Oddity, Week 1

Growing up in the Bible Belt, the sight of a church of some denomination on just about every street corner never really seemed that odd to me. What I have begun to notice, however, are the billboards that now seem to appear in front of each of these churches. We've all seen these signs, I'm sure. They usually consist of the name of whatever church I may be passing in bold, solidly-scripted letters across the top and channels of plastic meant to hold removable letter cards so that the church can continually change their message. Some of these billboards display the name of the message that will flow from the pulpit the following Sunday and the verses of scripture on which the pastor, reverend, father, etc. will focus. Some of these billboards hold dates and times for important events at the church that week. These billboards make some sort of sense to me. They relay what I can only assume is valuable information to the churches parishoners. What seems strangely odd to me are the campy sayings that some churches put on their signs. Like the church I saw last summer in the humid Georgia heat that said "And you think it's hot here...," or the sign in front of the small church on a dirt road near my parents' house that looked like it could barely hold fifteen people and said "Hungry? Soul food served here," or the hopelessly cheesy saying found on the sign of a rather prominent church in Carrollton that said "Fight truth decay, read the Bible daily." I wondered where all of these saying were coming from and decided to do a little research. Apparently, there are whole websites devoted to the promotion and dispersion of these sayings. You can literally find categorized and sortable lists of sayings for any event or holiday. Now I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and still attend regularly, but I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea what these churches are hoping to accomplish by putting up these sayings.