If I were not commanded not to I would swear. We can’t make this stuff up! If it is true that real life is stranger than fiction, then it is also true that what Baptists really do to get people in their churches is much more futile and God-dishonoring than any satirist can imagine. When I ran across this article in Baptist Press on church signs I almost fell out of my chair. Woody Murray (the article’s author) maintains that church sings are the “key to outreach” for any given church. He argues that because a church’s best “prospects” probably live close to the church, and drive by the church every day, then it follows that a good church sign should be all that is needed to fill the house. Murray warns against just any old church sign, though. He is not a big fan of the catchy, clever, or funny slogans and quips. He rather suggests that churches use their signs as invitations. Says Murray:

People respond to invitations. We see it happen every Sunday at the close of the service. The Lord pulls at their hearts. The Lord can do the same with your church sign. Make your message an invitation as often as possible.

I don’t even know where to begin. I think I will simply trust in your grace saturated, God-centered, biblically minded sentiments to take you where I am going with this. This is as absurd as thinking that altar call invitations are what get people into the kingdom of heaven. A well respected preacher (an employee of a local Baptist association) recently remarked to me that whoever built the church in which we were sitting at the time had doomed the churches evangelistic strategy from the word go. “They’ve installed the pews too close together. People are less likely to respond to the invitation when they have trouble getting out to the isle,” he said. Come on, preacher, I know Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses that are smarter than this, and they don’t even know the one true God!

Now back to the Baptist Press article. Murray even suggests that the quality of the sign itself can directly influence your church’s evangelism. He states:

If your church is located on a main thoroughfare, then try to have the best sign you can budget. You will be amazed at how many people in your church’s community can be reached.

It may just be my overly reformed/thoroughly biblical mind speaking, but that seems about as intelligent as believing that pew-to-pew proximity equates to sinner-to-God proximity. I just can’t go there.

Murray goes on to declare that “a sign should be a primary ministry touch-point that encourages people to visit your church.” What about gospel driven ministry to the community? What about Christocentric preaching and God-centered evangelism and outreach to the neighborhoods? What about real ministry? What about not just throwing money or invitations at people, expecting that any minute the nations will come banging down our door wanting to repent because we have a cool church sign! I wonder what kind of sign the church had in Ephesus . . .

Murray ends his article with a biblical quote: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). That’s a great quote, but when Jesus said “let your light shine” he did NOT mean the light of your CHURCH SIGN.

God help us. No wonder the world thinks we are a bunch of idiots!