How did the apostle paul make money

Exciting things are happening! English teachers are merging two house fellowships in a Muslim city where there was no believer six years ago! 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 has founded churches in Israel, where his firms provide manufacturing jobs for Jews and Arabs! A civil engineer and his wife do church planting in a Buddhist country, as he plans water resources and roads.

Graduate study gave another couple a foothold in India. All use their vocations for missions because Paul once used his craft to make Jesus Christ known. I have given this question about Paul much thought because in God called me to Peru and then to Brazil, as a fully self-supporting tentmaker. He gave me an exciting ministry in secular elementary and secondary schools, and in my free time helped me start university fellowships.

Then I worked in Spain, Portugal and Austria, on donor support with the IFES, and then in the U. I was evangelizing, training students for lay ministry, and mobilizing many for tentmaking. God led me to start Global Opportunities, to provide job referral, counseling and training services. So I draw from my 21 years overseas, plus 20 years of international job research and feedback from tentmakers, and a sizeable collection of articles and books on this subject. But in this paper I will focus mainly on Paul in Scripture.

But 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. Can his model in the first century have value for us in the twenty-first? We can rejoice in recent advances! What we are accomplishing is exciting, but it is not enough.

Ralph Winter and others met recently to consider why we seem stalled in reaching the huge Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist blocs. An overwhelming task remainsand we cannot do it without Paul. It is not true that our mandate is fulfilled when we adopt a few more people groups. It may take much time and effort to start viable churches in most of them. Take Japan—still less than one percent evangelical, after more than a century! Most have 10 to 20 people.

Southern European countries are also less than one percent evangelical, as are some in Eastern Europe. Formerly Protestant Europe and North America now have a couple of generations with little or no knowledge of Christ, and millions of immigrants. Newbigin, after a lifetime of work in India, said that he found the ignorance of Christ in Asia less daunting than the rejection of Christ in Britain and the U.

He said our Western countries should concern us deeply because of their powerful influence on the rest of the world, and on newly reached people groups. What yet remains to be done is highly challenging!

Our only hope is to produce missionary lay movements everywhere! We have plenty of personnel in our churches, but most are spectators in the pews, immobilized by entertainment model services, and unable to evangelize even their own family, neighborhood and workplace. Training programs become increasingly complex, time-consuming and costly, and the attrition rate grows.

This is no way to win a cosmic war for control of the world! We must marshall all our forces—foot-soldiers as well as officers. But our problems are small compared to the dilemma that Paul faced!

Saul of Tarsus he was then. He was personally commissioned by Jesus to evangelize the Gentiles. He understood that to mean the whole Roman empire. Where would he find hundreds of missionaries?

There was no church yet in Antioch, and he had just destroyed the one in Jerusalem—turning all its members into refugees, prisoners or corpses. But even if he could have found the personnel, where would he have found funding for so many? He had just confiscated the property of Jerusalem believers and it was now safely in the hands of the enemy.

He produced both as he went along. His Spirit-guided tentmaking strategy was intentionally designed to produce missionary lay movements everywhere! It is the only complete strategy for pioneering 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 can solve our problems of diminishing personnel and rising costs.

It is a phenomenon of our day—nonexistent in the s when a few of us went abroad. Most evangelicals have poor Bible study skills, for people who staunchly defend sola escritura— even inerrancy! In talks and articles, church and mission leaders constantly cite three or four proof-texts as evidence that Paul did manual labor only when he ran out of donor money!

But proof-texts without contexts are pretexts— pretexts for proving almost anything, especially our cherished ideas and practices. Most of us do not relish making major changes. These all interpret each other. What an exciting picture emerges! And what hope it holds for the future of the world! He was jailed in Philippi, fled Thessalonica, briefly visited Athens, and then proceeded to Corinth.

We see him job and house hunting. They are refugees—victims of Emperor Claudius who expelled all Jews from Rome. They were Jews, but not Christians. If they had also been Christians, Luke would have said so because that fact would far outweigh their Jewishness.

But the three hit it off and Paul accepts both employment and lodging, because all were tentmakers! If they had been weavers, several other words would have been used.

Paul may have been expert in the kind of goat-skin for which his home province, Cilicia, was famous. Instead of carrying looms on his long walking journeys, he may have taken only a sharp knife, an awl and a big curved needle.

