Going Multi, Part 6

Is Multi Biblical? Contd.

2. A unity of teaching
Does this really make a church? As Matt Chandler puts it,

After studying the issue, we decided to go multi-site. Yet we still have some serious concerns and questions about the multi-site idea even as we participate in it. 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?

The biblical instructions about the role of elders would indicate that elders in situ are to teach their congregations:

This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you… He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:5-9)

The average Joe might prefer to listen to a Driscoll or a Virgo than to me, and technology now means that they can, but is that necessarily healthy? Or biblically appropriate?

A consideration of this point and the previous one might drive us towards the conclusion that generally our churches should be small, and pastored and preached to by elders who know the congregation as a father knows his family.


3. A unity of philosophy of ministry
Again, this would seem a necessary but not sufficient totem of church identity. A whole movement or network of churches can share a philosophy of ministry, but that does not make them one church.


4. Very significant clusters of relationships that are biblically life-giving and involve all of the "one another" commands of the Bible
I think most of us would say “Amen” to this, but how many multi churches actually manage to pull it off? And is there the danger that in pursuing this we end up with a fragmentation of the church rather than an all-together-ness?

It does seem that in the NT whole churches met together, and that to some extent at least it was this meeting-together-ness that defined the church. It is in Acts and 1 Corinthians that we are given the most details about how the church met, and there it is epi to auto (in the same place):

1 Cor 11:18-20
For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.

1 Cor 14:23
If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

Acts 2:44
And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

Acts 5:12
Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico.

Acts 6:1-2
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Acts 15:22
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

So it would appear that in Jerusalem and Corinth the whole congregation gathered together. The Jerusalem church was presumably a large one, while the church at Corinth seems to have been small (judging by Paul’s comment to the Romans [16:23], written from Corinth that, “Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you.” Archaeological evidence suggests that even the larger Corinthian home would have been unable to accommodate more than 70 people). If this is the case, then small groups are only part of the answer, and not the whole story.

But it is debateable as to how much we can read in to the Acts accounts of the Jerusalem church gathering together. The data is limited and hard to be definitive about.

For instance, what does the Acts 2:46 description of the church “attending the temple together” mean? Did the Jerusalem church really all meet together in the temple? Surely the temple authorities would not have allowed believers to meet together; certainly not for what we would recognize as Christian worship. The argument could be made that this might be language used in a similar way to how we might say, “I met with the church” if we happened to bump into ten church members at the shops. However, whatever went on in their meeting together, that they did meet together was in some way defining for the Jerusalem church.

It would seem very odd to dispute that when Acts 2:1 records, “they were all together in one place” it means anything other than they were all together in one place. The similarity of this phrase to that in Acts 5:12, “they were all together in Solomon’s Portico” [NIV: “all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade”] is a clear indication that the Jerusalem church did indeed continue to meet all together, at the same time and in the same place, until the persecution broke out, even if they were not having a ‘worship meeting’.

Of course, the question that must then be asked is to what degree the meeting habits of the Jerusalem church are prescriptive or merely descriptive. To me, the evidence from Corinth, and Acts 15:22 (after the persecution associated with Stephen) clearly suggests a pattern of the whole church meeting all together at the same time and in the same place that was normative in the NT churches.