Tent Mission

I attended the recent tent mission based in a field at Cowan Bridge near Kirkby Londale on Friday night. It was arranged by three local churches at Clapham, Ingleton and Wray. Billy McCurrie gave his powerful testimony of finding God's forgiveness while in Her Majesty’s Prison at Maze, County Down, and Wes Brewer gave an animated and impassioned evangelistic talk to conclude. The combination of tent and earnest preaching gave me a flavour of a late Victorian revival meeting. I was certainly revived by it, though I trust some others found salvation itself. Although the photograph makes the field look muddier than it really was, the night upon which I attended had no rain, so the speakers had not to compete with its patter.

I cannot remember if I have been to a tent mission before. The Inskip Bible Convention used to meet in one, and I recall Brother Faith removing a bucket from Homer’s head in a tent mission in Faith Off, the eleventh episode of Season 11 of The Simpsons. I have also enjoyed a number of wedding breakfasts in large marquees. Yet this may be the first actual tent-based mission I have been to. There is evidence online of several Victorian outreaches and evangelistic endeavours using this method. Had last night’s speaker coupled a three-piece suit with a wing-collared shirt, I might have stepped back into the 1890s, with pleasure.

Tent missions are a great way of reaching out, for:

-They remind us of the gospel’s temporal presentation. That night, the tent would be packed away, for it does not stand for long. The gospel will not be preached for ever; when the Lord’s people are called up to meet Him in the air, the days of invitation and presentation are over.

-Paul likens the human body to a tent; one day, it is taken down or collapses. Our earthly existence is by no means assured; it is temporary and fragile.

-They remind us of the patriarchs like Abraham and Isaac, who, though great men and in possession of saving faith, sojourned in tents all their lives. Earthly blessings pale in comparison to heavenly realities; what we have now is nothing compared to what we have when we reach the jewelled City.

-They help us to picture Noah’s prophecy from Genesis 9:27:

God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

We who were born gentiles and outside of the old covenants are now admitted into the people of God by faith; the Law was not given to us, but the grace and truth that comes by Jesus Christ most certainly is. Ancestors like David, Abraham and Gideon are now mine by faith, if not biology.

-They remind us of the tabernacle, that great Tent of Meeting, in which the presence of God was concentrated among His people, and in whose furnishings and features we detect the future life and ministry of the Messiah.

Furthermore, we are reminded that at least two teachers of the early church were tentmakers, preaching the gospel but also working hard elsewhere. Let us not be shy of toil, especially when it is for the Lord Himself, who

…sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. Isaiah 40:22