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So we’re getting involved in a church here in Dahlonega named Christ Family Church. It’s quite phenomenal to find a church we can call home after coming back to Georgia. While we attended some nice ones in Lawrenceville, one of them was too focused on tradition and the other was too focused on its members (although it was trying to change that and become more missional). In Dahlonega, CFC is solidly biblical and missional. Just because they’re so concise, here are the vision and distinctions of the church:

Missional

We focus our times together on building up believers and encouraging one another to take the Good News of salvation into the community, region, and world.

Family-Integrated

We place high value on the health of families, and our corporate meetings are multi- generational in that children remain together with families in the meetings to allow and encourage families to function and grow together.

Covenant Membership

Covenant membership involves all members’ commitment to be subject to one another for the sake of the integrity and spiritual growth of the Church. It is both a solemn and joyful matter—a deep agreement between regenerated believers that welcomes discipline for the sake of the greater good of sanctification.

Expositional Preaching

We, in our corporate presentation of Bible texts, will deal exegetically with each passage, taking as our main point for the sermon the main point of the text and attending to each issue presented in that text.

Reformed Southern Baptist

God, with absolute sovereignty, accomplishes the salvation of his people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and for the glory of God alone. He uses his people as His means of spreading the gospel of eternal salvation; we, therefore, being Southern Baptists, cooperate with other churches in supporting mission efforts worldwide.

Plurality of Elders

Elders are the scripturally mandated positions of leadership in the Church. Biblically qualified leaders are shepherds, guiding the body towards accomplishing congregationally selected goals and adhering to Scriptural values; thus, the church is led by the Holy Spirit and guided by multiple elders.

Gospel-Centered Counseling

We acknowledge the Bible as the chief authority on healthy, fulfilled living. As such, pastoral counseling is first and foremost the application of Biblical truth to guide us through our lives.

Those who know me or have read old posts in this blog know that many of those topics have been addressed in this blog, especially the last one.

So, we’re getting settled in here in good ol’ GA. We’re in the Lawrenceville area hanging with my grandmother-in-law and aunt-in-law (whom I usually speak of as “my wife’s grandmother and aunt” since the alternative is a mouthful). I’m looking for jobs in the area, if anyone is interested. I have my portfolio here on the site, if you’re curious what I’ve done. The strange thing about looking for jobs is I have a very diverse skillset. For example:

• I’m finishing up my Master of Divinity with Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and would love to work in a church or a parachurch ministry giving counsel to people from the Bible.
• I’ve been on staff and before that volunteering at Journey Church (and also working at my seminary) doing production stuff – video and audio editing, lighting programming, web, and all that sort of stuff. I love tech.
• For over a decade, I’ve built websites (sometimes for fun, sometimes as a job or part of a job) and I would consider myself an advanced dabbler. Along with a friend, I’ve maintained a web host for a few years now.
• Another area I love is making computers and tech stuff in general work. While in college, I actually was one of the first employees of the NGCSU Help Desk.

Diverse, huh? If anyone reading this knows of any jobs in the Atlanta (especially Northeast GA) area, please shoot me a note.

I attended a conference a few months back that was incredible. Now anyone who wants to can watch the sessions for free! Check it out.

Pastor Jimmy spoke this message a few weeks ago. I just wanted to repost it here – to test my video embedding and because it’s a great message.

I recently got a copy of the eJournal by 9 Marks (named from the book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church). It is the official “multi-site” issue. (Check it out in it’s entirety here.) The blog post I reposted here by J.D. Greear is in the issue, as are others for an against multi-site. You should most definitely read it in its entirety. I will when I get a sec. However, I’ve been skimming the cons to multi-site and noticed something interesting. First, here’s a list of the articles against multi-site:

• “Nine Reasons I Don’t Like Multi-site Churches, from a Guy Who Should” By Thomas White – A young, tech-savvy seminary professor explains why he’s not getting on board the multi-site revolution.
• “Exegetical Critique of Multi-Site: Disassembling the Church?” By Grant Gaines – A pastor-scholar weighs the exegetical arguments in favor of the multi-site church and finds them wanting.
• “Theological Critique of Multi-Site: Leadership Is the Church” By Jonathan Leeman – The local church on earth is constituted by a gathering of Christians, which means the multi-site and multi-service “church” is not a church, but an association of churches.
• “Historical Critique of Multi-Site: Not Over My Dead Body” By Bobby Jamieson – Regardless of the fact that multi-site churches haven’t existed for most of the past four hundred years, historic Congregationalists and Baptists have a lot to say against them.
• “The Alternative to Multi-Site: Why Don’t We Plant?” By Jonathan Leeman – The multi-site church phenomenon looks like a capitulation to consumeristic culture. We should plant instead.

