On Answering Questions Nobody is Asking ("Jesus Must Be Crazy")

A couple months ago, I put up a survey on our church's website, asking the question, "What do you think is the most confusing and/or frustrating thing that Jesus ever did or said?"

We received some pretty fascinating responses, and I took the most frequently-asked questions from that survey and turned them into a sermon series called "Jesus Must Be Crazy." We just wrapped up the series this past Sunday, and I cannot tell you how much fun it was.

(Yes I can. It was a lot of fun.)

One of the best parts about being a pastor is that I get to go out learn a bunch of stuff and then come back to my friends at Collective Church and tell them what I learned. It's pretty great. And this series was a big stretch for me, because it forced me to start thinking about a few passages I had never preached about or even heard anybody else preach about. Several of the passages we dealt with have been largely ignored in most churches because they are confusing or scary or frustrating, which I suppose is why so many people wanted to talk about them in the first place.

I once heard a great preacher challenge a room full of preachers by saying, "You need to know if you're trying to answer questions that nobody is asking." What he meant was that sometimes preachers just talk about the stuff that they've always talked about or they deliver boring sermons every single week because they are trying to engage topics and ideas that have grown stale in the minds of their listeners.

That really stuck with me. I've heard lots of boring sermons in my life, and I could look at each of those sermons and tell you why I found them so uninteresting (the typical reasons tend to be overuse of churchy jargon, lack of a central point, and total disinterest in the people who are listening), but I had never really considered that one of the main problems might be that the preachers were trying to answer questions that nobody was asking.

I've written a lot about the nature of preaching and the things I've learned and am still learning about it. Whenever I go back and listen to my sermons, I can hear dozens of ways that I could be better than I am. That's the nature of any art form; you have to keep working, and you have to try and be better today than you were yesterday. But one of the greatest challenges of this whole thing has less to do with style and delivery and more to do with how we engage the subject matter. It's the question, "Am I trying to answer questions that nobody is asking?"

And so, as an exercise in answering the right questions, I did this series. It was a very demanding series that cost me countless hours of research and fact-checking, but it was worth it. I'm sure I'll do something like this again at some point. In fact, more than once I have preached a series based on a specific request from a church member. Why not? It's fun, and it forces me to get outside my own head and experiences and to think about what other people are dealing with. Plus, as I'm doing the research, it's pretty fun to discover something mind-blowing and then to think, "Oh man, that one guy who requested this topic is going to love this!"

So here's to curiosity and to asking questions alongside one another.

Oh, and here's the series:

Part 1: "I Have Come to Bring the Sword"

Part 2: "The So-Called Unforgivable Sin"

Part 3: "Jesus and Anger"

Part 4: "Jesus and Divorce"

Part 5: "Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

Part 6: "Paul Must Be Crazy" (or "Our Silenced Sisters")

How Communicators Can Develop a Unique Voice

This post is Part 3 in an ongoing series on preaching, public communication, and standup comedy. (Part 1. Part 2.)

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One of the toughest parts of doing standup comedy at an Open Mic Night was deciding exactly what to say. I have never written a joke in my life, so the idea trying to write five minutes’ worth of jokes seemed impossible.

So I decided to do what I already knew I could do: tell stories. I knew I had a much better chance at being funny with stories than if I tried to make hilarious observations about airline food.

A few hours before I went onstage at the comedy club, I was talking to a friend who asked me, “What are you going to say when it’s your turn?”

I’m going to tell a couple of stories,” I said.

My friend seemed concerned. “Is that what they’re going to be expecting?” He asked. “Don’t most comedians tell jokes? Are there very many comics who tell stories?” I told him he was probably right but that I did have any jokes, so it didn’t really matter what people were expecting. I could only use the material that I had.

As it turns out, there are lots of different styles of standup comedy.

• Some comics tell traditional jokes and specialize in rapid-fire setup/punch-line delivery (such as Rodney Dangerfield and Mitch Hedberg).
• Some comics are “observational.” This is the “Have you ever noticed…?” brand of comedy (such as Jerry Seinfeld and Brian Regan).
• Some comedians are “Insult comics,” who are at their best when they are making fun of people (such as Don Rickles and Lisa Lampenelli).
  
• There are comedians who are often talked about as “Confessional,” and they basically specialize in raw honesty and tell you things about themselves that most people would never want to admit to anyone (such as Richard Pryor and Louis C.K.).
• And then there are story-based comedians such as Bill Cosby and Mike Birbiglia. These are the kinds of comedians who tell long stories and hope to glean as much humor out of those stories as possible. This is what I was attempting to do at the comedy club.

Of course, these categories are not set in stone, and there are lots of comedians who flow in and out of a couple different styles. There are also lots of other “types” not mentioned here.

