1. Are parachurch ministries biblically warranted? To begin with, what are parachurch ministries? Examples include apologetic/countercult organizations, publishing, campus ministry, athletic outreach, evangelistic organizations, Christian media, hospital chaplains, educational institutions, and Bible translators. We might include Christian blogging.
2. Sola scriptura doesn't mean we need direct biblical authorization for everything we do. We don't need a special right to do what's right. We have a standing right to do the right thing. If I see a kid drowning, I don't need to text-message my elders for permission to rescue him. I don't need to thumb through the Bible for a specific command.
3. We need to examine the unspoken assumptions that underlie this question. Is parachurch ministry supposed to be answerable to "the church". That raises a number of subsidiary questions. What authority do elders have over laymen?
Unlike highly regulated religions such as Islam, Second Temple Judaism, and Hassidic Judaism, the responsibilities and activities of evangelical laymen are largely unregulated. If you're a Muslim or Hassidic Jew, there's a social blueprint that regiments your daily life in prying, excruciating detail. That, in turn, gives the clergy tremendous authority over laymen because the clergy are the experts on halakha or sharia, and laymen must consult the clergy to know what's commanded or forbidden. Their interpretations are binding. And they adjudicate ethical and religious disputes. To some extent, traditional Catholicism was fairly regulated.
By contrast, evangelical elders don't have anything like the same authority over laymen because there is no evangelical counterpart to halakha or sharia–although Puritans like Baxter and Ames produced textbooks on Protestant casuistry. In general, the ethical issues confronting the average evangelical laymen boil down to a few basic categories: deception, abortion, premarital sex, divorce and remarriage, military service, civil disobedience, capital punishment, end-of-life care, contraception, homosexuality. There's not as much occasion for laymen to consult their pastor. Moreover, there are books on evangelical ethics which laymen can read for themselves.
Evangelical laymen don't submit a daily itinerary to the pastor for his prior approval. They don't generally seek the advice, much less the consent, of the pastor or elders, in making most of their decisions. In fact, they don't think that's anyone's business but their own.
4. Assuming that a parachurch ministry should be subject to ecclesiastical oversight, what's the unit of supervision? The local church? Presbytery? Denomination? Interdenominational coalition?
Take Bible translators. No denomination, much less a local church, has a monopoly on Christian linguists. Moreover, Bible translation committees are deliberately interdenominational to curtail sectarian versions.
5. Some critics of parachurch ministry complain that it usurps the role of the church. But that reflects an envious attitude. Christians shouldn't be keeping score. Is my side winning? A competitive spirit is out of place. If someone is doing God's work, we should be thankful rather than resentful.
