The NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - Are Multisite Churches Biblical？

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.

00:00:03.420 If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,

00:00:06.420 would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?

00:00:09.760 This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do

00:00:12.860 to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. Thanks.

00:00:21.260 Our multi-site, multi-congregational church campuses with the same elder board and in-person

00:00:27.640 pastors, not video screens, a biblically permissible alternative to independent church

00:00:32.060 plants? No. Thanks for the question. No, it's not biblically permissible. No.

00:00:39.860 For one, it's just, it's a bad move. Mark Driscoll, I think, had some problems. I think he had a lot

00:00:46.320 of great stuff too. I think part of the reason that he got fired is because he flew a little

00:00:50.500 too close to the sun and in part because of his views on men and women, the whole thing we've

00:00:55.300 been talking about in this episode. Um, Mark Driscoll actually would, um, address women in

00:01:00.060 their sin and, uh, and affirmed biblical masculinity in a lot of really good ways. I think at certain 0.70

00:01:05.820 points he got, um, perverse. I think he, he went across the line and, um, but a lot of it was

00:01:11.700 really good. A lot of it was really good. And, um, I think part of the reason that he was ultimately

00:01:17.440 removed was because, um, he really made some serious mistakes. I think part of the reason

00:01:21.900 he was removed also is because he did some things that were really good, like addressing the sin of 0.96

00:01:26.060 women, and they came back with a vengeance. And I think part of the reason he was removed is because 0.84

00:01:30.840 of the multi-site model. Think about this for a second, all right? Since we're talking about

00:01:36.260 consummation and covenant and all these kinds of things and marriage and men and women,

00:01:39.960 imagine this as an illustration, all right? Imagine did, well, it's like pre-Minactra.

00:01:47.500 How do you say that, Nathan?

00:01:49.960 With the king on the first night sleeps with...

00:01:52.180 Minotra, I think.

00:01:53.300 Minotra. 0.97

00:01:55.740 Imagine that there are 12 married couples 0.98

00:01:58.600 and the men in each of these marriages 0.99

00:02:02.580 are responsible for protecting and providing

00:02:04.700 for the wife and children

00:02:06.700 and caring for her,

00:02:10.380 loving her, leading her, all those things.

00:02:12.560 But then there's one man

00:02:14.260 outside of these 12 marriages

00:02:16.840 who has exclusive conjugal rights to these 12 brides. 0.78

00:02:23.600 So they're married to a man,

00:02:25.160 each of them an individual man who is their husband

00:02:27.300 and performs all of his responsibilities

00:02:30.380 and performs them well, is a loving, good husband.

00:02:34.320 But then there's this 13th man who sleeps with all of them.

00:02:38.920 So the husband brings home the bacon. 0.96

00:02:41.000 The husband cares for them.

00:02:42.420 The husband does this, protects them,

00:02:43.760 provides all these kinds of things. 0.92

00:02:44.780 But when it comes to sleeping with the wife,

00:02:46.840 another man swoops in. That's not going to go well. What you're going to have is these 12

00:02:52.980 husbands are going to want to kill that man. And rightfully so. Rightfully so. 0.99

00:03:01.060 Yeah, they're the husband. They're doing the work. They're caring for the wife and the children,

00:03:08.580 the family. And it is their right to be able to be sexually intimate with their wife.

00:03:15.340 Now, that's kind of a vivid illustration, which is in my mind because of the nature

00:03:19.460 of everything we've been talking about in this video.

00:03:22.240 But I think in some sense, that's kind of what the multi-site campus does.

00:03:26.540 You had 47, I think it was, 47 different elders, campus elders throughout the Mars Hill empire.

00:03:34.700 And these men are doing the marriage counseling with every couple that's getting married.

00:03:39.760 These pastors are, if somebody dies, they're performing the funeral.

00:03:43.180 They're doing the grief counseling with a mother and father that lost their son.

00:03:48.320 You know, they're doing all these different things.

00:03:51.120 They're the ones who are doing all the pastoral work, caring for the families in their church.

00:03:56.340 But then another man swoops in on Sunday morning to consummate, you know, the preaching is given to another man.

00:04:04.540 So you've got a pastor who's on the ground, a group of pastors, three of them, five of them, ten of them, in a particular campus.

00:04:09.700 they're doing all the pastoral work, but some other man swoops in Sunday morning for the

00:04:13.760 preaching. And you wonder why Mark Driscoll ultimately had all of his elders turn against

00:04:18.940 him. And I understand what the record stated that he was harsh, he was quarrelsome, he was all

00:04:24.080 these things. And I think he was some of those things, some of those things, although there

00:04:28.680 are two sides to every story. But for sure, even if Mark Driscoll was a saint, if he was a perfect

00:04:35.920 saint, I still think, maybe not guaranteed, but I still think, this is my suspicion, that there

00:04:42.300 would be still a very high likelihood that his elders eventually would have removed him, outvoted

00:04:48.440 him, and removed him, even if he wasn't quarrelsome, even if he wasn't harsh, even if none of those

00:04:54.100 things were true. Why? Because at the end of the day, pastors preach. Pastors preach.

