In a comedy movie, Chevy Chase plays a spy who is forced to hide his identity as a famous surgeon. Naturally, he gets trapped into performing a delicate surgery on a patient while a room full of doctors is looking on. If you’ve not seen it, you can image how humorous this could be.
But how would you feel if such a “surgeon” was about to operate on you? Even more, imagine being called upon to operate on someone yourself without training. It would be terrifying and ludicrous. No one practices surgery without years of serving as an apprentice under skilled surgeons. The same thing applies to airline pilots, firemen, plumbers, etc. You would never accept a pilot flying for you who had only read books on flying, nor a fireman who had only read manuals. To a lesser degree, this applies to all professions. Academic training is never enough, especially when it involves complex, high-risk tasks.
Does this apply to tentmaking? You bet it does. In spades. Integrating all of life-work, family, neighbors, community, ministry, etc.-under Christ’s Lordship is challenging. So is leading people to Christ, discipling them, and nurturing them into simple house churches. Sadly, many tentmakers and missionaries are not very effective because they weren’t effective before going; they had inadequate godliness and ministry skills. We find the biggest need of prospective tentmakers is to become equipped and effective before going into another culture. They need to learn under a skilled surgeon before operating on people, before going as tentmakers.
Jesus understood this. So he chose twelve “to be with him and to be sent out to preach.” (Mk. 3:14) These men never received Bible school or seminary training. He trained them by taking them “with him” on-the-job as he loved, healed, proclaimed, and discipled. They watched him and copied him. Only later did Jesus send them out to “preach.” When he did, they did what they had seen him do and were tremendously effective. They were so effective that a huge crowd followed them in order to hear Jesus-a crowd of 5000 men plus thousands of women and children whom he miraculously fed. After Jesus’ resurrection, these men turned the ancient world upside down.
Jesus’ apprenticeship model worked because imitating others is the way humans really learn. Paul understood this, so he told the Corinthians, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Co. 11:1) This was his discipling “strategy,” not classroom lectures, not handouts, etc. He demonstrated what he taught-he lived it. He knew that godliness is more “caught than taught,” that people copy what they see, not what they hear. In Paul, people saw joy in the midst of suffering, faith in the face of mortal danger, unflagging love for failing, even hurtful people, passionate zeal for God, exemplary work practices, compelling preaching and teaching, effective discipling, wise, Christ-like leading, etc. And they saw Paul do all this as a full-time worker supporting himself.
They saw the same example in Paul’s co-workers-Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and the rest. They were all tentmakers who worked for their living. The early converts saw everyday working Christians living lives of powerful godliness and ministry. Paul and his team showed the supernatural power of God, and made serious discipleship and disciple-making normal for regular Christians. Early Christians found it easy to believe God worked like this through ordinary disciples because they saw it with their own eyes. To them, this was normal Christianity.
These stories tell us exactly what training is ideal to make us effective tentmakers-working as apprentices to a master tentmaker. This is what Timothy and Titus did. This is what early church leaders did. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to do today because there are few master tentmakers.
This model of making disciples through exhibiting the gospel, working personally with a few, and leading by example and word, is very simple and powerful. It works. Regular workplace Christians can do it. In fact, God is using workplace Christians as effective tentmakers around the world. But this model has been largely replaced by an organizational, impersonal, program-oriented, and academic model. And this has become our mental model of church and ministry. And we do what we see. What we need is to replace the old mental model with the simpler, more powerful New Testament model. This is why we need effective tentmakers to show us how to do it. This is also why there are few master tentmakers for us to work with as apprentices.
So is there an alternative? What about bringing some effective tentmakers together to share stories of how they were effective? Their stories enable us to “watch” them after the fact. They let us “see” and grasp a model of effectiveness we’ve never seen before, especially as they explain the Biblical principles of why it works.
If we could gather these leaders for a concentrated, 4-5 day course, built around the core principles of tentmaking, then any motivated potential tentmaker can get this powerful training by simply taking a few days off. We have done this with the GO Equipped! Tentmaking Course. We created a course built around the core Biblical principles of tentmaking using stories told by effective tentmakers.
Ari Rocklin is one of the tentmakers who will share his story. But he learned it the hard way, through much questioning and work. When he joined Global Opportunities and first helped with our course, he said, “If only I had gotten this before going!” Other tentmakers have expressed the same thing.
You can get his training for a fairly small investment of time and money. And you can sit and talk with tentmakers who have done it and who keep on learning from working with tentmakers. Sign up now to take advantage of this crucial training before you attempt to perform tentmaking surgery!
