Author: Guest Contributor

Tips from Tentmakers

/ Guest Contributor

by David English

From tentmakers in Germany:

I kept an Olympics medal table updated on the white-board at work as a conversation starter with all the countries represented in our department. It gave me something to talk about with the Dutch guy when the Dutch gymnast won the balance beam, for example. To counter it appearing that I was bragging on the US, I consolidated all the European Union medals into a group which ended up larger than the US. This got co-workers more interested in the Olympics and opened up some conversations.

For my birthday I made some American treats to take to work, which were well received. I made Pumpkin pie, which most of them had never had before, and Scotcharoos (a rice crispy-peanut butter thing covered in chocolate for those of you that don’t know). I gave the recipe to several people already. Though some commented that American food was unhealthy, they managed to enjoy them anyway and to eat all of them.

Another hospitality idea from an actively evangelizing friend: 

Fred and his wife host an open dinner every Thursday night. Anyone is welcome. Students they’ve connected with from the local university come regularly and bring friends. In addition, he regularly walks to and from downtown a few blocks away and chats with people along the way. He also visits the same coffee shops and restaurants regularly to get to know staff. He observes people’s expressions and asks how they are doing. When they share a need or struggle, he asks if he can pray for them right then. He then does so in a natural way with his eyes open. One woman he prayed for during a crisis had moved one from the coffee shop. But she crossed the street to thank him when she saw him walking one day. In these ways he meets, cares for, shares Christ with, and draws more people to his and his wife’s Thursday night open dinners. Nonbelievers are impressed by what they see and often comment and ask questions. 

What variations of these ideas could work where you are? And what other ideas do they stimulate in your mind? Don’t be afraid to try things and learn. It always works when we make people really feel welcome, appreciated, and loved.

Insight from a Master Tentmaker

/ Guest Contributor

by David English

Ruth Siemens had just arrived in Peru just a few days before to teach third grade in a secular international school in  Lima. She was attending the back-to-school and welcome-new-teachers party complete with dancing and alcohol. One of the teachers, a nonbeliever, asked Ruth, “Would you like to have a drink?” Ruth responded, “Yes, I’d love to. Do they have any Coke or ginger ale?” 

For a Christian from a very conservative, non-alcohol church background, this was a startling response. Why did Ruth answer this way? “Because this colleague wasn’t asking me to drink. She was asking to get to know me. I was responding to her intention. I was delighted with her desire and to get to know her.” 

This is the most insightful response I’ve heard to this question. An invitation to have a drink was bound to come at this party. Ruth had to think this through, preferably beforehand. But her primary focus was the other person. What is she intending to communicate? And how can I respond to affirms her and build friendship. 

We’ll always find ourselves in uncomfortable situations with nonbelievers at times. Think how badly Christians have treated people because they focused on their own scruples rather than the other person’s intentions. Without meaning to, we have alienated and killed opportunities to connect with people.

Ruth was always thinking about people’s motives when interacting with them. I saw this over and over. One day we had lunch at a restaurant near her home in California. A Hispanic waitress came to our table, obviously pregnant. Ruth smiled with delight and said in Spanish, “I see you are expecting. What a wonderful blessing God has given you! I pray it’s a happy, healthy baby.” The waitress just beamed with pleasure and gratitude.

Ruth’s warm response at the party led one woman to say to her, “I think you know about God. Could you teach me?” This woman had lost her airline pilot husband in a tragic plane crash leaving her with two teenage boys. Ruth responded, “I’d love to!” and led Bible study with them for months. All three came to Christ and Ruth discipled them.

In Lima, Ruth led faculty, staff, students and parents to Christ at her school. In spare time, she studied Spanish at San Marcos University, led Bible studies, and started the Peruvian IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) movement.

From Peru, Ruth moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil to head up an international school where she repeated her pattern. She again led students, faculty, and staff to Christ, and in spare time, started Brazil’s IFES university movement. When she left for Spain and Portugal, there were groups on 30 campuses. After returning to the States, Ruth launched Global Opportunities

Amazing Strategic Grace

/ Guest Contributor

“Culture eats strategy for lunch” is now a well-known expression of the importance of defining your organization’s culture and aligning it with organizational vision and strategy.(1) The need to align your values to get the culture that will give you the outcome you want is the underlying premise behind much of organizational development and change management today.

I stumbled upon the importance of this principle through personal experience as part of the leadership team running a business process outsourcing company in northwestern Pakistan. We wanted to run a successful international business and respect local culture while doing it, and ran smack into several cultural dynamics which made cross-cultural conflict inevitable.

Revenge is a cultural value in Northwest Pakistan. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is the respected rule and expected norm. In fact an old, old proverb immortalized as part of the Pashtun code of honor says that “a man is no Pashtun who doesn’t give a blow for a pinch”.(2) A man who doesn’t respond in kind when his honor is disgraced loses it, and the way to get it back is to take revenge.

So there we were, wanting to respect local culture but not wanting revenge to be part of our corporate culture. It’s not that I can’t see the reasons why revenge would be highly valued in the traditional, tribal society, but we knew it could be counterproductive to having the workplace environment we wanted for doing business internationally. Not only that, a heart of revenge can turn small unintentional mistakes into ongoing feuds that ruin the work environment for everyone. So we had to respond.

