Some of us even grew up in churches were many of the staff were paid full-time.
It’s easy for us to assume that our experience is the norm.
But it may surprise you to learn that many churches, perhaps most churches globally, don’t operate this way.
There just aren’t the funds available to pay a pastor full-time.
Most of us live in a context of great wealth. But most of the world doesn’t live in that context.
And the early church certainly didn’t live in that context.
Tentmaking is the norm. Funding pastors full-time is the exception.
It may not have been the norm in the church you grew up in, and that’s ok.
But, even in a Western context, there are thousands of bi-vocational pastors. They serve in churches where they get very limited pay, if any at all.
So, the first way I’d answer the question, “Is tentmaking a distraction?” is to say:
Far from being a...