Johnathan,

Gracious, Accurate, Helpful!

THANKS

Jonathan,

This is an important issue to discuss and of course there are varying opinions on the subject. I have a number of challenges with the multi-site concept, but first let me start with simply stating my perspective.

1. As best as I can tell from the New Testament and some early, early writings of the church, each church/ekklesia was defined by its geographic location and known group of Elders. Meaning each geographic area had apostolically appointed Elders to oversee the saints of their area.

2. In some and perhaps all of those geographic locations, the saints gathered in multiple houses/locations on the Lord’s Day. I also suspect that those localities that gathered in multiple houses/locations would also come together as a whole from time to time. I believe the saints in each area came to know one another despite gathering in different locations on the Lord’s Day.

3. Despite not all gathering at the same place at the same time, they were all considered one body or one church.

4. The Elders had their work cut out for them. This is speculation, but maybe one week they all showed up at one gathering and the next week another. Or there may have been Elder gathering with each group and then reconvening with the other Elders later in the week to share and discuss. Theoretically this could have given rise to the Arch-Bishop. Regardless, I believe the Elders knew the sheep they taught and had oversight of.

My challenges with the way most current multi-site churches are run are:

1. They are primarily driven off of a celebrity preacher/pastor. It’s about coming to see (in person or via video) a preacher. It is not about coming to be intimate, to edify and to serve.

2. Typically true biblical shepherding and oversight goes out the window. The celebrity pastor does not know his sheep and they truly don’t know him. He does not walk among them. Yes I know that many of these multi-site churches will have “elders” at each site, but the people are not coming to know the pastor and others or to be known by the pastor and others.

3. Genuine biblical membership is lost. Members do not truly become “members of one another.” The members at Site A haven’t a clue who the members are at Site B…especially when Site B is many, many miles away…perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles away. Of course the same is true of churches that have multiple services.

4. I can not be a part of a Body of Christ that is a hundred miles away and I don’t know the Elders/Shepherds.

5. It takes away from biblical church planting where you have a distinct set of Elders and distinct group of saints that come together in the same area to be the Body of Christ to the world around them.

If you are going to have multi-site churches, you need to do so within a confined geographic area, have a distinct group of Elders that shepherd and oversee all the saints that gather in those multiple locations. Teaching in each location is done in person by an Elder or man gifted in teaching…teaching is not via video. And all the saints of all the gatherings serve, edify and know one another outside the Lord’s Day gathering.

This is difficult to do in most situations. A less dense and more remote area would probably work. The challenge is keeping each gathering from turning into it’s own unique and distinct group/church.

I think a network of churches is a better idea. Each church has its own Elders, each church is autonomous, the churches can gather together as a whole from time-to-time and the churches can support and aid one another as needed.

Sorry for being so long!

I enjoyed this article. Thank you for it.

I'm assuming that Jonathan Leeman holds to the Universal Church doctrine. Perhaps he, or another like-minded individual, could enumerate how one harmonizes the view described here (a church isn't a church if it can't assemble) and the doctrine of the Universal Church - i.e., if we are all in the Church, then why can't several different sites claim to be a church.

Thank you.

While agreeing with the main issue against a multi-site concept being a celebrity-like pastor streamed in via tv to multi-locations, it's hard for not to see a multi-site concept from Paul. That is, one church in many locations. I am not so well read as Pastor Mark or Dr Allison on this topic, and I also had Dr Allison as a professor...for several systematic theologies...

It seems to me that Paul planted several churches, taught there for some time, established elders to oversee the church and then he moved on to plant another church. And from time-to-time, if the Lord willed, he returned to visit these churches, often correcting them if necessary, writing letters to them, or etc. It seems to me Paul was overseeing many churches from afar, and when he visited, it seems likely that these churches respected his authority greatly, he was well-known among the churches, and he probably preached at the churches during the times he returned to visit. He seems to be overseeing multi-sites, yet with an established pastor/elder leadership at every site. Almost like a "One church, many locations" model.

Today, our technology has improved, imagine how many more times Paul might have been able to visit all the churches he had planted with a car, keeping in contact with them via email instead of letter, or cell phone, watching their sermons online or listening via podcast, the pastors of those churches also following Paul in a similar way.

