I’ll assume you’re familiar with the ol’ “good cop, bad cop” routine. If you’re not, I’ll encourage you to turn on your television to find one of the many iterations of “Law and Order” currently playing at this minute (well, unless it’s past the bottom of the hour, in which case we’ve moved on to the “Law” part of the show, which is a less likely place to find good cop/bad cop), and you will become acquainted in short order.
Anyway, while we were on our most recent vacation, I ran across a couple of church signs that made me think of good cop/bad cop. With apologies to Ed Stetzer (who publishes noteworthy church signs each week), I give to you:
So, that seems welcoming, doesn’t it? At least, sort of. God wants to talk to you! Come on in!
But then there’s this:
See? There’s the bad cop! Maybe you’ve already picked up that these are the same church sign, on two different sides. When you’re coming into town, you get the welcoming church. But when you’re headed out of town, you get the warning church. I’m not sure if there is special significance to that. I wonder if some weeks the church is really welcoming, and other weeks, they’re pulpit-pounders. Or, maybe this is the church-sign equivalent of A/B testing. I wonder if anyone was enticed to come to church, or even think more about their relationship to Jesus because of one of these signs.
That makes me wonder: what could a church put on a non-moving sign that would actually catch your attention to read, in a positive way?
Brandon Woosley 
Indeed! Negativity does little to bring about positive results. In fact, both sign readings could be perceived as negative. The words “We need to talk” are almost never about good news. (The one about temperature similarities being more obvious.)
I’m not very good at clever little word crafts to put on church signs, but I would agree that the tone of it matters.