A FUN EXPERIMENT WITH COLLEAGUES

Try this experiment. Choose a couple of colleagues and invite them to participate in an exercise of sharing humor.
Each week each of you will send the other two a serious topic with respect to the stresses of ministry. This is not a statement of personal complaint but a serious statement about a stressful reality about ministry.

Judy Carter, author of The Comedy Bible, says that good comedy topics always include an attitude. She offers five basic attitudes – weird, scary, hard, bugs me, and stupid.
You and your colleagues take the statement offered and write out at least five statements using those attitude words. For example, say the topic is, “Pastors are expected to visit all the members who are sick or in the hospital.” Nothing funny there, just the stressful expectations of a pastor.

GET AN ATTITUDE

Now write out that statement with the attitude words. “You know what’s weird about expecting pastors to visit all the members who are in the hospital?” “You know what bugs me about expecting pastors to visit all the members who are in the hospital?” etc.
When you receive the five statements about each of the topics from both of your colleagues, read them aloud and try to speak them with the attitude identified.

Once you hear those five statements, there will be one or more of them that you can answer with an additional statement that carries some humor with it. “You know what bugs me about expecting a pastor to visit all the members who are sick in the hospital? They also expect the pastor to be like superman and arrive at the hospital within minutes of their arrival.”

FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT

The idea is that you come up with your responses and then the three of you meet together and see which responses are the funniest. A couple of things will happen if you do this. First, you will begin to back off from the pressure of the expectation and see some funny sides to it. Second, you will have some colleagues who understands the situation with whom you can share both the frustration and the humor in it. Third, even if all of your jokes are pretty lame, you will enjoy thinking together about what makes the ministry funny even when it is very serious. And fourth, if you do it over a meal, you will enjoy the fellowship.

YOU WOULDN’T DARE

Exaggeration is another technique of humor. Here you remove the boundaries of always being fair, accurate, and kind and just let it rip. For example, you have just read of one more clergy, politician, or teacher who has become involved in inappropriate behavior. You meet with your comedy colleagues and set up this scenario.
Name three exaggerated sins you could commit in your ministry. For example you say:

Maybe I’ll seduce the 3 most beautiful women in my sanctuary,
Corrupt the treasure into splitting the Easter offering with me,
And loose the brake linings on that idiot who drives his Ferrari to the meeting that votes down my salary raise.

(OK, I know that first one is a male fantasy — so if you are a female clergy think about the studs in the congregation, or if you are gay — well you get the idea.)

Then make your exaggerated rejoinder.

When my sins are exposed, I’ll make a Jimmy Swaggart type confession with tears running down my face and see if by sinning boldly grace does abound.

You may not think that is great comedy or you may think that you can never come up with really funny ideas, but just making the effort with some colleagues who are also trying to find the funny in the stresses will have it’s benefits.

If you come up with some really funny ones, why not share them with me as well.