Dueling Billboards

I was perusing my hometown newspaper (the Toledo Blade) this weekend while waiting for my wife to get out of surgery and the main article on the home page was a story about two churches with dueling billboards in Toledo. The article, Debate on gays is writ large, is about two churches in Toledo debating the issue of homosexuality via billboard.

The ongoing and sometimes contentious debate in churches regarding homosexuality is back in the public eye in oversized print, thanks to 10 Toledo-area billboards proclaiming competing messages.

After Toledo's Central United Methodist Church posted a single roadside billboard in late April that said, "Being Gay Is a Gift from God," the Rev. Tony Scott of the Church on Strayer felt compelled to offer an opposing point of view.

The Maumee megachurch this week bought nine billboards that proclaim, "Being Gay is NOT a Gift from God -- Forgiveness, Love, and Eternal Life Are."

Here is a classic "lose-lose" scenario.

On one side is the absolutely ridiculous statement that living in a homosexual lifestyle is a gift from God. God "gifts" people with something He clearly condemns as sin? Would you have a billboard that says being an adulterer is a gift from God? Or that being greedy is a gift from God? Not to go all elementary school here but "they started it" with a billboard that is not only erroneous but also intentionally provocative.

On the other side, I doubt that the nine rebuttal billboards are going to do much other than draw a line in the sand. I agree with the content of the message more or less. The method not so much. Perhaps the better method might be to equip the 2500 members of The Church on Strayer to go forth, meet and get to know homosexuals in Toledo and minister to them in love. Billboards don't seem to be a terribly effective ministry tool. It looks kind of like the big church one upping the little church. I'll see your billboard and raise you eight!

I used to think that winning arguments was a great way of winning people. Experience has shown me otherwise. I am pretty skilled at debate and arguing but vanquishing someone in an argument is more likely to leave them resentful and me feeling smug. That is not helping me and it certainly is not helping anyone else. What would be helpful? If Bill Barnard and Tony Scott, the two pastors in this kerfuffle, would actually sit down and talk with one another. If both of these men are Christians, they are adopted brothers with the same Father, not enemies on opposite sides of an ideological debate. They sound like reasonable men who live and minister in the same city, a city I of course know very well and also know is hurting in many ways. Instead of communicating via billboard and soundbytes in interviews, how could they find a way to minister to the lost and hurting in Toledo?

There is a time and place for spirited discussion. There are lots of issues we need to clarify, lots of truths we need to stand firm for, lots of ways the world is trying to chip away at the fundamental truths of the Gospel. But there is also a place, often overlooked, for sincere believers to remember what unites us and what our calling is. That is hard to do with dueling billboards.