In a powerful and refreshingly honest approach, Pastor Bob Pearle looks realistically at the issues causing the growing irrelevance and weakness of churches today. What he presents will concern you, inspire you, and lead you to make your church more what the Bible intends. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, writes in his endorsement of Pearle's book: "In a day when churches are captivated by every passing trend and pernicious teaching, Bob Pearle challenges the church to recover the authority of God's Word over every area of life. He writes with the pen of a dedicated and experienced pastor. His book brings fresh light to the challenge of leading a church to faithfulness today." James T. Draper, Jr., president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, TN, writes in his endorsement: "Bob Pearle has addressed the most distressing issue facing the church today: its general decline in influence and growing irrelevancy in the current culture. This book addresses the issue and challenges us to rethink both the practices and the biblical foundation of the church. It will challenge your assumptions about the church and require a careful examination of the church and its role today."
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Resource for Preaching on Ecclesiology,
By
This review is from: The Vanishing Church: Searching for Significance in the 21st Century (Paperback)
Pearle, Bob. The Vanishing Church: Searching for Significance in the 21st Century. Foreword by Paige Patterson. Garland, TX: Hannibal Books, 2009. 144 pp. $14.95.
The first decade of the twenty-first century has included a renaissance among Southern Baptists in the area of ecclesiology. It is too early to determine whether this renaissance will outpace competing factors to become the defining mark of Southern Baptist life at the beginning of this millennium, or even whether it will emerge from its infancy to become a powerful influence in the life of our churches, but at this moment more Southern Baptist authors and pastors are writing more, preaching more, and doing more to shore up our ecclesiology than at any point in my lifetime, the lifetime of my parents, and the lifetime of my grandparents. The genre has included works written by and for the academy, such as John Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches; and Thomas White, Jason Duesing, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches. Works such as R. Stanton Norman, The Baptist Way: Distinctives of a Baptist Church, have represented efforts by members of academia to provide primers on ecclesiology to those outside their guild. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has hosted a conference regarding "The Mission of Today's Church," resulting in a book by that title, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is now hosting annual conferences on Baptist Identity for theologians of both the professional and the armchair variety. Any discussion of this category would be remiss in passing over the works of Mark Dever, whose ministry and writings are both academically rigorous and practically oriented. As important as it is, academic work alone will never succeed in restoring vigor to Baptist ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is, after all, the doctrine of the church, not the doctrine of the seminary, and in a Southern Baptist church the coin of the realm is good preaching. For our churches to find their way back to a biblical concept of the church, their pastors must learn to see the doctrine of the church in the Bible and learn to preach it with conviction and power. Enter Bob Pearle and The Vanishing Church. The book decidedly has the tone of a collection of sermons, and with good reason--Pearle first developed this material to preach at Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and then adapted the sermons into this monograph. Adaptation did occur--these really are now chapters rather than sermons--but the strongest use of this book will be as a resource to develop good preaching on ecclesiology. The resulting sermons will carry forward the thesis of the book: "Churches that have lost their doctrinal core are struggling with an identity crisis. . . . The effectiveness of a church's ministry is largely dependent upon knowing her confessional identity and staying true to her original purpose." The book groups the chapters into three sections. "Looking Inward" posits a turbulent world in desperate need of receiving God's loving truth from churches, too many of whom at this very moment of crisis are succumbing to lies that counterfeit the truth. "Looking Backward" provides biblical and historical rationales for sound Baptist ecclesiology, including defenses of the concept of church membership and baptism. "Looking Forward" challenges seeker-oriented ecclesiologies, asserting that the key to tapping the power of the gospel lies in allowing the gospel appropriately to set the church apart from the culture rather than in churches' sidling up to culture. Pearle favorably quotes David Wells: "It is surely ironic that those who seek to promote the church have adopted strategies that deliberately obscure its essence." Likewise he brings forward anew the words of Charles Spurgeon, "Put your finger on any prosperous page in the church's history, and I will find a little marginal note reading thus: `In this age men could readily see where the church began and where the world ended.'" The key to looking forward into the twenty-first century and liking what we see there, asserts Pearle, lies in the look backward provided in the center of the book. In this book the reader will find good guidance as to the content of sound sermons on ecclesiology, as well as a number of strong illustrations and well-phrased points. But the pressing need of the hour is that we be not merely hearers of the word, nor even merely preachers of the word, but faithful doers of the word in heeding the biblical teachings that Pearle has highlighted and transforming this budding renaissance into a reformation and a revival.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Prescription for Success,
This review is from: The Vanishing Church: Searching for Significance in the 21st Century (Paperback)
My personal experience has relevance to my review of Pastor Pearle's book, so I will begin with some preliminaries. I wandered in search of Christ for many years because of the disintegration of the Episcopal Church in which I was raised. The leadership of the Episcopal Church decided that she had to change if she was going to remain relevant in a changing world. In the 1970s, the Episcopal Church (USA) determined that it had to decouple from the fundamental truths specified in the Bible because, well, it was just too exclusive and intolerant.