I agree that the universal church is, as Heb. 12:23 implies, "a heavenly and eschatological assembly," but I also believe this very same church is in the process of being built up, spiritual stone by spiritual stone, on Earth right now, and down through history.

Eph 2:21-22. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Local congregations are expressions of this One True Church. So are other gatherings of Christians, if they are carried out in the name of Jesus, and with the purpose of building up the spiritual stones.

Most (if not all) of the "one another" admonitions are more effectively carried out in a small group setting, a setting small enough for everyone to know everyone else's name, and to know something about their personal life and walk with the Lord. Shepherds, in order to truly shepherd, must also know the sheep. This also implies a group of a certain size.

That is not to say there is not room in the Body of Christ for larger meetings, and for what Peter Wagner and Lyle Shaller call "ranchers." But megachurches and multi-sites must never become a substitute for true "one another" ministry and shepherding.

I agree that the universal church is, as Heb. 12:23 implies, "a heavenly and eschatological assembly," but I also believe this very same church is in the process of being built up, spiritual stone by spiritual stone, on Earth right now, and down through history.

Eph 2:21-22. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Local congregations are expressions of this One True Church. So are other gatherings of Christians, if they are carried out in the name of Jesus, and with the purpose of building up the spiritual stones.

Most (if not all) of the "one another" admonitions are more effectively carried out in a small group setting, a setting small enough for everyone to know everyone else's name, and to know something about their personal life and walk with the Lord. Shepherds, in order to truly shepherd, must also know the sheep. This also implies a group of a certain size.

That is not to say there is not room in the Body of Christ for larger meetings, and for what Peter Wagner and Lyle Shaller call "ranchers." But megachurches and multi-sites must never become a substitute for true "one another" ministry and shepherding.

Sorry about the double-post. Feel free to delete one, and this comment as well.

I fail to see how a multi-site church destroys the “assembly” meaning of ekklesia. In a multi-site, people still assemble, just at different locations. True, the Church assembles, nobody disagrees with that. One question I have, what is the line between a multi-site and a denomination? Is it simply that they share leadership? As Mr. Leeman clearly accepts the SBC as biblical, is there clear biblical evidence that an organizational structure like SBC is permitted but a similar structure that shares preachers is not? The SBC meets in thousands of locations each Sunday. Does this mean that they aren’t “assembling” as they should?

Jonathan,
Thank you for your gracious tone and your sharp handling of the text.
Mark C.

I fail to see the practical difference between a huge assembly of 1000 distributed across a large room, and a huge assembly of 12,000 distributed across 12 rooms.

The more important issue is live preaching, is it not?

Chris,

I agree with your first challenge:

"1. They are primarily driven off of a celebrity preacher/pastor. It’s about coming to see (in person or via video) a preacher. It is not about coming to be intimate, to edify and to serve."

Without trying to sound judgmental, would these Mars Hill, Village Church, Austin Stone, etc. campuses flourish as much as they do without Driscoll, Chandler, Carter, et al.?

I think if anyone does multi-site churches correctly, it would be Redeemer NYC. They rotate preachers, so it's not just about coming to see Keller.

Per the Redeemer website:

"Each Sunday at all worship services, Redeemer's Preaching Team will preach from the same Scripture text. All of our preaching pastors rotate through the five locations with each location's preacher changing based on a weekly schedule. Redeemer does not publish or share the preaching schedule for any of the worship services, so please do not call the offices to to inquire about this information."

GREGG ALLISON’S RESPONSE TO JONATHAN LEEMAN’S 9MARKS BLOG POST ON MULTISITE CHURCHES

I appreciate the respectful and thorough response from Jonathan Leeman to my post about biblical warrant for multisite churches on The Resurgence blog a couple of months ago. He is a capable defender of the “whole assembly” position that disputes the multisite structure and poses solid challenges to both its biblical support and its practical outworking. In this reply to Jonathan’s response, I will continue to defend the biblical legitimacy of multisite churches by offering some considerations that I could not include in my first post due to space limitations and by clarifying some of my earlier points.

