Multi-site churches raise questions of congregation polity

Multi-site churches are the wave of the future, proponents say. They reach more people than traditional churches, have a higher success rate than church plants and provide additional space more economically than expanding church facilities.

So shouldn’t all growing congregations become multi-site?

Not so fast, caution some critics. Even if the multi-site model seems pragmatic, some arguments are being made that it violates the Bible’s standards of church polity. And though they admit the issue is not of first-order importance, these critics urge congregations considering a multi-site option to look closely at the biblical data.

Most churches that launch multiple campuses don’t seem to cite New Testament teaching as the main or first reason for the move, according to Greg Gilbert, pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and a Texas native. Gilbert shared his viewpoint in a 2009 panel discussion on multi-site churches at Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Proponents, he asserts, tend to give pragmatic reasons for opening satellite campuses, like the need for more space and the ability to reach larger numbers for Christ.

Among the first biblical questions to ask is whether a multi-site congregation fits the New Testament definition of the word “church”—a question Gilbert answers negatively.

“Nowhere in the New Testament do you see a situation where the word church is used of [a] broad set of assemblies and the individual assemblies themselves are not [also] referred to as churches. The little things are always referred to as churches,” said Gilbert, who served as an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., at the time of the discussion.

He added that New Testament metaphors for the church (a flock and a body, for example) imply that all the members are assembled together and functioning as one.

Nathan Lino, pastor of Northeast Houston Baptist Church in Humble, agrees. Though he doesn’t think multi-site churches are in sin and respects a number of leaders of that style of congregation, Lino said he could not pastor a church with multiple campuses.

“My convictions are tied to my understanding of the word ‘church,’” he told the TEXAN in an email. “It seems to me that the best understanding of a local church is a community of believers physically gathered in one place and time for their common purpose. Furthermore, my studies of Baptist history have made me convictionally Baptist and I can’t reconcile the multi-site model with Baptist distinctives like the autonomous church model.”

According to two Texas authors in their book “Franchising McChurch,” the New Testament church in Jerusalem gathered together in one place even after it grew to between 5,000-10,000 members. Acts 2, 3 and 5 say that the believers gathered in an area of the temple called Solomon’s Porch, write John Mark Yeats and Thomas White, an area that could accommodate huge crowds without any need for amplification.

Though Acts also says the Jerusalem Christians met in houses, “these verses indicate that the believers were together for teaching and then separate for fellowship meals,” write Yeats and White. Yeats is pastor of Normandale Baptist Church in Fort Worth, and White is vice president for student services and communications at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Of course, pastors who lead multi-site churches disagree with the critics. Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and former pastor of the multi-site Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., said that having six campuses did not prevent his church from functioning as a united body.

“We do come together quarterly,” Ezell said of Highview when he participated in the Southern Seminary panel discussion. “All the campuses come together in a combined service. We celebrate communion. We celebrate baptism. We ordain deacons or ministers and also do church discipline. Often the kickback that I get is that ‘you can’t do church discipline.’ Well, we do.”

Gregg Allison, professor of Christian theology at Southern Seminary, concedes that the New Testament emphasizes the church’s “assembling together,” but he argues that a biblical case can be made for the multi-site model. Citing Acts, Romans and 1 Corinthians, he writes that the early church met in large gatherings and in the homes of wealthy members.

“These examples may underscore what would have been normative for the early church, as the many multi-site house churches were considered to be part of one citywide church,” Allison writes in 9 Marks Journal. “These smaller congregations met regularly in homes (i.e., campuses) as well as all together as a church (i.e., the originating campus).”

But even among multi-site advocates, some are uncomfortable with the increasingly common practice of streaming the senior pastor via video to multiple campuses.

Russ Barksdale, pastor of the Church on Rush Creek in Arlington—which also has campuses in Grand Prairie and Mansfield—said, “I could not gain the comfort level with me pastoring through a video screen,” explaining his insistence that campus pastors also preach. “And I haven’t seen much to change my conviction. One of the reasons is if something were to happen to me, and I’m the only pastoral leader they see on the screen, it just feels too personality dependent.”

Barksdale said he also enjoys the opportunity to develop young leaders as he supervises their campus ministries. Furthermore, whenever those pastors communicate in person, they “exude leadership and gain leadership,” he explained, a benefit that is worth the additional time and cost involved.

