Why I Chose Tentmaking?
By Ruth E. Siemens, Founder of Global Opportunities (now Global Intent)
On April 4, 1954, PanAm’s little prop plane finally deposited me in Lima, Peru, after a brief stop in Guatemala and an overnight in Panama. It was about 5 A.M. when I arrived, and at 8 A.M. I was in the secular binational school where I would be earning my living and doing low key evangelism. It was the beginning of 21 years of ministry in Peru, Brazil, Portugal, Spain and Austria, and at least 25 years more all over the world, through the tentmakers GO helped get overseas. I was asked to share what first interested me in missions, how God led me into tentmaking, and why I started Global Opportunities. I agreed to write this very personal testimony to help other Christians better understand how God leads.
I never chose tentmaking–I knew almost nothing about it. Rather, God unmistakably called me into tentmaking, and then oriented the rest of my life around it. But first, he drew me to himself, and gave me a commitment to missions.
Home and church. I think God intended me for cross-cultural ministry when he put me into an immigrant family. My parents had come from the Russian Ukraine to Canada in 1903 and 1905, and then to California, where I was born—one of ten children. At home and church we spoke German and Frisian Dutch. We mainly learned English in school. The largely untrained pastors of our vital little Mennonite Brethren country church partially supported themselves. And when we had no pastor, godly young laymen capably led the congregation.
Language and cultural barriers meant there was little local outreach, except through the lifestyle of members. But we generated a large missions budget, welcomed missionary speakers, and sent several of our small membership to India, China and Africa. Our three church bookshelves carried about ten missionary biographies, which I read–probably, three times each.
While I was still young, our dear, hard-working father became ill and disabled, leaving my mother with total responsibility for a large brood. Her strong dependence on God enabled her to give us a happy upbringing—without many things, but with everything important. At Christmas, we loved finding our old toys under the little tree—repaired and repainted, and our old dolls in new dresses.
My church strongly emphasized eschatology. That Jesus could come at any moment and take all the good people up to heaven worried me. I knew I was not good enough. But I had a plan. I would grab my doll and my mother’s rag bag (remnants for new doll dresses) and hang tightly to her skirt as she was taken up, because I knew for sure she would be going.
A teacher facilitated my personal encounter with Jesus Christ when I was 11. When I was 12, I was baptized in a river. I can never forget the sights and sounds and smells. The choir stood on a little island and sang antiphonally with the congregation on the shore. At age 13 our Sunday school superintendent gave me responsibility for a large nursery class, to replace Frieda Voth, my teen idol. She left for Multnomah and then Asia. In high school I helped start a Bible club and Spanish aroused my interest in Latin America.
Bible and missions training. At 17 I went to Biola–hoping to find a once-for-all experience which could transform me into a permanently spiritual Christian. Instead, I learned that I needed to renew my commitment to Jesus Christ every morning and live in daily obedience to him. A new ministry called Navigators, started me on Bible memorization–an invaluable lifelong gift.
Missions courses were weak because there was little data to be had and little missiology in those days. What influenced me was teachers’ lives. Dick Hillis left midyear to go to China. His twin brother Don took over, but soon left for India. John Wiebe of SIM (my cousin) finally got us through the year and then left for Africa. These were no armchair faculty–they lived what they taught! On the Student Missionary Union exec, I met many missionaries, and gained a growing interest in Peru, then a fairly restricted country. I signed an FMF-IVCF promise card which I still have that I would serve abroad if God opened the door.
I thought he was leading me into Bible translation with Wycliffe. So I filled out an application for the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the U. of Oklahoma. But the deadline came and I still had no money. I told the Lord I would know he wanted me to go if he would send just enough money that day for the three-cent postage. But there was no money in the mail. The last envelope, tiny and pink, from an elderly woman I had seen only once, did not look hopeful. Sure enough, it contained no money. But what dropped out onto my desk was–a three cent stamp! I took that as guidance. Wycliffe let me earn my room and board by illustrating reading primers and word games for Mexican Indians. I loved the linguistic training, and applying the techniques with two Kiowa Indian informants.
