My generation of church leaders has found great success in
the establishment and growth of multi-site churches. The Leadership Network has
documented
more than 5,000 multi-site churches in North America. Many of these
congregations broadcast a sermon by a central preacher to the satellite campuses;
at least one that I know of uses an internet-based metronome to control the
tempo and timing of the worship music to best coordinate the live broadcast of
that sermon.
The collapse of the Mars Hill network is, in a way, sad. I
have at least one dear friend who has lost his ministerial position and will
certainly be in a state of uncertainty and trouble because of the breakup of
Mars Hill. I am sad for Driscoll and for his family, and for the thousands that
will go through a period of mourning and transition as they (hopefully) look
for a new church home. We should never celebrate the collapse of a ministry
that was proclaiming salvation through Christ (Luke 9:49-50).
The breakup of the Mars Hill model reveals something else
that I’m interested in: the relationship between the sustainability of a
congregation or network of congregations and a single minister. There can be
little doubt that Mars Hill Church’s decline has been directly related to
Driscoll’s departure: attendance, giving, and momentum have all significantly
declined since his announced leave of absence in August. Mars Hill, as it had
existed, was unsustainable without the singular personality of Driscoll. It was
the preacher’s personality, delivery, and activity that kept the organization not
only thriving, but also alive. Once that personality was removed, the Network
had no hope of staying together.
This (relatively) new model of ministry is the consequence
of our departure from denominationalism. I can only competently speak of the
Southern Baptist Convention and its offshoot organizations (BGCT, CBF, etc.),
but I suspect that the situation in the PCA/PCUSA divide, the Anglican
Communion, and the Lutheran organizations are similar. The Southern Baptist Convention
is even now deciding
how to fund that denomination’s Cooperative Program in the face of
mega-churches being able to count their own missions work as CP giving.
As denominations crack and splinter over (important) social
issues and react to new bureaucratic and management paradigms, large,
multi-site churches are able to address missions and ministry directly. These
congregations, though, are often built on the personality and preaching of one
single minister. As these congregations invest in missions, buildings, and
ministries of increasing scale and complexity, they increasingly risk
catastrophic collapse if their lead pastor departs.
My primary concern is the congregational model of church
leadership. The saga of Mars Hill’s collapse reads (at least in hindsight) as a
story of the consolidation of power into a smaller and smaller group. Even
though the staff and membership of the Network was growing numerically,
authority over institutional decisions was placed into the hands of a shrinking
group of Driscoll’s supporters. Congregational authority was diminished in two
ways: the scale of the Network rendered the distance between a believer and
institutional power too great to be meaningful to the member and the sheer
quantity of worshippers reduced that authority so much that a single believer
had little to do with the leadership of the church. Secondly, with Driscoll
managing the entire network in a hardline authoritarian way, the congregation
was effectively left out of ownership of the congregation, thus relegating them
to some sort of “consumer” status.
If a church is to be congregationally led, that is, if the
autonomy of the local church is to have any meaning in the 21st
century, then believers must be given and must take responsibility for the
institution itself. The pastors are certainly responsible for the spiritual
care and leadership of the people, but power to make institutional decisions
must not reside in the Senior Pastor or even in the Pastoral Staff. The
congregation, whether through a committee structure or through a strong
emphasis on lay leadership, must be cultivated to engage the work of being the
church so that, regardless of pastoral leadership, the church may thrive.
In this way the congregation reflects what Baptists have
believed for generations about the Priesthood of the Believer and the Autonomy
of the Local Congregation. Our churches should not break apart when a pastor leaves;
there should be such a strong sense of the congregation as the Body of Christ
that, ministry, mission, and work exist independently and sustainably in
partnership with preaching and pastoral leadership.
I worry about Pinelake and other multi-site mega-churches.
When the charismatic pastor/preacher departs, who will fill the void?
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