QUESTIONS - Are Multisite Churches Biblical？
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Toxicity
4
sentences flagged
Hate speech
11
sentences flagged
Summary
Pastor Driscoll was one of the most controversial preachers of the 20th century. In part because of his controversial views on men and women, many have wondered why he was removed from the pulpit. In this episode, we discuss why this happened.
Transcript
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Our multi-site, multi-congregational church campuses with the same elder board and in-person
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pastors, not video screens, a biblically permissible alternative to independent church
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plants? No. Thanks for the question. No, it's not biblically permissible. No.
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For one, it's just, it's a bad move. Mark Driscoll, I think, had some problems. I think he had a lot
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of great stuff too. I think part of the reason that he got fired is because he flew a little
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too close to the sun and in part because of his views on men and women, the whole thing we've
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been talking about in this episode. Um, Mark Driscoll actually would, um, address women in
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their sin and, uh, and affirmed biblical masculinity in a lot of really good ways. I think at certain
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points he got, um, perverse. I think he, he went across the line and, um, but a lot of it was
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really good. A lot of it was really good. And, um, I think part of the reason that he was ultimately
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removed was because, um, he really made some serious mistakes. I think part of the reason
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he was removed also is because he did some things that were really good, like addressing the sin of
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women, and they came back with a vengeance. And I think part of the reason he was removed is because
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of the multi-site model. Think about this for a second, all right? Since we're talking about
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consummation and covenant and all these kinds of things and marriage and men and women,
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imagine this as an illustration, all right? Imagine did, well, it's like pre-Minactra.
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With the king on the first night sleeps with...
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who has exclusive conjugal rights to these 12 brides.
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each of them an individual man who is their husband
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and performs them well, is a loving, good husband.
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But then there's this 13th man who sleeps with all of them.
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another man swoops in. That's not going to go well. What you're going to have is these 12
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husbands are going to want to kill that man. And rightfully so. Rightfully so.
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Yeah, they're the husband. They're doing the work. They're caring for the wife and the children,
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the family. And it is their right to be able to be sexually intimate with their wife.
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Now, that's kind of a vivid illustration, which is in my mind because of the nature
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of everything we've been talking about in this video.
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But I think in some sense, that's kind of what the multi-site campus does.
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You had 47, I think it was, 47 different elders, campus elders throughout the Mars Hill empire.
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And these men are doing the marriage counseling with every couple that's getting married.
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These pastors are, if somebody dies, they're performing the funeral.
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They're doing the grief counseling with a mother and father that lost their son.
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You know, they're doing all these different things.
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They're the ones who are doing all the pastoral work, caring for the families in their church.
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But then another man swoops in on Sunday morning to consummate, you know, the preaching is given to another man.
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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.
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they're doing all the pastoral work, but some other man swoops in Sunday morning for the
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preaching. And you wonder why Mark Driscoll ultimately had all of his elders turn against
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him. And I understand what the record stated that he was harsh, he was quarrelsome, he was all
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these things. And I think he was some of those things, some of those things, although there
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are two sides to every story. But for sure, even if Mark Driscoll was a saint, if he was a perfect
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saint, I still think, maybe not guaranteed, but I still think, this is my suspicion, that there
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would be still a very high likelihood that his elders eventually would have removed him, outvoted
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him, and removed him, even if he wasn't quarrelsome, even if he wasn't harsh, even if none of those
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things were true. Why? Because at the end of the day, pastors preach. Pastors preach.
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and to be a pastor, a spiritual father in a congregation, an ecclesiastical father,
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caring for these people and spending time all week long, knowing the needs of the people,
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knowing what struggles they're going through, knowing what questions they're asking,
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knowing what spiritual direction they require. And then here's your chief opportunity to feed
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the sheep. This is the climax, the pinnacle of sheep feeding, the Lord's day hour,
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preaching the word. And you don't get to do it. Some other guy swoops in week after week
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after week. I don't know about you, but yeah, I would start to probably really struggle with
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resentment towards that guy. And if that guy got even close to being disqualified,
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I'd be hopping on that like white on rice. I would be saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah. He is quarrelsome. Yeah. I think he is quarrelsome. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.
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I think he is disqualified. Did, did I hear somebody? Yeah. I think, you know, I think
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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
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bad model. Um, but I also think more than that, not just that it's foolish or, or a non, not
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strategic. I really do think that it's not biblical, that it's actually, um, not biblical
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for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is because we're called to disciple
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and train people up. That's one of the roles of a pastor. And we need to be church planting. We
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need to be planting churches, not campuses, not just expanding empires, but actually planting
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other churches. I think that the multi-site thing is kind of like globalism. It's the
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evangelical equivalent in the church world of globalism. No, no, no. We want nationalism. We
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want independent sovereign nations. And we want many of them, not one big George Soros global
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economic forum, right? We don't want that. We want individual nations. And so too, we want
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individual churches. The highest, I believe that the Bible teaches the highest ecclesiastical court
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on earth is the local church. It is the local church and that local churches should be independent
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and autonomous. And then that gets into the question of not just who is the church,
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That's the people of God, those who are regenerate, but also what is the church?
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And the church is many things and, you know, the called out ones, ecclesia, you know, but
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And so wherever you have an assembly, that is an assembly of the saints on the Lord's
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day for the right administering of the ordinary means of grace.