Time out in the hospital. But suddenly I became very ill with tuberculosis, and dropped out of everything. I felt really let down. When I finally resumed normal activities after three surgeries and a long slow recovery, I knew no mission agency would send me to the boonies with only one functioning lung.
Chico State and campus ministry. So I went to nearby Chico State to get a degree in English and education–a bit more marketable than systematic theology, church history and Greek. I found myself on a mission field! A secular campus is a microcosm of a cross-cultural, spiritually hostile world. Gene and Earline Wellsfry and I, with several others, established the first InterVarsity group on campus. The Lofgrens, a dear faculty adviser couple opened their home to us.
IVCF staff visits were infrequent. But Alice Alter (Swan), on her first visit, spent an hour showing me how to look at a Bible text inductively. I stayed up all night investigating one passage after another. Every text gave me new insights. I often stop to thank God for the life-changing gift he gave me through Alice. Without it, the rest of my ministry would be inconceivable.
I made it to every IVCF training event, usually without enough money to get home. (My part-time jobs didn’t provide for extras.) It was important to me never to tell anyone in any way that I was broke. Repeatedly, I saw God provide in unpredictable ways. It is not easy to get first-hand experience of God’s love and power if loans and credit cards are easily available!
Public school and TCF. I began elementary school teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two teachers were San Diego State grads with similar IVCF training. We gave substantial help to the only staff worker in the area, Bob Young,, who soon left for Argentina. We also prayed together about our responsibility for fellow teachers, pupils, and parents. And we started a teachers Christian fellowship, which quickly spread far beyond our district, with Bible studies, evangelistic breakfasts and teas, even a weekend conference. I was active in Berkeley First Presbyterian, and Dr. Bob Munger spoke in some of our meetings.
In the middle of all this fulfilling ministry, God surprised me with a salaried, secular job abroad–in Peru, the very place he had put on my heart. I didn’t look for it because I didn’t know paid secular jobs existed. In fact, there were very few in 1954. But World War II had ended, the U.S. was giving massive reconstruction aid to Europe, and decolonization was in full swing. Soon 120 newly independent countries needed development help of every kind. An international job market began to blossom. Americans had been very provincial, but ten million men served in the military, and many Christians returned home with first-hand experience of the mission field. A new wave of missions interest began to grow.
My teacher friend, Wanda, and I were cooking for an IVCF missions conference in Berkeley, when Don Burns, the Wycliffe missionary speaker from Peru, told me he and his wife were praying that I would come teach in the binational school in Lima. I applied and was accepted. An administrator from Peru was supposed to meet me in San Francisco with the contract. Friends said you could know a decision was God’s will if you had complete peace about it. But I was filled with apprehension. David Adeney wisely told me, “Only people who don’t think don’t have misgivings about such a big step.” He believed God was telling me to go. But the administrator never came. Now I had no job, and little money. I had been packed for two weeks. Besides, I felt obligated to go—friends had given me three farewell parties! Had God let me down? Finally a cable asked me to come at once. God had been rearranging circumstances in Lima for my benefit.
Tentmaking in Peru. My enjoyment of the long flight to Peru turned to panic on the last leg. My departure had been sudden. It was my first foreign travel, I knew little Spanish, and in 1954 Latin America was not at all tourist-friendly. Then I suddenly realized that no one would be meeting me at the airport, my only address was a post office box, and no one had phones! We landed. Somehow, I made it through immigration and customs. I stood with my bags in the middle of that dusty little airport, worrying about what to do next. But only for five minutes. Then, before my disbelieving eyes stood missionary Don Burns. I said, “How did you know I would be coming in on the 5 A.M. flight this morning?” He said, “I didn’t. I came to see another passenger off.”
Just five minutes after my arrival, God gave me an overwhelming experience of his presence, love, and power–as though he couldn’t wait to reassure me that he was there, that he had brought me, and that he would pick up the pieces after me, even when a problem was due to my own inexperience or negligence. He has been doing it ever since.
