This lecture was presented at the January 14, 2008 meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Baptist Principles and Heritate held at Plantation Road Baptist Church in Roanoke, Virginia.
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“ VERY Thought provoking! ” Thank you for a very thought provoking presentation.
Many of the dangers you point out are very real indeed, especially the ones which equate business tactics to the running of the church.
One aspect I would mention however is, that some of the difficulty in 'pastoring' people over a multi-site church could also be experienced in a church that has a very large congregation. The Pastor would not necessarily know all the members personally or even have met all of them. The many elders in such sized churches meeting the needs of the vaious 'groups' in the congregation.
If also a church grows too large for its present premises and really feels the need for the preaching of a particular gifted Senior Pastor, cannot the multi-campus approach be used, as long as the Senior Pastor visits them all in rotation. ie the Bethlehem Baptist, Minnesota, scheme.
I do not believe though that this can be extended outside of very defined limits. eg. City limits.
Thanks once again for such a stimulating subject.
(I have no connection to Bethlehem Baptist, I just listen to some sermons on the internet)
Scott McMahan (1/16/2008)
from Internet
“ Recommended-good investigation of timely topic ” I recommend that people listen to this good investigation of a timely topic. The Seacoast church came to my town recently, blanketing it with direct mail marketing, and I knew nothing about it at all. I found their web site, something I recommend anyone do if they see one of these franchise churches, and I picked a sermon almost at random which had the speaker saying that Jesus took one for us on the cross like a real man. This presentation explains that statement, because these churches deprecate any sort of theological soundness and emphasize modern business techniques. The presentation, which is full of quotes from a book by the franchise church movement (including Seacoast) is an eye opener with a lot of good background details.
Jeff Riddle is the founding Minister of Christ Reformed Baptist Church. Pastor Jeff has over 30 years of practical ministry experience and has previously served as a missionary in Budapest, Hungary and as Pastor of two Baptist churches in Virginia. Pastor Riddle is a graduate...
