Good Ecclesiology Continues Jesus’ Life and Teachings: A Response to ‘The Potential Dark Side of Movements’ | Guest Post by David Garrison

Last week I posted The Potential Dark Side of Movements: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill which was my reflection on American Evangelicalism and movements.

David Garrison, executive director of Global Gates and author of Church Planting Movements and A Wind in the House of Islam, responds with an ecclesiological comparison between Mars Hill and Church Planting Movements (CPM).

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Let me toss my two cents into this conversation. Every CPM is different with varying strengths and weaknesses. If, and I doubt it is so, the Mars Hill model is a CPM at all, it would fit on the extreme end of the spectrum as a sort of frankensteinian American mega-church planting movement. In so many ways, it fails to meet any of the descriptive elements found in the CPM phenomena that we’ve been describing around the world for the past 25 years.

In South Asia, as we sought to sharpen our CPM ecclesiology, we looked at the variety of movements around the world and adopted an eclectic approach to incorporating the best elements of ecclesiology that we were seeing. We sought to strike a balance between reproducibility and integrity to the ideal of continuing to reproduce all that Jesus taught and did in his life on earth.

The resulting ecclesiology, we called “A Handy Guide to Healthy Church,” so named because we used the “hand” as a mnemonic devise for teaching and reproducing key elements of the ecclesiology. Essential to this ecclesiology were what we called “antibodies” that fought off the twin maladies of immorality and heresy. The antibodies were woven into the structure of the ecclesiology and included:

1. Small size of meeting groups that prevented the sort of megalomania that afflicted Driscoll and threatens so many mega-churches today.
2. Intimate meetings in homes that ensure that discipleship exposes and penetrates every aspect of family life.
3. Participative Bible study built on 2 Tim. 3:16-17, asking one another the Pauline questions: 1) what is God teaching, 2) what is God rebuking, 3) what is God correcting in my life, and 4) what will I apply to my life this week? This is radically different from the “knower/teacher to passive recipient” model abused by Driscoll.
4. Shared leadership responsibilities with male and female deacons stewarding the five purposes of: 1) worship, 2) fellowship, 3) ministry, 4) discipleship, 5) evangelism/missions.
5. Dedicating all tithes and offerings exclusively to one of these five purposes, with none available for salaries, buildings, or property.

These internal checks and balances within our house church network (that produced 106 churches in two years), served as antibodies within the body of Christ to fight off the sort of immorality and heresy that infected Brother Driscoll’s network.

Good ecclesiology that is both faithful to the Christ ideal and nimble enough to keep up with rapidly multiplying new conversions/disciples is a moving target. Our challenge must always be to measure our churches and ourselves by the ideal of: “Is this continuing what Jesus began?” Aiming for anything less, whether it is rapid or slow, Reformed or Charismatic, is missing the mark of fidelity to the One who claimed the Church as His Body.

David Garrison | Executive Director, Global Gates