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Sign of the times: Church sign hits the funny bone in downtown Cashmere
Cashmere Baptist’s witty sign is more than dad jokes — it’s a tool for welcoming neighbors, building community and helping breathe new life into a small-town church.
By Sebastian Moraga | For FāVS News
Bob Bauer has many reasons to feel glad about the sign outside his church. About 189 of them, in fact.
“The word sign appears about 189 times in the Bible,” he said.
The pastor of Cashmere Baptist Church, located in this small community of about 3,000 people in central Washington, feels a strong connection between the sign and his pastoral work.
The five-year-old sign, located just steps from the heart of downtown Cashmere, checks several boxes for Bauer, the pastor at Cashmere Baptist since 2010.
He wanted the sign to be part of a greater labor of beautifying his church. Check.
He wanted the sign to fit in with the rest of downtown Cashmere, both in style and color. Check.
He wanted the drivers and passersby to have a quick dad-joke laugh when they read the sign’s messages. Major check.
And he wanted the sign to remain safe, with short messages that would not distract the drivers coming off the roundabout in the heart of Cashmere. Check.
“Sometimes churches go overboard in trying to be the flashiest,” Bauer said, “That’s not us. We just wanted it to fit in.”
A sign to unite not divide
He also wanted the sign to be a source of unity. No political statements, no condemnation.
“We wanted this to be for the community,” Bauer said. “The members of this church by and large live in the community and they love God, but by golly, they love the community.”
That’s why the sign carries the Cashmere Bulldogs logo alongside the dad jokes and the Bible verses. That’s why the sign mentions the goings-on at Founders’ Day (Cashmere’s annual summer community party), the food bank, the museum and the schools, even events from nearby churches. It’s not a competition, Bauer says.
And if the sign was the reason for a smile, as you drove by, then it was all worth it. Judging by the emails Bauer gets — “‘Hey, I really liked that one!’” Bauer said folks write to him — it was indeed worth it and then some.
Some of the jokes are pretty straightforward, like the one posted in late June about Swiss cheese being a biblical favorite because it’s holey. Others are a little more subtle, like the one that was posted on July 8, which just reads “Here’s Your Sign,” a nod to comedian Bill Engvall’s routine about needing a way to identify smart people and not-so-smart people.
Jokes that don’t make the cut
Some of the jokes are still on Bauer’s wish list. “I upped my pledge, now up yours,” still makes him laugh, but the elders of the church vetoed it before it could be seen on the board. Same with “Special service today; bring your own snake,” and “We’re having communion with supper tonight; two drink minimum.”
The editing committee is whoever happens to be near Bauer when he reads a joke he likes.
Another no-no is any message with moving letters. City Hall asked for that rule, to avoid distracting drivers coming off the roundabout.
All in all, the folks at City Hall seem quite happy with the addition to downtown. Just don’t call it a billboard, said Cashmere Mayor Jim Fletcher.
“Billboards imply something out along a freeway to be visible from a long distance,” Fletcher wrote in an email. “And (that) would not be allowed in the city.”
What the church has is a lighted changing-message sign, Fletcher added, which was vetted by the city.
“The sign was well designed, provides messages of community events and interests, and its placement fits in the location without intruding into traffic flow,” Fletcher wrote. Fletcher said that the concern he heard at first from some residents that this could be the start of a flood of signs coming to downtown, has diminished.
Part of the big picture
The sign, Bauer says, was no toy or whim. It was phase two in a three-phase effort to renovate the church. First came the exterior, then the sign, then the interior — work Bauer says laid the groundwork for what came next: Providence Hall, a school the church would open two years later.
“If you are a small church, and you are even starting to look even a little run-down, people will assume you don’t even exist,” Bauer said. “I don’t think that’s you doing your best for God.”
Having successfully evicted the pigeons that lived in the attic, having washed away the sticky mementos they left behind and having repainted what Bauer called the “Pepto-Bismol pink” lettering out front, all helped with credibility when Bauer pitched the sign idea. The many years as their pastor also helped.
“If the congregation knows you love them and knows they are more important than a sign or an idea, they will naturally want to support you,” he said.
Still, convincing the very grown-up, very fiscally conservative congregation of about 60 people that an outdoor sign was the way to go was an adventure in itself, Bauer said.
The road to getting a yes from his flock had begun years earlier, with hospital visits and potlucks and many, many hours of counseling and hugs from Bauer to his group, and vice versa.
And yes, many jokes, even in the darkest times. When Bauer’s wife Karre (pronounced Carrie) battled cancer during the pandemic and underwent a partial mastectomy, she came up with the line, “I lost one, but I also married one, so I still have two.”
The humor, and the mutual solidarity underscored a deeper point: The congregation had Bauer’s back, because Bauer had theirs.
“You can’t have the kite without the tail,” he said. “You just gotta bring people along, and give them an opportunity to share their ideas.”
Nobody said this is a white elephant, but a few folks had their doubts. In all, it took about 18 months for the idea to become a reality.
Spreading the good word with a good laugh
After the city approved the permits, and the contract was a go, it was time to learn how to work the sign.
“I still don’t know how to do it,” he said.
Members of the church, including Karre, have proven invaluable when working the sign. He still hasn’t mastered the gadget, but it’s sure to be easier than evicting those pigeons from the attic crawlspace.
At 5 foot 4, Bauer was the only one who could fit in there. And he found unwilling tenants.
“Pigeons will fight you to the death,” he said. “They were coming at me like there was no tomorrow. I said ‘I’m not going back up there.’”
Instead, he stayed on the ground level and watched the church go from a weather-worn, pigeon-targeted place with a for-sale sign outside, to a re-energized building that two years ago opened its own school, Providence Hall.
Anchoring it all is the shiny sign out front, spreading the good word, spreading a good laugh and spreading love of community.
“An electronic sign, on 24 hours a day, says we are open,” Bauer said. “That’s a big message. Makes you look alive. And we are alive.”
Art Arnold, and his wife Joy, have been members for about 15 years, and Arnold says he supported the sign from the get-go, and he’s glad he did.
“It’s helped a lot. We have people who have read the sign and have come to church because of it. It’s doing real good,” Arnold said.
