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Mistaking Crowds for Churches

QUOTE: "The biblical New Testament church is vanishing from society today. Anything and everything is acceptable as long as it builds a crowd. Jesus wasn't as interested in building a crowd as He was in telling the truth." -Bob Pearle, pastor of Fort Worth's Birchman Baptist Church and president of the Grapevine-based Southern Baptists of Texas, a conservative state convention. In his latest book, The Vanishing Church, Pearle rails against the growing segment of American churches-particularly nondenominational, seeker-sensitive megachurches-that build their "product" to meet consumer demand based upon churchgoers surveys. "It's a bankrupt philosophy," the conservative preacher adds. "Our responsibility as pastors and leaders is not to give people what they want necessarily but what they need." [star-telegram.com, 2/28/09]

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Dr. Mark Rutland's

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