There was almost no cross-cultural training or discussion of issues available in 1954. I made many mistakes. If I could do my ministry over again, I think I might know how to do it right. But we never have that option. At each stage, we must do our best with what we know, and give the Lord both fish and all five rolls. He then multiplies them to be enough.
I went to the school that first morning in Lima with a confidence I could not have had without God’s wonderful reassurance in the airport. But I did not know anything about “tentmaking” or how to be a missionary when you had a full-time secular job. I had never met a tentmaker. (About that time Christy Wilson and others were beginning their tentmaking in Afghanistan. But I knew nothing about them.) I thought I needed to find a church ministry to do in my spare time. But I soon I realized that tentmaking is “full-time” ministry. You are evangelizing even when you are not speaking, because your life is under the unrelenting scrutiny of non-believers. People often ask if it wasn’t frustrating to have so little time left over for God, but I learned to see all of my time as God’s.
At the beginning,, the only thing that was clear to me was something Miss A.W. Johnson had told us in an IVCF conference after returning from China. She said that Jesus had walked where he wanted on his own two feet while on earth. But now he lives in us and depends on our feet to bring him to people he longs to meet. He wants our minds, eyes, ears, lips and hands at his disposal, so he can love people through us. (Rom. 12:1, 6:13,10:15)
Not many hours after my arrival, I met Marta, an attractive young Peruvian teacher, at the school board’s reception. I soon realized she was one of the people Jesus wanted to meet. Our small-talk halted abruptly when she said, “You probably know what is in the Bible–would you teach me?” I am not sure what I said to encourage her request, but God knew I loved Bible study. I learned that she had become open to God because her pilot husband had recently been killed in a crash. After a few Bible studies at my place, she invited Jesus Christ into her life. She then brought her three teenage sons. This doting mother had named them Miguel, Rafael and Gabriel though none of them were angels. It was a delight to teach three normally naughty adolescents about Jesus. Other teachers responded as well.
Almost all my sixth graders found Jesus Christ in a Sunday class I taught nearby. I also started a Bible club for the high school girls I taught every afternoon. My second and third years I did in-service teacher education. It was important for me to put real effort into my job, because God expects Christians to serve their employer as though he were Jesus Christ! (Col.3:23-25) God requires quality work even if the employer does not.
I also audited classes in San Marcos University to improve my Spanish. There I met Maria who started coming three times a week to teach me Spanish. Language lessons turned into Bible studies and Maria put her trust in Jesus. By then her friends were coming, and I realized God wanted me to begin a student ministry. I found about a dozen students in local churches. I felt instinctively that I should not approach them as a missionary, but as a fellow student. That way I could provide a model of workplace (campus) evangelism, not just teach it–something no missionary could do.
The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students invited me on staff, and I began sending reports, though I received no donor support. Many students whom God brought to the campus group had far more potential than I. Today, Dr. Samuel Escobar is a world class missiologist and president of IFES and of the Bible Society. Law student Carlos Garcia, became pastor of the largest Baptist church in Lima, and eventually was elected vice president of Peru. Pedro Arana, Presbyterian pastor and writer, was elected to congress to help rewrite the constitution. The list is longer! Even back then, I could not have preached to these students. But I taught them to love inductive Bible study discussions. So everything I wanted to teach, I included in the Bible study guides I prepared.
The missionaries in Lima were tremendously helpful, especially in our week-long training courses. We also sent a few students to IFES conferences in other countries. At the end of my three-year contract, I realized I had taught everything I knew. Already there were strong student leaders.
So I applied for teaching positions in other Spanish-speaking South American countries. I wanted to start another campus ministry, while integrating work and witness in another school. But no offers came. Finally I was running out of money, my visa was expiring, and I received a negative answer to my last job application. Every door had closed. I was in trouble.
