This post has been reposted here from Kevin’s Blog.

Why I Have Cooled On Multisite

I have been back and forth on the multisite question. When I first heard of the idea years ago it sounded crazy. “Pastors preaching by a recorded video or by a live feed? That’s hardly church.” But as I studied and thought about the issue more I came to understand why some churches chose multisite. It can steward the talents of the preacher. It can save money. It allows a church to get bigger (in one sense) without getting bigger (in another sense). And it gives you another beachhead for ministry.

With these positives I was happy to see our church explore the option of multisite over a year ago. Call me indecisive, but I’ve now swung back in the other direction. I can’t prove multisite is wrong. In fact, it may be the best option in some situations, especially as a temporary measure. But something I read from Martyn Lloyd-Jones cemented in my mind a crucial weakness of most multisite approaches. New technologies and new methods always have trade-offs. Sometimes the pluses outweigh the negatives. And as I think about it more, multisite has one huge negative I don’t want to live with unless I absolutely have to.

All along my hope was that multisite might be possible by a “circuit-rider” approach whereby I (or whomever) would still preach in person at each location. Some multisite churches use that approach, but I don’t know of any personally. Other multisites use different local preachers from week to week. But most use some kind of video, either pre-recorded or streamed. It seems that the long-term strategy for a growing church committed to a primary preaching pastor involves video at some point. I don’t think such an approach is sinful, but as I’ve reflected on it more, it feels like a real blow to the dynamic nature of preaching.

Lloyd-Jones explained this for me:

Another element to which I attach importance is that the preacher while speaking should in a sense be deriving something from his congregation. There are those present in the congregation who are spiritually-minded people, and filled with the Spirit, and they make their contribution to the occasion…The preacher–though he has prepared, and prepared carefully–because of this element of spiritual freedom is still able to receive something from the congregation, and does so. There is an interplay, action and response, and this often makes a very vital difference. (Preaching and Preachers, 84)

Later he adds:

The preacher then is a man who for these reasons and in these ways makes contact with the people who are listening to him. Far from being detached, there is rapport. This comes our in his voice, in his manner, in his whole approach; everything about him shows that there is this intimacy of contact between the preacher and his congregation. (90)

So upon further reflection, I just can’t see myself sacrificing the dynamic Holy Spirit give-and-take of the preaching event unless it seemed like every other option had been exhausted. I want to see the people I’m preaching to, even if there are lots of them to see. I want to be at the back of the sanctuary to shake hands, even if I can’t shake every hand and may forget too many names. Most of all, I want to know when I’m connecting and when I’m not, when I said something funny or something dumb, when they are crying or when they are sleeping, when I sense God at work and when I feel that God has done something wonderful in our midst as we worshiped together. I want that rapport, that connection, that freedom, that interplay which cannot come by video.

My heart is not hard to multisite, much less is it hard to those who use it. There may be situations or seasons where multisite is the best of several less than perfect options. But for the privilege of live preaching to live people in the same living space in the shared presence of our living God, I have cooled on the idea.

It was an audacious project. When completed, the new church building would hold more than 5,000 worshipers in a single service. In addition to several balconies and several meeting rooms, the church had a full basement with a lecture hall large enough for 900 adults. Also in the basement was enough space for 1000 children to attend Sunday school. There were, of course, bathrooms, a kitchen, office space, many classrooms and designated areas for special groups and special events. It was a big building and building it was a giant undertaking.  Some complained the plans were too big and the project unnecessary. How could such a bricks and mortar project be launched in the name of “ministry”?  A fair question, but the young pastor saw things differently. He had no intention of building the church to be “our nest, and then to be idle.” Instead, he viewed all the money to be raised and the beams to be hoisted as a means for mission. “We must go from strength to strength,” he remarked during the fundraising campaign, “and be a missionary church, and never rest until, not only this neighborhood, but our country, of which it is said that some parts are as dark as India, shall be enlightened with the gospel.”  He saw the bricks and mortar not as a distraction from real gospel ministry but as a catalyst for it.

