FEATURE
holiday planned. Eager to sample the
apparently huge US Christian comedy
scene, he contacted a few churches
in advance, to see if they’d welcome a
touring UK comedian, bringing laughs
and a bit of testimony as he passed. The
responses were surprising. No gigs came
in. Christian comedy in the USA is so vast
that they have a circuit of their own: years
of try-out spots, knowing the right people,
and playing the right conferences at the
right churches, could not be replaced by a
simple email from an English bloke.
But there was another slew of emails,
from those less eager for laughter to enter
their church. ‘How dare you even consider
using our place of worship as a place for
humor?’ one began. I was shocked, and
not just at the misspelling of ‘humour’. The
pastor chastised my comedian pal for the
nerve of his enquiry: the pulpit was not
a stage, and laughter had no place in the
house of God.
That pastor was perhaps at an extreme,
though some of his responses resonated
with me. When I bring a comedy show to
a church, I always respect the space, and
remind myself that while we’re sharing
communal laughs, the star of the show
is the Alpha and Omega, the set-up and
punchline, the creator of all. The angry
American pastor was right to a degree:
the pulpit is not a stage. Rather, (to offer
a Bible/Shakespeare mash-up) all the
world’s a stage… but we are not of the
world. The world is a broken and troubled
place, but God created it and has walked
it with us, through Jesus. So when I laugh,
communally, positively, inclusively, I praise
God: he who put the banana-skin there,
and he who slipped on it before I did.
In church, there is certainly a time to
mourn and weep, but there’s a time to
dance, and there’s a time to laugh.
Paul Karensa
Paul Karensa writes and script-edits for many
comedies for BBC TV, Sky and other channels. He
was on the British-Comedy-Award-winning writing
team for Miranda, and has written
on each series of Lee Mack’s sitcom
Not Going Out, among other
shows. Paul is also one of the few
to perform stand-up at both
comedy clubs and churches, in
bearpits and pulpits, as well
as being a contributing
regular on the ‘Pause
for Thought’ slots on
Chris Evans’ Radio 2
Breakfast Show.
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