Nov
05
2009
Multiple Perspectives on Multi-Site Churches
A panel at Southern Seminary (RSS readers, you know the drill: click through to view).
The participants are R. Albert Mohler Jr., Gregg Allison, Kevin Ezell, Greg Gilbert, and Daniel Montgomery.
31 Comments
[...] November 5, 2009 at 9:39 am (Church Planting, Missions) (church growth, Church Planting, multi site churches) At our annual meeting, we spoke about the desire to plant new churches. Is church planting the way we ought to be expanding? What about multi-site churches? Tuesday, a panel discussion was held at Southern Seminary concerning the issue of multi-site churches. You can watch it here. [...]
Someone needs to do a “Multiple Perspectives on Multiperspectivalism”.
“One of the biggest concerns is that we have multi-site churches so that we can reach the most people.” That’s what I’m hearing. But that’s the same reason a certain church in Hammond, Indiana does so many gimmicky things. Let’s swallow goldfish so we can reach more people. Let’s turn the church into a circus so we can reach the most people.
This seems far to pragmatic for me. And as I continue to listen, the pragmatism just keeps coming and coming.
I just wrote a letter to our state baptist newspaper in South Carolina (The Baptist Courier) about “video” churches.
Every Church Needs a Preaching Pastor.
I truly rejoice when someone that was lost surrenders to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It truly blows my mind when I ponder on the grace, mercy, forgiveness, patience and love of Jesus Christ. And I especially love it when people surrender to Christ in large numbers. No man can take credit for that it has to be a move of the Holy Spirit.
However, there seems to be a disturbing trend in bigger churches and I do not see a biblical foundation in their thinking. More and more, larger churches are copying their church and placing them in other parts of their city or state. They may have a live band lead worship but they pipe the message of the pastor via simulcast on a big screen for the presentation of the Gospel. This is not biblical church planting, and I think it shows a lack of faith by the leadership of these larger churches. The message they are sending is that they do not trust others can present the Gospel as well as them. It also reeks of ego and lack of humility. It seems they would rather send a video of their message rather than rising up a new church plant complete with a preaching pastor to lead the people at the new church plant. I know a lot of these “video” churches have their own pastors to help Sheppard their people. However, part of the authority God gives a pastor is given in the proclamation of the Gospel. When the flock that God has entrusted to the pastor hears the Gospel from their pastor on a week in week out basis, it gives him credence and authority. There is a trust that the pastor and the congregation share in the giving and receiving of the message.
I am praying that the pastors of the larger churches will drop this idea of trying to duplicate their churches all over their area or state. I pray they will release their resources to plant legitimate churches complete with a preaching pastor that can biblically lead their people from the pulpit and in casting a specific vision for the new church plant.
Preach it Chet. I echo your line about not trusting that others can preach the gospel as well as they can. I also want to point out that often, it’s not limited to placing copies of their church in other parts of their city or state, as you mentioned. In some cases, the locations are even in different states.
I often wonder when being a pastor ceased to inlcude any aspect of shepherding and became limited to just being a good speaker?
Yeah, John Piper “reeks of ego and lack of humility.”
Do you listen to podcasts? Do you watch video messages of panel discussions on multi-site churches? Do watch vodcasts of Piper?
To my knowledge, most Biblical multi-site video setups do not neglect the other mandates that shepherds have towards their flocks.
The point of this panel discussion is that this matter is not a simple issue. To simply assume things of pastors with “video campuses” and make quick judgments is a very slippery slope.
Please, at least an attempt to make an argument from Scripture as Greg did in the discussion.
Listening to a pod cast is different than being a faithful and productive member in a local church. Pod cast, blogs, etc help equip me, but it doesn’t replace the fellowship, and Kingdom building that can only be done in and through the local church.
I like Piper, I have learned a lot from his teachings and I believe him to be a humble man. However, I disagree with him or anyone else using video as a substitute for biblical preaching done in a local church by a real living, breathing, pastor.
the last question was most intriguing…can one man pastor six churches? well…that’s called a denomination in the truest sense and that pastor is usually called a “bishop”. this is exactly what we saw in the ancient church where the local church had bishops, presbyters and deacons. at some point bishops ended up overseeing more than one church and would leave the day to day ministry within each church to a presbyter (priest).
do bapists really want to go there? I’m honestly asking…
Great question, Gary. I, for one, certainly do not.
