. He had incurred more debt than ever before in his life.

His wife would have said that he had become increasingly irritable and distant. At home he often appeared to be a joyless, over-burdened man. His kids would say that even when he was present he was often distant. He dreaded meetings and found himself easily distracted when he needed to focus on preparing his next sermon. The door to his office was shut more than it had been before and he increasingly delegated more of his duties to his Executive Pastor.

Yet no one in the congregation had a clue. He did all his public duties and from the perspective of the person in the pew, he seemed to do them well. He lead the meetings that he was appointed to lead and did his best to do the follow up work that landed on his desk. The problem was that he was not doing well. There was a growing disparity between the public persona and the private man. There was a growing disconnect between the faith statements he made from up front and the thinking that ruled his heart. He carried with him the dirty secret that many pastors carry; the one that is so hard for a “man of faith” to admit. The dirty secret was that much of what he did was not done out of faith, but out of fear.

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