Signs and Wonders by Philip Gulley

Author:Philip Gulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Eleven

Signs and Wonders

While on the Gardners’ vacation tour of all the round barns in the state, Sam took a careful inventory of the church signs they’d passed. He counted nine Come Grow With Us! signs, three instances of If You Think It’s Hot Down Here… , and one God Is Coming Soon And Boy, Is She Mad! at an Episcopalian church. Another sign predicted the end of the world was at hand, but if it didn’t end by the following Friday, everyone was cordially invited to the ham-and-bean fund-raising dinner.

The sign in front of Harmony Friends Meeting is comparatively straightforward. It lists the times for Sunday school and worship, notes that Sam Gardner is the pastor, and reminds passersby that each Tuesday morning the Friendly Women’s Circle gathers to make noodles.

There was a discussion at the August elders meeting whether the sign should say more. Dale Hinshaw suggested using the sign as a tool of evangelism, perhaps posting a different verse each week from the book of Revelation that might cause people to consider their walk with the Lord. The Friendly Women’s Circle proposed using the sign to advertise their annual Chicken Noodle Dinner, while Bill Muldock thought it might be nice to list the church’s Heavenly Hoops basketball schedule on the sign.

Sam was horrified at the prospect of seeing any of that on the sign, so he hid the letters for the sign in the meetinghouse attic behind the box of Christmas decorations. He told Frank, the secretary, that if Dale came snooping around looking for the letters, to tell him he hadn’t seen them.

“Wouldn’t that be lying?” Frank asked.

“Did you actually see me put the letters in the attic?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not lying.”

Sam has been wanting to put up his own sign. After fifteen years of pastoring Quaker meetings and sitting through endless meetings marked by discord and indecision, he wants to post a sign that reads, Tired of Organized Religion? Try Us. But he feared the subtlety of his point might be lost.

Back in May, at the Mighty Men of God Conference, Dale Hinshaw had attended a church-growth workshop presented by a pastor from Iowa who had taken a church of twenty-three people and built it up to nine hundred by the strategic placement of Scripture verses throughout the church building. He’d written a book about his triumph, in which he revealed his secrets for convicting unbelievers and putting people in their place. Dale bought three copies.

Listening to the preacher from Iowa talk about convicting the unbelievers made Dale wish Sam was harder on sin. Sam never talks about convicting the unbelievers. Dale suspects Sam has never really given his heart to the Lord. Dale asked him the specific date he became a Christian and Sam said he wasn’t sure, that he’d just grown up in the church and had always been a Christian.

“But you gotta have a definite date when you asked Jesus into your heart. Didn’t you ever do that?” Dale persisted.

“I never asked him to leave my heart in the first place,” Sam said.

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