Episode 123: On Why We Pick the Multisite Fight in One Assembly
Should churches have only one service? Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss Leeman’s book, One Assembly in this episode of Pastors Talk and dive into whether or not churches should have multiple services and campuses. They dissect the main argument of One Assembly and how Christian discipleship is changed by multiple sites and services. They discuss why having one assembly is a second-tier issue and how high a priority it should be for you. Leeman also explains why he wrote One Assembly and who this book is intended for.
- What is the Main Argument of One Assembly?
- How Do Multi-Assembly Churches Change Discipleship?
- How Important is Having One Assembly?
- Why Did Leeman Write One Assembly?
- Who is One Assembly For?
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Mark Dever:
Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to provide biblical resources to help build healthy churches. Learn more at 9marks.org. I’m here today with Jonathan Leeman.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hello.
Mark Dever:
Hello, Jonathan. And we’re here because Jonathan has written a new book called One Assembly. Now, Jonathan, this book is so explosive in its thesis that we’re going to do, we’re hoping to do two conversations about this. In the second one, we’re going to explore the argument of the book, which is only three chapters, but it’s thick stuff.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
And there’s intros and appendices, and I mean, it’s a well-paced book. But in this first discussion right now, and that’s what you’re listening to right now, the first conversation. In the first conversation, I want us to think more about the reason we would have this conversation at all.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
What is the Importance of One Assembly?
Mark Dever:
What’s the significance? What’s the importance of this conversation? Why even bother to talk about what I think most people assume is a settled fact?
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
I think most people assume that what you’re arguing here is not true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Which is my assumption.
Mark Dever:
Which is probably one of the reasons that we’ve been so slow in coming out with this book in the first place.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes.
Mark Dever:
Because we think, man, if you guys thought we were legalistic, persnickety people before, you hadn’t seen anything.
Jonathan Leeman:
Check this out.
What is the Main Argument of One Assembly?
Mark Dever:
All right. So understanding that’s what our big vision is, we’re going to get back to the importance of this one in this conversation. Why don’t you just for a moment, give us the argument of the book to begin this conversation.
And then we’ll spend all our time in the next conversation on it. But just so folks can know, some of you will have recently gotten this book as one of your T4G books. So there might be a lot of copies of this book out there.
Friends might have begun to pick it up and read it, oh, what’s this really about? Jonathan, what’s the basic argument in the book?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, the basic argument is that Christians have not taken enough time to think about what the church is and adopted the multi-first service and then multi-site practice without really looking at their Bibles. And that those practices, the multi-site, multi-service models, both basically reject what Jesus says the church is, they redefine the church, and they reshape the church morally.
That multi-site church is effectively multiple churches. Your north campus is a church, your south campus is a church. Your 9 o’clock service is a church, your 11 o’clock service is a church.
So those churches are doing great things. Don’t want to dispute that. Partners in the gospel, right? Grateful for the evangelism, grateful for the preaching, grateful for the fellowship that occurs in all these churches.
But I am saying a change has taken place in that multi-site, multi-service structure. Those are actually multiple churches. And in the process, they’re changing the nature of Christian discipleship.
How Do Multi-Assembly Churches Change Discipleship?
Mark Dever:
How are they changing the nature of Christian discipleship?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, if now I am united together, covenantally united together as a church with people with whom I never meet, 11 o’clock, the 9 o’clock, the North Campus, the South Campus, and we exist together under one authority structure, one administrative mechanism.
And that administrative mechanism is the thing that’s called the church. And I’m accountable to that. Well, that’s a subtle reshifting of authority, a subtle reshifting of the shape of my discipleship in the same way an Episcopal structure or a Presbyterian structure is going to subtly reshape the nature of discipleship.
Mark Dever:
When you mentioned a Presbyterian structure, and I understand what you mean theologically, but historically, the Westminster assembly came up with a confession and they would agree with you. They define a church as a particular local assembly.