00:05:00.840 and to be a pastor, a spiritual father in a congregation, an ecclesiastical father,

00:05:09.280 caring for these people and spending time all week long, knowing the needs of the people,

00:05:14.740 knowing what struggles they're going through, knowing what questions they're asking,

00:05:18.340 knowing what spiritual direction they require. And then here's your chief opportunity to feed

00:05:25.640 the sheep. This is the climax, the pinnacle of sheep feeding, the Lord's day hour,

00:05:32.860 preaching the word. And you don't get to do it. Some other guy swoops in week after week

00:05:41.020 after week. I don't know about you, but yeah, I would start to probably really struggle with

00:05:47.700 resentment towards that guy. And if that guy got even close to being disqualified,

00:05:52.500 I'd be hopping on that like white on rice. I would be saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:59.380 Yeah. He is quarrelsome. Yeah. I think he is quarrelsome. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

00:06:02.900 I think he is disqualified. Did, did I hear somebody? Yeah. I think, you know, I think

00:06:06.740 that's part of what was going on. So yeah, I just think it's a, it's a dumb model. I think it's a 0.99

00:06:11.180 bad model. Um, but I also think more than that, not just that it's foolish or, or a non, not 0.98

00:06:16.140 strategic. I really do think that it's not biblical, that it's actually, um, not biblical

00:06:21.160 for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is because we're called to disciple

00:06:25.100 and train people up. That's one of the roles of a pastor. And we need to be church planting. We

00:06:32.020 need to be planting churches, not campuses, not just expanding empires, but actually planting

00:06:38.600 other churches. I think that the multi-site thing is kind of like globalism. It's the

00:06:43.900 evangelical equivalent in the church world of globalism. No, no, no. We want nationalism. We

00:06:49.700 want independent sovereign nations. And we want many of them, not one big George Soros global

00:06:56.740 economic forum, right? We don't want that. We want individual nations. And so too, we want

00:07:01.900 individual churches. The highest, I believe that the Bible teaches the highest ecclesiastical court

00:07:07.620 on earth is the local church. It is the local church and that local churches should be independent

00:07:14.260 and autonomous. And then that gets into the question of not just who is the church,

00:07:18.640 That's the people of God, those who are regenerate, but also what is the church?

00:07:22.720 What is the church?

00:07:23.780 And the church is many things and, you know, the called out ones, ecclesia, you know, but

00:07:27.840 the church is also, it's a gathering.

00:07:30.760 It is an assembly.

00:07:32.860 And so wherever you have an assembly, that is an assembly of the saints on the Lord's

00:07:37.820 day for the right administering of the ordinary means of grace.

00:07:41.120 That is a church.

00:07:43.280 Some of you guys probably don't know this, but I'm not just a no multiple campuses guy.

00:07:48.220 I'm a no-multiple-services guy.

00:07:51.060 Probably didn't know that about me.

00:07:53.580 If I have anything to say about it,

00:07:55.440 I will not have more than one church service

00:07:57.420 because it's two gatherings.

00:08:00.120 Even in just the administering of the Lord's Supper,

00:08:02.640 we would be dividing the people of God 0.95

00:08:04.860 and dividing the table. 0.99

00:08:06.120 We would be taking the Lord's one table

00:08:07.860 and the one bread.

00:08:09.140 1 Corinthians chapter 10 says,

00:08:10.680 just as there is one loaf of bread,

00:08:12.400 we who are many are one,

00:08:14.920 are one in Christ Jesus.

00:08:16.380 And what we would be doing

00:08:17.280 is we'd be taking instead of one loaf of bread, you'd have two loaves of bread. Instead of one

00:08:21.680 table of the Lord, you would have two tables of the Lord, one at 9am, one at 11am. And instead

00:08:26.240 of the family of God coming together and bellying up to the Lord's one table to eat of the Lord's

00:08:31.740 one loaf of bread, we divide the family. Even if there aren't factions emotionally among us,

00:08:37.500 there is a literal physical time divide where half of the church shows up before and the other

00:08:43.260 half shows up after. We're not made one. We're not partaking of the Lord's Supper together in unity,

00:08:49.360 but we're actually partaking of half of the supper with half of the church and then half of the

00:08:53.180 supper with half of the church. It's two Ecclesiastes. It's two churches. It's two gatherings.

00:08:59.220 And so, yeah, I think that that's just in terms of time. But when you say it's not just two

00:09:04.660 different times, two different groups of people, but in one place, but now you're talking about

00:09:08.680 two different cities and two different buildings and two different communities with different

00:09:14.680 campus pastors. Still, yeah, one board altogether, but three of them are here and four of them are

00:09:19.900 here. That's just different churches. I think it's just foolish, absolutely foolish

00:09:24.660 to do anything but to cut those churches off in a most positive way possible, but cut them off, 0.98

00:09:33.680 release them, release those elders, release those congregants and say, you're free. You are free.

00:09:40.200 You don't have to continue the brand. We're not starting Starbucks and franchising out.

