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At the beginning of the year I wrote about my time in San Diego at Harbor’s 2009 Multisite Conference. The posts in the series can be found here, here, here and here. What I never wrote was my take on how multisite church planting could be implemented here.

There are several reasons why this never happened:

• I didn’t know what to write…I though it might be a bit presumptuous to say “this is what we are going to do.”
• I was plague by alot of spiritual oppression, which caused me to distrust folks around me including my session. This made me worry too much about external appearances and I was scared to write on the subject. Fortunately things have gotten better, as I spoke to more people about the issue.
• I stopped posting as frequently as I had been, and I just didn’t have the energy to write about such as tough topic when I had such a deep sense of being bogged down.

That being said don’t expect the final Multisite09 post to come anytime soon, but I promise that I am working on several posts dealing with similar subject matter.

This is Part IV of my examination of the Multisite 09 Conference.
Introduction
Part I: What Makes A Church A Church?
Part II Team Ministry
Part III Opportunities In The Multisite Model

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A great lesson that I was taught by my Advanced Speech Prof. was that you should always aim to double the positive feedback before you give any negative feedback.

I was really impressed with Harbor’s Multisite model, and I have written 3 post highlighting many of the benefits of Harbor’s model of planting. In this post I am going to examine some of the challenges that seem to, or might, accompany Harobr’s Multisite/Multi-congregational model.
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This is Part III of my examination of the Multisite 09 Conference.
Introduction
Part I: What Makes A Church A Church?
Part II Team Ministry

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1. Prevents Rushed Organization
The multisite/multicongregational (MSMC) model gives church plants the room to extended their organization time, to what is necessary for their given situation.
Doug Swagerty brought up the point that in many church planting situations church planters are on a tight schedule to become self supporting and self governing, in the PCA this means having locally elected elders. The MSMC model tries to remove the situation where a church would rush to elect people that should not be elders at that church. This seems to allows for a less forced and more organic organization, with tested leaders who rise to the surface. 


2. Team Ministry
As addressed in my previous post, I think the most prevalent form of ministry in the Bible is team ministry, and harbor leaves room for alot of team ministry.

3. Creates More Intimate Meeting with The Resources of a Larger Meeting
Most of Harbors sites are between 80 and 120 which means that, like many small churches people, feel more connected to everyone. There is also less need for very formal communication structures (an issue that City Reformed is wrestling with).
At the same time there is the ability to gather resources to do larger projects and impact more areas at the same time.

4.Better Avenues for Leadership
In most larger, or well established, churches there is a long road that needs to be taken to move from new member to leader, and there are fewer openings into leadership. On the other hand this longer process means that leaders have the time to be better equipped, and there is more time to test their skills. In a small church, or a church plant. The road is much shorter and there are more openings into leadership but the trust that can only be built up over a period of time is often negatively effected.
Harbors model takes the best of both paradigms. It allows for many openings but also creates a space where senior leaders can be slowly brought on board.

5.Resource Sharing
In Harbor’s model, they share what they call central services, this includes things such as printing, insurance, tax info, and many of the other administrative things that take up so much of a pastors time.

6. Accountability In Relationship
Maybe one of the most interesting opportunities that Harbor affords is the ability for there to be more accountability between people who know each very well. While many presbyteries on paper are meant to operate like this, when people only meet 5 or 6 times a year it takes many years for any deep relationships to develop. And as Dick Kaufmann pointed out most presbyteries see themselves as court first and church second.

This is Part II of my examination of the Multisite 09 Conference.
Introduction
Part I: What Makes A Church A Church?

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I will be speaking more in my next post about some of the benefits that a Multisite model affords. In this post I want to focus specifically on the benefits of doing ministry in teams.

Looking though the New Testament there are scarcely any examples of solo ministry. In fact there is overwhelming evidence that the pattern of ministry set up in the bible is team ministry.
Jesus first sends out the 12 in pairs of twos, Mark 6:7. Later he sends out the 72 in the same manor, Luke 10:1.

Peter and John are sent together to see the Samaritan work being done in Acts 8:14. In Acts 11, Paul and and Barnabas travel together to bring the offering to Jerusalem. In Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas are sent out as missionaries.

