Church Signs
As a charter member of the Ban the Inane Messages on Church Signs Committee, I could do without them all. Too trite. Too cute. Too annoying. Too self-assured. Too unfunny (”Seven days without prayer makes one weak.”) Most are like flashing neon signs: “Looking for shallow answers to deep mysteries? Try here!”
Occasionally there’s one that makes you smile the first time you see it (”Forgive your enemies. It messes with their minds.”) But most bring groans.
How about this? Use church signs for the church’s name. Maybe a website. Maybe assembly times. Can the cute quotes.
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Another amazing work on Paul’s writings has come from N. T. Wright. I’d highly recommend that you get ahold of Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision
Huzzah. Those signs are collectively a miserable, vomitous mass of insipid banality, a scourge, a festering boil.
waffling, uncertain qb
Amen. There’s a church outside of Searcy that always puts the words God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit in quotation marks. ALWAYS.
Poor grammar aside, I wonder if they realize that it makes it look like those thoughts/words are pretend. Isn’t that what arbitrarily placed quotation marks usually do?
Come worship “God” with us on Sunday!
“Jesus Christ” is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Yes, they even do it when quoting scripture.)
It is seriously annoying.
Isn’t it funny that the worst signs are almost always the ultra churches that have the belief “if you can’t find that in the Bible, I’m sure God hates it”. And the — post a stupid comment on your sign — is found in 1st T……? Oops.
On my last ride somewhere between here and Seattle I saw a sign and had to get off my bike in order to take a picture. It was a large sign with a picture of Jesus and the words “JESUS IS WATCHING YOU.” What made it interesting; the sign was next to an Adult Book store. I did notice that as I rode off His eyes followed me.
clint -
Isn’t that what a lot of churches teach their kids?
“Be careful little eyes what you see”…”for the Father up above is looking down”
What a great message…
Church signs are like bumper-stickers on cars…I have never read one that persuaded me to think or act differently. I’m for doing away with both.
Grace and peace,
Rex
My favorite was a sermon title followed by an invitation.
Line 1: What is Hell Like?
Line 2: Come early and listen to our choir.
The sad thing is that instead doing away with bumper stickers and church signs this disease is spreading to billboards. In Tucson, AZ there are a series of billboards that say things like, “You think it’s hot here. -God”
Really?!? Christians are spending money on this?
Perplexed,
Keith
If the church is the church, it shouldn’t need a sign at all.
Steve Jr., take that idea further for us. qb
And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all,
I didn’t have a penny to pay, so I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign
I said thank you Lord for thinking about me, I’m alive and doing fine
One person believes he may put up anything on his sign, but the one who is weak puts up no messages on his sign. The who has messages on his sign must not look down on the one who puts up no messages and the one who puts up no messages must not criticize the one who does, because God has accepted him. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Whoever puts up a message on his sign, puts it up to the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not put up a message, it is to the Lord that he does not put up a message, yet he thanks God. For no one of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
Christ died and came to life for this: that He might rule over both the one who puts up a message on his sign and the one who does not put up a message. [Romans 14 in contemporary English]
D. Dallas, I really liked what you said. This topic and the responses just hit me as a bit self righteous.
LOL! When I was in youth group – way back in the day – I had the dubious honor of manning the church sign. Yes, I actually had a book of churchified banality from which to choose two statements a week (one for each side).
Wonder what the church sign would look like if that dude from the Redneck Comedy Tour (”Here’s your sign!) was in charge?
All time favorite ridiculous church sign:
“Seating for eternity – smoking or non-smoking!”
In the country community where I spent my childhood, there were probably folks who wondered if we were thinking about bringing Marlboros into Heaven with us.