But he probably did more business for the ubiquitous military. The over-extended Empire with its indefensible borders was never more than a chain of military outposts and city colonies along its incredible network of highways. Soldiers were posted in the cities and at intervals along these roads, to maintain internal order and national defense.

Is this why Paul used so many military metaphors? Where many householders lived in rural villas, urban ones often lived with their extended families, behind their workshops, or on two or three floors above them. Paul may have done supervision and training on the job as well as his own expert labor. He quickly won the couple to the Lord. Paul says they even risked their lives for him!

They were first-rate tentmaker missionaries! We have considered Paul and his milieu in Acts It is claimed that when Silas and Timothy caught up with Paul in Corinth, they brought money from Macedonia, so Paul quit tentmaking and dedicated himself to preaching. A couple of translations say this. Did Paul really give up his job a few days or weeks after acquiring it? The Greek suggests only that the men were surprised to find Paul already deeply immersed in spiritual ministry.

No change is indicated. He had made converts in the synagogue, including its leader! But we will see convincing evidence that Paul did not stop making tents. Jews in the synagogue begged him to return. So he came back to Ephesus overland, and had a spectacular three-year ministry in this city. But near the end of the three years, he received word that there was trouble in Corinth. City treasurer Erastus was there, too.

They said Judaizers had come to Corinth and brought their heretical teaching. They made serious charges against Paul. Paul answered their charges in his 1 Corinthians letter, so we can deduce what they were. They said his preaching was shallow and incomplete and his oratory was not up to standard. But most serious, they said he had to support himself because he could not get support from churches— because he was not a genuine apostle!

Now if Paul had quit his tentmaking when Silas and Timothy arrived, the charges would have had no credibility. Everyone would have said he only worked a bit at the beginning. Paul could have written that he only made tents when donor funds were low.

But what does he do? He makes an impassioned defense of his manual labor! First he gives some evidences for his apostolic authority. Then he comments favorably on support received by Peter and his wife, and James, and other apostles. But more about that later. Then in 1 Cor. Nowhere in Scripture do we find such a strong defense of fully supported missionary ministry.

We need not fewer supported missionaries, but many more than we have! Church and donor support is biblical, and Paul approved of it. He presents this whole list as reasons why he himself has a right to the same financial support as the other apostles! It sounds like this is the approach to missionary finance which Paul prefers. But no one seems to notice that Paul then says three times, in the same chapter— three times for emphasis— that he has never made use of this right!

His teammates have also never made use of support. Paul puts this defense of his manual labor in the center of his letter—where ancient writers including the biblical ones usually put their most important content relating to their main purpose in writing. I will examine the reasons later, and also a couple of proof-texts about gifts he received that seem to contradict the claims he makes here. But first, Paul sends Timothy with his 1 Corinthians letter.

Luke says Erastus accompanied him. How did he fare? To know what happened we must read how Paul recounts the story later in 2 Cor. Timothy returns to say that neither he nor the letter resolved the problem. Alarmed, Paul makes an unscheduled emergency visit to Corinth and apparently postpones a scheduled one. The great apostle Paul was actually rebuffed by the Corinthian house churches! But Titus has no sooner left than Paul wishes he could get the letter back, fearing it is too strong, and may prove counterproductive.

The letter has not survived. Paul had been nearly ready to leave Ephesus when the Corinth crisis arose, but had decided to stay until Pentecost, because new doors had opened up to him, even though there were now many adversaries. Then Demetrius rounds up the silversmiths and coppersmiths and leads a city-wide riot against Paul, and he barely escapes with his life.

He says that Priscilla and Aquila risked their lives on his behalf. It seems the Asiarchs also helped him escape. Paul flees to Troas, where he had agreed to meet Titus on his return.

But Paul is so anxious about Corinth that he proceeds to Philippi to intercept him there. Titus brings good news. So in Philippi Paul writes 2 Corinthians, ostensibly to ask them to have their offering for Jerusalem ready when he comes.

This is the content in the middle. But most of the letter in one way or another continues his defense of his manual labor, especially chapters 11 and He says that on his third visit to Corinth he will follow his same policy of self-support as before. Note that the person under discipline in 2: First, we will consider his early ministry and the three journeys chronologically.

His stated intention was to destroy the whole movement. When he set out for Damascus he must have believed he had found all those in Jerusalem who had not fled. He is commissioned by Jesus to be his apostle to the Gentiles.

His sight is restored on Straight Street, he is baptized, and immediately begins preaching in the local synagogues! He powerfully convinces the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. After all, how could anyone serve God without Bible school or seminary? But Luke says he went from Damascus into Arabia—the puppet kingdom, Nabataea.

