Christian Piatt has posted his 16th collection of “Church Sign Epic Fails” (with links to the previous 15 installments).
Reading through Christian’s series, and through the many similar signs regularly featured by Matthew Paul Turner [link fixed] (including the one pictured here), some patterns become clear. I find myself wanting to create taxonomies for various categories: the deliberately and successfully witty (rare); the grammatical error; the accidentally ambiguous statement; the failed cultural reference; the unintentional sexual entendre …
That last category is a big one. Jesus told his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Some of the folks in charge of these signs, God bless ’em, have got the innocent as doves part down. What they need is some kind-hearted, filthy-minded neighbor who’d be willing to supply a bit of serpently wisdom — somebody who can look over the copy for next week’s sign before it goes public.
They need someone who could warn them ahead of time that “Behold, I come quickly” is likely to inspire too many giggles from passersby, never mind why. Or who could gently inform the Christian Outreach Church to reword the name of their C.O.C. Block Party. Or who could say, “Psalm 16:11 is a lovely verse, but you don’t want to put ‘In your right hand are pleasures for evermore’ on your sign.” (All real-life examples.)
Until such churches find such people to pre-screen all of the copy for their signs, allow me just to say this one thing to all these gentle, earnest, innocent souls: Don’t use any variation of the phrase “on your knees.”
Trust me, just don’t. I know that, for you, it refers to prayer. But for many, many other people, prayer is not the first or the only thing they think of when they see those words.
Please don’t worry yourself about what it is they do think about. It’s not something I imagine you’d approve of, or something I’d want to have to try to explain to you, so we needn’t get into specifics here.
Just trust me — avoid the phrase.
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