D. Dallas…apples and oranges, I think you missed the point.
Actually, this is a pretty serious matter. These signs communicate certain aspects of a church’s self-understanding, both at the face value of what is said on the sign and at the presuppositional level. To the extent that they try to distill the gospel essence to a sound bite’s worth of aphoristic pseudo-wisdom worthy of Dr. Phil, they trivialize the narrative of grace that gives life to the Messiah’s gospel. These signs stand as a living testimony to the accretion of modern cultural assumptions about what the church is: just one more voluntary association that thinks it must compete for public attention using the very marketing tools that have given birth to the public’s cynicism about the church in the first place: trite sloganeering, insufferable cuteness, and simplistic formulations of all kinds. They betray an institutionalized insecurity about – indeed a quixotic shame about – what we really have to offer as a sign, foretaste, and herald of the kingdom of God. Do we not see how ironic it is that these signs represent what the culture has to offer us, rather than vice-versa?
qb
Seen on a church sign in our community recently, “Autumn leaves, Jesus doesn’t.”
Dumb!
Not trying to answer for my son, but it appears we think alike on this issue. I say do away will all signs. If Christians are reflecting Jesus in a manner befitting him, no sign is needed. We’re not trying to call people to buildings, programs, or ideologies. We are pointing people to Jesus, and according to scripture, that’s done by “good deeds.” Paraphrasing Paul: “You show that you are a (sign) from Christ…written not with (neon) but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
But my real pet peeve are church bulletins that feature a photo of the church building labled the “________ Church of Christ.” If that doesn’t illustrate and reinforce a misdirected emphasis on “church,” I don’t know what does.
qb,
Well said…you state exactly why I think we Christians should be critical of ourselves for such practices.
Grace and peace,
Rex
Leave it to Christians to banter about signs. Sorry if that was too unfunny. Why do we take so many things so personal? Why can’t we just be different from each other with out tearing each other down? Who are we? You can call me Too trite. Too cute. Too annoying. Too self-assured. Too unfunny, and that is ok because I am Too Loved and I love Mike Too much Too take it personally.
D. Dallas,
While one may be upset at the reasonable objection to misrepresenting Christ with simplistic signs and slogans, one must surely be be upset at blatantly changing the text of a scripture and quoting it as if it were a valid translation. Meat does not equal signs. The social context of each doesn’t even begin to compare.
You may be offended that this post takes issue with a practice of many of our tribes (and isn’t that our job to teach and admonish one another?), but I take issue with your misrepresentation of of Paul from Romans 14. Dead and living do not equal signs and no-signs. Condemnation does not equal criticism. I could go on but I hope you see the problem with falsely representing the Bible. Hopefully the readers here are savey enough to understand what you were attempting to say (which is a point worth discussing) without being mislead by your falsified quote, but you’ll never know if they were or not. Very risky.
Here in rural Oklahoma we have some great ones. One from a couple years ago was:
“Jesus got ‘er done, come in and hear how”.
I just wonder what some of the church signs around Killeen, Copperas Cove, and that area say today.
I’m in charge of the electronic sign in front of the church where I work and worship. I have a different Bible verse for each day of the month, and one “slide” which gives the current time and the comment “- a good time to pray.” Is that too much? No one at church has said anything to me about it, but a couple of folks from our community have said they liked it.
Be careful, Keith. One of those scriptures might come across as too critical!
Our church sign is on a busy urban street. Its tiny ministry has cheered drivers with such wit as “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two Wrights made an airplane!” Then of course, there was the sign this last week that brought a homeless man in for some cheerful words, a meal, and a place to be warm on a cold night. I am sure there have been signs which have offended innocently and some signs which have allowed the easily offended something innocent at which to grumble ~ thereby saving an innocent person later in the day. But church signs seem such a minor thing for me to commit six minutes of my time to comment upon when I could have been doing something more productive with my time.
I despise church signs. I’m not trying to be difficult or critical, I just wonder what in the world is the goal behind these signs? There are a couple close to our house that always have hideously embarrassing quips AND generally include at least one misspelling or incorrect use of grammar/punctuation. Ugh. I guess I just cannot imagine someone being lured into the building because of a sign. Just in the past week I saw:
Are you in the book of life or Hell’s obituary?