I left home for a military career at about the same time that the Episcopal Church began its sojourn to self destruction. Over the years, I would seek out the Lord's Word at the local churches where I was stationed; I was typically very disappointed. So I started to attend Baptist churches, and was well rewarded with that for which I was thirsting--preachers who were willing to preach the Word as specified in the Bible. It was much the same when I finished my career and moved back to Texas. As it turned out, I found myself at Birchman Baptist Church where Brother Bob Pearle is the pastor. It did not take me long to realize that Pastor Pearle was a true believer, and, therefore, a man of true, unwavering conviction that Christ is Lord, and that through Him is the only way to salvation. I have heard his sermons for years, and they are always doctrinally accurate. He has a way with words that connects with people. He comes across as a strong, Christian man who knows his responsibility to Christ as a church pastor and all that that entails. He is the epitome of what a Christian warrior looks like and acts like--he leads by example. Now, after all of those preliminary comments, in his book, The Vanishing Church, Pastor Pearle, tackles some of the key issues that are facing the church, including, believer's baptism, what defines a biblical church, the duties and responsibilities of the local church, what is expected of the church membership, why a person should become a member of a local church, the definition of marriage, the natural yearning of people to hear the unabridged word of Christ, the inevitable persecution of those who adhere to the teachings of Christ, the great commission, the danger of preaching that which is not doctrinally sound, the need for people to test teachings against the scriptures, that there is right and wrong in the Bible, social justice, multi-culturalism, the dangers of certain "new" interpretations of the Bible and how some churches are selling out (my words, not his) in order to compete for membership; a sort of church-light because certain teachings of the Bible are so harsh, and so much more. As a layman, this book was very uplifting for me because in explaining certain aspects of church doctrine, it does not deviate from the truths that are in the Bible; Pearle cites the Bible extensively and relies on the original Greek translation in many cases. It is refreshing for me to be able to read Pearle's words and find that there are no contradictions of the Word, the ease of understanding his arguments, and that he doesn't embed any hidden agendas in what he writes. Pastor Bob wrote, "Churches would be better served by pastors who believe and preach, without apology, the whole counsel of God." I translate his words to mean that we require fewer milquetoast pastors and more men of conviction in our church pulpits that are willing to preach the Word, and not worry about whom they might offend. After all, the Word of God is immutable and timeless. In case you have not figured it out, I recommend this book very strongly--it is a must read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Thoughts on This Book,
By
This review is from: The Vanishing Church: Searching for Significance in the 21st Century (Paperback)
In a church market flooded by influential books with pragmatism as their premise and cultural acceptance of the local church as their objective, this book has sound doctrine as its premise and a New Testament church as its objective. Many have already begun to observe the inherent danger of modern church strategies. Bob Pearle has plotted a clear, concise and biblically substantiated course back to the fundamentals of a New Testament church.
Over the course of three sections, twelve chapters and just 131 pages, this book systematically and thoughtfully addresses a variety of issues facing the local church today including: how to stay true to her Scriptural roots in the face of mounting pressure to cater to a secular culture; why church membership still matters; the always damaging intellectualism shrouded in false humility that can be found in the pew of every church; the damage done to a church when individualism overwhelms the church body. These are just some of the issues dealt with in the book; issues every evangelical church in America is facing. As a long tenured pastor of a thriving church as well as a bible scholar, Bob Pearle is able to keep a pulse on the current issues of the local church and deal with them effectively. I have personally seen his church ministry and interacted with this author in a variety of settings and he is a trusted leader. Whether a pastor is looking for a way to provide continuing education to his leadership and himself, or a church is searching for a tool to assess their biblical standing or a Christ follower is desiring to learn more about the doctrine of the church, this book will not disappoint. This is the rare book on the doctrine of the church written with the reader's comprehension in mind rather than to showcase the knowledge of the author. I plan for my church staff to read through this book together.
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