A Higher Humor : Religion: An outdoor sign featuring weekly messages of wit and wisdom has helped the Hillcrest Christian congregation in Granada Hills increase attendance from 350 to 700 people.

The familiar slogan, “The family that prays together stays together,” has a pious wisdom about it.

But it’s not quite the kind of weekly message offered by Granada Hills’ Hillcrest Christian Church on a sign luring motorists as prospective members. It’s more like: “Families That Stay Together Probably Have Only One Car.”

Or, “If God Had Intended Man to Fly, He Would Have Made It Much Easier to Get to the Airport.”

One hot summer, it was a theological exclaimer: “And You Think It’s Hot Here!”

Since he began the message board sign at Hillcrest in 1990, the Rev. Dudley Rutherford has watched average attendance at the church on Rinaldi Street double from 350 to 700 people.

“The sign has been a significant factor in attracting first-time visitors,” said Rutherford, the senior pastor. Among new members, Richardson said, “a large percentage always say it was the sign” that first drew them to the church.

Rutherford, 35, said he pictures the average person driving by the nondenominational church as holding a preconceived view of church as “dry, dull, boring, irrelevant and outdated.”

With the weekly changing messages, “we want to say that this church has people who like to laugh and have a good sense of humor.”

Only one message has been removed after complaints by church members. Some didn’t care for a doubting reference to the presidential qualifications of Vice President Dan Quayle, a line that Rutherford thinks he borrowed from NBC’s “Tonight Show”:

“The five most feared words from George Bush: ‘ Dan, I’m not feeling well!’ “

Rutherford said he thought it was funny despite the fact that he is a Republican. A few messages refer to politics, such as, “Why Not Slap a Tax on Political Gas?”

But many are plays on words with a moral edge (“America Is the Land of the Spree and the Home of the Crave”) or a religious point (“No God, No Peace. Know God, Know Peace”).

The congregation’s perspective is conservative evangelical. Rutherford, a graduate of Ozark Bible College in Joplin, Mo., is a third-generation preacher whose brothers are ministers and whose sisters are married to ministers.

“We are here to preach the word of God in an uncompromising manner--I think that’s what people are looking for today,” he said. “We’re straightforward with the Gospel, but I want people to have a good time.”

Rutherford said his sermons avoid dissertations on the meaning of scriptural passages and instead use parables and metaphors to draw spiritual truths from life in Southern California.

“I use a lot of sporting illustrations,” said the 6-foot-5 pastor, who plays in local basketball leagues.

When hockey star Wayne Gretzky was lured from Edmonton to sign with the Los Angeles Kings a few years ago, the church sign carried an inside joke for fans who knew Gretzky’s uniform number: “They Say It’s Cold in Edmonton. They’re Minus 99.”

After the Kings reached the National Hockey League championships this year, the church sign spoofed: “Free L. A. Kings Tickets. Stanley Cup Playoffs. This Sunday, 10:45 a.m. Not!”

Hillcrest is by no means the only church to try to catch passersby with clever messages. And Rutherford got the idea from his father who does it at his church in Oklahoma City.

Nor are all the sayings original. Some are lifted from books or other written sources. Church members and staff contribute ideas. “Realtors who drive by the church phone in some,” he said.

Yet, the church may be distinctive for demonstrating a perceptible connection between the signs and a rapid growth.

The double-take message this week, “Not All Visitors Welcome. Only 400 Seats Available!” focuses on the growing pains of the church. It is simply running out of room.

In January, the church added a Saturday evening service to its schedule of two Sunday morning services--a recent trend among growing evangelical churches. At Easter this year, the congregation put up a big tent on its school grounds for a single morning service featuring the singing of Debby Boone. A total of 1,648 worshipers showed up.

Church leaders hope either to buy more land to expand the current facilities at the corner of Rinaldi Street and Shoshone Avenue, or rent a large auditorium elsewhere, he said.

Not everything falls nicely into place for the church, of course. And Rutherford, who is known as The Dud (instead of Dudley) to friends, shows he can laugh at himself as well.

Hillcrest ran commercials on television that used soft-sell humor, one of them showing Rutherford hitting a golf ball out of a sand trap at nearby Porter Valley Country Club.

“Later, I was golfing at Porter Valley and on the third tee when a guy looked over and said he recognized me from the TV commercial,” the pastor said.

“I have to tell you something,” the other golfer told Rutherford. “I was in bed, making love, smoking, drinking a beer, when I looked up and you were in the sand trap and said, ‘God gives you another chance.’ ”

Richardson asked if that changed his outlook.

“No,” the golfer replied, “but it did remind me that if I didn’t get out of bed, I was going to miss my tee time.”

THE HILLCREST MESSAGE BOARD

Here are some other messages used in the past three years by Hillcrest Christian Church on its sign in Granada Hills:

* Eternal Reservations Made Here: Smoking or Non-Smoking?

* Our Sundays Are Better Than Baskin-Robbins.

* Good Intentions Die Unless They Are Executed.

* Church Is a Hospital for Sinners, not a Museum for Saints.

* The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, Minus 40% Inheritance Tax.

* A Man Who Thinks He Never Makes a Mistake Has a Wife Who Made One.

* War is Costly, Peace Is Priceless.

* An Engagement Is an Urge on the Verge of a Merge.