I echo my first two points of criticism for those who dismiss multisite churches by saying “the word ekklēsia means assembly,” because such an approach commits both a methodological error and a lexical error. I may be wrong, but it seems that Jonathan’s response continues to commit these very errors, because he still defines the concept of church by the one word ekklēsia, and he still maintains that the word ekklēsia at its core means assembly. If I’m wrong on this matter, I stand corrected; but if I’m right, I appeal to Jonathan to employ a correct approach to this issue.

I also don’t understand why he challenges “can we really define a concept by completely emptying a word of its dictionary meaning, as if to say, The word ‘assembly’ in the New Testament does not actually require an assembly.” In my first two points I certainly don’t state, nor do I intend to imply, that we can eviscerate the word ekklēsia of the connotation of “assembly,” and I certainly don’t state, not do I intend to imply, that the NT does not actually require an assembly (so I dissent from Jonathan’s idea that I “remove the concept of a gathering from ekklēsia;” I do not do this nor imply this). But let’s not beg the question here: the issue of multisite churches is the manner of the assembly, and certainly the word ekklēsia in and of itself does not indicate what the manner of assembly is. Only by assuming that “assembly” means something on the order of “every member must be able to assemble in the same place at the same time” can the issue of the manner of the assembly be decided apart from a thorough investigation of all biblical passages regarding the church in their context. But this assumption would be guilty of begging the question.

Clearly, then, both Jonathan and I agree that for multisite churches to be legitimate, biblical warrant is required. We therefore need to look at all that Scripture affirms about the church, considering in context the biblical passages that contain the word ekklēsia, as well as the passages that address the church not by using the word ekklēsia but through narratives, apostolic exhortations, and the like. Two examples of this latter point are Acts 2:42-47, Luke’s narrative of the initial phase of the church of Jerusalem, and Acts 8:4-13, the story of the conversion of the Samaritans through the preaching of Phillip. In neither passage does the word ekklēsia appear, but certainly the narratives describe the founding of the church of Jerusalem and the start of the church in Samaria.

So what do we find when we investigate the biblical affirmations about the church? Jonathan’s point about the church as an assembly of Christians is well taken, though I would argue that his claim that in every instance some assembly is in view is exaggerated. He admits that the church in Acts 8:3 cannot refer to the gathering of believers but to their scattering into houses. So, from this passage, we can affirm that “church” can refer to believers who, because of persecution, cannot meet together but are dispersed into separate dwellings. In Act 9:31 Luke rehearses the blessing of God (peace, edification, comfort, multiplication) that came up “the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria.” Though Jonathan cites F. F. Bruce’s idea that the reference is to the church of Jerusalem scattered around that geographical area, I think that Bruce and similar interpretations are wrong if they limit the referent to those Jewish Christians. The narrative of Acts 8:4-13 (noted above) clearly presents the founding of the church in Samaria, a church that did not consist of scattered “church of Jerusalem” members (most of whom were Jewish Christians) but of newly converted Samaritan believers (whose conversion created a good deal of consternation for the apostles; Acts 8:14-17). Accordingly, in this case “the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria” refers to a regional church that does not assemble all together.

Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 10:32 does not have the connotation of assembly but instead concerns people, as the first two terms of the imperative “give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God” refer to the Jewish people (those descended from Abraham) and to the non-Jewish people. Certainly, the assembly of the Jews is not in view here, nor is the assembly of the Gentile people; indeed, it is hard to imagine what such assemblies could be. Accordingly, the church in this context refers to people from both a Jewish background and a Gentile background who are characterized by something new and unique—being in Christ—that distinguishes them as the people who are the church. But they don’t assemble together.

Accordingly, examination of the many passages of Scripture leads to the conclusion that the concept of the church cannot be restricted to the notion of assembly.

Still, Jonathan and I concur that where Scripture presents the church, the assembly of Christians is in view in the majority of contexts.

And this agreement raises the key issue: what is the manner of the church’s assembly? As noted above, to assume that the assembly must be the gathering of all the members together in the same place at the same time begs the question; rather, we must continue to investigate Scripture.

