Why Did Paul Make Tents? – Condensed

Five reasons why Paul’s example gives us our best hope for finishing advancing world evangelization:

As a strategy for evangelization, it is presented in its entirety in the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit preserved it in great detail, so we would adapt and use it.
It has produced remarkable results throughout history wherever it has been implemented.
It solves the problems of diminishing personnel and rising costs.
It still works in today’s global job market.

Prologue

“Why did Paul make tents?” may be the most important question to ask as we enter our 21st century of missions.

The question arises because many countries in our “post-post-colonial” age restrict the entry of missionaries, but welcome people with expertise they need. So many Christians are using their professions to make Jesus Christ known abroad—as Paul used his tentmaking craft in the first century.

Exciting things can happen: English teachers merged two house fellowships in a Muslim city where there had been no believers six years before. A linguist translated the Bible into the language of five million Muslims who never had it before, while he and his wife supported themselves teaching. An engineer founded churches in Israel, where his firms provided manufacturing jobs for Jews and Arabs. A civil engineer and his wife planted churches in a Buddhist country, while he planned water resources and roads. Graduate study gave another couple a foothold in India. All used their vocations for missions just as Paul once used his craft to make Jesus Christ known.

Paul’s Ministry Model

Paul supported himself with his own manual labor when it was not necessary to do so. Can his model in the first century have value for us in the twenty-first? I am convinced we cannot advance world evangelization unless we adapt and implement Paul’s larger strategy to our post-modern world.

An overwhelming task remains, and we cannot do it without the model from Paul.

I. Paul’s Challenge

Paul was personally commissioned by Jesus to evangelize the Gentiles, which he un-derstood to mean the entire Roman Empire. He would need to find hundreds of mis-sionaries, but there was no church yet in Antioch, and he had just destroyed the one in Jerusalem.
Paul, “like a skilled master builder”, devised an ingenious strategy to deal with the lack of funds and personnel: he produced both as he went along. His Spirit-guided tentmaking strategy was intentionally designed to produce missionary movements led by ordinary people everywhere.

Paul did not use his craft to get work visas, nor even primarily for financial support, which he said he could receive from churches. This adds importance to our question. He intentionally chose his plan for success.

II. Paul’s strategy is found in the answer to these six questions:

A. Why did Paul work as a tentmaker?

During Paul’s second missionary journey, he proceeded to Corinth, where he met Aquila and Priscilla. Paul accepted both employment and lodging from them because all were tentmakers.

The word translated “tentmaker” is thought to mean a leatherworker. Instead of carrying looms on his long walking journeys, he may have taken only a sharp knife, an awl, and a big, curved needle. The tents they made or re-paired may have been for traveling traders, since all Paul’s base cities were important trade crossroads.

His work as a tentmaker was part of an intentional strategy to meet people where they lived and worked – in the marketplace. This is explained below.

B. Did Paul receive financial support?

When Paul arrives in Rome, he spends two years under house arrest with freedom for ministry. Since he lived there “at his own expense,” it seems pos-sible that he was able to continue his manual labor. But then he was taken to Nero’s palace prison to await trial.

The Philippians sent Paul a generous gift, knowing that he could not support himself in prison, and was dependent on friends for his personal needs. Paul says they gave “once and again,” “a time or two.” Paul had written to the Thessalonians that he did not even accept free food and lodging from his hosts. Paul insists he receives no funds, and that he volunteers his ministry without pay from any source—for a very personal reason. He could not give his ministry to the Lord as a gift, because that is a debt he owes. He had a right to financial support but would forego it. He turned his manual labor into a daily act of worship, of gratitude to the Lord.

Paul was convinced his manual labor would also enhance and accelerate his ministry. It was a non-negotiable part of his carefully designed strategy.

C. When Did Paul Fit in His Spiritual Ministry?

Paul integrated his work and witness, so he could do “full-time ministry” even in the context of a “full-time job.” This is the genius of Paul-style tentmaking. Although Paul was fully qualified as a formal religious worker, he chose to ap-proach people as an ordinary person—as a fellow common laborer. It could not have worked if there had been any pretense. He genuinely earned his living.

How did he evangelize in the workshop? We know because we have quite a few of the explicit instructions he gave to them. The focus was on lifestyle. They were to conduct themselves wisely toward outsiders, and to say gra-cious, thought-provoking words that would elicit questions from them. Then they must be ready to answer the questions. (Col. 4:5,6) He doesn’t recom-mend indiscriminate personal evangelism, but this selective approach, of fish-ing out the seekers, the people on whom the Holy Spirit was already working. It is a superb approach for us to use with the people we see regularly at work, on campus, in our immediate neighborhood, and in social, professional, or rec-reational associations.

