EMQ » October–December 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 4
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder, EMQLibraryInstitution”]By Glenn Deckert
The terms global professional and tentmaker are used interchangeably as both terms have been used by many in reference to persons serving abroad in a self-supporting fashion.[1] A would-be global professional, as here understood, is a person with qualifying work experience who has a desire for cross-cultural ministry, has learned how to share Christ with others, and is in search of where God would place him. He is not like millions of Americans, Christian or not, who accept overseas positions offered by homeland employers with simply a desire for a cross-cultural experience and some extra salary.
The main difference is intentionality, that is, having the higher priority of extending the body of Christ in the overseas situation. He believes that regardless of the host country’s missiological classification, closed or open, he can settle into a social sphere where he will have the joy of explaining the Christian gospel to people thus far ignorant of it. In a sense, entry into a particular country for a global professional is by way of natural access, not a creative maneuver. For him, it’s a purposeful change of jobs.
My Personal Professional Engagement
For me, this was entry into Iran, and later to Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, and other places. For today’s global professionals, a recent check into just one source of job openings in higher education uncovered openings in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Oman, to name only a few.[2] In fields other than teaching, one can search sources appropriate to the discipline. Tentmakers long to see these overseas positions filled with purposeful evangelical Christians. They offer golden opportunities.
Two of these golden opportunities are as follows. As the head of the language center of a college in Hong Kong, I had natural contact with many other lecturers and professors. A most memorable experience occurred with a Chinese lecturer, a well-published poetess and short story writer, who taught communication in modern Chinese. In our fourth year of association, she came to a dramatic commitment to Christ after we had months of one-to-one office Bible study. Subsequently, she led her husband and others to Christ. For years afterward students came to her office seeking answers to their questions about faith.
In Saudi Arabia, a very different environment, a few years of casual relationship with an Iraqi biology professor seemed inconsequential. However, sixteen years later while I was working at Eastern Michigan University, I received a Fulbright appointment to the university in Doha, Qatar. There I discovered my old Iraqi friend had taken up a position in the same university. At the time, he and I were both single-status as his wife and daughters had settled in Jordan and my wife had obligations in Michigan. We agreed to have lunch together at a Ponderosa restaurant, and while eating, he shared some of his anxieties.
There in the restaurant he welcomed my offering a prayer for him. After a few more lunches and brief passages of Scripture, he agreed to meet weekly for Bible reading. Once, during our reading from the Sermon on the Mount on how to pray, he commented “That’s how it ought to be!” When we read and discussed passages on the gospel, he responded, “That’s different. That’s wonderful. No one ever taught me that before.” Only God knows what was taking place in his heart over our six weeks of study. And that friendship, as with other Middle Eastern Muslim colleagues, lasted for decades after we each moved on to other places.
I write this article drawing on my own and my wife’s employment and residence abroad for eighteen years, and from many later short-term trips to Turkey and elsewhere. Our jobs have taken us to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East. We have worked in both so-called closed and open countries some of which were affluent while two evidenced much poverty. My wife sometimes held elementary school teaching or administrative positions, while I regularly worked in universities in the field of English language education.
A prepared global professional is ready to answer two questions that may be asked in one form or another by colleagues, curious acquaintances, and likely host-country employers. The questions must be answered confidently and honestly in the detail appropriate to the occasion and the person who asks. The global professional should first answer these questions for himself to be ready to give clear unhesitating answers to others. The first question is “What is your true identity?” and the second, “What is your basic purpose?”
What Is Your True Identity?
The question will come in different forms, like, “What kind of training and work did you have before coming here?” or “What brought you to our country?” or even “Are you a missionary?” Some assume this question poses a moral dilemma when the tentmaker doesn’t disclose her “primary motivation.”[3] A tentmaker or global professional should be able to simply state that she is a professional with a track record as a teacher, musician, stockbroker, or whatever her expertise may be. Whether a vision for cross-cultural Christian witness came before or after the professional training is irrelevant. The desire to do her work in a way that is pleasing to God, and the desire to share the gospel with others operate simultaneously in her daily living wherever her workplace may be. So, in regard to identity, she has one identity, not two for different audiences.[4] There is no change of identity in moving from one country to another. Both professional practice and Christian witness are part and parcel of the whole person that an employer is hiring. And if an employer is able to ask, or decides to ask, she is able to state that she is a practicing Christian.
