Wayside Pulpit

There have been wayside pulpit posters on Northgate end of the church since sometime in the 1960s when the late Dr Gordon Ratcliffe, Warwick GP and Northgate Junior Church superintendent, hit on the idea. The typical pre-printed wayside pulpit
posters of the day were a bit nondescript for Gordon’s liking and sense of humour; in any event he began making up his own and that has been the case ever since.
We put up posters to show our presence and make people who probably wouldn’t come into church stop, think and maybe come in and enquire further. Our aim is to do
it with good humour, without giving offence or shocking drivers into a road traffic accident. Twelve words is the optimum message length to be taken in by
passing motorists.

Where do the ideas come from? Well, anyone at all really. We are always grateful for ideas: variations on topical adverts, headlines or catch phrases; quotations straight or funny; a memorable one-liner from a sermon and we are not too proud to steal a good idea from another church!

We put a lot of thought and prayer into the posters. There is a real danger of being amusingly flippant to the detriment of the message and some ideas are good but run the risk of being taken the wrong way and causing offence which is the last thing we want to do. These have to be discarded; it’s a fine dividing line.

If you want to give us a poster idea for consideration or if you have found one of our posters inappropriate for reasons of your own, please email mail@warwickmethodistchurch.org.uk.