We honor the tradition of congregational polity, but the congregations that exist today are quite different from the congregations that existed several hundred years ago. During the Protestant reformation, there were two different ways of being Protestant. In some places the local prince, or king asserted power over the church in favor of the Reformation, and Protestant ministers simply took over the function of the Catholic clergy. The liturgy changed, the church was redecorated in puritan simplicity, but the way the church related to people was not radically different from the pre-reformed church
The other way of being Protestant was for people to form a covenant group usually based on the study of the Bible, these groups were almost always illegal and politically in opposition to the establishment of church and state. We call the way of being Protestant that derived its authority from the political rulers the Magesterial Reformation. We call the way of being Protestant that derived its authority from the gathered members the Radical Reformation.
In some peoples minds, the world Radical implies an impatient attitude toward change and extreme tactics. But the word meant "to go to the roots." A radical was not impressed with tradition, which they perceived as corrupt and antithetical to the original purity of institutions, they wanted to return to that original purity, Thus the radical Protestants advocated pacifism, common property, and non-cooperation with the state, seeing these things as the way of the early Christian church. Bishops, and non-elected clergy were also corrupt and they argued for the power of the congregation who called and covenanted with a religious teacher and leader.
For the magesterial reformers, the clergy were functionaries of Law and Order, but for the Radical Reformers the clergy were teachers chosen to lead the covenant community.
Congregationalism, the covenanted community that called and ordained its own clergy was an expression of radicalism.
Most but not all of the New England settlers had experiences with such radical, oppositional congregations in England before they came across the sea. Some had been part of churches established by Calvinist gentry who functioned as little princes on their own estates. So the English Puritan experience exhibit both radical congregational and more elitist magesterial experiences. Moreover many of the Puritans clergy who came to Massachusetts read John Calvin, who was a magesterial reformer. Calvin's Geneva was Presbyterian in church governance, power rested in "elders" who were chosen for their orthodoxy.
Thus the church system that evolved in New England contained both a magesterial tendency and a populist radical tendency. Officially, they established a congregational system out of deference to strong feeling of many Puritans, but one that recognized order and clerical privilege. The legislature required each town to raise a meeting house, and to support a teacher. The congregational church met in the meeting house, and its called teacher was the teacher of the town. This merging of the two tendencies of the Reformation created a conflicted dynamic. New England Puritans produced many disputes, break away congregations and finally the baptists and universalist dissenters that challenged the standing order itself.
Congregations as covenant communities, that relate to each other as a community of covenant communities. I don't think we have heard the last of this form of human organization.
I don't think the corporate megachurch is the product of the natural evolution of those house churches that met to study the Bible, and to hold each other accountable for renewing the church. Rather I think the megachurch is "Geneva in the suburbs," another reincarnation of Calvin's magesterial vision of the church, and just as theocratic and clerical as the original.
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