Authority to Something Outside of the Congregation
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. Nonetheless, Presbyterian structure and Episcopalian structure. What it does is it gives authority to something outside of the congregation.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right? Both in the receiving or dismissing, disciplining of members, the removing of pastors, and other things of this sort. And what that does, that shift in authority from all the congregation, the Catholic congregation to something outside of the congregation has a subtle way of shifting the nature of my discipleship. Now that’s something we’re double-clicking on, but that’s the thumbnail sketch you were asking for.
How Important is Having One Assembly?
Mark Dever:
So yeah, and everything in me wants to have that conversation, but we’ll leave that conversation next for this, just to keep helping us understand how important this conversation is. Wouldn’t, wouldn’t your concerns have been shown to be evidently misplaced by the recent quarantine that a lot of people had been under?
Where they couldn’t meet, so many churches met virtually, and small groups met virtually. I mean, didn’t that disprove all your concerns?
Jonathan Leeman:
Somebody tweeted me the other day asking, hey, Jonathan, is this not changing the ontology of the church? And I replied, not at all. The church is what the Bible says the church is.
We’re in an exceptional moment, however, where we’re taking exceptional measures. But that’s sort of like walking around with a broken ankle. We’re limping and we’re using a crutch.
Lord willing, we won’t always be on a crutch. Lord willing, one day that ankle will heal and we’ll be all together again walking straight. Right?
So I would say if we were to persist in this state, the state of say the internet church or whatever, I think that over time we would all see how much that harms our discipleship. I think the gathering serves clear purposes that the Bible intends and we’re going to feel its absence, see its absence.
Mark Dever:
So you would say a time of abstinence from that gathering doesn’t make the argument on the other side, it actually supports what you’re saying, experientially.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think that’s exactly right.
How Can One Assembly be Misinterpreted?
Mark Dever:
So if the thesis of this book, to many people’s ears, will be so extreme, how do you think it will be misunderstood? Or is it kind of beyond misunderstanding? Because whatever extreme conclusion they draw, yes, that’s what you’re saying.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I think a main misunderstanding is to think that you and I, Mark, are probably angrier about this or think it’s a bigger deal than we actually do.
Mark Dever:
So you would preach at a multi-site church and be happy with your image being reproduced video-wise, 10 places around the state, and that sermon being…
Jonathan Leeman:
Take out happy with and put in willing to, yes.
Mark Dever:
Okay. You happily preach at a church with two services. You’ll happily preach the nine-thirty and the eleven.
Jonathan Leeman:
I would happily preach with brothers and sisters who meet in two services, yeah. For the sake of those brothers and sisters. I’m not happy about that structure, no.
Mark Dever:
Right. Well, in the same way you might happily preach in a paedobaptist church, you’re not happy about the paedobaptism.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
You’re happy about your brothers and sisters in Christ and all the good they do.
Mark Dever:
Of course.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, what I want to do is I want to stick this right here in that kind of theological triage, first-year gospel issues, salvation, second-year, second-tier, sort of those ecclesiological issues, which aren’t essential to salvation, but which protect the gospel over time. I want to put it right there.
Mark Dever:
And which determines who we can work with in a lot of ways.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s right. But it’s right there with something like a Presbyterian church structure. What does Presbyterianism do? They redefine the church. Back to Westminster’s assembly, it’s a church, it’s believers and their children.
That’s the church. That’s a redefinition of the church. And so what I’m saying, or what we have been saying, is that to say a church is these separate assemblies united under one administrative structure is a church.
Right there, the second level of theological triage, it’s a redefinition of the church. And I’m going to say it’s not as important as a first-tier issue, but it’s more important than a third-tier. It can be indifferent toward the issue.
Third-Tier Issues?
Mark Dever:
So what would be some examples of issues that even people as careful as 9Marks would agree are third-tier issues?
Jonathan Leeman:
The nature of the millennium.
Ecclesiology
Mark Dever:
Okay. How about touching ecclesiology?
Jonathan Leeman:
Touching ecclesiology. Oh… That’s a good question.
Mark Dever:
What hymns do we sing?
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh, certainly what hymns. How long your sermons are? Frankly, to some extent, expositional preaching, I think, is finally something that’s a matter of prudence. I think it’s the best way. I think it’s the most prudent way, the most wise way to preach the Bible.
