I’m glad to see some discussion of the multi-site-church movement.
SBTS recently held a public conversation between Gregg Allison, Chad Brand, and Jimmy Scroggins on this issue. Here is the link for the audio on the conversation: Franchising the Church or Fulfilling the Great Commission: A Forum on Multiple-Campus Churches
I think this is a model of the kind of dialogue that needs to take place in these discussions.
I was a little surprised that the issue of the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia (“assembly”) did not come up in the discussion, since the meaning of this term is at the heart of the concerns John Hammett raises (Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches, 315-16, citing Mark Dever and Paul Alexander’s, The Deliberate Church, 86-88).
There is obviously a spectrum of churches engaged in multi-site ministry. Those that insist on gathering the whole church are seeking to address the issue of the need for the whole “assembly” to assemble.
It looks like those at the other end of the spectrum will be addressed in a new book by Thomas White and John Mark Yeats, Franchising McChurch: Feeding America’s Obsession with Easy Christianity.
I hope that this discussion will continue. I am convinced that congregationalism is biblical, and Baptist churches should be concerned to maintain it.