The point is that there is not merely one single type of comedian, and style has everything to do with the personality and strength of each specific comic.

A comedian needs to know specifically what is funny about him (or her). When a comic tries to take on a style—or a voice—that is not authentic to that comic, it never goes well.

There’s a scene in Mike Birbiglia’s semi-autobiographical 2012 film Sleepwalk With Me in which main character Matt—a struggling comedian—learns that a club owner wants him to perform thirty minutes of comedy when he only has ten minutes’ worth of material. Another comic—played by Marc Maron—advises Matt to fill the time by doing “crowd work” and making fun of people in the audience.  Matt tells Marc, “Whenever I make fun of people they punch me.” Regardless of his reservations, Matt gets desperate and, while onstage, he points to one guy in the audience and says, “Nice shirt, loser!” Nobody laughs. Matt tries to recover by saying, “Sorry… No, I like it. It’s nice… Sorry.” This illustrates a crucial principle in standup comedy as well as all of public speaking: Never try to be something you know you are not.

As with standup comedy, there are lots of different styles of preaching. People tend to identify the style that they prefer and assume that Jesus likes that style best, too.

If you are a preacher or a public speaker of any kind, here is something you need to know: You are not some off-brand version of someone else’s favorite speaker. You are you, and that is who you are supposed to be when you preach.

What comedians understand and what preachers need to learn is that you do not have to copy someone else’s style; you have your own voice, and you should use it.

So here are some things to do as you develop your voice-

1.    Accept the fact that you will never make everybody like you.

I have served as a teaching pastor at two different churches, and I have received feedback that was highly complimentary and other feedback that was… not.

I was once standing in the foyer of the church where I was the teaching pastor, and I was wearing one of those microphones that sits on your face—this is the universal sign for “I’m going to preach soon.” A woman walked right up to me and asked, “Where’s the senior pastor? Isn’t he preaching today?”

“No,” I said, suddenly feeling the need to apologize. “It’s just me.”

“Oh man!” she said, disappointed. “I was really hoping he would be preaching today.”

“He’ll be back next week,” I offered, being placed in the odd position of having to console someone whose biggest problem in life was that I would be preaching at her church.

Her shoulders slumped, and she said, “Okay.” She then turned around and walked out of the building. After getting up and dressed and out the door that morning, she bailed out on the whole plan once she found out that I would be preaching.

I don’t care how good you think you are; that kind of thing will affect your self-confidence.

I used to take every single bit of criticism personally. I actually believed it might be possible to become such a good preacher that I could make everybody like me. But it’s never going to happen. Not for me, and not for you.

Another preacher I know once told me, “Rob, as a preacher, you’re a lot like bleu cheese. People either really like you, or they really don’t.” He then said, “And that’s okay.”

2. Learn what people like about you.

I once heard an interview with Mike Birbiglia in which he was discussing how he developed his comedy style. He said this-

“I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy… [he said] that when you’re starting out in comedy it’s the audience that tells you what’s funny about you… You need to listen to that” (Interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, August 20, 2012).

As with comedy, the people who like your preaching can tell you a lot about who you are as a preacher. Your audience will tell you who you are and what exactly you are doing when you preach.

So perhaps a question preachers should ask themselves is, “When I preach, what kinds of people give me the most positive feedback?” The answer will tell you a lot.

If you prepare sermons that you would want to hear and deliver them as yourself, you will learn what people like about you as a communicator.

3.    Pay attention to your listeners while you are speaking.

When are your listeners most engaged? If they are laughing, what makes them laugh? If they are feeling some other kind of emotion—sadness, anger, relief, fear, regret, etc.—at what point were those emotions triggered? Noticing these things will help you know when you are strongest when you preach.

4.     Learn to appreciate styles that are different from yours.

I have several friends who are communicators, and they are very different preachers than I am. As public speakers, it is okay to celebrate diversity in our craft and to recognize the skill that other communicators bring to the platform.

How a Boring Sermon is Worse than No Sermon at All

This is Part 2 in a series on Preaching and Standup Comedy. Click here to read Part 1.

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I have heard a lot of boring sermons in my life. When I was a kid in church, the thirty-minute sermon was the most boring portion of my entire week. I thought sermons were actually supposed to be boring because that was their key defining characteristic.

The church my family attended did not have a children’s ministry that operated during the services. Unless you were a baby in the nursery, you went to church with your parents. Most of us who attend younger churches in suburban areas in America will raise an entire generation of children who have never fallen asleep in a pew before lunch on a Sunday morning. As I grew older, my friends and I discovered new ways to keep ourselves awake during the sermon.  We had games we would play while the preacher talked. These games varied from the always-relevant tic-tac-toe to the more obscure and denomination-specific “Find-the-Hymn-in-Three-Page-Turns-or-Less.” The rules of this game were fairly self-explanatory. One of us would pick a song in the hymnal (if you are unfamiliar with this word, a “hymnal” is a book full of songs that people sing in church), and the other player would randomly open the hymnal three times. If the specific song was found on one of the three random page turns, that player would earn a point. If the hymn was not found during the three page turns, no points were awarded.

