Multi-site churches

[agedman]

And your church is a exact model of the earliest churches of the NT era? How about sharing the criteria and properties that you think, make a church a proper church.

What my church is or is not as what is exampled by the earliest NT church is not the question, nor should it be brought into the discussion. It is merely a distraction.

The question of this thread has to do with the assembly of believers who meet in single location in which the leadership is not selected by THAT assembly and to which the leadership is not held accountable in all manners of faith and practice to THAT assembly.

There is actual Scriptures that state the qualifications of the leadership of the LOCAL assembly, and there is never a time when it included multiple assemblies from different geographical areas which meet in worship. For example: The church of Corinth had no authority over the church of Ephesus.

The ONLY time a church was considered OVER the others was that of the Apostles church in Jerusalem. Even then, there is not one Scriptures that express that the Apostles were "over" the local assemblies in general. That they were is assumed because of Paul's traveling to Jerusalem to present a question to them for their consensus.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

The question of this thread has to do with the assembly of believers who meet in single location in which the leadership is not selected by THAT assembly and to which the leadership is not held accountable in all manners of faith and practice to THAT assembly.

As I pointed out in my previous post, that isn't a biblical model. The church at Corinth (see my post) disproves your premise.

 

[quantumfaith]

What my church is or is not as what is exampled by the earliest NT church is not the question, nor should it be brought into the discussion. It is merely a distraction.

The question of this thread has to do with the assembly of believers who meet in single location in which the leadership is not selected by THAT assembly and to which the leadership is not held accountable in all manners of faith and practice to THAT assembly.

There is actual Scriptures that state the qualifications of the leadership of the LOCAL assembly, and there is never a time when it included multiple assemblies from different geographical areas which meet in worship. For example: The church of Corinth had no authority over the church of Ephesus.

The ONLY time a church was considered OVER the others was that of the Apostles church in Jerusalem. Even then, there is not one Scriptures that express that the Apostles were "over" the local assemblies in general. That they were is assumed because of Paul's traveling to Jerusalem to present a question to them for their consensus.

It is not a distraction, it is a statement and a question.

 

[preachinjesus]

The "house church" were local assemblies.

The church in the earliest form moved from house to house but moved as a complete assembly. There is no account of multiple house meetings at the same time by multiple groups.

This is simply not true. There were independent meetings in various houses at different times. I'll trace the evidence for you in a bit, but no reasonable scholar doing work in this period thinks this is true. The churches across the Mediterranean region had differing approaches, but the house church remained the primary congregating form for the first two hundred years of Christianity. No buildings were built prior to AD 300.

Furthermore, the "house church" is NOT the same as what is being presented in this thread. Rather, the folks are meeting as separate assemblies bound merely by electronics and modern constructs that are not Scriptural.

This is an erroneous understanding of what we're talking about. Though I don't believe you can find the modern instantiation of multi-sites directly in the NT, the idea of multiple assemblies as part of a larger regional/city church is clearly evident in the NT. Most modern forms of worship and ecclesiology are several steps beyond the NT ecclesiological presentation. That's fine, there is no singular ecclesiological form, of leadership and assembly, presented in the NT.

Secondly, there is no evidence that the NT churches such as the Ephesian church or Corinth church were not local assemblies gathered in one place.

For instance, the Ephesian assembly hall is well documented here.

Wel, one this isn't a scholarly source but a tourist site. Secondly, I read the article and there isn't a basilica present until (quoting the piece) His Basilica was built in the 6th century by Justinian I.

I'm not sure what your point is here. However, there are few surviving Christian structures from before AD 300. None of which bear the marks of large assembly halls.

No place in the Scriptures is the assembly divided into "house churches" meeting on the Lord's day to worship with some pastor or their staff running from place to place.

I disagree with this, but likely for different reasons than you're anticipating. Perhaps too much of our current ecclesiological methods are speaking into how the NT expression of ecclesiology is understood here. The churches in the NT didn't just meet on the "Lord's Day" but throughout the week as well. They celebrated the eucharist and received instruction during these times. Pastoral staff, or elders (depending on which author we're reading), were part of these assemblies.

 

[JohnDeereFan]

If someone wants to meet with a pastor for pastoral counseling, they can definitely do so. We simply prefer and recommend seeing someone with a degree in Christian counseling, our counselors all have masters and above and are certified Christian counselors.

So, your pastor is not qualified to counsel???

Why is pastoral counseling so important for you? I don't see it in Scripture as a requirement of ministry or qualification for ministers.

Because it's one of the roles of the pastor.

I think our definitions of pastor are different.

Clearly.

We have campus pastors

Then why not just make them the pastor and drop all the franchise nonsense?

i.e. children's pastor, student pastor, adult pastor, etc)

...just like the Bible talks about, in verse....er, what verse was that again?

Our teaching team is composed of ordained men who are pastors.

Then why not just make one of them the pastor and drop all the franchise nonsense?

I've explained myself above. Please reference it.

So then, if there's no difference, why the franchise model?

There is no uniform biblical understanding of ecclesiological formation or leadership function. Indeed, one can trace multiple forms of ecclesiological expression in the NT and early post-apostolic period. One of the challenges with the NT descriptions of early Christian ecclesiology is that these churches were experiencing massive shifts in paradigm focus and dealing with ethnic divides along with false teachers. Ecclesiology was in process of being developed and didn't really get settled for a long time, beyond the first century. So I don't see a mandate from the NT about one form of ecclesiology.

That's odd, because the rest of us have no problem finding it.

No I'm not.

Yes, you are. When you describe an aspect of evangelism as being part of the worship service, then you're confusing two separate and distinct things.

I think we simply disagree about the nature of the pastorate and responsibilities/assumptions therein. We have a campus pastor at every campus who is responsible for that campus and the ministry there.

Then why the franchise model? Why not just make one of those men pastor?