Several times each week on my way to and from church I pass a couple of church signs—you know, the sort on which you place letters to spell out words and sayings. I grit my teeth over and over again as I cannot help but notice that there is not only a failure on the part of these churches to communicate an intended message by these signs, but rather a howling success in communicating a wrong one.

One of these churches has the words TO GOD BE THE GLORY, emblazoned in letters two or three of which have either fallen out of line or out of sight. If it were true that this happened only one week to be corrected soon as discovered, it wouldn’t make any difference. But there they hang, perilously teetering from their perches week after week, calling attention to the fact that the members of the congregation seem not to really care about glorifying God after all—at least that’s what one might readily conclude from the apparent neglect that the disorder evidences. It would be better to have no sign at all than to have one that disgraces God rather than glorifies Him. That the intended message might not be one that connects with the average unbeliever is an additional point that I shall not discuss.

The sign in front of the church across the road is usually neatly cared for, and its message is changed with regularity. But it has a fault of a different sort. This sign is much larger than the first and can carry at least three fairly long lines of wording. And—you guessed it—the message that it sets forth is unreadable because, typically, all three lines are used. It’s unreadable because you’d have to stop your car on a busy street to be able to do so. It is cluttered with too many words to take in at a glance—or even two or three glances! I’ve tried.

So, what am I saying? Simply this: when it comes to using signs either do it rightly or don’t do it at all! Pastor, if you have one—take a look at yours.

p.s. This church has a new pastor and the sign has been fixed.