Mark Dever:
It’s the most theologically consistent.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, most theologically, but maybe I would put it there. The nature of our membership practices.
Mark Dever:
Whether or not you have membership classes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Exactly, that sort of thing.
Mark Dever:
Right. Whether or not you have a church covenant.
Jonathan Leeman:
But what you’re giving me right now, Mark, are issues that we can, in some sense, disagree on and still be members of the same church.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
A multi-site, multi-service structure, you gotta make a decision. Either you are or you’re not.
Mark Dever:
Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
And so that almost necessarily puts it up into a second-tier issue.
Mark Dever:
Well, you are and you are not on lots of the issues you just mentioned, but for some reason, they don’t seem as important. So you may or you may not have membership classes, you’re going to do one or the other.
Jonathan Leeman:
Of course, right? that’s true, good point.
Mark Dever:
But whichever you do, it might not be determinative to whether or not you feel you had a good conscience joining that church.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, that’s right
Mark Dever:
Whereas if a church has three services on Sunday morning and members can choose to go to whichever one, then your concern is that the church never assembles.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah
Mark Dever:
Therefore it’s not in what the Bible teaches in those terms is not a church.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, in that sense, I think our conversation just confused the second versus third tier and the whole thing about elements versus forms. I think your forms, membership classes or not, yeah, that’s, you have to make a decision on, but it’s not finally in the Bible. Whereas this I think is in the Bible.
Mark Dever:
So you’ve had, I think, a slowly growing reputation as a theologian and as an ecclesiologist, ecclesiastical or whatever we could call it.
Jonathan Leeman:
My Twitter description says an aspiring ecclesiologist.
Mark Dever:
An aspiring ecclesiologist. Any concern this is going to be like the nail in the tire? I mean, this is really where Leeman lost it. You know, I was following him along in his hard-to-read books and his less hard-to-read books and his little tiny books, and they were all really helpful.
Church membership, church discipline, such good stuff. And then he just went a little too… He went a little too far.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. It’s possible. I certainly, we certainly feel, I think, the greatest risk with that book. And that’s why we did more in preparing it than we typically do. So we got guys from around the country to come together, read an early draft, got a lot of feedback.
Mark Dever:
And it was funny. I’ll just, I’ll tell you folks watching the feedback we got.
Jonathan Leeman:
It was significant.
Mark Dever:
Well, they’re from guys who they all agree with our thesis, or almost all anyway. But yet there was a very divided feeling like half the, or some of the people let’s just say, thought this book needed to be real sweet and toned and…
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
you know, oh guys, it’s not that big a deal, but look over here. Let me try to persuade you.
Jonathan Leeman:
My first draft was more in that direction.
Mark Dever:
And other people felt like, no, this has to be like Luther at the Reformation. You got to plant the flag, and burn down the enemy villages.
Jonathan Leeman:
And the final draft moves slightly more in that direction.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, but having read it, I wouldn’t say it’s very much in that direction.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Mark Dever:
So anyway.
Jonathan Leeman:
The whole day felt like a shin-kicking.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Well, for you, especially. The brother, very vulnerable, laid his manuscript out there and everybody had lots of opinions and the opinions were not uniform.
Although, it was funny because we were all pretty much agreeing on the conclusions. The whole question was how do you approach this?
Jonathan Leeman:
How do you get there? That’s right.
Mark Dever:
Because this is such a sensitive issue.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, because most churches, many churches, and at least in the states, in the 1960s and 70s started moving to multi-service. The 1980s and 90s and 2000s started moving to multi-site and they admit in their own books never gave it much study. They were as one author put it building the plane in the air.
Mark Dever:
Well, I think they were assuming there was no problem here theologically.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thats right.
Mark Dever:
In the same way, when they have the new air conditioning put in they assume there’s no problem theologically.
Jonathan Leeman:
and so here we are four or five decades on saying up. Hold up, guys. Can we go back and look at the Bible? That’s just not going to make you popular.
