Minister’s Workshop: Punch Lines from the Pulpit

They didn’t know it was coming. The buildup began like any other story illustrating a biblical text. But then came the punch line, and the pastor looked out over a laughing congregation.

But wait a minute!

Not everyone was laughing. In fact, one or two even had their heads bowed. Were they embarrassed, ashamed? What happened?

Not every preacher can tell a funny story; not every preacher should. And even those who have a “sense of humor” had better know what they are doing when they tell a joke or funny story, and be aware of whom their humor is going to affect.

Some people laugh because they are feeling good; they come to church ready for a blessing. They hang on the preacher’s words, and the humor he uses has its expected effect—it drives home a point in a way that the hearer will remember for a long time. A joke or a funny story is a hook, a means of pulling along the minds of the hearers. It even gives a little mental vacation in the midst of concentration.

Humor is enjoyable; often it is even therapeutic. “A cheerful heart is a good medicine,” states Proverbs 17:22. Recent studies on humor support that. It has been found that hospital patients who are given something to laugh about sleep better. Many experience a reduction in pain, and in one experiment reported by Science Digest (Nov. 1977) a young polio victim in an iron lung was able to breathe for up to forty minutes on his own because he had been laughing.

But even though laughter is good for people, and smiling is known to help create a happier frame of mind, some people in church aren’t laughing, and aren’t ready to be made to laugh. A pastor can’t assume that his humor will always help people.

What about the person who comes to church with a longing for answers to some critical need? What about those who are hurting, or are in spiritual depression, or are under emotional stress? What does pulpit humor do to a person who has gone through one of the most difficult weeks of his life? He may need humor—it may even be good for him—but he isn’t ready for it. The laughter of people around him reinforces his loneliness and pain. In the midst of humor, he feels worse.

There are others who do not see the humor in a story because they have a different idea about what is funny. One recent study of fifty people who read the same “funny story” showed that seventeen of the people laughed aloud, six snickered self-consciously, and the rest either had no response or asked if the story was supposed to have some meaning. The researcher’s conclusion was a question: what is really funny?

Tell a joke or story from the pulpit, and the parishioner may or may not think it is funny. It depends on his conditioning and his feeling at the moment. And if he doesn’t think it is funny, what does he think? His reaction may be that his pastor is making light of God’s truth, mocking something that is serious, being sacrilegious. Some may even begin to question his sympathies as a pastor—“if he laughs about that, how will he react to me and my needs?”

We assume that humor is going to be beneficial, and usually it is. It loosens up an audience, gets oxygen to the brain, and even relaxes the speaker. Executives pay for jokes to use in their speeches. Their writers draw large checks and are kept busy.

Humor is a helpful tool to any public speaker who can use it well, and it is especially helpful to preachers. Oswald C. J. Hoffman, radio preacher on “The Lutheran Hour,” is a master at humor. The late Norman Paullin, former pastor of Baptist Temple in Philadelphia, and homiletics professor at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, was known for his humorous pauses. His hearers would wait, deliciously savoring the moment when he would say what they knew was coming. With his eyes twinkling, he would hold his audience as the laughter built up in anticipation of the punch line. Then when he finally gave the last line, he would use the receptivity of the congregation to drive home a biblical point. Not everyone has that gift.

A pastor can’t always know what is happening when he uses humor. Humor is unpredictable because it is personal, and people are unpredictable. A parishioner is as different as each new day and event in his life can make him.

And what about the pastor himself? Why do I tell a story or joke? Am I sincerely trying to make a point in my biblical teaching? Am I using a joke to show that God likes humor too, and pastors are not dull? Is my humor constructive and positive?

Or am I consciously or unconsciously taking a thinly disguised jab at someone? Am I reacting to some personal pain that perhaps has not been dealt with adequately outside the pulpit? Pastors are human too. Is the pulpit my platform for getting even? If it is, I am engaging in public torture. Many may laugh at what I say, but some will not. It was Will Rogers who said, “Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.” A pastor has to be sure of his motives.

Does humor help your message? Does it illustrate a point? Will it make the hearer more receptive to what is coming? Does it justify the amount of time you give to it in a twenty- to thirty-minute sermon? Humor, Reinhold Niebuhr explained, “must move toward faith.”

A prayed-for sermon includes prayed-for illustrations and prayed-for humor—even prayed-for spontaneous remarks. God communicates by his Holy Spirit through all of the emotional channels which he has placed within us—and he made us with the ability to laugh.

Knowing that he made us for laughter, and obeying God’s call to communicate his Word, we can preach freely, relaxed in the awareness that the humor we use is from him and for him. When it is dedicated to God, our humor can send people home with cheerful hearts.—ROGER C. PALMS, editor, Decision, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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