Come to Our Church
About a half-mile, as the crow flies, from my home is a small church on a highly traveled road on the Eastside area of Seattle, WA. I have watched the sign in front of the church for many years now. The picture to the right caught my eye in that I am preparing two online courses for Missio Dei Learning Community around the topic of Missional Church. I think the slogan may tell the tale well. Church signs were big in parts of USAmerica in times past. It most likely is still a big business. My wife showed me a picture of a newly constructed church sign that she saw on her recent trip to SoCal. That sign came into being by spending thousands of dollars and came complete with a “sign dedication service.” What I find interesting is that both of these signs belong to Assemblies of God churches. I’m not sure that the one in the pic is going to do what those who spend time putting up such slogans hope it will accomplish, but it sure gives the flavor of much of the church living in USAmerica. In my opinion, the sad thing in this attractional model is that if a driver was attracted by seeing such a sign, pull into the driveway, park the car, get out, go inside the building, there would be little attraction once inside.
Pat http://patloughery.com/
August 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pmWinn, that’s a good (well, you know what I mean) sign. I’m fascinated by the old-school technology of church signs, what with their pithy puns and marquee attraction model.
There’s an old community church in my town which uses theirs to great effect in this model, with the standard pun fare. A friend of mine who planted a church when I did was at their building for a pastors meeting which was happening in the midst of a community festival, and the pastor of the community church entreated the other pastors to “worship so loud that those people out there can hear us!”… which is pretty dang fnny, actually. Why go to the effort of actually leaving the building to mingle with the neighbors when you can sing loud enough to make them take notice?
drwinn http://
August 11th, 2008 at 6:48 amI once heard a “song leader” (before they were called worship leaders) tell the congregation that they needed to sing louder and raise the roof off the church. I never really got it! Maybe it was in the same thought process of your illustration. Some things stay the same while everything around them is changing. There are some quirky things we do “in the name of Jesus.”
marion
August 12th, 2008 at 10:11 amI think we are the ones meant to be the signs to our local church that these signs have replaced in some cases