Smoking guns, I love this post by John Armstrong "Great Movements: Control or Co-op?". Here's a blurb, but go and read the whole thing.
You can have a strong leader, who is a hugely successful visionary, without buying the old top-down model. I saw it at work this week. Mark [Driscoll] is developing an amazing vision by which he plans to build one of America's largest churches. By this means he also envisions planting 1,000 new churches in the coming years. He is doing all of this without one iota of desire to control anything or to be the president, CEO, or top dog. I know what I have seen for thirty-five years of ministry among great evangelicals. And I know what I saw this week. It was entirely different and frankly it was very fresh. I pray other strong leaders with huge vision will take the same approach and thus by this means the the old way will be dead in twenty years. I doubt that it will be, however, since so many leaders I know are terribly insecure and need to control and dominate others through a kind of piety that often covers deep insecurity and fear.
John's other posts on his exprience with Driscoll and Mars Hill: Church Planting, Strength of a Team