Work as Mission: Lessons from Moses and Exodus 18
When God Uses Your Workplace for Witness
We live in a country with severe restrictions on the gospel. We have churches, but we cannot share our faith outside that environment. Even so, from time to time, opportunities arise. Some time ago, during one such opportunity, my wife was able to speak about Jesus — the fruit of at least two years of working at that company. With patience, warmth, much prayer, and dependence on God, she earned her colleagues’ trust, until the question came: why do you behave this way? I remember she was able to answer by speaking about Jesus, describing Him as a mentor who helped guide her steps. It could not have been more fitting, given that it all happened within a corporate setting.
This is tentmaking. And the practice is far older than the name.
Moses in Midian: When Mission Begins in Ordinary Work
Before he was known as the liberator of Israel, Moses was a refugee in a foreign land.
He fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian. He arrived in Midian with no status, no plan, no support network — and built his life there: he married, had children, and worked as a shepherd for his father-in-law for forty years. Forty years of complete anonymity.
It is tempting to read this period as a waiting room, a parenthesis before the real mission began. But it was in the desert of Midian that God revealed Himself in the burning bush. It was there, on someone else’s land, that the call came.
The mission did not begin despite the exile. It began within it.
For the tentmaker, this detail matters. The period of cultural adaptation, of language learning, of slowly building trust, is not the prelude to the mission. It already is the mission.
The text also tells us something about Moses’ character during this time. When he arrived at the well in Midian and Jethro’s daughters were driven away by other shepherds, Moses intervened. With no audience, no apparent personal benefit. For the sake of justice. This simple act opened the door to everything that followed.
The tentmaker who acts with integrity in the workplace, who refuses bribery even when the local system normalises it, who treats their staff with dignity, who keeps their word, is doing exactly this. They are planting before they reap.
Work, presence and mission
You might think that Moses was not, in fact, a tentmaker. And you would be right; he is not a tentmaker in the sense in which we use the term today. But his story illustrates a central principle of tentmaking: God shapes people through work, and sends them to take part in His mission.
Paul of Tarsus made tents in Corinth alongside Aquila and Priscilla. In Thessalonica, he wrote that he worked “night and day” so as not to be a burden to anyone. His work was not merely a means of support, but an expression of his understanding of mission and Christian witness. And it is from precisely this example that the term tentmaking emerged.
But this principle runs throughout the whole biblical narrative. Long before Paul, God was already shaping leaders in ordinary work contexts. Moses was a shepherd in the desert. Joseph administered Egypt’s resources. Daniel served in the administration of Babylon. And Jesus Himself spent most of His life as a craftsman in Nazareth before beginning His public ministry.
The Bible presents work not as a detour from the mission, but often as one of the very means God uses to fulfil His mission.
We do not always have the opportunity to preach … but through our work, our service, and our lives, the way opens up for the preaching to come.
Jethro: The Unexpected Counsellor
Returning to the example of Moses, in Exodus 18 we find him in the wilderness of Sinai, acting as judge for his people, working from dawn until dusk, after Israel had come out of Egypt.
And it is in precisely this setting that Jethro, his Midianite father-in-law, appears.
Jethro was not an Israelite; he was a priest from the land of Midian. A man of another nation, another tradition, another frame of reference. But he was someone who knew Moses, who had walked alongside him for years. And he is the one who sees what Moses cannot see.
“What you are doing is not good.” (Exodus 18:17)
Three words. No beating about the bush. No softening.
The popular reading of this passage tends to be simple: Moses was tired, Jethro taught him delegation, the end. But Jethro’s diagnosis goes far deeper than personal fatigue. He identified three layers of the problem:
Moses was wearing himself out — the text uses a verb that suggests progressive deterioration, not a one-off bout of tiredness.
The people were being poorly served — the queue was too long, and access to justice depended on a single person.
No new leaders were being raised up — the mission was fragile because it rested on one man alone.
But what is most striking about Jethro’s counsel is not the suggestion to reorganize, but the call to redefine priorities. He does not merely say “share the workload”; he says that Moses should focus on representing the people before God, teaching the statutes, and raising up other leaders. He brings Moses back to the focus of his mission
For the tentmaker, this distinction changes everything. The question is not “how can I be more efficient?” but rather: what is the main purpose that brought me here? What, within my mission in this place, can only I do — and must I do?
