Tentmaking

The Life and Work of Business as Missions

Patrick Lai, Robert Larkin

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780830857661
• eBook ISBN:
  9780830859573
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

Professional church planter Patrick Lai provides an in-depth reference for tentmakers--business-as-mission practitioners operating in regions of great antagonism to the Christian message.Those who are unfamiliar with the world of tentmaking will find valuable information to introduce them to the concept and to help in getting started. Designed to be a manual, Tentmaking is more than just an overview of questions and issues. This work will serve as an in-depth reference for existing tentmakers. This thoroughly researched collection is the result of interviews from over 450 people serving in the 10/40 window. It provides a unique viewpoint on missions, sharing proven, workable alternatives to conventional missionary life. Tentmaking provides an important and much needed resource to this specialized area of world missions.

chapter 1

BREAKING BOXES

What do you do when the Master has called you to preach, but having an unconventional style gets you barred from reaching the very people you are called to preach to? John Wesley faced this very problem. The leaders of his day felt biblical preaching should be done in a church behind a pulpit. Their limited view of doing outreach was based on their own experiences. They were living in a box, unable to see beyond what they already knew. John Wesley stepped outside of this box. Barred from his city’s pulpits, he bought a horse and rode out to the countryside where he began open air preaching. Wesley fulfilled his calling without worrying about the traditions and structures of the church. He did not live boxed in by the inhibitions of others. He did not allow the narrow mindedness of others to hinder his ministry of evangelism and church planting. He stepped out of the box, believing the Spirit of God could manifest Himself in unexplored ways, reaching beyond structured and controlled institutions and their liturgies. Wesley appreciated the church, but he did not have a need to reform it. He understood the limitations of traditional methods of outreach and climbed outside the box to reach the less reached. He focused his efforts and resources on implementing new strategies for reaching those who were beyond the reach of the gospel.

Mission agencies now have over two hundred years of traditions, values, policies, and practices. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mission organizations enjoyed the protection of western governments and the donations of wealthy western churches. Having been built on such a foundation, mission agencies are finding it hard to remodel themselves to fit today’s world. Many agencies embrace strategies and methods that contrast with those of the world around them. The ways of bringing missions and business together are difficult. A paradigm shift is needed. We must break out of our boxes.

It is a waste of time and resources to train people to learn more and better things, when the context in which the learner thinks has not shifted. It is like trying to add ten new storeys to a building without making adjustments to the foundation. Shifting paradigms cannot be done simply via the imparting of knowledge. Presenting facts and telling stories may or may not help. If leaders are going to look at things differently, we must willingly choose to re-look at the same situation from a totally different point of view. Old foundations need to be put aside so new structures may be built. Revamping former strategies and methodologies will not work. “We need to wake up to the fact that we can not rely on the ‘tried and true’ because what was tried yesterday is no longer true today.”¹ Mission organizations need to retool. We need to attempt new models of sending workers. Like John Wesley, we need to pray and think and then be ready to step outside the box.

Jesus says, “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”² Jesus is still seeking fishers of men; some are to leave their nets, and others are to bring their nets with them. But how are we to reach those living in countries which restrict missionary access? How are we to evangelize neighborhoods and nearby classes of society that are still largely untouched by churches just around the corner?

Encouraging changes are beginning to occur, both in churches and mission agencies. Some leaders are assessing the successes and failures of current tentmaker-missionaries. New insights are being gleaned from the lives of many scriptural heroes, like Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, Paul, Aquilla, and Priscilla. We are beginning to grasp the importance of holistic believers who go about their “business” while being agents of a much higher calling. We are being forced to recognize that the Great Commission does not end when missionary visas are withdrawn. We are accepting, even encouraging, new workers to take their nets with them.

IT’S A NEW WORLD

After World War II, there was a shift among the nations from colonialism to nationalism and independence. To demonstrate their newly gained freedom, many former colonies closed their doors to missionaries. As a result, some Christian leaders began to consider that the end of the era of sending missionaries was near. In the 1970s, such thinking was modified, with Ralph Winter drawing the attention of mission leaders to the priority of unreached peoples. But the question quickly arose, “How can missionaries serve in countries that do not grant missionary visas?” Churches and missions were told they needed to study the situation, to develop new strategies, and to pursue a higher order of performance. During the past thirty years, the discussions have evolved from “how to do tentmaking,” to the “ethics of tentmaking,” to the “biblical basis of tentmaking,” to the “historical basis of tentmaking,” to “evaluating the successes and failures of those who are doing tentmaking.” Though these foundational issues needed to be discussed, progress has been slow in convincing decision makers to change their positions. Only since the turn of the century have mission leaders begun to formulate creative tentmaking strategies.