That is exactly the question that all these “baptists” didn’t answer, except for Greg Gilbert of Capital Hill. The rest seem very comfortable moving towards an Episcopal or Presbyterian form of governance. Seems awful strange coming from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
The programmers at TGC should be able to fix it up so that videos are replaced with text telling people on RSS to click through to view.
If you want me to write a quick WordPress plugin for you, let me know.
I would love to have heard someone talk about how this is consistenly baptist since all are convictional baptist on the panel. How is this different from other types of church polity, like Presbyterianism?
I am not necessarily opposed to multi-site since I am not educated enough to make a decision. Just wanting to hear more on the polity issue as I think through it.
I also would have like to seen a more balanced panel. It seemed like 1 against 4. Grant Gaines, Dever (either instead of or alongside of Gilbert) would have been two good ones to add.
Why is no one asking, “How does a multi-site church reach more people than church planting?”
Church planting doesn’t always have to start from scratch. I know a church who took a portion of its congregation and one of its pastors and started another church because they couldn’t fit in their one building.
I haven’t heard any compelling arguments that make multi-site better than church planting.
Very true, we heard no compelling arguments for multi-site over plants. Basically all we heard was that the work of church planting is harder. Wow, what an underwhelming argument.
This is directly related to the 90 page 9Marks Journal on Multi-Site Churches from earlier this year.
I think Thomas White is convincing in the section Arguing Against the Multi-Site Church, Nine Reasons I Don’t Like Multi-site Churches.
[...] the multi-site movement is where one church has multiple campuses and the main pastor’s sermon is broadcast/simulcast [...]
Guys:
People keep throwing Presbyterianism out there, but I’m not sure you’re familiar with Presbyterian government. Presbyterianism has each church governed by a plurality of elders, all of whom have the same vote. The senior pastor at my church has the same vote as the math teacher who’s also a ruling elder. Nothing about multisite moves anybody in a Presbyterian direction.
Incidentally, I can’t think of any Presbyterian multisite churches (though there probably are some). I can name a half dozen Baptist or baptistic ones off the top of my head. That doesn’t prove anything; just illustrates my point that multisite doesn’t make you more Presbyterian than you otherwise would be.
Thank you for this comment. Multisite church structure does not have anything to do with the polity of Presbyterianism. There are far too many unknowns for multisite churches not to mention a complete lack of Biblical support. The solution is to train better pastors and plant new churches.
Let’s face it guys, Multi-site churches are easier to build because of the corporate efficiencies involved: branding, administrative costs, pastoral celebrity. For the 10% of the congregation that is really involved in multi-campus life it’s really exciting to see the leveraging of assets, but for the 90% of the people who just show up and see the digital preacher and rock band, it is a far more superficial experience than the historic congregation where you shake your preaching pastor’s hand at the end of the service.
Video venues is a (okay broadly) Pauline idea. Here goes the argument.
Use of video a BIG issue for many people because it presents a large cultural shift that God is using in many areas, and it can be a symptom of megalomania.
One person who struggled openly with the possibility of using video venues in humility was Matt Chandler. The end of the argument seemed to rest on Romans 12:6 “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them”.
The issue of using technology to further the outreach of a preacher’s gift shouldn’t be suddenly called into question after all the use of tapes, then CD’s, now mp3’s and mp4’s.
Then again, maybe the precedent goes all the way back to Colossians 4:16 and 1Thess 5:27. Of course there were other people in those churches who “substitute” & preach the gospel less well.
In the end, it seems like all the chatter is concerned with abuses and shortcomings of video campuses. Potential abuse is not a reason for prohibition.
I think you’re doing some hermeneutical gymnastics there and adding wrong application. Just because someone is gifted as a preacher, doesn’t automatically mean their ministry should be broadcast to tens of thousands of people as if he were their pastor.
The NT knows only of a church that has its own elders (which includes teachers). Bringing Paul’s letters into the mix doesn’t help the multi-site idea because he would be comparable to a visiting preacher, not a weekly preacher.
Using video only promotes the celebrity culture and discourages the ministry of other gifted men (campus pastors). Is it ok for a celebrity pastor to diminish the use of other gifted preachers? I don’t think so.