Then a cable from a Brazilian school asked for my final answer to their job offer. But I had never received an offer. The mail must have been lost. I had briefly met the administrator, but had not applied because God would never expect me to learn Portuguese while I was still struggling with Spanish. But he did. With only one open door, guidance is clear.
Tentmaking in Brazil. On arriving in Sao Paulo, I learned I was to head a large bi-national elementary school with a generous salary! But I found poor teacher morale. So together we set high new standards, which soon gave them immense pride as most children began performing well above grade level in most subjects.
God quickly opened doors for witness. A teacher in the adjacent high school died, and the principal asked if I would say the prayer at a memorial service, since no high school teacher was willing to. My colleagues must have seen something in my life which led them to think I might know how. I asked God to comfort the family and then said, “Thank you, Lord, that we can know about life after death!” Over the next week, teachers and students from both schools came to my office to talk. I could evangelize freely without imposing on them, because they were asking questions. I learned to let them pace the discussion with their questions.
Among those who came to my office after the service were several Christian high school students. So I started a Bible club in my apartment to help them win their friends—multiplying my ministry through these eager teenagers. I was invited into numerous upperclass Brazilian homes, that had no contact with missionaries.
The night I arrived, I met the university student who became president of the first campus group to form–in my apartment in Sao Paulo before we even had furniture. I was soon traveling all over Brazil (bigger than continental U.S.) training students during school breaks.
IFES is a student movement, not a mission to students. The goal is to develop student leaders–patterned after Paul’s model of producing indigenous ministry. If I had been on donor support, students would have felt they could leave the ministry to me because I had more time and was getting paid for it. Instead, because I had a demanding job, they kept offering to take responsibility. They had ownership of the ABU from the start–one of the many advantages of tentmaking.
From the beginning the students and I worked together. When I found interested students in Goiania in Brazil’s interior, I scheduled a meeting. But instead of going myself, we sent Lucas and Peter to help the group start. Another time, I took ten Sao Paulo students with me to Belo Horizonte on a holiday weekend to help students there start a group.
When the Baptist National Convention met in Sao Paulo, Lucas made an announcement from the pulpit that anyone interested in university student work was invited to my place for tea at 5 PM. In mid-afternoon he called me at school to tell me what he had done, and that he never expected 60 people to sign up! I caught the first cab I could, and kept it waiting at a little grocery store while I bought just about everything that could be served. Once home, I put water on to boil, mixed two big cakes for the oven, and had the girls put snacks on trays. Meanwhile, Lucas and Wangles led an orientation meeting for students and a few pastors from all over Brazil. I was delighted that Lucas trusted me enough to take this strategic step, which resulted in several new ABU groups.
Later, two girls from Belo Horizonte requested and received two free round trip plane tickets from their governor, so they could help me with the Recife camp.
My apartment was like a railway station–with many people for meals and girls staying over on foam mats on the floor. In both Peru and Brazil, I was able to mobilize missionaries and tentmakers to help student groups, especially in cities I could not visit often. In time, Dr. Douglas, a physics professor, and his wife made Brazil their permanent home.
The student movement grew best later under Brazilian directors, especially Neuza Itioka, a very capable, godly, young Japanese-Brazilian graduate, and then, Dieter Brepohl, who later became general secretary for all of IFES in Latin America.
Did I never feel a time conflict between my job and spiritual ministry? Not often, because my secular job was spiritual ministry. But there were two occasions. Once I accompanied four students on a very rough, eventful 3-day trip across the Brazilian wilderness on a wood-burning steam-engine train, followed by a three-hour flight and a 12 hour bus trip through the Bolivian Andes–to our first all-Latin America student conference. I had already learned how eventful it could be to travel with students, because God would let problems develop so that we would pray together, see his remarkable answers, and then thank him together. This trip was no exception. It’s good to know the rumors of God’s love and power, but he wants us to experience it first-hand. After an unbelievably eventful trip, I regretted that I had to fly back to Sao Paulo after only a few days at the conference.
