Paul arrives in Corinth alone, after being forced out of Thessalonica and Berea and getting a hard reception in Athens. He finds a Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla, recently expelled from Rome. They make tents, and so does he, so he moves in and goes to work beside them (Acts 18:1–4).
Every Sabbath he argues in the synagogue. Every weekday he makes tents.
That’s where the phrase “tentmaker ministry” comes from. I’ve been doing a version of it myself for twenty-five years, and I’ve come to believe Paul wasn’t making the best of a bad situation. He was making a choice, and that choice has a lot to teach pastors today, whether they draw a salary or not.
Lesson one: work is access
The simplest thing tentmaking gave Paul was a place in the marketplace. People knew him as a worker. He sat alongside folks who would never have come to hear a traveling rabbi, and he could go to towns with no church to support him and start one.
A pastor with a day job has the same advantage. You’re in the room. You aren’t visiting the world as a guest speaker; you live in it. The people at work know you pay bills and meet deadlines and get frustrated in traffic like everybody else.
For pastors today: If you have a job outside the church, stop thinking of it as time taken away from ministry. Ask what doors it opens. Who do you see every week because of that job that nobody else from your church will ever see?
Lesson two: freedom is about credibility more than money
We tend to think of tentmaking as a financial arrangement. The freedom it creates isn’t mainly financial, though. It’s relational, and it has to do with credibility.
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says plainly that he had the right to be supported by the churches he served. He chose not to use it. And he isn’t complaining about that. He’s boasting about it. He worked so that the gospel wouldn’t be hindered by any hint that he was in it for the money: “We endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:12).
Nobody could accuse Paul of preaching for a paycheck, or say his message was shaped by his donors.
Bi-vocational pastors still have that freedom today. When you preach hard things about money, or sacrifice, or following Jesus into uncomfortable places, nobody can say you’re doing it for personal gain. You aren’t asking anyone to fund your lifestyle. You’re asking them to follow a Lord who gave everything, and you’re right there doing it alongside them.
For pastors today: Even if you’re fully funded, ask where your message might be bent by who pays for it. Are there hard things you avoid saying because of who might stop giving?
Lesson three: paying a pastor is not wrong
I want to be careful here. The tentmaker model is a gift, but it isn’t the only faithful model.
Paul himself teaches that elders who lead well are worthy of double honor, and that the laborer deserves his wages (1 Timothy 5:17–18). A fully funded pastor who preaches faithfully is doing honorable, important work. Nothing in Paul’s tentmaking gives anyone a reason to look down on that.
Different settings call for different models. Picture a church planting among people who can’t yet fund a pastor, especially people with no church background at all. For them the tentmaker model isn’t a compromise. It frees the church to be generous from its first days.
For pastors today: Don’t turn your own arrangement into a standard for everyone else. Ask instead what model best serves the people God has sent you to reach.
Lesson four: the church’s money can go out the door
This is the part that surprised me most. A church that doesn’t pay its pastor can do something remarkable with its money. It can give it away.
In our early years, Living Faith Church never took an offering for its own operating expenses. Everything that came in went out, to the poor and the community and to mission. We helped single mothers move. We paid utility bills. We fixed people’s sinks.
That shaped the DNA of the church in ways that have lasted. Twenty-five years later, generosity and service are still what define us, and it all started with a structural decision about who would pay the pastor.
For pastors today: Look at your church’s budget and ask what percentage leaves the building to serve people who aren’t members. Whatever the number is, what would it take to move it by five points?
Lesson five: one calling, two contexts
For Paul, tents on weekdays and the synagogue on the Sabbath weren’t two lives. They were one calling, lived out in two places.
That took me a long time to learn. Early on I felt like two people, a business self and a pastor self. After twenty-five years the divide has narrowed, and I’m one person with one calling. The day job is where I practice what I preach before I stand up and preach it.
A question to take into your week
Whether you’re bi-vocational, fully funded, or still discerning, try this. Write down one way your current work, paid or unpaid, gives you access or credibility or freedom that you haven’t been using for the gospel. Then pick one small step to use it this week.
I go into all of this more fully in Second Fiddle, a book for pastors and couples counting the cost of bi-vocational ministry. If Paul’s example stirs something in you, it might be worth reading slowly, and together.
Enjoyed this article?