The most uncomfortable lesson
Moses was the man who had spoken with God in the burning bush. Who had confronted Pharaoh. Who climbed the mountain to hear the divine voice.
And he listened to the counsel of his Midianite father-in-law. And he followed it:
“So Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said.” (Exodus 18:24)
For someone who had spoken with God face to face, listening to his father-in-law and simply changing his method was not the obvious choice. Yet the text records no resistance — only listening, discernment, and action.
This confronts a very common assumption among Christians in missions: that useful wisdom can only come from within one’s own circle, the same tradition, the same organization, the same faith.
The tentmaker in a foreign land will inevitably meet their own Jethro: the local colleague with a management insight they had not considered, the younger employee who points out a mistake, the host-country supervisor who understands the culture in a way no external training could ever teach. What wins trust is not solitary competence. It is the combination of excellence with a genuine willingness to learn.
Patrick Lai, who lived for almost twenty years as a tentmaker in the 10/40 Window and interviewed more than 450 other tentmakers to write about the subject, records an episode just like this. An African Muslim colleague pointed out something that he, as a Westerner, could not see on his own: that his direct style of communication, so natural to someone from the West, caused confusion among people accustomed to expressing themselves more indirectly, more figuratively. This was not learned in formal training, but in the workplace itself.
(This book, “Tentmaking: The Life and Work of Business as Missions”, is essential reading for any tentmaker — Lai documents, with an honesty that is uncomfortable at times, the real joys and sorrows of those who live out this calling.)
The pattern repeats because the principle repeats: God’s wisdom does not respect the boundaries we build between “our own” and “outsiders”. Sometimes He speaks through the mouth of someone who does not yet know Him.
An order the text does not allow us to reverse
There is a structural detail in Exodus 18 that is often overlooked in readings focused on leadership. Before any counsel about reorganization, the text records worship. Jethro hears everything God has done for the people, and he worships. There is a communal meal before God, before any administrative change takes place.
And after the reorganization, chapter 19 opens with God speaking directly to Moses on Sinai. The improved structure did not replace dependence on God; it created space for Moses to hear God more deeply.
The restructuring of the mission begins in worship, not in strategy.
The tentmaker knows that it is not the sophistication of the method that opens hearts, but the presence of God.
Moses was called in a foreign land. Paul proclaimed the gospel while working with his own hands. Jethro, an outsider, brought the counsel that freed Moses to focus on what mattered most. And the leaders raised up to share the burden of serving God's people were given no promise of recognition, only the responsibility of faithful service.
The tentmaker carries all of these layers within them:
Sometimes they are Moses in the making — learning, being shaped, and waiting for God’s timing.
Sometimes they are Paul in the workshop — working, serving, and opening doors to conversations that work alone could never create.
Sometimes they are one of those leaders raised up to share the burden — serving faithfully where they are, working with integrity and the fear of God, even when no one notices.
In many contexts where missionary presence is restricted, legitimate work is not simply practical—it is often the only viable entry point for gospel presence. Yet work does not replace the message; it prepares the environment in which the message can be received.
In many contexts where missionary presence is restricted, legitimate work is not simply practical—it is often the only viable entry point for gospel presence. Yet work does not replace the message; it prepares the environment in which the message can be received.
A Christian who works with excellence, who leads with justice, who serves with generosity, who puts Christian values and love into practice through their actions in a context where this is not the norm, is proclaiming something about the character of the God they believe in, even before they have the chance to explain the reason for their hope.
And so God fulfils His mission around the world, using people like you and me to carry out His purpose. People who do not depend on a stage, a title, or a special occasion, but who reveal God’s love and grace and remain open to learning and obeying, wherever they may be.
Further reading
Paul Sciberras, “Jethro and Moses in Dialogue (Exodus 18:8–26): Ethics of Communitarian Responsibility”, MDPI Religions, 2023.
Regent University: “An Examination of Participative Leadership Theory in the Advice Given to Moses by Jethro”, Socio-Rhetorical Analysis of Exodus 18:13-27 and Deuteronomy 1:9-18.
Bible Study Tools: Applied Old Testament Commentary on Exodus 18.
Patrick Lai (Ed.), Tentmaking: The Life and Work of Business as Missions, Paternoster Publishing, 2005.
Image
Photo by Sanaea Sanjana on Unsplash