LEARN LAUGH LOVE: "Tentmaking" or Paul's Missionary Model

What is a tentmaker? Tentmakers are believers who support themselves as they do cross-cultural evangelism on and off the job. This is in comparison to "regular missionaries" who rely completely on raising financial support and have organizational ties, or "Christian expatriates" who have moved to another country for the sole purpose of work having no call to missions but happens to be a believer.

There are many good, responsible, and accountable mission organizations who require their missionaries to raise their support or raise support as an organization for their missionaries. The people who are commissioned and sent abroad are financially relying on the gifts of others. For the first three years of the past four years I was one of these missionaries with Rafiki Foundation in Kenya. The last year of the past four years, I relied on individual financial gifts from people as I worked with a local pastor in Kenya. Starting in September I will be tentmaking as I work for Brookhouse International School in Kenya.

Paul's missionary journeys were emphasized by tentmaking, in fact that was his missionary model. Other apostles did rely on the churches for financial support, but Paul did not. 1 Corinthians 9:6 suggests that Paul and Barnabas were self-supporting on their first missionary journey; "Or is it only Barnabas and I who must work for a living." In the same chapter Paul gives many reasons in favor of donor support for the mission work, but states three times that he and by association, his teammates, did NOT use this right; vs. 12, 15, and 18. In Acts 18, Luke writes about Paul's work with Aquila and Priscilla as a tentmaker, most probably as a leatherworker; with verse 4 stating that Paul continued with his mandate from the Lord, "he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks." In Acts 20: 25 - 35 Paul commission the church leaders in Ephesus to continue in the way that he had shown them since "I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again" (vs 25) and "You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions." (vs 34).

Brookhouse is a door that the Lord opened for me to continue His assignments for me in Kenya. It is possible now for me to do much more in specific areas than possible in the past four years.