In Iran at the time of the Shah, pre-1979, no Iranian employer ever asked me if I was a practicing Christian. It was not an issue to them in light of what they were hiring me for. However, over time, friends and acquaintances realized I was a practicing Christian who easily raised and discussed matters of faith. I recall how different it was in Saudi Arabia. All foreigners who interviewed for university positions were required to be Muslim or Christian, and not Jewish or atheistic. In reality, my colleagues were both practicing and nominal Muslims, and a few Westerners I knew claimed to be Christian. However, over time it was clear some were agnostic, if not atheistic. More than one was gay. What the dean or departmental heads were really interested in was their professional skills. Should an employer or dean have probed into what kind of Christian I was, I might have said I hope my conduct would show, and that in light of biblical teaching, I was to be one who sincerely loved God and showed love to my neighbors.
The global professional’s own understanding of who she really is, at a deeper level than seldom shared widely, is that she belongs to Jesus Christ and is in a mystical union with Jesus. Further, following the Protestant belief in the priesthood of all believers she, like every regenerated layperson, is a bearer of the gospel to others who are ignorant of the gospel. Indeed, that is a fundamental part of the global professional’s identity. This priestly role of all believers explains why Christianity spread so rapidly across the Roman world in the early Christian centuries. Scholars who study that rapid spread come up with the same conclusion. Michael Green concluded, “Christianity was from its inception a lay movement, and so it continued for a remarkably long time.”[5]
Adolf Harnack examined closely the first three centuries and found that it was not principally the work of the presbyters, bishops, regular clergy, or the early theologians. Rather, “the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries.”[6] Yale University professor of church historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette, observed that “the chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or made it a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.”[7] So the global professional understands this phenomenon and identifies closely with it.
What is a possible test of one’s claim to be a Christian global professional and not a missionary or evangelist in disguise? I recall a recent conversation with my son about our family name. I had said there were very few Deckerts in the United States, much less Glenn Deckerts. He challenged me by pulling out his iPhone and googling my name. Up came many Glenn Deckerts, one a police chief, another a realtor, and then, Glenn Deckert, his father. A few more clicks brought up a stream of academic articles I had written for professional journals over past decades. Aside from my recent book on tentmaking,[8] there was no indication of my evangelical purpose. Actually, that book was published thirteen years after my retirement from Eastern Michigan University when I stopped pursuing overseas employment. What came up on the internet confirmed my professional identity. My many informal Christian activities abroad were of such low profile character that they escaped Google’s notice – granted, much took place long before Google and the like came to be. However, I learned from my son that there is convincing documentation online that I was a professional language educator, not something else.
What Is Your Basic Purpose?
This is another question a tentmaker must answer for himself before being asked by an employer, colleague, or friend in the host country. This too comes in many forms: “Why did you decide to leave America and come here?” or, “Wasn’t it hard to leave friends and family to live so far away?” A global professional must work out how to answer for himself this legitimate question. Only then can he know how to answer others without equivocating or conveying misinformation. Depending on the situation, he may find that the question is really a welcome opportunity to say something about his Christian faith.
A Christian professional’s underlying purpose is essentially the same whether he is in his homeland or abroad facing special golden opportunities. He knows from Scripture that it is incumbent upon him to love God with all his being and to exhibit love toward those around him as Jesus’ summary of the greatest commandment makes so clear (Mark 12:29–31). Jesus’ double-barreled commandment to love God and neighbor means the Christian is to express his love to God through words and actions and to neighbors through caring engagement with them. It means favoring his neighbors’ interests, including that of his employer, over his own interests, even when inconvenient. This quality is what the Apostle Paul noticed in young Timothy whom he had observed to have genuine interest in the welfare of others (Philippians 2:20). The Apostle Peter’s brief description of Jesus’ social life is one a tentmaker tries to keep in mind; that is, Jesus “went around doing good” (Acts 10:38). The tentmaker must work this standard out so that in his daily activities he proves to be a real help to others.
For tentmakers in the field of teaching, loving others is going beyond expectations in the classroom and being available to students in an office. For me it also meant to be a resource to fellow teachers, especially younger ones, through encouraging conversations, conference presentations, and professional publications. I found in some cultures, friendship with my current students ran the risk of misunderstandings and misguided expectations, or even gossip that could misinform a supervisor. Rather, I have found friendship and witness toward former students less complicated. Usually, however, my higher priority and focus in outreach was my own university colleagues with whom I had daily contact and much longer association.
So how do I answer when I hear something like, “Why in the first place did you ever come to this part of the world?” I answer that I enjoy life and my work wherever I am, and love seeing different lands and their people. I can add that I believe God is pleased when I serve people who need the help my job offers, and that’s why I chose teaching as a career. For people who want to know more of what I believe, I can share basic truth about God and hope my daily life shows what it means in practice. In such conversations I look for the person who is open to reading the Bible. I never had the intention of planting a church, but wherever I discovered a Christ-centered church, I met and tried to encourage its leader and learn if there was a way to help. And in those places where we’ve seen a person moving forward spiritually or actually come to saving faith, we helped them find their way into a church for fellowship, nurture, and baptism. In those places where no national church existed, we believed those whom the Holy Spirit eventually brings to saving faith would be the ones to see a church sprout in that soil.