Workplace conduct must include personal integrity—moral purity, truthfulness regardless of the situation. It must also include quality work for the employ-er—as though he were Jesus Christ! (Col.3:23-25, Eph. 6:5-9) It must also include caring relationships (See 1 Thess. 2:7-12, and other passages, about treating everyone with dignity, giving up one’s rights for others, etc.) (See GO Paper, Workplace Evangelism: Fishing out Seekers.)

Paul used his free time for more formal teaching. On the sabbaths he taught in the synagogues, as long as they would have him, fishing out both Jewish and Gentile seekers there.

Because we are to serve our employer as though he were Jesus Christ, there is no conflict of interest between the job and the ministry. The job is not a nuisance to tolerate in exchange for a work visa but is the essential context for effective evangelism. But we must be sensitive to how the Spirit leads us to accomplish his goals, and not insist on pre-field strategies we designed.

D. Why Did Paul Work When He Did Not Have To?

Credibility

Paul says twice that he works in order not to put an “ob-stacle” in the way of the Gospel, so his message and motivation will not become suspect to the Gentiles. Paul’s self-support demonstrates his genuineness—he gets no financial gain from his ministry. It costs him. He is not preaching what the audience wants in order to gain fatter profits.

Identification

Paul adapted culturally to people to win them. Rome usually respected the local rulers in its provinces, their local laws, reli-gions and customs, and interfered mainly in major disputes and nation-al defense.

Paul approached the Jews as a Jew himself, and the Greeks (educated Gentiles) as the highly educated, tri-lingual, tri-cultural upper-class Roman citizen that he was. But he focused mainly on the “weak”—the poor, less educated, lower classes, including the “barbarians.” (These were not savages, but rural or tribal people whose first language was not Greek, and foreigners—many of them captured abroad and sold in slave markets.)

But Paul needed a job to identify with the artisan classes, to earn his living through manual labor (1 Cor. 9:19ff). He must dress and live as they do. He and his team actually depend on their manual labor.

Why does Paul choose to identify with the artisans? Because most of the Roman empire was near the bottom of the social and economic scale. Besides, the barbarians were his channel to their own people groups in the rural and tribal hinterlands. The Empire was just a chain of military outposts and city colonies along the Roman highways, and neither Rome nor Greece had ever tried to educate the tribes and vil-lages nor to integrate them into their empires. But Paul felt indebted to them, and to the Jews and Greeks. (Rom. 1:14-16)

In another time and country Paul might have chosen to identify with a higher social group. Even if he earned an excellent salary, it would not be an obstacle, as long as it was not pay for his spiritual ministry.

Paul not only identified culturally, but vocationally—with the people he sought to win. Tentmakers’ jobs usually put them into their own pro-fessional milieu, where they can move naturally as insiders. They un-derstand the jargon, the mentality and the hang-ups of their fellows. They can evangelize their colleagues, clients, patients, students, etc., from the inside.

Modeling

First, he was modeling the Christian life. No one had ever seen a Christian before. So, Paul showed converts how to live out the gospel, not just in church, but in the marketplace. It was not enough to tell them how to live. The converts would have told Paul it could not be done in their cesspool society. He demonstrated a holy life in their immoral, idolatrous culture.

Secondly, he models a biblical work ethic (2 Thess.3:6-15), transform-ing newly converted thieves, idlers and drunks into good providers for their families and generous givers to the needy. (1 Cor.6:10,11, Eph.4:28, 1 Tim.5:8.)

Thirdly, Paul’s example establishes a pattern for evangelism for ordi-nary people. (1 Thess.1: 5-8) Converts must immediately be full-time, unpaid, evangelists in their social circles, prepared to answer the ques-tions about their changed lives and new hope. Converts were new beachheads into enemy territory.

Paul did not evangelize haphazardly. He planned a careful strategy and set solid precedents. “Like a skilled master builder, I have laid a foun-dation; let everyone take heed how he builds upon it.” (1 Cor.3:10-15) Paul’s foundation was theological—Jesus Christ—and it was methodo-logical, with unpaid evangelism an essential part of it.

E. What Was Paul’s Strategy and How Effective Was It?

This “apostle to the Gentiles” had received a daunting commission from the risen Christ. He set out to evangelize the Roman empire, but with no source of personnel or money. But the Holy Spirit helped this strategic thinker to de-vise a plan that would produce the personnel and the money as he went along. Paul aimed not just for individual conversions and church planting, but for movements and exponential growth.

1. Paul’s teaching and model

He would fully support himself to gain credibility for himself and the gos-pel, to identify with working people, and to model a holy Christian life in an unholy marketplace, a biblical work ethic, and unpaid evangelism.

