In twenty-four years in the pulpit, I have never told a joke. I may have fifteen more years and anticipate never telling a pulpit joke during that time, either. I know what you’re thinking, “No wonder his church is small!” I do, however, use a great deal of humor because I am convinced that laughter is a healing salve and all the people in my church are harboring private griefs, fears, discouragements, and disappointments. Doesn’t Proverbs
When dealing with sin, disappointment, failure, or discouragement, humor can help us swallow hard truths from Scripture by sweetening to taste. One of the foremost theological writers of two generations ago, St. Mary of Poppins, in her Summa, wrote that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. I believe she was right.
The laughter for which I am looking is that which is self-deprecating, humor that makes me the focus of the joke. This can be dangerous if carelessly done: you may come off looking like a fool, and no one wants to listen to a fool, let alone follow one. In dealing with sin, you may inadvertently portray yourself as a pervert with a high reading on the yuck-o-meter, in which case you will, within weeks, evacuate your church. The balance is to describe an event in your life in a funny way that helps people identify with you as you describe one of your foibles. If they can laugh at you while seeing themselves, it is because you are giving them cause to believe that you understand them and that, if you see hope and victory for yourself, there is the same for them. All of a sudden, you are Everyman. This is the secret of self-deprecating humor: people will identify with you and laugh at themselves as they laugh with (not at) you. “If my pastor struggles with this problem or carries this pain and can still live in victory, then perhaps I can as well!”
This is equally effective when identifying with your church family in the universal struggle with sin and disbelief. Again, you do not want to expose yourself as an inveterate and hopeless sinner, but they must see you as a godly man who struggles against the sin within him, who lives in a Romans 7 world, but finds victory in spite of the intractable power of his fleshly sin nature. Self-deprecating humor allows us to admit to the reality of living in Romans 7 while enjoying the victory of Romans 8.
For the past year, I have been preaching my way through 1st Corinthians. In teaching on the last half of chapter six (“flee sexual immorality”), I was reaching out to the men, some of whom are addicted to pornography or masturbation rather than meeting their God-given sexual needs by loving their wives sexually. One of my calls to action was for every man to read Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker’s book, Every Man’s Battle. One of Arterburn’s principles is that most men, ninety percent by his estimation, struggled with sexual purity: from an improper thought life, to pornography, to adultery. In my sermon, I referenced the passage in Job in which Job makes a covenant with his eyes (a man’s primary sex organs, by the way) that he might not look upon a young woman. Having done so, I described a scene in which I was at the gym and happened to forget that admonition and, staring at one of the mega-babes who inhabit World Gym, stumbled into one of the weight machines, making it obvious to all present what I had been doing. As soon as the laughter died down in the church, I knew then that I had the men where they needed to be because they identified with me, seeing themselves doing the very same stupid thing. All of the other “ninety-percenters” identified with my comic embarrassment. I could see it in their eyes. I could also see the looks of bewilderment in the eyes of the women. At the end of the service I had men coming forward simply to identify with me as a fellow “ninety-percenter.” Their coming forward was not an admission of guilt so much as an admission of their commitment to sexual purity when their sin nature was constantly striving to bring them down. Humor in the pulpit made their admission of need possible.
Since then, I have seen the eyes of the women in our church turn from bewilderment about what makes men tick to thankfulness that their pastor was willing to take the lead on admitting that he was a “ninety-percenter” and that their husbands felt they could now strive for victory over an ever-present sin. I do not know how many of our men are reading the book, but I do know that, since that Sunday, the local Christian bookstore has not been able to keep it in stock.
With Everyman in the pulpit, your congregation will be able to identify with you and see that you understand them and are not so far above them in holy perfection that there is no use in even making the attempt to be a super-saint like their pastor. Self-deprecating humor will make the connection without picturing yourself as a revolting, bottom-feeding pervert.
The pulpit is that place in which the most serious, heart-wrenching issues of life are covered. A healthy dose of comic relief makes it easier for people to hear what you are saying and to handle the issues you bring up. Your people do not want to come to church and hear their pastor decry the miseries of his endless failures; they face that despair every time they look in the mirror. They need a new perspective: victorious, godly people have the same sin nature and the same failures, and the same discouragements, and the same tendencies to hopelessness; but they live in victory because of Christ. Humor helps change that perspective for them.
Interestingly, the funniest scenes in Shakespeare’s plays are not found in his comedies, but in his tragedies. Shakespeare understood!
Self-deprecating humor takes skill to walk the fine line between identifying with others in a humorous manner and becoming a ridiculous clown or a despised and hopeless sinner. Such humor has a marvelous way of connecting with your congregation, showing them by your example that, in spite of being just like them, you can experience great victories over sin while admitting to the undeniable reality of an active sin nature.
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