The Five Most Important Interpersonal Relationship Skills for Pastors:#3: Humor

By Joe McKeever, Preacher, former Pastor of seven churches, and retired Director of Missions at the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.

This is the third in a series of five articles on interpersonal relationship skills essential to ministers. The first is “The Ability to Listen.” The second is “Assertion.”

“Preacher,” said the fellow at the door shaking the pastor’s hand, “You ought to loosen up. Learn to laugh at yourself. We do.”

It’s a wise preacher who knows how to laugh at himself. And a sad one who doesn’t.

Few skills a minister possesses will get him through troubled waters like a great sense of humor: the ability to laugh at things that would otherwise have destroyed him, the gift of seeing the humorous in any circumstance, a love for oddities and incongruities in every situation, the enjoyment of life itself.

Did our Lord have a sense of humor? Without a doubt. I refer you to Elton Trueblood’s classic, The Humor of Christ.

Baton Rouge’s Bob Anderson told us in seminary one day, “We know Jesus was a happy person because children loved Him. And little children do not like to be around an unhappy person.”

That’s good enough for me.

Although, if you are like me, you’d be more convinced if somewhere along Galilee’s dusty trails, the Lord Jesus had turned to the disciples and said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one….”

I’d like it if the Apostle Paul had dropped in a tale of something funny that happened on the road to Ephesus to illustrate a point. That he didn’t doesn’t bother me, but still, I wish he had.

I apologize in advance for what follows….

Emmanuel Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, was our first pastorate following seminary. One Sunday following church, Mr. and Mrs. Laney had invited our young family to dinner.

While his mother finished setting the table, Rudon Laney said, “Brother Joe, settle a dispute between Mother and me.”

“Well, if I can.”

He said, “Did Jesus ever laugh? I say he did and mother says he didn’t.”

Mrs. Laney called in from the kitchen, “The Bible doesn’t say he did.”

I said, “Mrs. Laney, the Bible doesn’t say He went to the bathroom either, but we may assume He did.”

She said, “Brother Joe!” This genteel Southern lady was shocked at the very thought.

All these years later, the memory of that little conversation brings a smile to my face.

Now, pastor, I am not urging you to go to the extreme of becoming a jokester. Keep the sense of humor under control.

As one who loves hearing a good joke–and loves telling one even more–I cannot ignore what happened to Abraham’s nephew Lot when he tried to warn his sons-in-law about the coming judgment on Sodom. “To his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking” (Genesis 19:14).

A sense of humor can get out of bounds in a hurry, so it must always be disciplined and kept under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Why a preacher needs a good sense of humor….

1. Laughing at oneself is endearing to people.

You goof up in a sermon by using the wrong word. My friend Gene was preaching about some Old Testament group who “pitched their tent toward the cities of the East.” But it did not come out that way.

I will not tell you what he said. But you can imagine.

What came out of his mouth was borderline risque. The congregation rolled in the aisles, they enjoyed the gaffe so much.

You do that, and you are greatly embarrassed. You would not have done such a thing on purpose for any amount of money.

What you want to do is crawl under a rock. Don’t do it. There’s a better place to hide: in laughter.

You might as well laugh at it along with the congregation. To do otherwise will make them uncomfortable and embarrass them for having enjoyed it.

Remember this principle: When you unintentionally goof up and people laugh, if you will laugh too–and seem to enjoy it as much as they do–you will win a lot of friends at that moment.

2. Laughter is a great tension reliever. It relaxes.

You enter a hall where the audience is equally divided over some tense issue. You are the speaker, the one assigned to bring people together. If possible, you would love to dial the emotions down a notch, to get people to ease up in their passion. That’s when you would give your right arm for a great story. Or for a child to appear on the scene and do something cute. Or the perfect joke.

The prospective pastor has been introduced to the congregation. He strides to the pulpit, smiles at the people gathered to meet him and like it or not, pass judgment on him, and opens his mouth: “There is a powerful lot of wondering going on here today. You are wondering if I can preach. And I’m wondering if you know good preaching when you hear it!”