For a brief time Damascus was part of it. We can be sure the warrant for his arrest three years later was not issued because he had been meditating under a palm tree!

He said he had a better knowledge of the Torah than most young men his age. He must also have learned much about Jesus. How do you think his victims answered his questions about Jesus? Most were eyewitnesses of his crucifixion. Many saw him after his resurrection. They spoke with conviction—knowing they risked death! Saul heard more than we have in all four gospels! It is no wonder his steps slowed as he neared Damascus. What a terrible, unthinkable possibility that he might be fighting against God!

The stress could have caused his blindness. So the newly converted, newly baptized Saul puts together facts about Jesus with the prophecies. Almost certainly by his own artisanry—because it was the normal way for any Jewish rabbi of that day. Besides, he had destroyed the church in Jerusalem and there were no others. This was a crossroads of the east-west Old Silk Road and the north-south Spice or Frankincense Road, and an excellent location for a maker and repairer of tents—or for an evangelist.

We recall how he was eventually lowered over the wall of Damascus and how he fled to Jerusalem. Some saints had returned to Jerusalem, but they were terrified of Saul. But we recall how Barnabas took him to Peter and James. Then Saul powerfully preached to his fellow Hellenistic Jews in the Synagogue of the Freedmen, the very group that had martyred Stephen!

But Saul was too hot a commodity, and a liability to the Jerusalem believers, so the apostles hustled him off to the port of Cesearea and onto a ship for Tarsus, in his home province of Cilicia.

Paul tells us in Galatians that he spent the next ten years preaching in the provinces of Cilicia and Syria. Judaean believers had never seen him, but rejoiced that the former persecutor was preaching the faith. The first great missionary movement in the early church had been inadvertently set off by Saul! The believers fled and everywhere they preached the Word!

They spoke mainly to Jews, except for the Cypriots, who won Gentiles and produced fellowships in the great capital city of Syria—Antioch. Barnabas is sent from Jerusalem to investigate these Gentile believers and he soon goes off to find Saul.

In Antioch, too, Paul and Barnabas almost certainly supported themselves 1 Cor. Luke does not give us more information about these early years because Acts has a limited purpose—to show how the gospel was taken from Jerusalem to Rome, and how a strictly Jewish religion became a predominantly Gentile faith.

We wonder where they had intended to go? After a fruitful ministrybut much persecution, they returned to Antioch, and remained there for some time. We recall a journey they made to Jerusalem with money for its famine victims. Meanwhile, Judaizers visited the Galatian churches and tried to convince the Gentiles they needed circumcision and dietary laws.

Paul wrote the Galatians to denounce this heresy, to clarify salvation by grace, and to encourage them. The same issue became crucial in Antioch, so the two men made a second visit to Jerusalem, for what became the first Church Council. We recall how Paul and Barnabas then decided to make a follow-up visit to the Galatian region and to do further pioneering. But they disagreed over John Mark, and ended up forming two teams. So How did the apostle paul make money leaves with Silas and Titus, and they take an overland route through the Taurus Mountains, no doubt taking the Council letter to the Galatian churches.

Then they seek to go to Ephesus. Is that where Paul had hoped to go on the first journey? Paul was a strategic thinker and in the Empire, Ephesus was second in importance only to Antioch. But once again they are unable to go. Maybe military men, stationed at intervals along the highways, had closed the road. The way to Bithynia was closed, too. Even Paul did not always receive direct guidance. God had to get him to Troas in intermediate steps, in order to get him to Europe—to Macedonia and Achaia.

In 2 Corinthians Paul tells us he made tents also in Philippi, at least on his second visit. You will remember that he had to flee persecution. He sane buy binary option leads not mean 24 hours, but both early morning and late afternoon shifts—with a long break over the hot noontime.

It was the same work schedule which is observed in the Mediterranean today. Paul had fled Thessalonica, stopped briefly in Athens and then made his first visit to Corinth. We have already considered his tentmaking there with Priscilla and Aquila. Paul intends to concentrate on Ephesus next, so he takes the couple along and leaves them there. He promises the Jews he will return after his visit to Jerusalem. When the crisis occurred in Corinth, Paul could have downplayed his tentmaking, trade forex business managed account at the beginning of the letter he sent them, he already says he is then doing manual labor in Ephesus!