As argued in my post, four times in the Pauline corpus (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:9; Col. 4:15; Phlm 2) the apostle employs the expression ἡ κατ’οἰκον ἐκκλησια (he kat’oikon ekklēsia). My point in BDAG is found under the second main heading under kata, with the accusative. Point d notes that kata + accusative has a distributive notion and lists kat’oikian (oikon) “in the various houses” as found in Acts 2:46 and 5:42 with a similar idea in Acts 8:3. (Confirmation can be found in the Liddell-Scott Jones lexicon, vol. 1, p. 883, which explains kata with the accusative as “distributively, of a whole divided into parts.”) What is important in this discussion is not the meaning of the word kata by itself, but the meaning of the prepositional phrase kat’oikon (again, let’s move away from just looking at an individual word to settle these matters). Jonathan may disagree with my understanding of this expression, but I hope he will concede that I am not engaging in special pleading. A plausible interpretation of this phrase is “the church distributed into the house.” In saying this, I’m not denying the spatial emphasis of this expression; certainly, Paul addresses the church in the home, as most translations render it. But English translations don’t settle the matter, and my interpretation of the expression as “the church distributed into the home” underscores the distributive notion of the church in relationship to these dwellings and is clearly a plausible interpretation.

As just noted, in addition to the four times the distributive expression is used in the Pauline corpus, Acts 2:46 employs it. Why did the Jerusalem church meet in the temple and kat’oikon, “from house to house?” That is, why did this church gather all together and also fan out into smaller gatherings in the houses of its members? As Luke explains, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42), they pooled their resources and supported the poor in their midst (2:44-45), they worshipped God (2:47), and so forth. So, from this passage, we can affirm that “church” can refer to believers who, for the purposes of teaching the Word, edification, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, giving, and the like, are dispersed into various dwellings. Such distributed meetings are legitimately called “church.”

Let me apply this discussion to Sojourn Church, which distributes itself into weekly gatherings at our campuses in midtown, East, J-town, and (Lord willing) New Albany. We promote this multisite structure for the very same reasons listed above: preaching the gospel, celebrating the Lord’s Supper, praying, giving, and the like. Additionally, Sojourn gathers all together at various times; for example, about two months ago about 1500 Sojourners celebrated Good Friday together at a gathering at the Louisville Memorial Auditorium (one of the few affordable venues in Louisville that can accommodate all the people from the various campuses gathering in one location).

Returning to my post’s biblical example of the multisite church in Corinth: I admit that it was too compressed due to space limitations to make good sense, and for this I apologize. My intent was to illustrate what might have been the situation there by citing NT passages that indicate Christians who were associated with Corinth and who may have hosted the gatherings distributed in their homes. Aquilla and Priscilla were important Christian leaders who at one time were in Corinth (Acts 18:1-3); I projected their hosting of a church gathering in their home in Ephesus (from 1 Cor. 16:19) to what might have been a similar case in Corinth. Titius’ home was indeed the site in which Paul worked as he established the church in Corinth (Acts 18:7); Crispus and his household may have hosted part of the church in their home; Stephanus and his household were the first Corinthian converts (1 Cor. 16:15), so I extrapolated that their home was a location for the church to meet; Gaius’ home was the site for the whole church to gather (Rom. 16:23). I should have been clearer about my use of these people and their homes as illustrative of what might have been the case.

But let me underscore this point: If Scripture makes use of the expression “the whole church,” this implies that a legitimate biblical notion is “the partial church.” Accordingly, the Corinthians “came together” (1 Cor. 11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34) as the “whole church” (in the house of Gaius; Rom. 16:23) and also fanned out into other houses; and these partial church gatherings were legitimate assemblies of “the church” of Corinth.

I offer three hopes for future discussions: (1) No one will dismiss multisite churches by simply appealing to the meaning of the word ekklēsia; this move commits both a methodological error and a lexical error. (2) No one will charge that the notion of multisite churches has no biblical warrant. The expression ἡ κατ’οἰκον ἐκκλησια (he kat’oikon ekklēsia) in Romans 16:5, 1 Corinthians 16:9, Colossians 4:15, and Philemon 2 (confirmed in Acts 2:46) provides strong warrant. (3) We move away from what seems to me to be atomistic appeals to individual words—e.g., ekklēsia, kata—to settle the issue of meaning; meaning pertains to phrases and sentences, not words. And just because a word does not appear—e.g., ekklēsia—does not mean that Scripture is not addressing the topic; though Luke does not use the word ekklēsia in the book of Acts until 5:11, its absence should not be understood as indicating that the preceding narrative is not about the church and its establishment.