In my early days as a pastor, our congregation purchased a booth at our local County Fair. For the ten days of the annual fair we hoped to meet many of our neighbors, reach out in friendship, and increase our church's visibility in the community.
Unfortunately, another local church had leased the booth directly across from us. These folks built their booth around a large neon-lit electronic game—passersby were asked to answer a series of questions, most of them on moral issues. Their ‘incorrect’ answers would set off a siren, flashing red lights and a lighted sign that pulsed in huge letters, ‘HELL!’ Hearing the bells and whistles, the church folks manning their booth sprang on the people who had played their game, pushing religious literature with pictures of flames surrounding the words ‘Turn or Burn!’ into their faces. “You’re going to hell!” they’d warn. The way that word hell rolled off their tongues sounded as if it had two syllables. The victims would turn to walk away, only to have a chastening commentary shouted after them as they went.
As you can imagine, the folks across the way greatly decreased traffic to our church’s booth. The last thing anyone wanted to do was stop and converse with more church folks. Observing this, I went to speak with the pastor of that church about his group's tactics. “Brother,” he said, “We’re calling people to repentance!” While I agreed that was important, I suggested that his manner of doing it was actually chasing people away. He narrowed his eyes and curled his lip. He proposed that maybe I should take his test. He argued, “The gospel is a rock of offense, Sir!”
In an instant, I had gone from Brother to Sir.
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