Paul had barely escaped Ephesus with his life. Then he met Titus in Philippi with news that the Corinthian crisis had been resolved. On his third short visit to Corinth, persecution intensified, and he changed his travel plans. Eventually, he caught up with the Gentile converts who would accompany him to Jerusalem with their money gifts. Their ship made a stopover in the port city of Ephesus.

Paul called the house church elders to meet him on the beach at Miletus. It may have been too dangerous for him to enter the city. It would be a farewell meeting. Paul reminded them how he had served among them—the precedents he had set which they were to follow, including his financial policy. They were to continue their self-support. But Paul was not thinking of their charitable work. To earn money in order to give it to the weak is just the opposite of what Paul meant here.

For this and other reasons, Paul allowed no paid ministry during the pioneer stage. But he stipulates financial support of leading elders at a later stage—maybe for those who eventually became regional supervisors.

So it appears that Paul supported himself everywhere. But we must consider two more proof-texts that seem to contradict these findings. Paul is using hyperbole in order to shame the Corinthians. Is there any other passage about Paul receiving donor gifts? They interpret each other. We must go to Philippians 4. He finishes the second journey, spends 3 years mainly in Ephesus, then two years in the palace guard in Caesarea under Felix and Festus.

Then he makes the long sea voyage with three months shipwrecked on Malta. Finally, he arrives in Rome and spends two years under house arrest, with freedom for ministry. During his long wait, Paul even converts members of his household! The Philippians send Paul a generous gift, knowing that he could not support himself in prison, and was dependent on friends for his personal needs. Paul thanks them, and then reminds them that they were the only church that ever gave toward his ministry!

This would seem to rule out Antioch. How often had the Philippians given? Paul had written to the Thessalonians that he did not even accept free food and lodging from his hosts!

He says in the 2 Corinthians 11 passage that he will not let anyone rob him of his claim to make the gospel free of charge. This suggests that the Judaizers were accusing Paul of receiving donations secretly from some source—that his claims to self-support were dishonest. Paul insists he receives no such funds. He volunteers his ministry without pay from any source—for a very westfield anzac day trading hours 2016 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 turns his manual labor into a daily act of worship—of gratitude to the Lord! This is something every lay person can do! It can transforms the most boring or difficult job into worship!

But the Lord would not have thanked him for long days of manual labor that he might otherwise have spent preaching! So we know Paul was convinced his manual labor would also enhance and accelerate his ministry.

It was a non-negotiable part of his carefully designed strategy. So we must ask our next question. Although Paul was fully qualified as a money maker institute lebanon religious worker, he chose to approach people as a lay person—as a fellow common laborer.

But 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 he tells his converts to imitate him, and 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 gracious, thought-provoking words, that would elicit questions from them.

Then they must be ready to answer the questions. 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 recreational associations. Workplace conduct must include personal integrity— moral purity, truthfulness regardless of the situation. It must also include quality work for the employer—as though he were Jesus Christ! See GO Paper, Workplace Evangelism: But Paul also 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. In Ephesus, he used the Hall of Tyranus during the long noon time when this teacher did not need it for his own school. Bruce considered the Western Text accurate in these details.

Luke gives us a poignant picture of Paul preaching in his work clothes! Listeners took away his apron and the sweat cloth on his brow, to heal sick people in the audience! It seems that he made the rounds. We know that he did some teaching at night because in Troas a long sermon put one young listener to sleep! When I lived in Spain, supper was at ten or eleven, and committee meetings after midnight! In addition, you have time away from the job for other ministries. Most of the articles I have collected on tentmaking, say that a major drawback of self-support is that it allows too little time and energy for spiritual ministry.

Immediately I know the writer has never done Paul-style tentmaking! I asked God to help indiaearnings moneycontrol home do my job better than I could with only my natural ability and training. I had supernatural help for my job! Much of my ministry took place in the school, where I tried to live out the gospel, and developed relationships, and made brief comments about the Lord.

The Apostle Paul and Manual Labor (part 1)

Much of this led to significant longer evangelistic conversations—and home Bible studies. God helped me evangelize teachers, elementary and high school students, and their upper class local parents. Even some school cooks, janitors and bus drivers. I started a high school Bible club. Forex bank turkey evangelism spilled over into my home, taxation of stock options in canada cra left time for additional ministry—in local churches, and especially, pioneering university campus fellowships.