Upon closer examination we see that Philippians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians all come from not just Paul but from at least Paul and Timothy, and Silvanus in the case of 1 Thessalonians.
The Biblical evidence for full-time perpetual team ministry is overwhelming.

While all presbyterians at one level adhere to a team approach to ministry, most people would admit that the actual amount of teamwork on the day to day level of ministry varies widely.

In the last year working at City Reformed I have come to appreciate how active all of our elders are, but I have especially appreciated the way that Matt, our Senior Pastor, and I have been able to work together on a full-time basis.

Harbor’s model of many pastors serving in many locations, creates an environment of accountability and encouragement. If the Biblical pattern of ministry is team ministry, Harbor has developed a very interesting way of fostering this type of ministry. They have also adopted the practice of hiring full-time interns, who are either ordained or working toward ordination, creates a place for young men like myself to gain invaluable experience in ministry.

Do you think that team ministry is something that is important to cultivate in your local context?

Why do you think there are so many Biblical examples of groups of people ministering in the New Testament?

If you know of team ministry happening, what are some of the advantages or disadvantages of working in teams?

As a basic introduction to the topic of Multisite churches, the simplest definition is–one church that meets in several different locations. In the Harbor model, which they call Multisite and Multi-congregational, they have 6 pastors preaching at 10 different locations scattered around San Diego.

Many people might read that summation and say: “well thats not one church, thats 10 churches” But Harbor has one board of elders, and one role of membership.
The challenge of Harbors model is that it is so different from what churches have done in the last 100 years that it doesn’t seem to make sense.

The question is what makes a church a church?

During a breakout session, Dick Kaufmann recalled that when they were organizing Harbor that they were wrestling with this city-wide model of church. Dick said that he called Ed Clowney, and asked for some advice, and Clowney’s response was that he wrote a section of his book The Church for situations like Harbor’s.
When I got home I grab my copy of the book and tried to figure out what section Dick was referring to, after flipping around for about an hour I came to the section:“Perspectives on the church: local and universal” In that section, found on page 111-112, Clowney concludes with the following remarks:

“How can one term[“church”] be used with such flexibility? Simply because it is no the geographical size or location that defines it. Even those committed to local-church definition much ask which is the local church in the New Testament. Is it the house church, or is it the city church? We do better to conclude that the church can be expressed at more than one level: in smaller or larger fellowships, even in gatherings like that in Jerusalem (Acts 15), representing the whole church, in order to deal with issues that concern all.”

Clowney’s conclusion comes from looking at several texts in the new testament including Romans 16:3-5; Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15, Philemon 1:2, and Acts 8:1.

• That “Paul mentions the house church in the same breath with the churches of the gentiles, or of Asia.”
• That “House churches are found in places where city churches are addressed (Rome Laodicea, Colosee)”
• That “the term ‘church’ may be applied not only to house and city fellowships, where the members could meet together, but also to the church in a province (Acts 9:31; 15:3)”

Do you agree with Clowney’s conclusions?

How does this effect your perception of what makes a church a church?

Does anyone know of any examples of this wider perspective on the church being used in the PCA outside of Harbor?

Over the next few days I’m going to be writing several posts examining my experience at the Multisite 2009 conference hosted by Harbor PCA Church in San Diego, CA. The focus of the conference was Multisite church planting.
Many folks knew that I was heading out there last week, and many people have been curious as to what went on out there, and what impact it is going to have on my ministry in Pittsburgh. To that end, I am going to be writing, at least, five posts focusing on the following areas:

What makes a church a church? – Defining church in a multisite model

Team Ministry in the multisite model

Assessing Multisite Models – Part I – Opportunities

Assessing Multisite Models – Part II – Challenges

Multisite Ministry In Pittsburgh?

For those unfamiliar with multisite churches I would recommend that you read the brief outline by Dick Kaufmann posted here. I would also recommend you look at the short powerpoint presentation by Doug Swagerty examining the different models that are commonly called “multisite” (In my posts I will be focusing primarily on habor’s multisite+multicongregational model )