We didn’t launch a hot and holy anti-revenge campaign as an effort against something we didn’t want. Change efforts against something negative are never quite as compelling or appealing as efforts FOR something good. So instead we focused on what values we did want in our company to give us the results we wanted – a productive, harmonious workplace.

As we chose our company core values, among the usual values like integrity, quality, and service, we also chose GRACE. We defined grace as “giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt, even if they didn’t deserve it,” because we’ve also been (or will be) in need of some grace.

All company values need to be modeled from the top in order to be authentic, so as leaders we sought to model it. Grace doesn’t mean we forgave everything or didn’t have disciplinary processes; rather it means that we had intentional, moderate, and care-full policies and processes that didn’t burn people, even if we had to let them go. With grace as a value we were careful to design our policies and procedures in a way that would not throw our staff under the bus in our pursuit of profit. Rather, grace as a value helped our staff to be proud of the company and more eager to see it succeed for the benefit of all.

We asked our staff to show each other grace, and forgive each other when necessary. And they did most of the time. But because intended and unintended slights just happen in workplaces, and sometimes they had difficulty resolving disputes on their own, we needed to back up our values with processes for dispute resolution. Otherwise our value of grace would seem like so much worthless sentiment.

Now in all my research about core values, I have never found another for-profit company that used grace as a core value, but we did, and it worked. Our company had hard working people stay and prosper with us. We all prospered for a variety of good business reasons which unquestionably included having a nurturing company culture made possible by our value on grace.

I will forever be a “fan-boy” of strategically choosing company values to craft an effective company culture. I’m sold, convinced, persuaded. At our company in Pakistan, I don’t think that having a great business strategy would have helped us succeed if we had not given due attention to our company culture.

No Closed Countries!

/ Guest Contributor

No countries are closed to people, including Christians, who bring needed skills and products. They welcome anyone who can provide the products and skills they need.

If you told your secular neighbor or colleague, “Saudi Arabia is a closed country,” or “China is closed,” they would say, “What do you mean? I know about lots who go there and who work there. What do you mean, ‘They are closed?’”

Closed is very limited insider missions language. No one else uses the word this way outside the missions-aware population of the church. It makes no sense to nonbelievers and even to most Christians. If you said, “North Korea is closed,” people would understand. North Korea’s paranoid, despotic ruler, Kim Jong-un, severely limits outsiders entering the country, though even he still allows access for vital trade and expertise. If you said, “Cuba is closed to Americans,” people would also understand.

In reality, every nation needs and welcomes outside trade and expertise, at least to some extent. But many do not issue visas for professional religious workers—not just Christian, but all religious professionals except of the state religion. Seventy to eighty percent severely restrict any missionary visas, but welcome other professionals whatever their religion.

The world is wide open to Christian non-religious professionals with needed skills or products. They can enter legally. Global Opportunities-Tent knows of no country where tentmakers cannot enter including North Korea.

Words impact thinking. The word closed distorts our thinking about “closed” countries. We perceive “closed” countries as evil and totally closed to the gospel. But this is skewed. These nations reject not just Christianity, but any foreign religion. Further, rejecting Christianity is not the same as rejecting the gospel.

People have no other way of understanding Christ’s message except as a foreign religion until they see it demonstrated and communicated through living witnesses. This is why tentmakers are crucial. Even if missionaries were allowed, their testimony is always undercut as paid religious professionals. As one Taiwanese responded when asked what they thought of missionaries’ work in Taiwan, “Oh, they get paid to make converts.” Only tentmakers can demonstrate the reality and power of the gospel in everyday life.

All nations are “closed” to outside politics, culture, and religion being imposed upon them. They want to decide their own destiny and to develop themselves in their own right. Yes, evil motives of greed, self-gratification, power, and status greatly corrupt and shackle them. And totalitarian nations are often the most oppressive, corrupt, and underdeveloped. But people’s desire to determine their own destiny and to create real worth is an expression of God’s likeness in us. We, as Christians, should understand this better than anyone. We should stop thinking of these nations as totally closed to the gospel.

Two more negatives accompany the closed country view—that to spread the gospel missionaries must be the ones to go, and that, similarly, we must develop full-time, donor-supported workers to continue its spread. Nowhere does the Bible teach this. In fact, the great expansion of the gospel beyond Judea and Samaria recorded in the second half of Acts was carried out by tentmakers, i.e., self-supporting workers who integrated work and witness.

Tentmaking adds power and credibility to the gospel. It multiples evangelism by activation “lay” disciple makers. And it creates a pattern of “lay” leadership and pastoring without waiting to raise support and get professional ministry training. Godly “lay” leaders provide powerful examples of discipleship as unpaid, real world subjects of the Lord of lords. And the tentmaking approach provides a vastly larger pool of leaders for the church and for missions.

So let’s stop calling countries “closed” or “restricted access” or other terms which see them through a colored lens of “full-time” workers. Let’s recognize the tremendous calling and capacity of “lay” workers, both sent and indigenous. And, finally, let’s grasp the reality that countries are wide open to Christians with needed skills and products.