Photograph by Austin Chan via Unsplash

Sometimes, the humor is as corny as contemporary Christian music.

Need A Life Guard? Ours Walks On Water.

I Hate This Church, Signed Satan.

Jesus Is The Rizzle For The Sizzle.

Choose The Bread Of Life Or You’re Toast.

Other times, it’s, well, just awkward.

You Can’t Enter Heaven Unless Jesus Enters You.

Stop, Drop, And Roll Won’t Work In Hell.

The Most Powerful Position Is On Your Knees.

And my all-time cringeworthy favorite,

I Kissed A Girl

And I Liked It

Then I Went To Hell.

Many of these have left me wondering what type of people enter the building and call themselves the “Body of Christ.” None have left me wanting to darken their church doors.

However, church signs certainly offer passersby an idea of the people attending services there. Before the rise of user-friendly website design platforms like Squarespace and Wix, church signs acted as a means of communication, conveying the service times and the name of the preaching pastor. Some included a vision or mission statement if the space and budget were big enough.

I saw a vision statement this week that floored me.

My family and I were on the road, journeying down south to visit kith and kin. You have heard it said that children have small bladders, and this is true if what you mean is they have little evidence of one. My oldest daughter is a testament to this fact.

Like clockwork, I watched her consume half a thermos of water, with squirming starting shortly afterward. Luckily, our travels took us through a promised land filled with Sheetz gas stations. My eyes would roll at her plea to stop before they began to scan for signs directing us toward this oasis and the promise of their deliciously affordable MTOs (Meals To Order). Already, I was concocting a plan – if we were pulling over yet again, I would willingly sin and give into my cravings for tubed meat drenched in mayonnaise, sriracha, sweet chili sauce, mustard, and ketchup. A hot dog with “Boom Boom” sauce was in my future.

With my stomach growling, I looked ahead, hoping I could make it another exit or two before becoming completely famished. An advertisement for a local HVAC company appeared before vanishing in my rearview mirror. I sped by a promotion for some colorful, calorie-free, sweetener-free, sodium-free, gluten-free, and probably taste-free tonic water without a second glance. Insurance company displays were in no short supply. And then I saw what I was looking for, only it wasn’t directions to my favorite convenience store.

It was simple, poignant, and free of cheesiness. A message with an obvious and sharp theological edge.

But it wasn’t for a house of worship. It was for a gym.

Planet Fitness, the real-life Average Joe’s, come-as-you-are establishment, beat every church sign I knew with its slogan,

The World Judges, We Don’t.

How did the church universal miss this? I have some ideas.

The culture we currently live in often gets a bad rap. Too often, I hear that it’s the culture’s fault that families no longer attend church, that sports matches are held on days when students could be at youth group, or that Jesus is removed from public schools.

It’s the culture’s fault for __________ (insert your own deflection).

I’m starting to think the blame shouldn’t rest on the culture but on the church for abdicating its position to lead.

Baptist iconoclast and railer of all things reeking of religious institutionalism, Will D. Campbell, wrote of the church during the Civil Rights era, “…it failed to act. It waited until the government took the initiative to rescue human rights.”[i] Campbell lamented the lack of presence he saw in mostly White churches during the 1960s. He believed the church should have led the way in repentance and reconciliation around race relations during the Civil Rights era.

And because the church didn’t act within her nature, society began to look elsewhere to hear and see what they knew to be true and right; the equality of all.

Now, here we are in 2024, following an election in which a divided nation is set to move further away from one another, and the church is still missing its opportunity to lead. We’re letting organizations like Planet Fitness beat us to the punch. Ministers, laypersons, any and all calling the lowly carpenter from Galilee “Lord” — we need to do better.

And until we do, people will continue to look elsewhere.