In reality, many leaders and missiologists are scarcely aware of the conceptual re-tooling needed for directing change on the mission field of the 21^st century. In attempting to initiate changes, most mission organizations fail to realize that, though tentmakers are missionaries, the scope of their assignment creates problems and stresses which are unique and different from those experienced by regular missionaries. As a result, tentmakers who are teamed with regular missionaries often find they are unable to relate to one another. Though the tentmaker’s approach to solving problems and relieving stresses will in some ways parallel that of the regular missionary, the differences are significant and need to be addressed. Missiologists need to come to a point where we admit that long-held perspectives are inapplicable and irrelevant to a tentmaker’s life and work.

We live in a new and unpredictable world. Governments, the marketplace, and life in general are changing at speeds never heard of before. The way of life and the values that were the norm in our grandparents’ childhood are in many ways completely out of date. Any resemblance between today and the 1950s is purely coincidental. Nonetheless, the Word of God is constant. We know that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”³ As Paul was a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks, so we must adapt the delivery, not the content, of our message to the changing world around us. We have not played in this arena before. The rules are different. Everything is moving faster. What we need to know and how we need to act in order to win the world to Jesus has changed as well.

TENTMAKING

What is tentmaking? Tentmaking is often understood to refer to an economic factor: “a missionary being financially self-supporting.” A handful of missiologists stubbornly stress this narrow point of view, relating tentmaking to money. However, tentmaking is not about money; it is about God. Tentmaking is about a way of revealing God’s glory to the ends of the earth. Jesus makes it clear: “You cannot serve both God and Money . . . Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”⁴ Tentmakers know that tentmaking is not about money, visas, entry strategies, or all the other issues missiologists love to debate. The objective of tentmaking is to put Jesus in front of those who have never had an opportunity to hear the truth about Him, or who have turned their backs on Him because of an encounter with some form of “Christian religion.” Tentmaking provides many advantages, but the most important aspect of tentmaking is giving the lost a good look, and often a first look, at who Jesus really is. Tentmaking is using daily-life strategies to tell people about Jesus. The models and methods vary, but the goal is to glorify Jesus among the unreached.

When we stop and consider the world, we realize that money is the primary motivation behind most activities. Buying, selling, and creating material wealth—that’s where people are; that’s what they think about; that’s what they strive for. The world revolves around the marketplace. That is where people learn values and methods. That is where people function and gain satisfaction. It is crucial that we meet people in their comfort zones and impart godly values, methods, and satisfaction. People need to see the Christian life lived right before their eyes. Our faith in Jesus needs to be made real; it is to be lived where the people live. George MacLeod urges:

“I simply argue that the cross must be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Christ was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage-heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek; at the kind of place where cynics talked smut, and thieves cursed, and soldiers gambled. Because that is where He died and that is what He died about, that is where the churchmen should be and what the churchmen should be about.”⁵

Whether it is in New York or New Delhi, San Jose or Shanghai, we need to live out our faith in ways that are both understandable and genuine.

As missiologists debated the tentmaking issues, a few thousand workers who could not wait while millions perished into a Christ-less eternity stepped out of the box. They picked up their nets and went without missionary visas into countries which restrict the spread of the gospel. This first wave of 20^th century tentmakers worked primarily as professionals with multi-national corporations and as English teachers in local schools and universities. Some set up Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), which for all intents and purposes, operate like a mission organization providing social services without the Christian label. Others went as students. The successes and failures of these early pioneers were duly noted. Both sides of the argument had illustrations to prove their points for or against tentmaking. As more and more young people accepted this new approach, missiologists became more informed about the how to’s of tentmaking. In 1983, Frontiers, a new mission agency, was created for the purpose of facilitating the efforts of tentmakers in closed countries. Their willingness to think and live outside the box eventually led to the spawning of many similar missions and is bringing changes to the more established sending agencies.