But was it necessary for Paul to make tents to implement this strategy? He thought so, or he would never have spent so many hours doing manual la-bor. If he had received support, most of his converts would have waited around for it, too. Then unpaid volunteers would have been considered second rate. They could have said, “You do the evangelism, Paul, because you get paid for it, and you have more time than the rest of us who work two shifts to support our families.”

2. He aims for godly, self-supporting, evangelizing converts, willing to suffer for Jesus Christ

Paul wanted Jesus Christ reproduced in himself (2 Cor. 5: 14 ff, Gal. 2:20, Rom. 12:1) and in his converts, but as a Christian worker, he tells them to imitate him as he imitated Jesus.

3. He aims for indigenous, independent house churches

a. His churches were self-reproducing from the start. Everyone evangelized, without pay. For Paul to have brought in a few dozen for-eign missionaries to evangelize these provinces could have been dam-aging to the local Christians. It was their responsibility to evangelize their region. Immediately. Not ten years later after pastors have been produced in seminaries. The converts didn’t even have their doctrine straight when they ran to their towns and villages with the gospel. But they had Jesus Christ inside. Paul arranged for their doctrine to be cor-rected by good teaching later. Paul’s own willingness to suffer commu-nicated a great sense of urgency.

b. His churches were self-governing. They were not dependent on foreign leadership. Paul and his team members did not pastor these churches but appointed local house church leaders whom they coached and whom they taught the “whole counsel of God,” so they could teach their home fellowships. The churches were Bible schools. Their job was to equip members—not for church committees—but to evangelize out-siders. (Eph. 4:9ff) Since the pastors also supported themselves in the marketplace, they reinforced Paul’s model.

c. His churches were self-supporting, never dependent on foreign funds. Even the house church pastors supported themselves during the pioneer stage. In many cases, the converted well-to-do household-er would be the natural leader of the fellowship in his rural villa or city house. But converts were taught to give. Generosity and hospitality were not optional for Christians. They gave to the needy. And we recall the time they sent gifts to help the Jerusalem church during a famine.

Paul appointed house church leaders almost immediately, but they maintained themselves financially. (Acts 20:33-35)

The basic pattern of unpaid evangelism was well established so that paid ministry was the exception rather than the rule.

Paul never allowed his churches at any stage to become dependent on foreign funds or on foreign leadership. Paul’s strategy was not haphaz-ard. He warns others to take heed how they build on his carefully set precedents.

d. He aimed for missionary lay movements everywhere.
Paul’s unique approach to church planting was designed to produce missionary movements led by ordinary people. Members had to repro-duce themselves. He aimed for exponential growth. He did not merely add members to the church, but helped them multiply themselves.

It was a plan in which both doctrine and methodology mattered, 1 Cor. 3:10. It never required more than a handful of foreign workers and vir-tually no foreign funds.

By reproducing himself in the working people Paul guaranteed the infil-tration of Christians into all the structures of society, at all levels, all the vocations, into the labor guilds, etc. It is also how he aimed at heads of households, the natural social units in a culture where house-hold solidarity was obligatory. He aims at employers through their transformed employees.

F. How Well Did Paul’s Strategy Work?

Many of his evangelists were from unsavory, uneducated, pagan backgrounds. Most were slaves. It cost Paul dearly to bring them the gospel, and they risked their lives without pay to take it to others. Paul had provided a model of suffering.

In ten years (the three journeys took a decade) Paul and his friends (a small team without financial support) evangelized six Roman provinces! They did it by winning and mobilizing their largely uneducated, unpaid converts.

Paul writes to the Roman Christians (there probably weren’t many) about his past twenty years of missionary work. He says, “From Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum (modern Albania) I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. . . I no longer have room for work in these regions” (Rom. 15:19-24) He had finished evangelizing the Greek-speaking half of the Empire and now turned to the more Latin half, including Rome, Italy and Spain.

But how can he claim to have finished the Greek half of the Mediterranean when he seems never to have worked outside the major cities? Yet he wrote the Romans that he was debtor to the barbarians as well as to Jews and edu-cated Greeks. (Rom. 1:14-16). Paul must have believed that the gospel had sufficiently taken root in the hinterlands, so it would continue to grow.

We have seen how his strategy included the evangelization of the rural and tribal people who came to the big city, and they were the ones who ran home with the gospel. Neither Paul nor his team members had to learn the many lo-cal languages spoken outside the cities. Remember the trouble he and Barna-bas barely averted in Lystra because they did not understand the Lycaonian language and didn’t realize the local people had mistaken them for Hermes and Zeus. (Acts 14)

Paul evangelized some rural areas. But he could not have gone to them all, nor learned all their languages. But he took the gospel to them through his converts, and the new converts immediately reproduce themselves. It was exponential growth. The gospel spread so quickly that by the time the opposi-tion had geared up, it was too late to put out the fire.

