Throughout history, God has used people in regular jobs and businesses to advance his kingdom and fulfil his purposes. The same happens today. The major Christian mission force in the world consists of professionals, businesspeople, and students who move cross-culturally to serve Christ through life and work. They may not be counted in the mission statistics, but by God’s grace their impact is great. Today most of the unreached or least-reached people groups live in nations that are closed for traditional missionaries. Christian professionals and businesspeople are welcome in the same countries. We thus believe that God will use these key groups to fulfill his Great Commission.
We need intensive efforts to train all God’s people in whole-life discipleship, which means to live, think, work, and speak from a biblical worldview and with missional effectiveness in every place or circumstance of daily life and work. Christians in many skills, trades, businesses, and professions, can often go to places where traditional church planters and evangelists may not. What these ‘tentmakers’ and business people do in the workplace must be valued as an aspect of the ministry of local churches. We urge church leaders to understand the strategic impact of ministry in the workplace and to mobilize, equip and send out their church members as missionaries into the workplace, both in their own local communities and in countries that are closed to traditional forms of gospel witness. We urge mission leaders to integrate ‘tentmakers’ fully into the global missional strategy. The Cape Town Commitment II-A-3