I was a part of that first wave of tentmakers in the early fifties. I hoped to do Bible translation in Peru, but then became very ill. After a long slow recovery, I knew no mission agency would send me out with only one functioning lung. When I was able to resume normal activities I studied at Chico State and several of us started the first IVCF group.

Then I taught in the Bay Area, with two IVCF alums, and we started a teachers Christian fellowship. Then God surprised me with a salaried, secular position, in Peru—the country he had laid on my heart—and he turned me into a tentmaker.

He had used illness to delay me long enough to give me two kinds of training—how to start campus fellowships and how to do full-time ministry in the context of a full-time secular job. In this new wave of tentmaking there was no one to tell me how to do it, but the Lord himself undertook my training. 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.

We will consider only three of the several forex trading apps for ipad he gives. The first two are part of his formal defense in 1 Cor.

It was fine for Peter and others to get support because they worked with Jewish people. What a wise policy this proved to be in divisive Corinth, where he would have been suspected of being in the pocket of the wealthy and influential members of the house churches!

Paul adapts culturally to people to win them. The Roman empire then was not much more homogeneous than the British empire at its height. Rome usually respected the local rulers in its provinces, their local laws, religions and customs, and interfered mainly in major disputes and national defense. Paul approaches 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.

Apparently, not even his shabby clothing stood in the way. In Ephesus, even the Asiarchs local Asian rulers became his friends. But Paul needed a job to identify with quickest way to make money p2p artisan classes, to earn his living through manual labor 1 Cor.

He must dress and live as they do. But there is no pretense. He and his team actually depend on their manual labor. Was Paul disinherited when he put his trust in Jesus? 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 delta of european stock options chain of military outposts and city colonies along the Roman highways, and neither Rome nor Greece had ever tried to educate the tribes and villages nor to integrate them into their empires.

But Paul felt indebted to them, and to the Jews and Greeks. His identification with the working people was not phony. His pay was poor. Often he was hungry, cold, ill-clothed. This incarnational service did not originate with Paul. He is the one who tells us how Jesus left all he had to identify with us. It cost Jesus everything and Paul imitates him. In another time and country Paul might have chosen to identify how much money does mcdonald's make a minute 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. They understand the jargon, the mentality and the hang-ups of their fellows.

They can evangelize their colleagues, clients, patients, students, etc. What is Paul modeling? First, he was modeling the Christian life. None had ever seen a Christian before. So Paul shows 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 demonstrates a holy life in their immoral, idolatrous culture. Secondly, he models a biblical work ethic 2 Thess. Imagine the effect of their transformation on non-believers! Paul writes much about work, without which there cannot be godly converts, healthy families, independent churches nor productive societies.

The converted ex-Soviet economist, Zaichenko, says that after 70 years of Communism, foreign money and expertise will not help Russia much until a Judeo-Christian work ethic can be instilled in society. The same problem exists in other mission fields. Converts were new beachheads into enemy territory. They should not hastily change their circumstances until they had won their extended families, friends, and their colleagues at work.

Paul did not evangelize haphazardly. Buying ge stock should i planned work from home hays travel careful strategy and set solid precedents.

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 devise 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 lay movements and exponential growth. To achieve this he will have to produce a specific kind of churches, which will have to be made up of a specific kind of converts, for whom he will have to provide a specific kind of teaching and model.

He would fully support himself to gain credibility for himself and the gospel, 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 labor. If he had received support, most of his converts would pinoy stock market waited around for it, too.

Then unpaid energy trading systems uh would have been considered second rate.

Paul wanted Jesus Christ reproduced in himself 2 Cor. He multiplies himself many times over in his converts, who are to be godly in their relationships and dealings, providing well for loved ones, giving to the poor, and evangelizing their extended families, neighborhoods and workplaces.

His churches were self-reproducing from the start. Everyone evangelized, without pay. For Paul to have brought in a few dozen foreign missionaries to evangelize these provinces could have been damaging to the local Christians.

It was their responsibility to evangelize their region. Not ten years later after pastors have been produced in seminaries. But they had Jesus Christ inside! Paul arranged for their doctrine to be corrected by good teaching later.

His churches were self-governing. They were not dependent on foreign leadership. The churches were Bible schools! Their job was to equip members—not for church committees—but cheap kitchen cabinets in los angeles evangelize outsiders.

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 householder 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. Paul made this a requirement. How could he train them for it? By the time house churches multiplied and a paid leader was needed maybe for regional supervisionlocal funds were available for his support. Later, some of the same Ephesian elders of Acts 20, may have been among those receiving support.