Now, I’m not going to address everything brought up in them, but the first article is really short and digestable, so I’m going to tackle the nine points addressed in it. Here goes:

1. A Contradiction In Terms

Here Thomas White argues that the Greek word ecclesia (the word we translate “church”) means “gathering.” He then says “The oft heard mantra “one church many locations” is a contradiction in terms.” Since that’s what Journey is, I want to speak to that. The church is the assembled people – the gathered people. When Journey gathers at NE, it’s a gathering of Journey. Same at NW. It’s not all of the gathering, as not all members of Journey gather every week. Other churches generally have four times more people on “membership” roles than those that actually attend. Journey is about the exact inverse of that, I believe. Maybe those other churches should be looking for where the rest of their church went before they start asking if what we’re doing is biblical. I’m just saying.

2. Spiritual Colonization

The argument here is “mini-dioceses” that rule the campuses from a central location. Well, at Journey we don’t have a “central location” besides that of Raleigh (currently). Our goal is to reach Raleigh for Christ and there’s not a specific area of Raleigh that we’re based out of. While we spend more time during the week at NE, that’s just because we can’t get into NW during the week – it meets in a theater. Campus locations will grow as we launch new ones and such, but our location is Raleigh. Not a “central location.”

3. Encouraging Consumerism

He argues that the more locations, the more variety you get and people can shop around. I think consumerism is way more likely in a church with one location. Case in point: mega-churches. When we launch a campus, we need a ton of people to get involved to volunteer there or fill the places at the current campus that were emptied by the launch team. At Journey, we have hundreds more volunteers than single-site churches.

4. Cannibalizing the Body of Christ

He points out a multi-site that “partnered” with a smaller church, then replaced it’s staff and sold it’s stuff. A agree with his point that this is a bad thing. However, I’ve never seen this happen and I suspect it’s not a common occurrence.

5. Shepherds Who Don’t Know the Sheep

This point addresses Hebrews 13:17 where ministers of the gospel will be held accountable for their sheep and how can a video minister do that with sheep he doesn’t even know? Well, first of all, a pastor that rightly divides the Word of God can be certain that the Word will not return void. Also, that’s what campus pastors are for. At Journey, either campus will find a number of pastors (Jimmy Carroll, Paul Crouthamel, Rob Wetzel, Smooth Via, and Paul Callaghan) weekly with whom they can speak and pray. Also, they can set up meetings with them throughout the week. It’s called “doing life together.”

6. Understanding Planting and Preacher Training

He may have a slight point here. We do need to focus on planting churches as well as campuses. That’s why Journey gives to multiple church planting agencies. Who knows, maybe we’ll even plant one ourselves. Partnerships are especially helpful at church planting – shared resources are great. Acts 29 is a great organization that does this well.

7. No Scriptural Support!!!

Ah, I most definitely disagree here. While the church that was formed out of Peter’s sermon might have fit within Solomon’s Portico at first, remember that “the Lord was adding to their number daily” and they “were going house to house.” Does White really think that they organized meetings indefinitely at Solomon’s Portico? Also, could thousands of people really hear? Did they have to all meet together weekly to be called a church? Bi-weekly? Monthly?

8. Unanswered Questions

Since he gives questions, I guess I’ll give answers.

1. What happens when this generation’s gifted communicators leave?
   • One of the other pastors at that church will take over. This is more biblical that “hiring out” a pastor like many churches do. If the people go there just to hear that communicator, they shouldn’t be there anyway.
2. When they retire or pass to heaven, will these franchised churches of today lead to the disenfranchised religious of tomorrow?
   • Some could, but the ones who grounded their people in the Word of God will stand firm because Christ is their cornerstone.
3. Will these locations stand vacant symbolizing a failed religious experiment?
   • The one’s who worshiped the communicator and not Christ probably will. And that will be a good thing.
4. What if one location wants to call its own live preacher? Will that be allowed or does the founding assembly own the property and make the decisions?
   • If a church starts fighting over ownership, then they need to repent and turn from that. The body is just that, a body. They should function as one. They should also submit to the one (or ones – plurality of elders, anyone?) called to be their leader(s). If that many people have an issue with the elder(s)’ decision, then maybe that part of the body should meet with them as fellow brothers in Christ.
5. Could a remote location choose to begin piping in a new rising star with no connection to the current branches?
   • That would be a decision for the church as a whole to make. A campus is not separate from the church – it is a part. This does make it easier to have someone fill the pulpit who can actually preach when the pastor is out of town. Or even better, our pastor was in Uganda recently and Smooth uploaded part of a message from him to the internet. I then downloaded and Jimmy preached for about 10 minutes from Uganda to both of our campuses. Then we played the rest of his pre-recorded message. He was able to preach while being halfway around the world! Most single-site churches would never even think of that, much less have the technology for it.
6. Why not just plant churches?
   • We plan on doing this as well. The multi-site model helps us be wiser with our resources.

Wow. That was fun. Next?

9. Priorities

This is an important thing to keep in mind. Let us not strive after numbers and instead strive after reaching Raleigh, and North Carolina, and the world for Christ. It’s always good to keep the Gospel as the main thing – we’re called to use our talents and God-given abilities spread the Gospel (Good News) of Christ. And remember, God doesn’t always call the equipped – He also equips the called (a.k.a. all believers)!