Tentmaking is not without its challenges and critics. Some see most self-proclaimed tentmakers as weak on accountability and prayer support, too overwhelmed with work to have ministry, slack in language learning, and ill-prepared for cross-cultural witness. Certainly, criticism is due should a tentmaker deny in spoken or written statement having any religious intent. It is also ethically questionable to enter a country as a journalist or travel agent with no real intent to providing such service. Some suggest from cases in Scripture where God appears to approve of deception that some dissimulation is acceptable today for the furtherance of the gospel.[9] I myself cannot accept that line of reasoning. There are other ways of entry that better reflect the character of Jesus Christ.
How Do You Prepare?
Professional Preparation
The earlier would-be global professionals start to prepare for a self-supporting form of Christian witness abroad, the better. Even during high school, and certainly during college years, they should consider not only a field of study that appeals to themselves, but one that might address needs in the region of interest. A global professional must establish a track record of work experience in their specialty, be it engineering, business, physical therapy, music, or whatever. Reading news reports on the region, as well as ethnography or fiction focused on the region, can be eye-opening. Established candidates already committed to a specialty may consider where abroad their skill set would likely find a place for ministry. Of course, a global professional must have a biblical conviction on the sacredness of all honorable work, a conviction that precludes any sense of second-class status for not pursuing what is often called full-time Christian work.
Ministry Preparation
In addition to gaining familiarity with both the Old and New Testaments, experience in low-profile personal witness and small group Bible study is essential. These are the forms of ministry a tentmaker will most likely need when living in a predominantly non-Christian, even hostile, society. Those skills can be developed during years on a secular campus, service in the military, or years in a home country workplace. In these contexts, one often spots a mentor to imitate. Befriending international students or immigrant families from the region of interest offers splendid opportunity to practice skills a tentmaker needs. Weekend conferences and increasingly online courses offer training in cross-cultural communication and awareness.[10]
Resource Preparation
Global professionals seldom operate effectively as lone rangers; they need partnership with others of like mind. Not for financial support, but for sustained prayer support, a candidate should appeal to churches and to friends from college days, past job situations, and family connections. Some of these may see an anomaly in heading abroad without soliciting funds; that is, some are a few steps behind in grasping the strategic value of overseas lay ministry. A team of just fifteen or twenty individuals or couples firmly committed to praying regularly is a huge resource. Furthermore, global professionals should try to learn all they can before departure about any other like-minded Christians, regardless of nationality or sponsorship, who are already in the target country for potential partnership.
Following graduate studies in Bible and four years of campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Glenn Deckert pursued further studies, including a PhD in education from the University of Illinois, that led to eighteen years of overseas employment in universities. He, with wife Ann, first worked in Iran up until the time of the revolution requiring their moving elsewhere. The last twelve years of Glenn’s career were on the faculty of Eastern Michigan University, and now in retirement he continues to have ministry with Farsi speaking university students and refugees in the Chicago area.
[1] James (2020) pointed out for EMQ readers that the terms global professional and tentmaker refer to the same thing. However, a review of published articles on tentmaking over the past twenty-five years, shows how differently the terms have been understood in respect to financing, sponsorship, and transparency. An early use of the tentmaker term occurred in J. Christy Wilson’s Today’s Tentmakers: Self-support, An Alternative Model for Worldwide Witness (1979). I follow Wilson’s conception but with the added assumption that tentmakers or global professionals are laypersons equipped with a profession or trade that provides full support for living and ministry. They learn to live and serve on the earnings their employment provides. Any auxiliary funds are not used to upgrade their standard of living in the host country.
[2] The Chronicle of Higher Education, job listings accessible for subscribers.
[3] Larry Poston, “Shrewd as a Snake, Innocent as a Dove: The Ethics of Missionary Dissimulation and Subterfuge,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 49, no. 4 (2013): 412–19.
[4] Patrick Lai, Tentmaking: Business as Mission (Waynesboro, GA: Authentic Publishing, 2005), 347–349.
[5] Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 173.
[6] Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. I, 2nd ed. Translated and edited by James Moffatt. (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 368.
[7] Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol I: The First Five Centuries (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1938), 116.
[8] Glenn D. Deckert, Working Abroad with Purpose: The Way of a Tentmaker (Wipf and Stock, 2019).
[9] Poston, “Shrewd as a Snake” and Christopher R. Little, “Business as Mission Under Scrutiny,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2014): 178–85.
[10] Global Intent is one such organization providing cross-cultural training and other services for tentmakers, https://intent.org.
