I'm happy to affirm brothers and sisters in Christ to disagree with me.

One of my best pastor friends out there is a multi-site church pastor.

My parents attend a multi-service church.

I love my multi-site and multi-service church friends.

You know, we're one in the gospel.

We do the great commission together.

I'm just saying, okay, let's look at the Bible

and ask ourselves, what's the wisest and what's the most biblical, I dare say, way of doing church.

And when I see this uniform practice, when I see the very use of the word, and when I consider

implications for the Great Commission, I would say that this makes the most biblical sense.

Welcome to the Crossway podcast, a show where we sit down with authors each week for thoughtful interviews about the Bible, theology, church history, and the Christian life.

I'm Matt Tully, and today I'm talking with Jonathan Lehman. Jonathan serves as editorial director for Nine Marks.

He's also an elder in his church and is the author or editor of over a dozen books,

including One Assembly,

Rethinking the multi-site and multi-service church models from Crossway.

Today, Jonathan and I discuss his argument that multi-service and multi-site models run counter

to the pattern for the local church we see in the New Testament.

He lays out his biblical and practical reasons for believing this, explains why how we define

the Greek word for church, Ecclesia, is so important in this conversation and reflects on pushback he's

received from other pastors, such as the objection that it could harm a church's evangelism.

Let's get started.

Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me on the Crossway podcast today.

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