Daddy, can I have a puppy?

How many parents have been asked that kind of question? I'm guessing almost every one*.

A kid sees a puppy at a friend's house, or on TV, or at the park. It looks cute and cuddly. Kid wants one. What usually follows is a discussion about how owning a puppy is a big responsibility. Feeding it every day before and after school, taking it for walks, cleaning up after it, etc etc.

How does this relate to church?
Churches often ask their treasurer a similar question. "Can we have a church sign like __ church has?" is a lot like "Can we have a puppy like Tommy's family do?".

The difference is that nobody has the 'big responsibility' talk that parents have with a kid. Instead it's a case of 'Buy first, think later'. For a while people get excited about the new sign (like a new puppy) but then the excitement wears off. And the result is signs like this:

Week after week it's neglected, sitting in the yard. It's obvious that nobody cares about it anymore. If it were a puppy, it would be taken to an animal shelter at this point.

There's nothing wrong with advertising the worship times, but the old sign can do that job (at a tiny fraction of the cost).

It's not about the money
While it is a waste of money to buy a sign that does nothing more than the old sign, that's not the saddest part. It's the waste of opportunity. A changeable sign offers the ability to communicate with the neighbourhood.

A sign is a chance to do something. It's a chance to tell the good stories about church. A chance to connect with community over things we have in common. A chance to inspire. A chance to offer Christian commentary on current events (see Gosford Anglican and their 22,000 facebook followers for a great example of that one).

Overall, it's a chance to improve people's apathetic or slightly negative impression of what Christianity means. The waste of this chance is the bigger waste.

Sadly, all we say is "Sunday 8.30" and people's reaction is "Yes I know - and I'm still not coming". And why would they?
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* At the beginning I said that almost every parent would be asked about a puppy. Obviously this is only in the rich western world - not in places were people struggle to feed themselves from week to week. If we are thinking about a sign, but don't have the capacity to use it wisely, it might be a more Christian thing to give the money to the poor.