Decentralization was God's idea?

I grew up in the Church. I like Church. I really like my church. Thus, when I came across the following excerpts I took some time to really examine the scriptures and see what was going on here:

from Organic Church by Neil Cole:
God has always intended for humankind to spread out and fill the earth with His glory. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. (Genesis 9:1,7) Noah and his family tried to settle in one place, and they started a building project in direct disobedience to God’s design. God had to force decentralization with the confusion of languages (Genesis: 11:7-8)

When Jesus revealed His true incarnate self to His inner circle of leadership at His transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-6) Peter’s response was classic: “This is a good place to be; let me start a building project right now!"

Jesus commanded the disciples in (Acts 1:8) to spread out from Jerusalem until the ends of the earth are filled with the power of God. Instead, they all stayed in Jerusalem. Just as God forced decentralization in Genesis 11 with languages, He forced decentralization in Acts, this time with persecution (Acts 8:1)

By Acts 21 Paul returns to the Jerusalem church and finally the sent ones (apostles) are gone. But look at this model church: Paul is taken aside and told in private that he shouldn’t be there, that the church was overrun with legalists who would attack Paul if they saw him (Acts 21:20-26). Sure enough he is attacked and arrested, and this church tries to have the author of half the New Testament killed. If we disobey God’s will (whether in outright defiance or more subtle neglect), the consequences are an unhealthy church with messed up priorities.

Cole raises some interesting points concerning a centralized church body. According to the author of Acts (Luke), in 2:42-47, “All” the believers were together, and were meeting together “daily”. How many people is that? If we back up one verse we find a group of 3,000 people coming to faith after Peter preaches at Pentecost. Thus, at least 3,000 people were meeting together daily in this ‘transformational community’.

The mission of Christianity is to make go and make disciples; the command is very clearly, to “go”, and never, ever, are we commanded to have them “come”. Large group meetings are also clearly modeled by the early church.

When Paul goes on his missionary journeys of church planting, he would regularly write to these collections of believers, addressing them as "the church in ___", or "the saints in ___". Yes, these churches (collections of believers) are reaching out as decentralized individuals who would first "go" to their own households and friends, but I simply haven't seen any evidence to suggest that they weren't networked together in their community like the original post-pentecost church in Jerusalem.

This, of course, begs the question: what does it look like to decentralize in order to “Go”. Maybe we’ll get into that later…if you’d like.

-Ethan Wiekamp