Thanks to the prayers of many, all expatriates made it out from under the bombing and ongoing civil war. Many are reporting miraculous stories of how they were saved from very dangerous situations. Prayers are requested for the many national believers who face an uncertain future. Some early reports are coming in of increased persecution during this lawless era while at the same time there is also a new openness to the Gospel not seen before. God is in control.
lessons
Don’t Let Your eMails Get You in Trouble
The tentmaker in the Central Asian nation was shocked when he received the email from the senior pastor in his home church. “To Our Missionary Heroes” was the headline of the email. The same greeting was also used in the subject field.
The email was sent to all the missionaries that the church was in contact with and the pastor wanted to encourage these front soldiers in God’s army. Most of them were working in areas where they could openly share the Gospel. But this tentmaker was not. Although he immediately deleted the email, he knew that it could cause harm to the ministry he had been doing for several years.
Emails and other data communication have become major sources that can harm a growing work in a sensitive area. The people who want to stay in touch with us are not trained in thinking about security. Even the people who are working in such areas are often not aware of the security issues that can harm their work.
Global Opportunities and Tent have together with current tentmakers developed some security guidelines for people working in areas where the Christian church is persecuted. Here are some of the advices we give regarding emails:
– Remember that unencrypted emails are like postcards – everyone can read them.
Thus we should never write things that can harm our work.
– Avoid writing about politics and religion.
– Avoid giving details about names and places.
– Make code signals you can use if there is a crisis.
– Give security guidelines to those who are going to write to you.
– If you work in a very sensitive area, someone in your home country should scan
through your emails and delete sensitive words before the emails are forwarded
to you.
– Emails from people working in sensitive areas should never be forwarded without
asking the sender.
– Never display emails from sensitive areas in public meeting places.
Email correspondence is only one aspect you need to think through if you want to work in a sensitive area. How to plant churches in hostile environments, what to do with Bibles and other literature and how to inform your supporters back home are some other central areas of work that you will have to plan carefully.
The four questions tentmakers are asked
Ari J. Rocklin
The four most common questions that expatriate workers are asked by neighbors, coworkers, shopkeepers, taxi drivers and those they come in contact with are:
1. What is your name?
2. What do you do here?
3. Where are you from?
4. Do you believe in God?
Everyone can answer the first three questions in a few short minutes, perhaps even without thinking about it too much. The fourth question requires thought, preparation, sensitivity, gentleness, respect, divine inspiration and a time out.
Check out Peter’s advice on this – 1 Peter 3:15,16.
Paul the tentmaker from Tarsus
In one short, to the point sentence, we learn much about Paul. Having established his persona and reason for being, we can assume that he then began passionately sharing his faith in ever creative ways.
How you answer the fourth question will either open the door for future faith discussion or perhaps close the door to potential friendships that lead to faith talks. It is vital that we get it right, we only have one chance to make that critical first introduction of our faith. If it were up to me, I would make every future tentmaker spend at least 100 hours preparing themselves for this one question. It is that important. Getting that answer wrong could raise suspicion and make you an object of unwanted attention or it could simply set the foundation for future dialogue and perhaps even give you status as a man/woman of God.
For those of you considering tentmaking business as mission, or those of you out there already doing it, I urge you to do some homework so you will have the best possible answer to question number four.