Tentmaking Missions in history - Zinzendorf , Moravians the Tentmakers-  Johnny Chun / Executive Secretary of TI
During the Reformation, Martin Luther upheld all of life to be a calling from God, including daily work. In declaring the priesthood of all believers, he challenged the divide between the sacred/spiritual and the secular/ temporal. Reformed theology reshaped the view of vocation and work in the church and in missionary outreach.
About 200 years after the Reformation, Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig von, the well known German nobleman, Pietist leader, and theologian of Moravian missions Zinzendorf was born in Dresden. At the age of ten, following tutoring at became a legal councilor at the Dresden court of the Saxon elector August the Strong in 1721.
Zinzendorf established his manorial home at Berthelsdorf in eastern Germany. He was released from state service in 1727 and devoted his life to leadership of the Moravians.
Refugees from Bohemia and Moravia had arrived on his land beginning in 1722. Together with German Priests, these people formed the nucleus of the new town Herrnhut and were the first members of the Moravian Church, which emerged as a separate denomination by the 1740s.
When Germany sent the Moravian Missionaries into all the world, they went as tentmakers. As tentmaking businessmen, the Moravians took their trades with them wherever they went. The practice and teaching of these trades contributed to the economic development of the people they served, and provided frequent, natural contacts with them for outreach. Tentmaking was holistic and sustainable missions. It allowed the small Moravian community to send hundreds of missionaries who were all self-supporting.
Self-sufficient settlement congregations were established to enhance the spirituality of the inhabitants and to serve as homes for those who traveled to conduct renewal activities within established state churches or as missionaries among those who had never heard the gospel.
He was consecrated a bishop in 1737. His greatest contribution to missiology was his awakening within Protestantism of an awareness of cross-cultural mission as a fundamental task of the church.
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