They would give more willingly to a local senior person they respected, than to an unknown seminary graduate from elsewhere. Most important, by then 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. He warns others to take heed how they build on his carefully set precedents. Members had to reproduce 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. It never required more than a handful of foreign workers and virtually no foreign funds.

By reproducing himself in the working people Paul guaranteed the infiltration 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 household solidarity was obligatory. He aims at employers through their transformed employees. Many of his lay evangelists were from unsavory, uneducated, pagan backgrounds.

None had anthropological or missiological training. 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. 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 educated Greeks. 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 local languages spoken in the hinterlands. Paul reproduced himself in these multilingual, lower class converts, and they guaranteed the evangelization of the hinterlands. Furthermore, it was truly contextualized evangelism, since they took the gospel clothed in their own language and culture!

The gospel did not come to the people as a foreign religion. No wonder the church spread so quickly. After a few months in Philippi, Paul speaks of Macedonian churches, in the plural. In his first follow-up letter to the Thessalonians he says the gospel had already sounded out from them into the whole region!

Corinth spread the gospel through Achaia, and we soon read of a church in Cenchrae. But our best example is the Roman province of Asia.

Paul stayed in Ephesus for three years, but Luke writes in Acts Paul seems not to have left Ephesus. Does Luke mean also the rural and tribal areas? We have strong corroborating testimony from an unlikely source. Paul evangelized the hinterlands. But he could not have gone to them all, nor learned all their languages. But he takes the gospel to them through his converts, and the new converts immediately reproduce themselves!

It is exponential growth! The gospel spread so quickly that by the time the opposition had geared up, it was too late to put out the fire! Today we give non-Christian religious leaders decades to mobilize their opposition as we win occasional, often marginal, converts.

How can it be useful to us 21 centuries later? I think we cannot fulfill our mandate without Paul. Paul gives us our only N. It is designed to produce missionary lay movements, and has done so repeatedly when implemented through history!

John Nevius taught this strategy to the early missionaries to Korea, and it has never recovered! Remember that his strategy includes not only his self-support and workplace evangelism, but his holy life, deep Bible teaching, his spiritual power and his willingness to suffer. By teaching lay people to do workplace evangelism, we can guarantees the infiltration of every structure of society by Christians!

We win too many individuals from the fringes of society, or we remove converts from their social circles, so they have little evangelistic influence. We must aim at the heads of extended families and at employers—people who can bring many converts with them.

Paul did this by requiring former lazy, thieving, lying slaves to do quality work, with great personal integrity. So the householders and employers would ask about the transformation, and be led to Paul and to Jesus Christ.

This can work as effectively today! Donald McGavran said that church growth requires a large force of unpaid 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. He intends it for one purpose—to help us finish world evangelization. But we are making extremely poor use of it while cults and non-Christian religions use it well.

We need it to motivate and guide us and to reduce our high attrition rate. We are pleased at how many of our applicants have made long term commitments. But would not many tentmakers do so, if they had a strong biblical basis from Scripture? This is especially true because many get little encouragement from their home churches, or the mission community, or from creative access people on the field.

Paul-style tentmaking is neither appreciated nor well understood. The only missionary couple in an African town, refused the help and fellowship of a theologically trained tentmaker, because he did not belong to their mission, even though they were from the same evangelical tradition. 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.

It may be more than this, but not be less. Our biggest immediate problem is the lack of a common definition. A word with 13 to 20 definitions is as devalued as currency in triple digit inflation. The attempts that have been made to derive a definition from the diverse practices called tentmaking, can only give us a lowest common denominator—not a useful definition.

We must never begin with experience what cults dobut with Scriptureand then bring our practice in line with it. All combinations of self-support and donor support are legitimate, whether or not they are Paul-style tentmaking. But if we appropriate the term from Paul, we should take our primary definition from what he did and taught, and for his reasons.

We may then design our variations around him. At present, anything one person says on the subject can be contradicted by others who use a different definition. People are finding it inexcusably confusing! A great many lay people are excited about using their professions abroad in tentmaking. But when they contact mission agencies, they are told to raise support, and to minimize their jobs, and they realize this is not what they believed God wanted them to do.

Someone recently wrote an excellent description of the whole confusing tentmaker scene—all the options called tentmaking, and then said graciously that we probably just have to rejoice in our diversity. But I thought we should sit down and weep!