Ezell said he doesn’t believe Scripture forbids a video preacher, but “the old-fashioned in me will want a live person on site.”  

Similarly, Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in north Texas with campuses in Flower Mound, Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth, wondered whether the proliferation of satellite campuses with video preachers will cause the number of preachers in America to dwindle.
“We still have some serious concerns and questions about the multi-site idea even as we participate in it,” Chandler wrote in 9 Marks Journal. “The problem that haunts us is a simple one. Where does this idea lead? Where does this end? Twenty years from now are there fifteen preachers in the United States?”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary and a teaching pastor at Highview, said he questions whether a church can have a video preacher piped in from another city and remain faithful to biblical standards of church order.

“I think there are elements of this that are beyond where you can have any sense of gathering together except in almost the universal sense of an eschatological fulfillment,” Mohler said at the panel discussion. “And there really is no ability for the assembly together to exercise the discipline of the church, to have any meaningful sense of church membership” and “to take account of the teaching and to perpetuate the ministry, to guard the treasure.”

According to Allison, “Some proponents of multi-site churches offer disconcerting interpretations of Scripture” when it comes to video preachers. Arguing for live preaching, he writes, “God means to use both the life and doctrine of a preacher to save himself and his hearers.”

Another concern with multi-site churches is that they compromise the biblical standard of congregational church government.

Yeats and White argue that the members at satellite campuses of many multi-site churches do not have the right to make certain decisions that the Bible assigns to every local congregation. In those instances the main campus has all the authority, in violation of scriptural norms, they write.

“The decisions at question are,” Yeats and White write, “(1) the ability to elect the officers of the church usually called pastors and deacons, (2) the ability to accept members into the congregation, (3) the ability to exclude members from the congregation, and (4) the ability to vote on the use of budgetary funds.”

Some churches have convinced smaller congregations to affiliate with them as “campuses” but then treated the merger more like a hostile takeover than a partnership, according to Yeats and White.

“Regional multisite churches may offer your smaller church a way ‘in,’” they write, referring primarily to non-Southern Baptist churches. “The solicitation comes laden with promises of the latest technology, the best communicator piped in via video, nearly unlimited resources, and all at a seemingly low cost. Bite, and your church loses its identity to a large conglomerate, where everyday decisions are made by a pastor or leadership team in another city that doesn’t know your local community.”

Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research and author of “Multi-Site Churches,” said those who believe multi-site congregations compromise church autonomy may misunderstand the unity of a multi-site church.

“The people who are raising concern about autonomy are viewing the church not as one [entity], but as multiple churches. We’re using two different sets of vocabulary,” McConnell told the TEXAN, reiterating that a multi-site church is one church in multiple locations—one autonomous church that meets in different sites.

“For the more congregational multi-site churches the concept of autonomy of the local church is not in question at all. In denominations that are more hierarchical, they’re respecting the hierarchy or elders they report to.”

The more biblical alternative to multi-site churches is church planting, critics say. Yeats and White, for example, list five supposed advantages of plants over multi-site churches, including maintaining church autonomy and congregational polity.

Yet multi-site practitioners point out that they do not start new campuses rather than planting churches—they do both. In some cases campuses may eventually become church plants. And Allison argues that church planting is nearly impossible for many congregations.

For instance, a church in which many new people are coming to faith in Christ may not have enough mature believers to send out to start a church, he writes. Yet the mother congregation may be filled to capacity and unable to start more worship services.

Allison also notes that “traditional church planting efforts are generally thirty percent more costly than multi-site growing” and that “in 2007, 12 percent of multi-site churches spun off sites to become independent churches.”

In the end, most Southern Baptists on both sides of the multi-site debate agree that this is not an issue worth dividing over, and most critics still praise the God-honoring ministry done by multi-site churches. Yet they say questions remain unanswered about where the multi-site phenomenon will lead.

“I do find it ironic that multi-site is rooted in pragmatism and yet so many churches are piling on the bandwagon before there is more than 10 years of pragmatic evidence this is a sustainable model that produces believers abandoned to Christ,” Lino said. “Is this going to be another Willow Creek situation where the honest brothers will end up admitting a few years from now that they were able to touch a lot of people, but didn’t produce devoted followers of Christ? The jury is still out and yet so many churches are reorganizing around this model.”

—With reporting by Tammi Ledbetter