00:09:47.940 We're planting churches. It's radically different. All right. That's all I got for today. Nathan,

00:09:53.620 let's go ahead and one more time. Let's bring up, actually, you know what? Was there one more

00:09:59.080 question? That's a short one. Right. Well, yeah. In-person pastors. Oh yeah. You're right. In-person

00:10:10.740 pastors. So there would be an in-person pastor preaching. And so there would have to, but it's

00:10:15.880 not the same pastor. I guess I was imagining, because I know some churches where the guy

00:10:19.320 literally like, we'll get on the helicopter and fly to the other campus, you know, in between

00:10:24.100 services and go preach, but let's assume it's, it's, it's different men at different campuses

00:10:28.860 preaching live. Um, yeah, at that point you're just Presbyterian. Yeah. So at that point,

00:10:37.040 that's good. That's way, way better than what I was saying. And let's, I'm assuming that each of

00:10:40.740 these churches in terms of their giving have separate accounts. Cause that would be another

00:10:44.160 thing. Um, you know, different financial accounts that if this church chooses to be generous,

00:10:49.220 that church that was generous benefits from that generosity. And it doesn't just go into a pot

00:10:54.080 you know, a pool between a dozen churches or something like that, but assuming that they're

00:10:57.780 independent financially and they each have a pastor who is preaching live and a team of elders.

00:11:03.900 If it's all those things, then they are separate churches. And the fact that the elders still

00:11:07.660 combined form one board, that's not, that's not multi-site. That's, that's just, that's just

00:11:15.360 Presbyterianism. So yeah, I'm okay with Presbyterianism. I'm a Baptist, so I wouldn't do

00:11:20.800 that still but uh that's that's what every presbyterian is is independent churches but

00:11:25.620 each of the pastors actually sits on a presbytery and that's regional local and then you know it

00:11:30.440 goes higher and higher and higher so you have the session of elders you know and you have ruling

00:11:33.640 and bifurcation ruling elders and teaching elders and sometimes there's three different elders

00:11:37.260 depending on what presbytery you're a part of if it's opc or pca but you have elders a session of

00:11:43.240 elders multiple elders at a local church but then the teaching elder a minister a pastor from each

00:11:48.760 of these local churches sits on a presbytery and they, you know, they would use Acts 15 and

00:11:53.460 different texts, you know, the Jerusalem council to be able to, you know, biblically make their

00:11:57.960 case for that. But that's, that's pretty much, if that's what he means, he's just describing

00:12:02.400 Presbyterianism. That's what that is. I have a problem with Presbyterianism because again,

00:12:08.180 I believe that the highest ecclesiastical court in the land is a local church. So that there is

00:12:13.760 no presbytery or council or synod or pope or cardinal or anything that can actually with

00:12:20.760 ecclesiastical authority, tell a look outside of the local church, speak in and tell that local

00:12:26.160 church what they must do. I don't believe that that's biblical. I also don't like the idea that

00:12:33.180 in many presbytery, not, not in the CREC. So I appreciate that. Um, but in the PCA and I believe

00:12:38.420 the OPC as well. The teaching elder, the minister pastor who is on the presbytery, he's actually not

00:12:45.640 a member of his local church. Did you know that? So he's pastoring all these people who belong to

00:12:50.640 this church that he actually doesn't formally belong to. He's not a member of his own church

00:12:55.160 where he's preaching. He's a member of the presbytery. I don't like that. Houston, we have

00:13:02.200 a problem. I repeat, we have a problem. Our conference is about to sell out. I mean about

00:13:07.540 to sell out. We probably have about 75 to 100 seats left. Our venue holds about 525 to 550 seats,

00:13:16.140 and we currently have 450 people who are registered for this conference. The excitement

00:13:21.240 is tangible. A lot of people registered because they wanted to hit the early bird rate.

00:13:25.920 We're now at our normal rate, $130 for an adult, $50 for a kid who's 11 to 17 years old,

00:13:32.680 and kids 10 and under get in free. You can bring the whole family, but the problem is not that

00:13:36.960 we're going to raise the rate again. The problem is we're going to run out of tickets and we're

00:13:41.120 going to run out pretty fast. Again, we've got about 100 seats or less. 450 people six months out

00:13:47.880 are already registered for this conference. We don't want you to miss it. So to ensure that you

00:13:53.560 get to make it to this conference, you need to register not a month from now, not a week from

00:13:58.340 now, not tomorrow, but today. You want to be there for the Theonomy and Post-Millennialism Conference

00:14:04.320 May 5th, 6th, and 7th with James White, Joe Boot, Gary DeMar, Dale Partridge, and yours truly,

00:14:11.800 Joel Webbin. Go to rightresponseconference.com. Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.

00:14:18.320 It will sell out very soon. Thanks so much for listening, but real quick, before you go,

00:14:24.300 do us a small favor, take a moment, and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show.

00:14:29.180 This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.

00:14:36.980 Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - November 19, 2022

QUESTIONS - Are Multisite Churches Biblical？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript