Has anyone ever done a study of how the multi-site church model employed by Keller subsequently impacted the theology and practice of the PCA? I think such an analysis could be very informative.
Here are my observations. A couple decades ago one of Keller’s disciples came to my city and planted a church. This church went on to plant a bunch of satellite churches all over the metro area. These weren’t daughter churches that were intended to become independent after a short transition period but instead indefinitely remained under the supervision of the session of the central church. In name, the session and the congregation were a unified body spread out over all sites, but in practice, the members didn’t have much personal interaction with elders. Not surprisingly, the body of ruling elders was atrophied. Instead, the church relied on a large number of assistant pastors. Note that in the PCA, assistant pastors are called by the session rather than the congregation, and assistant pastors are not members of the session, but they are members of presbytery. This had a great impact on subsequent developments, I think.
How did this episcopal-lite system come about? Although against the spirit of presbyterianism, I don’t think it is directly forbidden by the BCO, and I think the presbytery was willing to let it go forward back at the beginning in part due to the celebrity of Keller. Eventually, the presbytery pressured the Kellerite church to make the satellite churches independent with their own sessions, but by then the damage was done.
What was the damage? First, the Kellerite church planted satellite churches without regard to whether another church in the presbytery was already in the area, which hurt the growth of the regular churches. Even though many of the satellite churches were not self-sustaining, subsidies from the central church kept them going for many years. Also, the substitution of assistant pastors for ruling elders enabled the Kellerite church to punch above its weight in presbytery meetings since there is a limit on how many ruling elders a church can send to presbytery meetings but no limit on the number on the number of assistant pastors. Moreover, since the assistant pastors were called by the Kellerite session rather than by the congregation at individual churches, they all held the same Kellerite views and presented a very unified faction at presbytery meetings. All of this made holding back Kellerite theology and practice more difficult within the presbytery.