Our Story
Forty Years
of Sending
Tentmakers Bible Mission began in 1985 with one family, one board of volunteers, and one conviction: a qualified worker called to plant a church should not have to wait years to go.
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40 Years of God's Faithfulness
- 1985 Founded
- 70+ Missionaries serving
- 11 Foreign countries
- 5 Continents
A Family Moving West
It was the summer of 1985. After more than twelve years serving one church in southeast Michigan, Tim and Joy Miles were preparing to leave. God had put St. George, Utah on their hearts — a growing city with a large Mormon population and a real need for churches that preached the gospel.
Tim was ready to go. He had pastored for over a decade, and he was willing to support his family with secular work while he planted a church. What he was not willing to do was wait.
The mission boards he spoke with told him the same thing: raise ninety to one hundred percent of your support in Michigan first, then move. Many of them also took a percentage off the top for administration. Tim's question was simple. Why not move to St. George, work a job, begin Bible studies, and let the church grow from there?
He called his father, John Miles, president of Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music, who shared a deep burden for missions. Together with a small group of like-minded men, John began to imagine a different kind of mission agency — one built on the pattern of the Apostle Paul.
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1985
A Board Forms in Michigan
John Miles phoned a few men and asked them to join him in starting a Michigan-based mission agency. The first board was Lew Buffinga, Keith Clinton, Elliott Anderson, Dr. Dan Clifford, Pastor Dick Manion, and Pastor Jeff Manion. Carol Olexa handled the secretary-treasurer duties, giving countless volunteer hours in those start-up years.
Dick Manion, a Michigan pastor and fellow graduate of Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music, was appointed the mission's first Executive Director, serving until 2008.
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1985
The First Family Sent
Tim and Joy Miles became TBM's first missionaries. At the time most faith mission boards required an extended internship before reaching the field. Tim had already pastored for twelve years; those years more than qualified. TBM was formed, in part, to let qualified workers proceed at once into ministry.
The church they planted, Southland Bible Church in St. George, Utah, is still thriving. Tim pastored there for more than thirty years.
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Acts 18
Why "Tentmakers"
The name comes from Acts 18, where Paul supported himself in Corinth while he preached: “because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.”
Paul planted churches and worked with his hands. That was the idea. Tentmaking gives missionaries options — a way to enter a community, build relationships in the workplace, and reach the field sooner. It was never required, and it never came before the ministry. From the start, church planting was the point.
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2000
West to Colorado
The mission grew, and many of its missionaries were serving out west. TBM moved its home office to Frisco, Colorado, and partnered with Rocky Mountain Bible Church, pastored by Bruce Miles, one of John's sons. The move brought more structure to a growing organization while keeping the family atmosphere that has always marked TBM.
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2008
North to Wyoming
Ron Thompson became Executive Director, bringing decades of church planting experience and a heart for discipleship. Under his leadership the home office moved again, this time to LaGrange, Wyoming, where TBM joined Frontier School of the Bible and LaGrange Bible Church in a shared work of training and sending.
It was an unusual partnership — a local church, a Bible institute, and a mission agency, all committed to equipping workers for ministry.
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Today
From One Family to Five Continents
Chuck Mathias now leads Tentmakers Bible Mission. TBM sends more than seventy missionaries across the United States and around the world — on five continents, in eleven foreign countries and seven U.S. states. Roughly a quarter to a third are national believers laboring in their own countries as equal partners in the gospel.
The distinctives have not changed. TBM plants churches and trains church planters. It takes no percentage for administration, so every dollar given to a project reaches the field.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it.1 Corinthians 3:10
A Church That Became a Sending Church
The story has a fitting epilogue. Southland Bible Church, the first church TBM ever planted, graduated from the mission years ago and has since become the mother church to two additional plants in southwest Utah. It has sent more students to Frontier School of the Bible than any other church.
The first church TBM planted became a church that plants churches. That is exactly the vision.
Much has changed over the decades, the size of the family, the reach of the fields, the location of the home office. But the vision and biblical foundation remain the same. Forty years in, the story is the one it started as: ordinary people trusting a faithful God to build His church.
