OPEN IDEAS
Our calling is to upgrade, serve, and facilitate tentmakers who are currently on the field working among the least reached peoples of the world for the glory of Jesus Christ. We are a network of field tentmakers and BAM workers who are working to establish churches among those people groups where few or no churches now exist. We exist to mutually encourage and affirm teams and individuals who are working in Creative Access areas and desire to:
- learn from experienced tentmaker coaches in our life, work, ministry, and family
- network with others who have like-minded businesses and ministry goals
- affirm and counsel tentmakers in need of guidance and encouragement
- upgrade our skills and experience in life, work and ministry
- grow in accountability
We realize:
- As tentmakers, we are committed to God's vision of serving Him through both the ministry and the professions God has called us to.
- As tentmakers we are committed to one Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we seek to serve Him among the least reached peoples of the world.
- As tentmakers, we have a different calling.
- As tentmakers, we see the world differently.
OPEN is growing a consortium of tentmaking entrepreneurs who see the values inherent in the business world as a non-negotiable aspect of a new missions paradigm. The heart of the world is commerce and education: that's where people are at. It's where they learn their values and methods. It's where they gain their satisfaction. We believe it is crucial that we be in the world, but not of the world, confronting the world with Godly values, methods and satisfaction. People, especially the unreached, need to see the Christ's life lived right before their eyes. We realize as a group that we will look odd at first and on the fringe.
We understand in Christ our distinctives may evolve over time, currently they include:
- people running businesses, schools, NGO's with a view to profitability and glorifying God among the unreached
- a vision to bring their resources of knowledge and finances to help up and coming entrepreneurs
- networking and encouraging the new generation of workers whom are pursuing secular training and real life experience instead of exclusive seminary education
- with clearly stated kingdom goals
For tentmaking to break through in the missiological world there's a need to move outside the boundaries of the traditional missions mentality. If we want to "turn the world upside down" for Jesus, (Acts 17:6) we cannot keep doing things the same old way, utilizing the same old strategies and based upon the same old assumptions that guided us in the past. We need to break the boundaries and challenge our old ways of thinking about how missions is done.
Many "new" strategies of the late 20th century set different boundaries through the conforming to a given set of rules. They stressed more sacrifice, work harder, faster, longer. And though these strategies made progress in reaching the unreached, they have failed to "finish the task of world evangelization". The unreached are unreached because traditional missions have failed to reach them. We believe it is time to reinvent missions. If we wish to reach the world in our life time we must break away from the accepted, the taken-for-granted, and the conventional. We do not play by the old missiological rules, we are seeking to create new ones. We seek to break the rules of man, not God. We want to question everything. We want to take risks. We want to do the impossible. We are mavericks whose minds roam outside the traditional boundaries of thinking and acting. We don't want to conform ... we want to create; we don't want to copy ... we want to invent.
For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 2 Corinthians 4:5
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