Using video is a means to ear-tickling (in a slightly different sense than Paul originally meant it). They assume that people will only come if they hear X pastor. If we plant a new church with Y pastor then it won’t work, so let’s put X pastor on video for the to hear.
It’s completely different than the use of CDs, mp3’s, etc. because those aren’t used to replace the Sunday morning shepherd.
I would really recommend Martin Lloyd-Jones’ “Preaching and Preachers” on this topic. He has a lot to say about preaching and the gift of preaching, and God’s intended use for that gift in building up the church. He would simply call something like this “prostitution”. He would tell you that there is more to the gift of preaching than the effect a voice has an a person or a group of people. He would highly emphasize the context in which that voice is heard. Are we really saying that the healthiest, most biblical context for the spirit of God to work through the preaching of the gospel is via a video? There’s a big difference between “impacting people” and building a healthly church. Unfortunately I think that those who believe they are being better stewards of their gifts by exposing a wider audience to them, are inherently misunderstanding the purpose of “the” gift and whose gift it is. It is not “their” gift is is the gift of the Spirit, for the building of the church, which is made of real people, in real time, and in real place. The farther we remove ourselves from those essential elements and rely more upon effeciency and giftedness instead of the health of a local body of believers the more we cut ourselves off at the knees. Is plan “A” the building of real local churches or something else. Local church work is messy and involves trusting people, training people, and taking risks with people. But it’s so much easier to avoid most of that and virtually duplicate people instead. I would rather have 100 churches with 100 people and a decent pastor in each one, than have 2 churches with 5,000 people in each one and one preaching pastor who thinks he’s so good that no one else could do his job and therefore he should be recorded and replayed for all 10,000 people. Now I know why Jesus choose to be incarnated when and where He did.
Thanks Matthew James
Tapes, CD’s, MP3 and MP4 are all used outside the corporate gathering of the Church not during Lord’s Day worship.
[...] Watch the recent panel discussion at Southern Seminary regarding multi-site churches. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
I was disappointed that this issue was so poorly thought through by this panel. I think the first great question is “are there Biblical guidlines for how we do church, and do MSCs help us do that?” I believe the answers are “yes” and “no” respectively. Not enough space here to get into, but I question three things: Are MSC elders really being shepherds, or just being “preaching faces”? Is an episcopalian government acceptable (since that is what MSC is by definition)? Does this kind of “branding” of local bodies fit the Biblical model? Although I would answer “no” to all three, I can see some kind of MSC being the solution to some of the issues we face these days in some contexts, but there is a huge difference between temporary adaptation to serve your people, and striving to implement this model as an ideal.
I hate to say it John, but I agree. It was sort of a shame to have a solid collection of people up there and what seemed like a very random conversation. Since watching this video I have gone to the 9marks website, downloaded their e-journal (mentioned at the end of the video above) and have read through about half of the journal (90-ish pages total). The articles they have in there, and the way the thoughts are articulated, seem to be a much better band-for-your-buck (solid material per minute spent) than the above video.
I wish they would have made each of the panelists read that journal and respond specifically to the points made in those articles. I think it would have been a much more effective use of their time.
So, if you haven’t read it yet, get the 9marks e-journal, and go from there.
Another side-point, I will throw in here, is the more I read about this stuff, and the more I listen to those who have gone to multi-site, the more I tend to find a pattern appearing…
1) The need to do something different arises (due to “growth”)
2) The decision to go to multi-site is made
3) Then many of these places check to see if it’s biblical, and find amazingly… that it is!
4) Sometimes these MS pastors will even admit they still have major questions and concerns that are unresolved
Shouldn’t you resolve those things before you pull the trigger? Or is that just me?
I think it was interesting that the question, “What is a church?” was never asked. The only partial definition given is a body of believers. What does the church do? What must happen to make it a church? When those questions are answered and I believe the answer is preach the biblical gospel, administer the sacraments, enforce church discipline, then you can ask if multisite churches can do this faithfully. Until you answer and agree on that, the conversation is not as helpful as it could be.
