Tentmaking
by Ruth Siemens
Marketable skills are golden keys that open locked doors! About 80 percent
of the world’s people live under governments that restrict the entry of foreign
religious workers. Although regular missionaries are not welcome, “tentmakers”
with nation-building skills are.
Tentmakers are missions-motivated Christians who support themselves in secular employment while making Jesus Christ known on the job and in their free time. They are in full-time ministry because they integrate work and witness. They find good opportunities to talk about Jesus Christ and are constantly trying to live out the Gospel. The workplace is their God-given context for evangelism as well as their means of financial support.
Tentmakers identify more easily with working people, because they move naturally in the same professional circles, understand their mentality and speak the professional jargon. They often have more credibility—in many places anyone not on a secular salary is suspect. Tentmakers need to focus on personal integrity, quality work and caring relationships.
In the workplace and in their host community, tentmakers put out verbal "bait"—casual comments about God at appropriate moments. Seekers ask questions. In this way they "fish out" spiritually hungry people to befriend and evangelize, without stirring the animosity of the spiritually hostile. Brief evangelism on the job spills over into free time in the form of hospitality and home Bible study. Tentmakers also do church planting, campus ministries, even Bible translation!
One thing should be clear: Christian professionals with overseas jobs are not tentmakers unless they intentionally seek to make Jesus Christ known to the local people of the host country.
The term “tentmaker” comes from the apostle Paul’s experience in Acts 18 where he made tents to support himself while devoting his time to preaching and witnessing to the Jews. It is a technical, missiological term relating to missions finance and strategy—self support versus donor or church support.
Today, church-supported religious workers are the rule, and lay ministry is sometimes looked down on as second-rate. That is an unbiblical attitude and must change if the world is to be won. Tentmakers can serve for years at little or no cost to the Church because they have salaried employment. We need many of them because there will never be enough donor-supported missionaries to win the world.
Today’s International Job Market
Today’s international job market is exploding as never before. There are about 4 million North Americans working overseas, but sadly, most of the Christians among them are NOT what this author would call tentmakers because they are not involved in cross-cultural missions. About forty kinds of organizations are potential employers, each with advantages and drawbacks. A few of these are United Nations agencies, U.S. government agencies, foreign national governments, U.S. firms with their affiliates and subsidiaries (more than 25,000), local firms in the target country, third country firms (e.g.: Japanese hiring English teachers for their firms in China), educational institutions (all kinds and levels), health care and social service agencies, voluntary agencies of several kinds, fellowship and professional exchange programs, paid internships and study abroad programs.
The most numerous options are salaried secular positions. Another is full-time or part-time work for retired people with cost of living and expenses paid. Another option is study abroad at all levels of degrees. Another is entrepreneurship where tentmaker teams start their own businesses.
Terms of Employment
Most positions require degrees and work experience, or considerable experience in lieu of the degree. Governments protect their job markets for their own people, and hire only the expertise they lack. Often the work can be done in English, the world’s trade language. But tentmakers should begin to learn the language of their target country, to gain the confidence and respect of the local people, for cultural adjustment, and for sensitive sharing of the Gospel.
Contracts are usually for one to three years. Some have served in the same position for a couple of decades. Tentmakers commit themselves to one part of the world as long as God keeps providing contracts.
Round trip travel is often paid. Salaries range from modest-but-adequate for the cost of living, to high, with benefits like housing, car, schooling, paid vacation, travel, health insurance, etc.. Americans overseas have a $75,000 annual income tax exemption.
Useful Careers
Many of the careers in the U.S. are transferable globally. Consider the following areas:
- Computers: In greatest demand.
- Education: All kinds, every level.
- English teaching is especially in demand.
- Health care: All kinds.
- Business and Finance
- Agriculture: Includes all related rural, plant and animal careers.
- Science: Includes engineering, technology, architecture, and urban planning.
- Social Sciences: Although fewer openings than in other fields, there are jobs for sociologists, anthropologists, archeologists, political scientists, social workers, psychologists, etc.
- Fine Arts: Performing music, graphic arts, art history, photography, creative writing, radio, TV and film-making.
- Athletics: All kinds.
How to Prepare
If you are considering going overseas as a tentmaker, you will need to prepare now!
- Acquire a degree in a marketable field.
- Learn inductive and small group Bible study methods. Make sure you know your Bible well.
- Develop friendship evangelism skills with your peers and with internationals.
- Make the most of your college experience. The secular campus, if you are on one, is a microcosm of a multicultural, spiritually antagonistic world, and your campus fellowship may be the best in-service training for missions you will ever receive. If you attend a Christian college, find ways to build relationships with people who are not believers.
- Get additional training in missions and church planting.
- Work on mastering a foreign language.
- Go on a short term mission trip abroad for experience.
- Research job opportunities overseas. Collect as much information as possible.
- Pray for God to guide your consideration of each opportunity. Then trust that he is leading you.
With many tentmakers, regular missionaries and senders serving together under our Commander-in-Chief, we can plant the Church in every people group and await the day when we join a great, multi-national crowd to sing praises to the King of kings and Lord of lords!
Excerpted from Tentmaking: The Job Market and Careers Needed and Why Did Paul Make Tents? with permission. Ruth Siemens founded Global Opportunities, which offers tentmaking training and job referral services.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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