Exceedingly Abundantly More

The building of the new church took several years of planning, fundraising, and construction to complete. The cost was significant, and as often happens, more than the congregation originally imagined. But almost five years after the original idea had been  approved the growing church held its first services in the new building. In the church book from that first meeting the pastor penned a humble reminder of the Lord’s faithfulness. At the bottom of the declaration he signed his name, as did the elders, the deacons, and many church members. “We the undersigned members of the church…” the paragraph began. It continued on with a request, repentance, and new resolve:

[We] desire with overflowing hearts to make known and record the lovingkindness of our faithful God. We asked in faith, but the Lord has exceeded our desires, for not only was the whole sum given us, but far sooner than we had looked for it. Truly the Lord is good and worthy to be praised. We are ashamed of ourselves that we ever doubted him; and we pray that as a Church, and as individuals, we may be enabled to trust in the Lord at all times with confidence, so that in quietness we may possess our souls. In the name of our God we set up our banner.Then Spurgeon dreamt of all that God could accomplish if He would visit “this place” in great power.

Given their acknowledged dependence on the Lord, it was fitting that the first service at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, held on Monday morning March 18, 1861, was a prayer service. On Wednesday afternoon Charles Haddon Spurgeon, their young pastor, preached his first sermon in London’s newest church building. On the following Sunday, Spurgeon delivered the first Lord’s Day sermon at the Tabernacle, preaching from 2 Chronicles 5:13-14. Again he emphasized the spiritual work that was to be done in and through their new physical space. He asked that God would send “the fire of his Spirit here, and the minister will be more and more lost in the Master. You will come to think less of the speaker and more of the truth spoken; the individual will be swamped, the words uttered will rise above everything.”

We shall have the lecture and we shall see in this place young men devoting themselves to God; we shall find ministers raised up and trained and sent forth to carry the sacred fire to other parts of the globe…Through us the whole earth shall receive benedictions; if God shall bless us, He will make us a blessing to multitudes of others. Let God but send down the fire and the biggest sinners in the neighbourhood will be converted; those who live in dens of infamy will be changed…dry bones be raised and clothed afresh and hearts of stone be turned to flesh.

The building was not about bigger and better but about blessings and dry bones.

What We Know and What We Want

Let me tell you some things we know. We know that our church is not the Metropolitan Tabernacle (and your pastor is no Charles Spurgeon!). But we know the same God. And we know the same gospel must be proclaimed.  I have no illusions of being Spurgeon and no plans for our church to grow from 500 to 5000.  But I believe God wants us to have the same desire for the same fire.  We want at URC what God’s people have always wanted. We want God to bless us that we might be a blessing.  We long to see sinners saved by God’s free grace. We aim to raise up pastors and missionaries to serve near and far. We want to see dorms and apartments converted. We want the dry bones of students and internationals to live. We want the stony hearts of teenagers and children, and of colleagues and neighbors, to be turned to flesh. We want a church where the good news of justification by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone to the glory of God alone is preached boldly and gladly to as many as the Lord brings.

We want children nurtured in the word of God. We want to make disciples and teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded. We want to shepherd wisely and faithfully the flock that God has entrusted to us. We want to cultivate a caring, loving communion of saints that use their gifts to build up the body and fan out into the city and on to the campus week after week to promote Christ in word and deed. We want to keep doing the things we do well, and grow in the things we can do better, all to the glory of God, by the power of the Spirit, for the joy of all peoples. We want to help one another know Christ, serve Christ, tell of Christ, and live for Christ. And we want the space and the seats and the parking to do all this on whatever scale God chooses for us.

Keep Banging

When the prophet Elisha was about to die, King Joash went down to see him one last time.  Elisha mustered up enough strength to give a final set of strange instructions.  “Take a bow and arrows,” the dying prophet said. “Draw the bow. Open the window eastward and shoot.” So the king shot. 

Then Elisha explained that the arrows represented the Lord’s arrows of victory over the Syrians. He told Joash to take the arrows and strike the ground with them. Elisha knew, and Joash probably understood, that each blow to the ground would mean another victory for the Lord and for Israel.  Joash only hit the ground three times. Elisha was furious. “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times” (2 Kings 13:19). The king had asked for too little.

It is possible to ask the Lord for wrong things. It is possible we ask the Lord for the wrong reasons. But if we ask with the right heart and toward the right end, we cannot ask for too much.

These are exciting times at URC. The Lord has seen fit to bring new people and new opportunities. None of us knows what the next opportunity will be, but we want to be ready when it comes. That means each one of us must pray for God to do more with us, among us, and through us than we ask or imagine. Let’s strike our arrows on the ground five or six times together. In other words, let’s not be afraid of big numbers, either for the church’s target or for your personal pledge. I’m fully convinced the Lord can enable us to raise more money than we think is possible—if we go after the goal in his way and for his glory. So let’s not ask for too little.  And most importantly, let us move forward in faith so that when God surprises us with his grace we will not look back and be ashamed that we doubted. In the name of God we set up our banner.