Yep. That’ll pack ‘em in.
Freda, your stout challenge deserves a reply, and qb will bite. Indeed, qb is easily bored by extended discussions of individual matters such as this one. Its value, however, is that it quickly forces us – if we are thoughtful – to attend to a far deeper, more pervasive, and greatly relevant question for Christ-followers: the creeping trivialization and enculturation of the great questions of life to which the gospel of Jesus is purported to give not only AN answer, but THE answer.
As I tap this out, I am engrossed in a fascinating radio conversation on the Medved Show concerning the nexus of faith and reason, science and ethics, nature and supranature. It occurs to me that an inch-deep church nourished on the kind of pabulum that passes muster for inclusion on our visual interfaces with the fields that are white unto harvest summarily disqualifies us from those great and penetrating conversations. Marquees? OK, choose another trigger or case study that seems worthier to you. But the question of trivializing the gospel cannot be evaded forever lest it swallow us whole. We ignore it at risk of fatal atrophy to our reasoning muscles.
qb
Here we go again……we have fussed about, over the years ……2 songs and a prayer….clap or no clap……. and now church signs…. while things that really matter get worse!
Isn’t it possible that our neglect to expose it, and then nip such nonsense in the bud, has created an environment in which banality roots itself, thrives, metastasizes, and finally threatens our witness as a living embodiment of the gospel?
qb
Keith,
I am sorry that I offended your sensibilities about scripture–but I’m sure that everyone understood my point and knew from my “contemporary English” as well as their knowledge of scripture that I had used literary license to make my point. [Did you note that I used 2 different translations?]
But I would hope that you would go back to that scripture and understand that the principle that Paul was laying down relates to signs if one was really condemning those who put them up. Also, that the principle fits whether the church has Easter or Christmas services or does not have them, praise teams or not, etc.
I was not offended by Mike”s blog statement tho having been in charge of changing the message in the past–I do not agree with the premise that they should be done away with. Over the time several people attended our services because of the sign and we constantly received comments of appreciation for the messages–they became some peoples thought for the day–I changed them ervery week.
But it interesting that you put the discussion on the level of teaching and admonishing–which to me makes you say it is doctrine.
Finally, I guess you like K Rex Butts did not recognize my tongue in cheek approach. It seems many including qb seem to put church signs into to the context of my approach when we hear statements like trivialize grace , etc.
So really “why do you look down on your brother” who puts a message on his sign?
Man, some of you need to loosen up. I like how some need to be right all the time so they write up a five paragragh essay defending yourself and/or attacking another’s opinion. Personally, I used to read all that long-winded garbage but now I ignore you. Get a life.
Not nearly so enamored of the pseudoconservative David Brooks, but this one hits its mark.
Funny, though: in all of his thoughtfulness, it apparently never occurred to Brooks that the hyper-therapeutic impulse that he deplores in his nation found its most explicit, amplified expression in yesterday’s speech by his president. Never named him, never called the president on it, never deplored the rhetorical leadership that BHO has provided to the therapeutic class (in this case – as opposed, starkly, to the case of that college professor who lashed out at the Cambridge policeman, in which case BHO had no compunction about assigning motives and drawing sharp, ethnic/racial lines before the data were in). I wonder why?
Actually, I think I know why. But if I’m right, it’s not a very good reason. Brooks needs to sit at the feet of Charles Krauthammer – or Hans Christian Andersen, for that matter – for a lesson in the construction of elegant, parsimonious, clear-eyed narratives.
qb
D. Dallas-In answer to your question- Because they’re snobs.
I think the original discussion was less about “looking down on our brother because of his sign” but rather asking whether these signs do a good enough job portraying what we are trying to say. I guess, then, to try to move the discussion away from snobbery, we could discuss church signs that we believe have been truly effective in carrying the gospel to our communities and delivering the truth of Christ. I, honestly, have seen very few of these. But, I could see how an encouraging verse from scripture could be beneficial. Anyone else?
