Ben Witherington: Paul on Money, Ministry, and Work
(The following is an excerpt from a book I am working on, on Money in the NT. Enjoy.....but take off your bling while reading it :) )
CHAPTER SEVEN: PAUL—ON WORK, REMUNERATION, AND THE LOVE OF MONEY
“The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.”--- Katherine Whitehorn
There is, especially in some forms of low church Protestantism, a notion that Paul advocated a principle of ministers earning their own living and engaging in raising their own support for ministry. Sometimes this approach is even called ‘tent-making ministry’, based on what Paul says, largely in 1 Corinthians and Acts 20 about supporting himself by making or mending tents, and perhaps other leather goods. Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands almost everything Paul says on the subject of a ‘workman being worthy of his hire’, and this is because of the failure to interpret Paul’s letters in the light of the actual social world and social practices Paul had to deal with. In fact, as we shall see, Paul is quite happy to receive support, so long as it does not involve the entangling alliances of patronage, and so in this, as in so many other things, the problematic situation in Corinth, and Paul’s response to it, should not be taken as indicative of some general principle in regard to minister’s raising their own support. Indeed, 1 Corinthians itself suggests that the congregation had an obligation to give and provide support, but Paul had the freedom to choose to reject that support, and support himself, if he desired to do so. ...
...Paul is not an advocate of what modern persons call tent-making ministry, if by that one means that church planters or missionaries should expect to have to work on the side or raise their own support whilst doing ministry. They may do so, as Paul does in Corinth and apparently in Thessalonike, but 1 Cor. 9 rules out the view that they necessarily should or must do so. If they choose to go this root, it needs to be for the right reasons, not because it assumed that the NT suggests we should not have paid ministers. To the contrary, argues Paul, churches should expect to pay their ministers. What is interesting and ironic about all this is that the very document which is assumed to most argue against paid ministers (1 Corinthians) is the very document which provides the clearest rationale for why congregations should expect to pay a Paul or a Peter or a Timothy or Titus, or whoever their local teachers (see Gal. 6) might be. ...
CHAPTER SEVEN: PAUL—ON WORK, REMUNERATION, AND THE LOVE OF MONEY
“The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.”--- Katherine Whitehorn
There is, especially in some forms of low church Protestantism, a notion that Paul advocated a principle of ministers earning their own living and engaging in raising their own support for ministry. Sometimes this approach is even called ‘tent-making ministry’, based on what Paul says, largely in 1 Corinthians and Acts 20 about supporting himself by making or mending tents, and perhaps other leather goods. Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands almost everything Paul says on the subject of a ‘workman being worthy of his hire’, and this is because of the failure to interpret Paul’s letters in the light of the actual social world and social practices Paul had to deal with. In fact, as we shall see, Paul is quite happy to receive support, so long as it does not involve the entangling alliances of patronage, and so in this, as in so many other things, the problematic situation in Corinth, and Paul’s response to it, should not be taken as indicative of some general principle in regard to minister’s raising their own support. Indeed, 1 Corinthians itself suggests that the congregation had an obligation to give and provide support, but Paul had the freedom to choose to reject that support, and support himself, if he desired to do so. ...
...Paul is not an advocate of what modern persons call tent-making ministry, if by that one means that church planters or missionaries should expect to have to work on the side or raise their own support whilst doing ministry. They may do so, as Paul does in Corinth and apparently in Thessalonike, but 1 Cor. 9 rules out the view that they necessarily should or must do so. If they choose to go this root, it needs to be for the right reasons, not because it assumed that the NT suggests we should not have paid ministers. To the contrary, argues Paul, churches should expect to pay their ministers. What is interesting and ironic about all this is that the very document which is assumed to most argue against paid ministers (1 Corinthians) is the very document which provides the clearest rationale for why congregations should expect to pay a Paul or a Peter or a Timothy or Titus, or whoever their local teachers (see Gal. 6) might be. ...
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