We get a sign!!

But from across Redmond, not from above.

I don't recall when we first started talking about a new sign for the church, whether last year or the year before. But part of all of the talk of sprucing up our appearance was the sign. The sign, or rather signs because there were two of them, is old and weathered and a bit decayed and "eaten" by carpenter ants, and there was a limit to what we could do with putty and paint.

It's a little sad to me, because I think the outgoing sign was made by Adrian (RIP) back in the mid-late 80s, definitely a work of love on his part. I remember being on the crew that installed our first sign (which I think was this one) down near the exit from the parking lot, and Adrian was leading the effort. I do not recall when it moved from that location to the current one near the church building.

But it had aged a lot, and things had changed since it was made. The primary message is still valid: "St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church." And though we had found ways to add things like telephone number and services to the sign, the presentation wasn't always the best.

So we started talking about a new sign.

And we began to learn that the Vestry was not a good forum for discussing the minutiae of the design and informational aspects of a church's new sign! Perhaps Vestries tend to be fickle beasts in matters of taste (as differentiated, you understand, from the rest of the world, civilised or otherwise). Every meeting changed the proposed sign, though to their credit the design began to converge, including old elements such as the colors of the current sign and new elements such as our rendering of the old Canterbury Cross and our church website. I'd love to hear about other churches' experiences in the comments...

I dropped out of the conversation when I rolled off the Vestry last winter. But Gordon (our Senior Warden) pulled it off! Finalized the design, worked with sign companies to produce the sign, selected one, got approvals (a BIG effort in this highly-regulated county) and... it was installed today.

The following picture is deficient, but it shows the two signs. I need to return later with the BIG digital camera for a better picture.