Sign broken . . . come inside for message.
Wal Mart is not the only saving place!
The only way up is down on your knees!
Staying in bed and shouting “Oh God!” does not constitute coming to church.
Read the Bible – it will scare the hell out of you!
We could do this all day, y’know.
D. Dallas,
I am not condemning Christians who use church signs; rather, I am just criticizing some of ways church signs are used. So your use of Romans 13 is not appropriate and if it were, then we all would be at an impasse since we could then no longer offer any criticism (and just so you know, the same person who wrote Romans also wrote some other letters filled with some strong criticism).
So is it wrong to criticiize a practice if I/we believe such practice is wrong or unwise?
Grace and peace,
K. Rex Butts
Ah, sweet. There you are, GT. Popping in again to let us know that those who don’t agree with you — those who dare express an opinion (this is a personal BLOG, isn’t it?) are liberal, snobs, elite, etc.
It’s not the opinion, it’s the way it’s expressed. Let’s see:
Huzzah. Those signs are collectively a miserable, vomitous mass of insipid banality, a scourge, a festering boil.
Nice.
Just an opinion though.
D. Dallas,
You make too many assumptions. You assume that I “look down on my brother” and you assume that “everyone understood” when you blatantly misrepresented Paul. You are definitely wrong about me and likely wrong about the second issue, though you’ll never know, as I already stated. As Rex said above, there is a difference between criticizing a practice and condemning a person. For example, I criticize your misuse of scripture in this thread while at the same time I do not condemn you.
What I’d like to know is if a church sign has ever lead anyone to Jesus? Has a sign actually got people in the door where they eventually submitted their lives to Christ? If so, what did that sign say? Somehow, I doubt “Read the Bible – it will scare the hell out of you!” ever accomplished this.
There’s a church sign (really a banner) near Waco on I-35 that advertises 30-minute worship. Check out the website… http://www.30minuteworship.com/.
gt, you obviously have never watched _The Princess Bride_! You really should do so. It will exercise your atrophied sense of humor, and you’ll recognize the source and tenor of the overheated polemics.
Lol,
elitist qb
We oughta cut to the chase. Actually, Mike already did. The signs are somewhere between shallow and stupid, as a general rule, and they reflect poorly on us and our self-understanding. And though I sympathize with the impulse to ask if they have caused one person to be exposed to the truth (a claim I seriously doubt), we have to be thoughtful enuff to ask about the collateral damage: at what cost?
If we think these signs are an innocent, harmless, evangelistic tool to a worldly, sophisticated culture, we are sadly or chuckleworthily mistaken. They are, perhaps, not worth the time. But perhaps they’re a small, telling part of a much larger picture.
qb
qb,
To paraphrase Inigo Montoya “You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.”
Perhaps this one will make it:
1) PreacherMike: Have you read Piper’s book or any of his material on the subject of Justification?
2) How is Wright’s position any different from Rome’s?
A few months ago, my eight-year-old son read a church sign: A SMILE IS A FROWN UPSIDE-DOWN.
He said, “Mom, I don’t get it.”
I then attempted to explain to him how turning a frown upside-down would essentially be a smile. Unfortunately, his face still looked puzzled.
He said, “No, Mom, I get THAT. What I don’t get is what that has to do with church!”
Late to the discussion. I do not like the “original” and “clever” sayings (which are neither) on church signs. Wish they were not so prevalent. Keith, much prefer your scripture a day approach.
To those that want to do away with the church sign… I am in charge of doing our church sign. I always put scripture and God tells me exactly what to put up on that sign. He lets me know what people need to hear. As far as bringing a person to a building and not jesus… God said where three or more people gather in my name there I will be also. My sign ministry has brought several people to the church and they have come to know Christ. Therefore, I will keep letting the Lord lead me and I will continue doing my sign ministry. God Bless.