Change—it is all around us. Our Creator is a God of change. To thrive in the 21^st century, we must love change—not just endure it, but love it. Globalization and the internet, along with the rise of fundamentalist branches of the world’s religions, have shaken many mission organizations, forcing them to look outside the box. This new viewpoint is leading more and more organizations to embrace entrepreneurial tentmaking as a legitimate strategy. Today, nearly every large mission organization has developed a tentmaking arm. Yet, as traditional missions cease their criticisms and embrace tentmaking, many still fail to grasp the fundamentals. The methods mission agencies use to recruit and train tentmakers and the way mission executives counsel and lead their tentmakers once they are out on the field shows little understanding of the differences tentmakers encounter in their daily life and work. My research reflects two divergent approaches mission agencies take toward tentmaking. The first is a paternalistic view, requiring tentmakers to live, work, and perform much as traditional missionaries do. The second is a hands-off approach, allowing tentmakers to write their own agenda with little, if any, care and accountability provided by the mission agency.

Rather than add to the already challenging rhetoric, this book is a manual of key issues today’s tentmakers are facing, presenting both illustrations and practical suggestions for the re-examination of tentmaking life and work. I wish to encourage both leaders and workers to look beyond the box.

SUMMARY

If the church is to take the gospel to every tribe, nation, tongue and people group, it must step outside the box. Tentmakers are determined to build roads through or around the walls which have blocked the spread of cross-cultural discipleship and church planting in the least-reached corners of the world. If the church is to see new churches planted in hostile environments, it must break new ground and build new foundations. Business as usual won’t do. And that’s the point. Tentmaking is ministry outside the box AND business outside the box. We want to ask Christopher Robin to pause for a moment so that Edward Bear can consider other, perhaps better, options for descending the stairs.

ACTION STEPS

•      What boxes do you need to break out of?

•      Are there any boxes your church needs to break out of?

•      In what ways does Edward Bear’s problem relate to missions today?

“Dad,” a polar-bear cub asked his father, “Am I 100 percent polar bear?” “Of course you are,” answered his father. “My parents are 100 percent polar bear which makes me 100 percent polar bear and your mother’s parents are all polar bear so she’s 100 percent polar bear. So that makes you 100 percent polar bear too. Why?” The cub replied, “Because Dad, I’m freezing.”

We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.

1 CORINTHIANS 8:1-2

chapter 2

WHO AM I, ANYWAY?

I hate being the bearer of bad news. I was in China visiting a dear friend, Karl. As requested, I had picked up his mail in Hong Kong to deliver to him. As he sat down to read the bundle, I left to scout out the area. I hadn’t made it to the stairwell when I heard shouting. I rushed back and opened the door find Karl standing there with a letter in his hand, half shouting, half questioning his roommate, “Who am I, anyway? What am I doing here? How do I explain to my church what I am doing here? Can you believe it? They do not want to fund a student!” Karl had just received a letter from his home church telling him they would no longer be supporting him, as it was the policy of the church not to support students while they pursued their education. The letter went on to state that once he finished his studies, the church would gladly consider supporting him again. Yes, Karl had become a student, studying for an MA in the music of the local people. However, music, though an interest, was hardly a priority for Karl. Unable to get a missionary visa, he became a student to obtain a legal residence that provided him natural opportunities among his focus people to build fri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Breaking Boxes
• 2. Who Am I, Anyway?
• 3. Pros and Cons of Setting Up a Tent
• 4. Preparing Your Tent
• 5. Minding Our Motives
• 6. Testing Your Tent—Pre-Field Preparation
• 7. The Tentmaker’s Transformation
• 8. Evangelism and Church Planting
• 9. Foundations
• 10. Fellowship On and Off the Field
• 11. The Tentmaker’s Jobs
• 12. The Tentmaker’s Personal Life
• 13. Women and Tentmaking
• 14. The Tentmaker and His Children
• 15. The Tentmaker and His Home Base
• 16. Tentmaking Tensions
• 17. Tentmaking Conflicts
• 18. We Got Next!
• Glossary
• Appendix A. Short-Term Worker Questions
• Appendix B. Pioneer Church Planting Phases
• Appendix C. M.O.U. (Memo of Understanding)
• Appendix D. Questions to Ask Before Joining a Mission Organization or Team
• Appendix E. Secular versus Sacred Terminology
• Notes
• About the Author