(picture via Wikipedia)

Another interesting quote about the state of the American church–found it on MinistryToday Online Magazine:

“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. Our responsibility as pastors and leaders is not to give people what they want necessarily but what they need.”

–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. [star-telegram.com, 2/28/09]