Mark Dever:
Ans I think that the arguments for having, let’s just say multiple services, seem so straightforwardly sensible. I’m here in the constraints of an old building in an urban area. By God’s grace, we got full.
We can deal with that somewhat by church planting, so see you, Jonathan. But the thing fills back up. Couldn’t we reach more people without spending any more money, maybe some more staff, but without a huge expenditure, without lots of problems and…
You know, of years of construction. Couldn’t we just, by having two different services on Sunday morning, or one on Saturday night and one on Sunday morning, couldn’t we just have a lot more fruitful ministry with a much more economic use of resources? I think that’s been, it’s a kind of stewardship argument that I think has been the leading argument for 50 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
And those aren’t bad arguments. It makes sense.
Mark Dever:
In moving to multiple services at least.
Is Church Growth Evidence of Evangelism?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s exactly right. And insofar as your understanding of the church is driven by that sort of evangelistic impulse to grow and reach more people, it makes utter sense.
Mark Dever:
Well, I would almost say driven solely.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Well, I think that’s…
Mark Dever:
Because I hope that both your church and mine are driven by an evangelistic impulse.
Jonathan Leeman:
Absolutely.
Mark Dever:
So I don’t want to in any way be opposed to that. We’re definitely for evangelism.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, but I just mean to kind of pit it against also grown by discipleship. Teaching them everything
Mark Dever:
Yeah
Jonathan Leeman:
I have commanded and so…
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I would say in the New Testament, the assumption is if the saints are growing if the church is being edified…
Jonathan Leeman:
That will be evangelistic.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, then that will naturally have the overflow of more evangelism happening, more people coming to Christ.
Short Term Vs. Long Term Thinking
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, in some ways, I think it’s the difference between short-term thinking and long-term thinking. Short-term thinking says, okay, second service, more people in the room, we’re good.
Long-term thinking, I think, says… Actually a growing vibrant body of people getting to know one another, discipling one another, disciplining one another, encouraging one another, that over time will prove to be the most evangelistic. So not opposed to evangelism, but opposed to short-term thinking.
Mark Dever:
So I’ll drop this part of the question in just a minute, but I just want to make sure we get this finally. You did make the decision at some point, or we made the decision at some point, to go ahead for all of our concerns about being pigeonholed, irrevocably.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes.
Mark Dever:
You did decide, okay, let’s go ahead and put this out there.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Why Write One Assembly?
Mark Dever:
What helped to bring you over the edge and say like, no, we need to teach on this publicly. Like in a, in more reified form in a book.
Jonathan Leeman:
Number one, the fact that nobody, or almost nobody else is out there making this argument. A couple of brothers did in their book, Franchising the Church, John Mark Yates and Thomas White doing that book.
A few essays out there, articles out there you’ll see, but nobody really seems to be taking this on. So number one, just nobody else is. Number two, because in a weird way, as obscure as this topic is, and in some sense, feelings of fringe, it sort of gets right to the heart of what a church is.
Mark Dever:
I think you dropped the sword, but I think it does.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that is going to impact how we live and grow as Christians and as disciples of one another. Again, just as important as arguments we might have over Episcopal structure, Presbyterian structure, and so forth.
Mark Dever:
But see, when you say just as important as those arguments, those arguments these days are seen as not that important. By many people, people think, ah, you do whatever works.
I mean, that’s been Lutheran position always has been that. But, you know, in American evangelicalism more broadly, people who 150 years ago would have argued between themselves about those questions, maybe even 70 years ago in the last, during our lifetime, they’ve been good with just whatever, whatever you want to do, whatever your church, you know.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, Mark, as you’ve always said, 9Marks exist in part to bring up what your great-grandparents always assumed and understood. So in that sense, yeah, we are trying to revive some of these older conversations because we think they’re significant.
And the failure to have these conversations, I think we can both see, has proved harmful. Not health-giving to churches in America and around the world.
Mark Dever:
And I think the recent and increasing prominence of teleworking, telehealth, telechurch, you know, video, video groups is simply going to make these questions more exposed, more obvious because you’re going to think the church is essentially what happens upfront. And you can bring that out to people via video link and, audio. Or you’re going to think the church is fundamentally the gathering together of the people
Jonathan Leeman:
The congregation.
