“...one of its tabs ripped off ...”
It probably had a fringe of tabs at the bottom with the phone number on each. You tear one off so you can take the number with you. It’s kind of old-fashioned now that people can take pictures of the poster with their cell phone and capture the phone number.
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Thank you! I've never encountered one of those posters.
In that case, "removed" would have been a better descriptive and more emotionally neutral term than "ripped off".
My overall impression is that the inside of any evangelical Christian church was "strange and foreign territory" -- and a bit intimidating -- to the reporter...