Seth discusses working and eating in the context of 2 Thessalonians 3 and polemicizes the polity of multi-site "baptist" churches. Send your questions and comments to [email protected].
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"For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you." Titus 1:5
I am a student at a Southern Baptist seminary that is located hundreds of miles from the city in which I reside. Thankfully, distance learning options are available to me. In addition to taking online classes, I take classes at my seminary’s satellite campus at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia. The Marietta campus is one of several satellite campuses that my seminary operates. My school has campuses in Birmingham, Orlando, and even inside of a state penitentiary. I (along with other distance learning students) can take almost every class I need to graduate at my satellite campus. At that campus there is educational space, administrative staff, and a staff of local professors. There is also audio video equipment which allows professors from the main campus to deliver interactive lectures from the main campus. Everyone at the satellite campus is under the authority of the seminary president just as if we were at the main campus. The situation at my seminary is hardly unique in academia. Satellite campuses at universities are becoming more and more popular. It can be very strange to see the names of various satellite campuses as they pop up in various cities. Universities, like churches, have long been associated with places. Now, as education delivery systems and technology are improving, schools are expanding into different territories. So, a school historically based in Atlanta may open up a satellite campus and make it possible, for example, to reach the students miles away in Macon or even out of state. There is nothing inherently wrong with a school extending its reach in this way, especially if it can offer the same quality of education as it does so. The movement among universities to create satellite campuses is an outworking of the modernization, or what author Thomas Friedman would call “flattening”, of the world. Following the trend of universities, many churches are beginning to open up satellite campuses. While the bible is silent about the proper operation of universities, it does provide the standards by which churches should operate. Unlike the case of university expansion, there is an inherent ecclesiological problem with the creation of church satellite campuses.
The most notable satellite church of which I can think of is North Point Church in Alpharetta, Georgia. It is “pastored” by Andy Stanley, the son of venerable Southern Baptist preacher Charles Stanley, who pastors the First Baptist Church of Atlanta. Andy began his career as the campus pastor of a First Baptist Church of Atlanta satellite campus. Something happened between Andy and his father which led the younger Stanley to found North Point Church. It became huge and eventually started a satellite campus in Buckhead; now it has five satellite campuses in the Atlanta area. Others have followed Stanley’s lead. The Village Church, which was formerly known as Highland Village Baptist Church, is led by popular Baptist preacher Matt Chandler. Like Stanley, Chandler led his church to open up satellite campuses. First Baptist Church of Woodstock, under the leadership of Johnny Hunt, another nationally popular preacher, has opened up multiple campuses as well. One campus is almost 400 miles away from Woodstock, GA in Panama City Beach, Florida (one of Hunt’s favorite vacation spots). Ronnie Floyd, the current President of the Southern Baptist Convention, is the Pastor of Crosschurch in Springdale Arkansas. Under Floyd’s leadership,