Mark Dever:
In a thousand interactions that can’t be captured just in what happens from the front. And anyway, we can talk about that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, let me say one thing about that. There’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing here, because something I argue in the book, and at least in the introduction, there’s a sense in which we wouldn’t have got to multi-service or multi-site in the first place if we didn’t already view the church as what happens up.
Front church as what upfront, you know, so when the pastors come along and say, Hey, let’s add a service, let’s add a site that doesn’t offend my sensibilities or my intuitions about what a church is. If I’ve already adopted, Hey, I show up for, you know, 90 minutes, 60 minutes on Sunday. And I, there’s a good show and great.
And then I go home, Hey, another service, another, you know, another show. Great. Sounds good. Uh, so there’s a sense in which those changed views of what a church is changed.
Intuitions are what made the whole movement possible in the first place. But then as you say, I think our practices can then turn around and reinforce that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I want to wrap this conversation up soon, because I don’t mean this conversation to be too long. I’d like to see it in that other conversation.
Jonathan Leeman:
Setting the context.
Who is One Assembly For?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, about the substance of the argument. But just for folks who are watching who are wondering, is this just a conversation for large church pastors? How is this an important conversation for smaller church pastors?
Or the church planter with 70 people or the congregation with 70 people in it. How is this an important conversation for them?
Jonathan Leeman:
Let me say two things there. Number one, I don’t really assume that the main audience of this book is the mega-church multi-site pastor.
Mark Dever:
This book is not going to make them rethink. They’re not in that market. They’re not coming to the conference, they’re not asking the questions.
Jonathan Leeman:
In some ways, I’m really only aiming at the smaller churches. That Mike Rowsome might add a second service. I’m aiming at the next generation.
That’s the first thing I would say. The second thing is…
Mark Dever:
So if you’re a 70-year-old megachurch pastor with four locations and three services in each, God bless you. If you’re preaching the gospel, we are thankful for you.
We’re not really guessing you’re going to take time to read this. And if so, we’re not guessing you’re going to find it persuasive, though maybe.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So yeah, leave that there. The second thing I would say is, okay, chapter one is the church as an embassy of the kingdom. Chapter two is about churches as a gathering. Chapter three is about the church as a small c catholic.
And that’s what I really hope. That’s sort of the alternative to multi-site. That’s the vision.
Mark Dever:
The church is an area working together.
Partnerships Between Churches
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes. The partnerships between different churches. I hope small churches that never are even threatened by the possibility of growing enough that they would go to a multi-service or multi-site.
I hope they will capture the vision of their church by partnering with other churches in ways that raise up leaders and send churches. I hope that’s inspiring that third chapter. I hope it’s inspiring to people about the landscape as a whole, I think, and I’ve seen modeled here at Capitol Baptist and other churches in our area.
I’ve seen modeled wonderfully. I hope everybody gets that vision.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Unless we make it sound unless we make this book sound too dire. Jonathan has done a great job making some tough, tight, biblical, theological, and historical arguments in the first couple of chapters.
But then in the third chapter, he just paints a wonderful, glorious, happy picture of a future and of a land of cooperation that I don’t think seems very native to a lot of churches today. I have to take that back.
There are certain churches that it does, but there are so many churches in which it does not seem normal, in which it seems like an alien land. And if nothing else, if you’re not too interested in the argument of this book, just cheat and read chapter three.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen.
Mark Dever:
And just enjoy thinking about how your multi-service, multi-site church can be in friendly cooperation with other churches and trying to help them in preaching the gospel.
Jonathan Leeman:
In some way, I almost wanted to put chapter three first
Mark Dever:
Yeah
Jonathan Leeman:
so that people could believe and see a vision. And that almost makes the argument easier to follow after that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Brother, thank you for the time. I hope you’ve been persuaded that it’s worth thinking about this topic and that Jonathan Leeman’s book, One Assembly, might help you do that. Thanks, brother
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks.
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