4 Things the Apostle Paul Teaches Us About Money

This is no way to win a war! Paul says that if the bugle sound is not clear no one will go to battle. Our confusion is keeping professional people at home in droves! Missionaries who use jobs mainly for entry visas often express disdain for those who feel God wants them to do workplace evangelism.

On the other hand, Christians with substantial jobs often feel some creative access people are deceitful, getting visas under false pretenses, and doing clandestine missionary work behind the front or cover of minimal jobs and phantom businesses.

When we have so few troops in hostile countries, we cannot afford to have them suspicious of each other! It is urgent to have clear terms and definitions, and all should understand what Paul taught and did. Our problem is not in what we are already doing—God is blessing. It is what we are failing to do because of the confusion. And we need both to finish world evangelization! I suggest the following:. Several hundred thousand American Christians have jobs in other countries, but probably not one percent do any cross-cultural evangelism, because they had little or no ministry at home, and crossing an ocean did not change that.

It is not fair to lump them with genuine tentmakers, and attribute their deficiencies to faithful workers who take risks for the gospel in hostile countries. It is this confusion which has damaged tentmaking more than any other.

But many have potential. God helped me mobilize a number of them with on-the-field training.

The Apostle Paul's Income: Four Reasons Why Paul Worked a Day Job - BibleBridge Bible Study Lessons

That is important also because the word designates not just an activity, but a unique approach to missions strategy and finance. If Paul had never left Jerusalem, it would not matter much to us if he had been a potter, a spice vendor or a toga tailor. But lay witnesses at home are important, and those who do cross-cultural evangelism in the workplace, are tentmakers like those who go abroad.

We need many more of them! But even those who do educational, agricultural, or health care work, etc. We need more of them, too! They are often called tentmakers, but differ from Paul because most are on donor support, and usually give little importance to workplace evangelism.

Minimal jobs are sought for entry visas. But God is blessing in many locations! Consider some hybrid options. But we must have clear terms. Unless we have a clear definition and a commonly accepted term for what Paul did, his strategy will not be implemented because it will continue to be lost in the present confusion.

At present, we are in a demographic trough in the U. 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. Academic training and work experience. Christians must see that excellent academic preparation is essential to their ministry. Governments only allow the hiring of foreigners with expertise their country needs.

We have helped some students gain ministry experience with Christian campus workers at the same time. Mission leaders often say overseas jobs pay so little that tentmakers have to raise donor support. Our experience with the job market and applicants reveals three job-related problems: Many of those most interested in missions are poorly prepared for any secular work.

Even those on donor support should have a vocation to fall back on. Mission agencies often take their people abroad to job-hunt there. But that makes them local hires, and they are paid local wages, with few benefits, if any. Contracts signed at home usually offer generous pay with round trip and vacation travel for the whole family, and other benefits. In places where university teaching is part time, foreign faculty people are often encouraged to take on consultancy work for pay.

Agencies often do not want their people to take significant positions, because they consider the hours on the job as time they could better spend in spiritual ministry. This should resemble that of most regular missionaries.

In a war, not all soldiers need officer training, like doctorates in missiology or theology. Some tentmakers have them. But all must know how to do spiritual warfare, and must have good inductive Bible study and evangelism skills. They need at least the equivalent of one year of Bible school, but may acquire it in various ways.

Some of the finest missionary training is given by campus fellowships in secular universities—because it is in-service training. Universities are microcosms of a multicultural, spiritually hostile world. All aspiring tentmakers should gain experience on a secular campus or in a secular job. But all should also take a missions course like Perspectives. 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. Lay people can give converts models for life and witness in the working world. Pius Wakatama from Zimbabwe says missionaries never helped their converts to get into the economic mainstream of their countries. But they did provide education! Lay 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. Lay people can effectively engage culture at home and abroad in a way religious workers cannot. 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.

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 ineffective because they have been neglected.

Only they are distributed throughout the structures of society. We could not accomplish much without our religious workers—and we count ourselves among them. 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.

Selected Bibliography Roland Allen. Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. Gerald Hawthorne, Ralph Martin, Eds. Dictionary of Paul and his Letters. Planting and Development of Missionary Churches. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co. Contact Global Opportunities Director Search Events GO Equipped! Sending Base For Missions What is Tentmaking? Why Did Paul Make Tents? Tentmaking — Start Here December 1, Starting A Business Abroad November 26, Business As Mission BAM November 26, Course September 28,