A Sign of the Times

Last Sunday, I was delighted to discover . . . that I was wrong! We recently purchased a new sign at Toowong Uniting Church - one with movable letters so the message can be changed weekly to offer the impression of 'life' rather than a fixed sign with static information. Last week in church I explained the rationale behind the use of our new sign: hoping it will become a stepping stone to bridge the gap between the life of our Christian community and those who have never been to church before. I said that I was under no illusions— I wasn’t expecting people to be converted because of our sign, nor was it likely people would be flooding into the church because of it. If you imagine two banks of a river quite some distance apart, you’re on one side facing someone else on the other; it's unlikely if you just stand on your bank and yell at them, “Jump across,” that they will. They’ll take one look at the distance and walk the other way. But if you can break that big gap into smaller steps, perhaps by tossing some stepping stones in the water, then the journey suddenly becomes far more accessible, more doable, more likely. Our sign is just a stepping stone.

Little did I know that as I was uttering those words last Sunday morning, two Hindu women were walking past the Church. They read the sign and decided to come and see what happens in a Christian worship service. They sat through the service and then spent some time afterwards asking a number of people in our congregation about their beliefs. It was exciting to think that such things still happen.

I still don’t think we’ll have people flooding into the church because of our sign. Perhaps those two ladies were already part way across the river. Perhaps the few words on our sign simply became the next stepping stone on a journey they were already on. We don’t know. So we keep serving to the best of our ability - I will keep placing the most engaging statements I can find on the sign each week and I trust that the congregation will continue to extend to those who worship with us a sincere, warm and open welcome. The rest is in God’s hands.