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2008-01-08 issue:

Warning: church ahead

Grace and Truth column

by Ron W. Adams

Print Article

While traveling along State Road 95 in Texas last summer, I saw something that made me wonder. It was one of those yellow signs that warn drivers about curves or slippery pavement. This one, though, simply read, Church.



Given the size of the church, I suppose the sign was intended to warn oncoming traffic about all those cars leaving after services. Still, as I drove by I couldn’t help speculating about other reasons why a congregation would merit such a warning to passersby.

Maybe it was an especially rowdy congregation, with attendees routinely spilling out onto the road in the sheer joy of their salvation.

Or maybe it was a congregation given to liturgical line dancing, sometimes snaking their merry way out the door and across the highway and then back again in perfect gospel rhythm.
Or maybe it was in the middle of an aggressive stewardship campaign, and had turned SR 95 into a Sundays-only toll road. I could picture the ushers wearing cowboy hats and wielding offering plates like six-shooters.

Then my mind took a darker turn. I thought of the public face of evangelical Christianity in this country. I thought of radio preachers using the language of fear to garner that next donation, politicians using the language of faith to justify war-making and the xenophobic and hateful rhetoric too often coming from people claiming to be born again. And it occurred to me that having warning signs in front of churches may be a public service. Let the immigrant and the unchurched, the Muslim and the Jew, the stranger and the other of whatever kind beware. Horrible things of thee are spoken on these premises. Better go wide around and lock your doors. There’s a church coming up on the right, and you want to keep clear of it.

OK, I know that’s over the top and unfair. And it certainly does not describe my congregation or yours. We are better than that. Christians are better than that. Aren’t we? I hope so. I drove on.

Out in the open again, I wondered some more. Suppose that yellow sign was there to warn the world that something peculiar is going on behind church doors? That inside that building is a people with strange convictions and even stranger behavior? That everything you thought was true as you traveled along the road was being called into question by the members of that congregation?

What if the sign were there to warn passersby that entering the doors of that building may be akin to a death? A death to every allegiance but what we owe Christ. A death to sin in all its forms, from vengeance to materialism to false hope to false pride. A death to our belief in our own importance, our own immortality, our own selves. The death Paul called putting away the things of this world.

And after all those deaths comes resurrection. Having died in Christ, we are made alive with Christ. Having shed the garments of conformity and delusion, the garments of idolatry, we put on Christ and are never the same again.

Imagine if people knew that they entered our churches at the risk of death. The death of much they believe and much they hold dear. Imagine if people knew they’d be changed forever by what and who they encounter in our buildings and among our people. Imagine if they knew they’d go in like the world but come out like Jesus. And, like Jesus, maybe suffer and die for the salvation of the same world they left behind just a moment before.

Surely such a dangerous and life-altering place is worthy of a big old yellow sign warning: Church.

Ron W. Adams is pastor at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pa.

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