I think that, ignoring the rhetoric and practice of the LRC, Christianity actually has a pretty good model. Local assemblies mostly cover themselves. Or more correctly, cover themselves plus more. The assembly as a group supports those who minister outside the assembly from local/regional efforts, to the traditional missionaries. Further, many of the people support others in ministry as they feel led. And they often support ministries that serve back to the individual and/or assemblies — the writers, speakers, etc. Surely we need those who are going out and those who are giving back. Even the local elders/preachers/teachers benefit from these.
There is an abundance of gifts for so many aspects of the Christian life, service, worship, and mission. We are all part in our way. Some teach us. Some go out as commissioned. And some continue the local evidence of changed lives. This is truly good news.
Now some will be quick to point out that some assemblies are required to pay a portion of their funding to a headquarters. My only comment on this would be that relationships are not necessarily bad. That any practice can be found in some problematic group (say, the LRC or the RCC) does not automatically make the practice bad. Those places also preach. They partake in communion. And so on. We don't complain about those things. Why does anything not otherwise clearly in error become error because it has a similar look to what some other group (that we don't like) does? Quit comparing and say what is wrong without comparison.
(I actually attended a RCC mass on Palm Sunday — well, it was Saturday — and they declared strongly that salvation is only due to the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. I guess that doctrine is now suspect.
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So the problem is not really that there are ministers that are linked regionally, or that answer to someone else. I would suggest that many would assert that a "church plant" is often subject to the desires of the church that sent them out. That is not a strictly LRC practice. And the arrival of new faces, including the leadership, from somewhere else is not entirely problematic. But eventually, the assembly should be local. I realize that there are some denominations in which the preachers are assigned by headquarters. But most of the evangelical grouping are not that way.
I'm not going through this to justify the ways of Christianity. I am doing it to parallel the practices of the LRC. The problem with the LRC is not that an elder may come from, and at the request of, someone at a distance. The problem is whether they are first servants of the assembly, or of that distant source. It is whether they are for the church or for some ministry. If some preacher, elder, etc., turns out to be a plant from the LSM, Cleveland, the BBs, Focus on the Family, Insight for Living, or some other ministry, and takes that as their primary directive, then they are not a proper preacher, teacher, elder, etc. But if they arrive at someone else's behest and become what a preacher, teacher, elder, etc., should be, then their history becomes somewhat irrelevant. It might even be possible for them to continue to have a relationship with that distant source that, while influencing their thinking, does not control. The evidence will be seen eventually. I note that Ohio has mentioned a lot of the wrong side of this kind of thing — elders who treat their local church family as an extension of a remote ministry.