Not only was Paul’s strategy successful, but he has never been equaled. How can it be useful to us 21 centuries later?

III. What Value Has Paul’s Strategy for Us Today?

I am convinced that Paul’s strategy for producing missionary lay move-ments, for exponential growth, holds the solution for world evangelization for the 21st century. We cannot fulfill our mandate without Paul.

A. It gives us a tested and proven strategy to adapt and implement

Paul gives us our only N.T. strategy for pioneer missionary work, and the Holy Spirit has preserved it for us in great detail, because he in-tends us to use it. It is designed to produce missionary lay movements and has done so repeatedly when implemented through history.

Remember that his strategy includes not only his self-support and workplace evangelism, but his holy life, deep Bible teaching, his spiritu-al power and his willingness to suffer.

Paul’s strategy mobilizes ordinary people as ordinary people—and doesn’t turn them into religious professionals, as our mission agencies often do today. By teaching people to do workplace evangelism, we can guarantees the infiltration of every structure of society by Christians!

Donald McGavran said that church growth requires a large force of un-paid evangelists. But how are they to be produced if the only models we provide are donor-supported? Missionaries from western countries are considered wealthy, even when they live modestly.

Paul’s strategy almost totally frees missions from the bottleneck of money, and all its related problems.

I think it is significant that our need for Paul’s lay missionary strategy should come just at a time when there is an exploding international job market. It is not there by accident, but by God’s design! He intends it for one purpose—to help us advance world evangelization.

B. It provides a biblical basis for tentmaking

We need it to motivate and guide us and to reduce our high attrition rate. It makes a difference when discouragement comes, to be able to look at Scripture, and say “Here is the biblical reason we are here and serving in this particular way.” If they don’t need financial support from their home churches it is difficult for them to get any prayer support at all.

C. It gives us a basic definition for the term “tentmaker”

Our definition has to be what Paul did, for the reasons that he did it: Tentmakers are missions-motivated Christians who support themselves as they do cross-cultural evangelism on the job and in their free time.

D. It helps solve our problems of personnel and finance

Paul’s strategy can allay our alarm at the fact that many missionaries are at retirement age, and fewer young ones are applying. At present, we are in a demographic trough in the U.S. and the ratio of young people to retirees is low. But we have an enormous number of people who love the Lord, and Paul’s strategy urges us to mobilize them for over-seas service. Many overseas positions have no upper age limit and there is part-time work. Older people are respected abroad. (See our GO Paper for Retirees.) But let’s help them to serve as lay people, and not turn them into religious professionals.

E. It suggests needed training Academic training and work experience.

Christians must see that excellent preparation is essential to their ministry. Governments only allow the hiring of foreigners with expertise their country needs. Because of today’s trend to globalization, many college majors require language and culture study abroad.

F. It brings balance into our missionary work

We need to provide both kinds of models for new converts—ideally, together. Otherwise, we export abroad the same distortions our churches suffer at home. We usually give our converts no models for how to live and serve God in the working world. We teach, by default, that all Christians are second rate, except for “full-time” religious workers.

G. Ordinary people can give converts models for life and witness in the working world.

Dr. Pius Wakatama from Zimbabwe says mission-aries never helped their converts to get into the economic mainstream of their countries. I think it wasn’t their job—they needed tentmakers to do it. (But they did provide education.)

H. Ordinary people can infiltrate every structure of society,

in a way that religious workers cannot. Paul had Erastus, the city treasurer of Corinth, well-to-do householders, artisans, slaves, and rehabilitated bums from off the street. He probably had people in every vocation, some from every trade guild, and every ethnic group. Too often after decades, we have only reached people from fringe groups.

I. Ordinary people can effectively engage culture

at home and abroad in a way religious worker cannot. Dr. Newbigin says we are wrong to focus only on individual conversions and church planting but must also challenge the worldviews and the falsehoods that dominate the cultures in which we serve. 2 Cor. 10:3-5.

Jacques Elull says we have little right to criticize the sad state of our society, because the church has all the answers, but remains silent. It can speak to society only through its lay people, and they are ineffec-tive because they have been neglected. Only they are distributed throughout the structures of society.

Conclusion

We could not accomplish much without our religious workers—and we count our-selves among them. Pastors, teachers and missionaries are God’s gifts to the church, with important roles to fill. But as religious workers, let us mobilize the lay people in our churches for their important roles in our own country, and as tentmakers abroad.

In conclusion, I urge that we seriously consider Paul’s strategy, and adapt it for our day, because I believe its main components are essential if we hope to fulfill our missionary mandate to finish world evangelization.