Long before the advent of Twitter, churches have employed exterior signs as a way of getting out meaningful, often clever messages in short bursts.

The practice is one used by a number of local churches as well, congregations who put out anything from friendly reminders to sermon topics or service times on their posts.

“There’s a little bit of time that’s put into that,” Tommy Leopard, minister of Demopolis’ First Christian Church said of the signage outside the Walnut Street congregation.

“One of our elders, Waymon Qualls, he’s responsible for that. He gets it from different sources.”

Qualls occasionally gets help from the church’s pianist, JoAnne Baker, in coming up with the weekly messages.

“When she’s driving distance, she occasionally catches a sign that speaks to her,” Leopard, who has also contributed weekly messages to the sign, said.

What seems like such a small part of church activity often involves a larger, collaborative effort at FCC and other churches.

That phenomenon, according to Leopard, is because of the importance of the messages such signs deliver.

“I think it’s very important to utilize (the church sign) because not everybody goes to church,” Leopard said. “It’s one of the ways of getting the message out there.

“We try our best to incorporate a different variety of messages, let the whole town of Demopolis and whoever is traveling on Walnut Street know what we’re all about. I do think it shows just a little bit of our personality.”