If they laugh, he’s in. If not, he’s in trouble.

My friend David, in just that situation, told the congregation, “Calling a pastor is like adopting a 15-year-old. You want to love him and you hope he will let you, but you don’t know where he’s been or how he’s been treated.”

Not hilarious, but humorous and so true.

3. Laughter brings people together. It unites.

You can see it happening in comedy clubs. People come in from all walks of life, all ages, all religions, all backgrounds. If the comic is good, the entire audience is soon rolling with laughter. Like some kind of glue, the humor bonds the people, transcending all the divisions and differences and barriers.

Politicians know this and will often employ the services of a humorist to insert funny lines and catchy insights into their speeches.

It’s human nature. We were made this way.

4. Laughter endears. It is attractive.

I had heard of Deacon Glynn before arriving at the new church. From all reports he was seriously godly and highly respected as a man of deep convictions. Having served five churches over nearly 30 years, I knew the type, I felt, and arrived at the church with my guard up. “I approached this man cautiously.”

To my delight, Deacon Glynn had a wonderful sense of humor. Furthermore, his wife and children did too. Their home was filled with laughter.

That did it for me.

Peter is a man I know only from Facebook. Evidently a preacher of sorts, his various “posts,” statements he makes occasionally on his page, are all deadly serious and full of dire warnings of judgment. From this and nothing else, I find myself shying away from him. I don’t like the fellow. He has no sense of humor.

5. Laughter adds a wonderful dimension to a sermon. Laughter enriches.

No one did this better than Frank Pollard, who served the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi, for a quarter of a century. When I preached in that church recently, he had been retired a decade (and in Heaven perhaps 5 years), but friends were still telling things he had said.

Winston Churchill said, “You cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you also understand the most amusing.”

Again, one must take care not to overdo the humor in a sermon. The best kind of laughter in church results from spontaneous occurrences. Second is the humor from a story of something everyone identifies with. Worst of all is a joke.

6. Laughter is healthy. It is good for you.

In his book “Anatomy of an Illness,” Norman Cousins tells of his experiment with laughter as a healer. As he battled cancer with all its horrible side effects, he made a point of watching videos that made him laugh. Five minutes of real laughter, he said, was able to counteract the pain for several hours.

Scientists tell us that deep belly-laughter causes the brain to release endorphins into the blood stream. These are called “nature’s healers,” and account for the high you feel after an evening with friends filled with laughter and joy.

7. Laughter is a survival technique. We choose to laugh rather than cry or get angry.

In the middle of the First World War, Winston Churchill advised a group of military officers, “Laugh a little and teach your men to laugh…. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way until you can.”

A British writer–whose name I do not know–tells of the time he found a great parking place in downtown London. As soon as he backed into the spot, a fellow came over and began banging on his window. “You got my parking space!” he yelled, and was ready to fight. The driver calmly got out, walked over, put his arm around the surprised man, and said quietly, “My friend, because I am more intelligent than you, I will go and find another space. Okay?” With that, he got into the car and drove away, leaving the irate citizen standing there, stunned.

In 1940, as Nazi planes dropping bombs on London each night, causing great suffering and destruction, someone took a photo of a shop that had taken a hit during the previous night. A hastily lettered sign read: “More Open Than Usual.”

8. Laughter is Godlike. God laughs.

James Thurber once said, “The power that created the poodle, the platypus, and people has an integrated sense of both comedy and tragedy.”

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. (Psalm 2:4)

Pastor, if you will have a smile on your face and good humor in your heart, you will be welcome everywhere you go. The folks at the nursing home will rejoice to see you. The hospital corridor will light up at your approach. Even the church business meetings will be less scary and the angry partisans less pugilistic if your good humor is on display.

This article was posted earlier at joemckeever.com, and is reposted here by permission of the author.

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