Developing Tentmaking Leaders Essential

"Drawing again from the writings of the father of the church movement, Dr. McGavran, I quote from his book:"

“Develop unpaid lay leaders. Laymen have played a great part in urban expansions of the Church. One secret of growth in the cities of Latin America has been that, from the beginning, unpaid common men led the congregations, which therefore appeared to the masses to be truly Chilean or Brazilian affairs. In any land, when laborers, mechanics, clerks, or truck drivers teach the Bible, lead in prayer, tell what God has done for them, or exhort the brethren, the Christian religion looks and sounds natural to ordinary men. Whatever unpaid laymen, earning their living as others do, subject to the same hazards and bound by the same work schedules, lack in correctness of Bible teaching or beauty of prayers, they more than make up for by their intimate contact with their own people. No paid worker from the outside and certainly no missionary from abroad can know as much about a neighborhood as someone who has dozens of relatives and intimates all about him. True, on new ground the outsider has to start new expansions. No one else can. But the sooner he turns the churches over to local men the better.3"
3 Donald McGavran (1970), Understanding Church Growth, Eerdmans.

(Saturation House Church Planting, Robert Fitts, Sr. Chapter 55 in, “Nexus: The World House Church Movement Reader, Rad Zdero, William Carey, 2007 pg 468-469.)