I was able to watch most of the panel discussion, which I appreciated. Many, if not most, commentators from pastor/theologians like John MacArthur to A T. Robertson, see Romans 16 as indicating multiple house churches in the one church of Rome found in the lists of names. The addition of the words, “household of” is arbitrary. At least three house churches may be indicated, but perhaps as many as six or seven. It seems reasonable to note that putting the entire Roman church into Aquila and Priscilla’s home seems inadequate, since the list of names shows the Roman church to be a larger church. Paul was only addressing some people he knew in a church he had not even visited yet.
I’m of the persuasion that the churches found the term “church” appropriate for both the house church unit and the whole unit determined by geography (the church of Rome).
The value of the early church plan is that the congregations were small enough to provide adequate pastoral care. Each smaller church pastored by an elder does not necessarily lead to a “bishopric” if the pastors see themselves as a true plurality. As house church’s grow, others are started and elders are added to the pastoral team.
The argument about 1 Corinthians 11 and the whole church coming together (”when you come together as a church”) is also answered by Romans 16 where Gaius is said to be host to Paul and to the entire church. Paul was writing from Corinth. There was only one rather large house church at the time in Corinth, probably with 50-60 people, if you consider the names involved and add some family members, etc. If this is so, nothing is gained by saying that the Lord’s supper could not possibly be done except in the whole church gathering. And it would not prove that all the house churches came together on Sundays (at least in any regular way).
My opinion is that God may allow several methods, but that the bigger question to ask is whether the objectives of church life and church meetings found in the NT are being accomplished best. We have found a great deal of joy in the house church network kind of church (www.ChristFellowshipKC.org) not because we think we have the only way, but because we pastors can go to bed at night knowing the spiritual state of everyone in the church, and that church members are participatory in the meetings in a way that strengthens them and others like we have never seen in other forms.
Tim made an important point at 6:06 p.m. yesterday.
One of the greatest needs is for systematic organized, effective disciplining that produces mature Christians able to do the work of ministering to fellow believers. 1. In too many churches, the “laity” have never been systematically trained in how to minister to one another (go through the N Testament and see all the times “one another” is stated). People have been led to believe that ministry is a job for the trained professional. (”After all, that’s what we pay them for!”)
Even our young preacher boys come out of seminary with little training or hands on experience in actual ministry. They may know some Greek or be able to discuss the hypostatic union but have no idea what to do if confronted by someone about to attempt suicide. They’re not really ready to assume the leadership of a church until they’ve been out in the field for a number of years (if they last that long).
So, on the one side, you have neither laity nor clergy who are spiritually mature enough to operate a new church. On the other sides you have senior pastors that, often correctly, believe that there is no one else in their flock capable and ready to shepherd a new congregation. Either through fear or pride (fear that some wrong idea might be presented, fear that people will see that there is another in the church that can actually preach an effective sermon, and pride,”No one else could possibly preach as well as I do- and, of course, the people come to hear the best- me! “), they have been unwilling to allow others to share in many of the facets of ministry leadership, such as preaching. I have been in many churches where, year after year, the only time anyone other them the senior pastor is permitted to preach is when that senior pastor is on vacation.
One further point: every church is called to be a training center. Every church, as soon after its founding as possible, ought to have a Bible Institute. I am absolutely, unequivocally convinced that every Christian school, from kindergarten through the Ph.D. granting university must be under the local church. There are a great many reasons why this should always be the ease. Let me mention just three: first, it enables men and women to continue to minister to and participate in the body life of the church. The church needs them and they need the church, a place where they can practice practical applications of what they are learning.
Secondly, their own local church knows them, their strengths and weaknesses, especially those areas where they may need more disciplining. At some far-off Bible college they tend to become just another face in the crowd.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the local church can exercise watch-care over the content of the teaching. With very few exceptions, Christian colleges that operate autonomously or with loose denominational oversight will drift away from sound doctrine. Just last night one of my pastors was describing the first day of classes in a certain supposedly evangelical Christian college. In one professor’s opening remarks to his new students he stated that he was an atheist and that Christianity was a ridiculous superstition. In it any wonder that 80% of the students leave these colleges with their faith in shambles? Is it any wonder that there are few men spiritually qualified to shepherd the flock of a new church?
One final point: what am I doing, what are you doing to help to prepare the members of the body to minister to one another? Every one of us ought to be discipline, one on one, someone less mature in the faith than we are, and in turn we each ought to have a mentor to whom we are accountable who is discipling us.
Oops! couple of times it came out “discipline” when I meant “discipling.”