Why tentmakers are arrogant
Consider someone who has the ability to earn a $50K/yr salary but chooses instead to be a tentmaker. This person only works half-time and can live on $25K. This is classic tentmaking. However, if instead this person earns the full salary and gives away half, someone else can live on $25K and work full-time in ministry instead. Since the tentmaker only can minister half-time, the tentmaker must be twice as good to be just as effective as the person who ministers full-time. Thus tentmakers are arrogant to think they are so good at ministry.
The point of this illustration isn't an exercise in micro-economic theory. We all must be good stewards of our income. Sometimes, God just wants us to work hard. To paraphrase Spiderman, with great earning power comes great responsibility. Likewise, the tentmaker must carefully examine his or her motives and truly understand God's calling.
8 Comments:
the flaw to that example is if the person who does full time ministry is willing to do it for free, and the tentmaker still uses half their time working (and making $25K) and does ministry the other 50% of his time, then as a total you have 75% of time (100% being time of both people) being spent on ministry.
as opposed to 50% of all time if each person works full time in their respective "jobs"
If the full-time ministry person is willing to work for free, the tentmaker is irrelevant to the discussion. The full-timer should just work for free, end of discussion.
the person is arrogant either way.
if he works PT & ministers PT, he thinks he can work twice as efficient.
but if he works FT & gives 1/2 of his salary, he thinks he can EARN twice as much.
eric
The assumption is that the person is already earning twice as much (which unfortunately isn't hard to do given how little we pay our pastors). Agreed, if the person merely thinks he can earn twice as much as he or she needs to survive, then that can be construed as arrogance.
That is a very interesting challenge. I struggle with *wanting* to continue in my career, knowing what the current path leads to, because I don't want to earn that type of income, and don't feel like I'm contributing to God's plan as much as I could be if I were in a different job. But maybe it's the case where some of us need to work and make money, in order to support those who are much more blessed to be in FT ministry.
Hate to bring more financial jargon into this, but it's the concept of opportunity cost, combined with a cost-benefit analysis. Opportunity cost is the value of what's being given up. Thus the income provided by a career given up would be the opportunity cost. When completing a cost benefit analysis, it's not just an assessment of what can be gained through the decision, but also the opportunity cost.
Sorry, I'm much too excited about talking about life as a Christian in terms that are work-related =) And to make it worse, my mind instantly thinks of setting up an excel spreadsheet with formulas to illustrate why tentmakers are arrogant hahahahaha =)
Glad you found this interesting. Someone else rightly commented to me that God's calling is not a black & white opportunity cost analysis. Sometimes God may be calling us into full-time ministry in spite of the obvious opportunity costs. It's all a matter of determining God's will in our lives. We need to follow God's calling for our lives in spite of the costs. Sometimes that cost is a real cost, sometimes it's an opportunity cost.
The other flaw is that you have to assume that a tentmaker is a part-time worker making only half of what they could potentially earn. There are professions where that assumption might not apply.
Yes, but that is precisely the definition of tentmaking: working part-time while ministering part-time.
Post a Comment
<< Home