The following excerpt was written with itinerant evangelists in mind. I think it has good application for all who presume to conduct “parachurch” ministry. Christ did not found a parachurch ministry. He founded a church, and any formal ministry not under church authority lacks legitimacy, and risks damaging the legitimate ministry of the local church.
There is another method of conducting revivals which may avoid these difficulties. Settled pastors occupy nearly the whole field of operation. They have, and ought to have the entire management in their own congregation. Each one has a right to pursue his own measures within his own limits; and no itinerant has any business to interfere or dictate. It will ever be regarded as intermeddling in other men’s matters. If they do not choose to invite me into their field, my business is meekly and silently to retire. And I have no right to complain. But many young men are continually violating the rules of ministerial order and Christian propriety in these respects. Impatient to see the temple rise, they are now doing that which, it appears to me, will tend ultimately, more than anything else, to defeat the end which they wish to accomplish. They are now pulling down, in many places, the very things which I have been helping ministers to build up; and for which I have often received their warmest thanks. It is a sentiment which I have had frequent occasion to repeat to my young brethren in the ministry: ‘Better forego the prospect of much present good, in your own opinion, than to lose the confidence of settled ministers, without which you cannot be long and extensively useful.’
—Bennet Tyler, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton (Banner of Truth, 1975), 354.
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