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Some of you guys probably don't know this, but I'm not just a no multiple campuses guy.
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Even in just the administering of the Lord's Supper,
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is we'd be taking instead of one loaf of bread, you'd have two loaves of bread. Instead of one
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table of the Lord, you would have two tables of the Lord, one at 9am, one at 11am. And instead
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of the family of God coming together and bellying up to the Lord's one table to eat of the Lord's
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one loaf of bread, we divide the family. Even if there aren't factions emotionally among us,
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there is a literal physical time divide where half of the church shows up before and the other
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half shows up after. We're not made one. We're not partaking of the Lord's Supper together in unity,
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but we're actually partaking of half of the supper with half of the church and then half of the
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supper with half of the church. It's two Ecclesiastes. It's two churches. It's two gatherings.
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And so, yeah, I think that that's just in terms of time. But when you say it's not just two
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different times, two different groups of people, but in one place, but now you're talking about
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two different cities and two different buildings and two different communities with different
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campus pastors. Still, yeah, one board altogether, but three of them are here and four of them are
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here. That's just different churches. I think it's just foolish, absolutely foolish
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to do anything but to cut those churches off in a most positive way possible, but cut them off,
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release them, release those elders, release those congregants and say, you're free. You are free.
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You don't have to continue the brand. We're not starting Starbucks and franchising out.
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We're planting churches. It's radically different. All right. That's all I got for today. Nathan,
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let's go ahead and one more time. Let's bring up, actually, you know what? Was there one more
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question? That's a short one. Right. Well, yeah. In-person pastors. Oh yeah. You're right. In-person
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pastors. So there would be an in-person pastor preaching. And so there would have to, but it's
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not the same pastor. I guess I was imagining, because I know some churches where the guy
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literally like, we'll get on the helicopter and fly to the other campus, you know, in between
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services and go preach, but let's assume it's, it's, it's different men at different campuses
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preaching live. Um, yeah, at that point you're just Presbyterian. Yeah. So at that point,
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that's good. That's way, way better than what I was saying. And let's, I'm assuming that each of
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these churches in terms of their giving have separate accounts. Cause that would be another
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thing. Um, you know, different financial accounts that if this church chooses to be generous,
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that church that was generous benefits from that generosity. And it doesn't just go into a pot
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you know, a pool between a dozen churches or something like that, but assuming that they're
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independent financially and they each have a pastor who is preaching live and a team of elders.
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If it's all those things, then they are separate churches. And the fact that the elders still
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combined form one board, that's not, that's not multi-site. That's, that's just, that's just
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Presbyterianism. So yeah, I'm okay with Presbyterianism. I'm a Baptist, so I wouldn't do
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that still but uh that's that's what every presbyterian is is independent churches but
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each of the pastors actually sits on a presbytery and that's regional local and then you know it
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goes higher and higher and higher so you have the session of elders you know and you have ruling
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and bifurcation ruling elders and teaching elders and sometimes there's three different elders
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depending on what presbytery you're a part of if it's opc or pca but you have elders a session of
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elders multiple elders at a local church but then the teaching elder a minister a pastor from each
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of these local churches sits on a presbytery and they, you know, they would use Acts 15 and
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different texts, you know, the Jerusalem council to be able to, you know, biblically make their
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case for that. But that's, that's pretty much, if that's what he means, he's just describing
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Presbyterianism. That's what that is. I have a problem with Presbyterianism because again,
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I believe that the highest ecclesiastical court in the land is a local church. So that there is
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no presbytery or council or synod or pope or cardinal or anything that can actually with
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ecclesiastical authority, tell a look outside of the local church, speak in and tell that local
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church what they must do. I don't believe that that's biblical. I also don't like the idea that
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in many presbytery, not, not in the CREC. So I appreciate that. Um, but in the PCA and I believe
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the OPC as well. The teaching elder, the minister pastor who is on the presbytery, he's actually not
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a member of his local church. Did you know that? So he's pastoring all these people who belong to
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this church that he actually doesn't formally belong to. He's not a member of his own church
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where he's preaching. He's a member of the presbytery. I don't like that. Houston, we have
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a problem. I repeat, we have a problem. Our conference is about to sell out. I mean about
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to sell out. We probably have about 75 to 100 seats left. Our venue holds about 525 to 550 seats,
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and we currently have 450 people who are registered for this conference. The excitement
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is tangible. A lot of people registered because they wanted to hit the early bird rate.
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We're now at our normal rate, $130 for an adult, $50 for a kid who's 11 to 17 years old,
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and kids 10 and under get in free. You can bring the whole family, but the problem is not that
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we're going to raise the rate again. The problem is we're going to run out of tickets and we're
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going to run out pretty fast. Again, we've got about 100 seats or less. 450 people six months out
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are already registered for this conference. We don't want you to miss it. So to ensure that you
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get to make it to this conference, you need to register not a month from now, not a week from
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now, not tomorrow, but today. You want to be there for the Theonomy and Post-Millennialism Conference
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May 5th, 6th, and 7th with James White, Joe Boot, Gary DeMar, Dale Partridge, and yours truly,
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Joel Webbin. Go to rightresponseconference.com. Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.
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It will sell out very soon. Thanks so much for listening, but real quick, before you go,
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