The second time I felt a conflict was when a Canadian evangelist came to Curitiba for a week of meetings, and I wanted to do follow-up. But I had school. You won’t believe what happened. On Monday morning many children had contracted measles and the doctor closed the school for a week! I took the first flight out and made it in time for the first meeting. I am sure my prayers did not give the children measles. They would have gotten them anyway, but God may have concentrated them in that week.
When my three-year contract at the school ended, I accepted the request of IFES and local leaders, to go on donor support and give all my time to student work. But first I took a brief leave at home with my family. The school sent me home the long way, paying for a wonderful trip through Europe. This ended abruptly when word came that my mother was very ill. God graciously allowed me to care for my mother the last three months before taking her into his own safekeeping. Then I returned to Brazil.
It would take a book to tell of all God’s constant provision and protection. Once I was apartment hunting in Rio. I kept praying about a specific building in a perfect location for student meetings. There was one empty apartment. But I knew no property owner who could co-sign the rental contract. I knew an engineer in a nearby town, but the owner would not accept that. Until I accidentally mentioned the name, “Dirk van Eyken.” The owner stood up. He couldn’t believe that I was a friend of the engineer who worked in the office next to his! He didn’t even require the signature of this godly young man. In a city that then had three million people, God had led me to the only man with an empty apartment who also knew the only person who could have been my guarantor!
On later occasions, God arranged for me to miss two flights that crashed and a bus that went into the river when a bridge collapsed.
But looking back on my early years, I marvel most that God used illness to delay me in the U.S. just long enough to add two essential pieces to my missions training:–how to start a campus ministry and how to do “full-time” spiritual ministry in the context of “full-time,” secular work. That is what tentmaking is and what God led me to do. I would never have included Chico State and Ashland School in my missions training and no one would have suggested it. But God himself undertook to direct my preparation! Faithfulness in our present assignment is always the best education for our next one. Jesus said, “You have been faithful over little, now I will set you over much. . ..” Mt. 25:23.
The Lord’s “call” is never to geography or task, but “to be with him,” and to be sent out wherever and however he chooses–his agenda, not ours.
Campus ministry in Europe. God had kept me in good health. So after three years in Peru and eleven in Brazil, IFES asked me to pioneer student work in Spain and Portugal.
We must often make important decisions with insufficient information. I had a map of Barcelona, but there were no apartments for rent near the new university campus. Disappointed, I settled for one in the city center where numerous bus and tramlines crossed for easy access to the most people. Surprise! It turned out the new campus had not yet been built, and I was one block from the medical school where most of the Christians were, and within walking distance of all the other scattered university buildings!
But I wondered if I should have come to Spain at all. Even though I registered to audit classes in the university, I could no longer relate to students as a fellow student. Why should they listen to anything from an older, American woman? How could I even find Christian students? There were very few. Evangelicals had suffered greatly under fascist Franco. They could not legally meet, get decent jobs, study, nor be buried in the cemeteries, etc. When Franco tried to confiscate the evangelical hospital, it was placed under the Swiss and British consulates for protection. The Spanish churches were especially strong because of the persecution.
But a 1965 law made a few concessions to evangelicals, and in 1967 a few young people had been able to get into the university. I had arrived in 1968. I finally met Pedro and Samuel, two medical students. Two weeks earlier they had searched out all the evangelical students and held a meeting–not for campus evangelism, but to raise money for the hospital which was going to be returned. That’s why all these Christians were studying medicine or nursing.
Pedro and Samuel were excited by what I had told them of campus evangelism in other countries. So they arranged another meeting, for me to share the same vision with the other students. That was the beginning of regular weekly meetings and of the GBU in Spain. God’s timing had been perfect. Two weeks earlier would have been too soon.
I helped start groups in seven cities, at a time when whole provinces had no evangelical church. And God raised up additional local leaders. Medical student Pablo Martinez won his fellow-student Juan, and others, to Christ. He now serves the Lord in psychiatry and continues to assist the national and international student movements.
In Portugal, persecution was more political than religious and had a different effect on the churches. Many young people had no personal faith in God, and some were antagonistic. But the church was their safe social environment. A missionary couple who had been trying to start a group got a few Christian students together at a pleasant campsite they had built in a fishing village. Several of these told me you couldn’t evangelize in Portugal. But then lovely Celeste asked me how to respond to all her friends’ questions about God. She was one of five Christians studying in the famous old U. of Coimbra. I suggested we do evangelistic Bible studies, but they were sure no one in Portugal would be interested in the Bible.
I asked if we could try it three times, and if it didn’t work, I wouldn’t mention it again. They asked, “Where?” I suggested the busiest place on campus—the lounge of the medical school cafeteria. So we huddled together in the lounge, five Christians and two seekers. As I led the study, people walked by, turned around to ask what we were doing, and stayed. Soon we had one large circle sitting with two larger circles standing around it.
When I announced another meeting for the next day, the non-believers begged for meeting times when they could be free. So we scheduled meetings throughout the day. Because some cut class to attend every session, we had to use a different passage each time! Several put their faith in Jesus Christ, and others did so later. And the Christians were sold on investigative Bible studies.
In addition to work on the Iberian peninsula, I helped with conferences in other countries, and spent six long, pleasant summers in the Austrian alps at a thousand year old castle IFES had acquired. We always ran simultaneous translation, and once had students and young professionals from 55 countries. I usually did Bible study or evangelism training, and several times had responsibility for the eastern Europeans, who came at great risk. I also led several secret training courses inside Poland. Today, with new freedom, strong national movements have developed in these ex-Soviet satellites.
IVCF-USA. In both Latin America and Europe, training students and professionals for lay ministry also prepared them for tentmaking, which is simply cross-cultural lay ministry.
When I left Europe, I wanted to spend a few months to get reacquainted with my family, because I had not had a proper furlough in my 21 years abroad. After that, I hoped to go as a tentmaker to another country and begin more student work–to Eastern Europe or to the Muslim world. But first, IVCF asked me to work as a missions staff worker at-large. So I criss-crossed the U.S., doing missions promotion, Bible study and evangelism training, evangelistic dorm discussions, etc. A number of students found the Lord.
I found Christian students turned off to traditional missionary work, but excited about tentmaking. They wanted to know how to get overseas jobs like I had, so they could integrate work and witness. I ended up with names, addresses and job requests from 600 people! I researched jobs and my sister helped me send out the information. It was a massive task with limited information, but a number of people did get positions. However, I wanted to provide better job help, counsel, and training. Dr. Reuben Brooks, head of IVCF Missions, said, “You have a new ministry going-give it a name and do a brochure!”
So I never decided to start a new organization. God had already led me into it. But it was a struggle to continue with few resources, and in the 1970s mission leaders were generally negative about tentmakers. They would say, “What do tentmakers ever do for the Lord?” That is because they erroneously considered every American Christian working abroad to be a tentmaker. But most were merely Christian expatriates who had little or no ministry at home or abroad. Genuine tentmakers work for a living in order to do cross-cultural workplace evangelism in a foreign country.
God was helping us get good people overseas, and I became convinced that rather than going abroad myself for a few more years, I should send hundreds of others who could serve many more years. Before long we had several hundred applicants. We worked on a shoestring, mainly with volunteer staff. We spent hours on laborious research finding 3000 new jobs per month. Sorting and preparing them for mailing was tedious, until Henry Trist computerized our service in 1978.
We are so glad for all the people God helped us get overseas for short or long terms, and for many others whom we counseled on the preparation needed to qualify for both jobs and ministry. We have no way to track them all, but are in touch with many and continue to send more.
In the last 25 years, the international job market has mushroomed like never before. But now, our operations director can access as many as 70,000 jobs a day on the Internet! He and GO executive director, Dave English, have been modifying GO to fit our new cyberworld. Tentmakers are desperately needed in that 80% of the world whose governments do not allow regular missionaries, and other countries where non-believers will more readily accept the gospel from colleagues than from religious professionals.