When my friends were not at church and I was left to suffer alone, I simply used offering envelopes to draw poorly-imagined doodles of stick figures wearing suits and ties. I was probably single-handedly responsible for our church needing to order extra boxes of offering envelopes every year. So you see, dull sermons can indirectly cost your church money.

When a sermon is boring, the people in the room stay fairly quiet about it. They may tell others about it later, but they won’t belligerently walk out or heckle.

Standup comedians do not have this luxury. A comedian has to fight for every second of their audience’s attention. If a comedian bogs down and starts to bore the audience, the crowd will abandon him.

In my experience, most pastors (especially senior pastors) are treated pretty delicately. People feel a certain amount of endearment toward their pastors, and they will forgive a bad sermon if they still feel like the pastor is their friend. It’s a lot like when a parent goes to a child’s piano recital. The kid could be a musical prodigy or the kid could be the worst piano player in the whole neighborhood. Either way, the parent will attend the piano recital and listen to every poorly-played note because the parent loves the child.

For lots of pastors, this is how the sermon is received; people keep coming back to church and sitting politely through boring sermon after boring sermon simply because they already have an affinity for their pastor as a human being (which is not a bad thing).

No comedian in the world has this kind of relationship with his or her audience. In the documentary Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld talks about how he will take the stage at a comedy club and people will get really excited to see him. However, even Jerry Seinfeld—one of the most famous and beloved comedians in the world—acknowledges that he has about three minutes (five if the crowd is especially kind) before the people begin to get impatient. After a few minutes of standing onstage with a microphone—regardless of how famous the comedian happens to be—he still has to make people laugh.

Any preacher or public speaker can choose not to be boring, but he or she must genuinely want to interest their listeners. It isn’t enough to say, “Okay, I’ll be interesting this time. I know those last three hundred sermons were pretty dull, but this is going to be the one. I can feel it.” We have to make conscious choices about how we will deliver our content.

Here are a few suggestions.

1. Use Normal Language

One of the easiest ways to bore people is to load a sermon with insider jargon. In the world of Christian culture this kind of language is often referred to as “Christianese,” and it’s terrible. There are lots of insider buzz words that church kids and seminary students will know, but they have mostly lost their intrigue because they have been beaten into the ground. I know all of these words, and whenever I hear them in sermons, my mind naturally starts to drift. I feel like these words are signaling my brain and saying, “You can stop listening. This preacher is going to be running through clichés for a while.”

The preachers I love are the ones who are able to find new ways to articulate very old ideas. They recognize that not everyone in the room has the same religious or educational background, and they are trying to engage the topic in a new way.

As a disclaimer, I have noticed that there is a flip-side to this problem. Some preachers become so obsessed with trying to seem relevant that they overload their language with phrases they think will make them more appealing to younger generations, but it mostly comes across as desperate. There is an episode of The Simpsons in which Ned Flanders is leading a Bible study in his home and (improbably) teen thug Jimbo Jones is in attendance. At a certain point, Jimbo gets bored and starts to leave, but Flanders shouts, “Mouse pad! Double click! Skye! Skype! These words basically hypnotize Jimbo and convince him to sit back down. Apparently, the writers of The Simpsons have noticed that pastors are starting to pander out of desperation. Similarly, I recently drove past a church sign that said, “New Series: What Would Jesus Tweet?”

So yes, use normal language, but it needs to be language that is normal to you, too. If you are trying to hijack someone else’s cultural vernacular in order to feel relevant, it may not be as effective as you think it is.

So just be natural. Tell stories. Be funny. Use words you would use if you were simply having breakfast with someone. This isn’t “dumbing it down”; it’s being a human being and a communicator.

2. Care

If a speaker seems bored, the people listening will feel bored.

Of course, this isn’t just about speaking in monotone or seeming disinterested in the subject matter. We need to care about how our words are affecting the people in the room.

I once heard someone say that good preaching is the difference between having to say something and having something to say. If I wake up on Sunday morning and think to myself, “Ugh. The service starts in two hours, and I have to say something,” it probably won’t be very good. However, if I wake up on Monday morning and think, “I cannot wait until Sunday, because I have something to say!” that energy will fuel the entire process and infuse a sense of life into the sermon itself. It is a terrible thing to be listening to a sermon and realize that the preacher is every bit as bored as I am.

3. Try to Establish Intimacy with the Room

I once listened to a youth pastor deliver a message to middle school students (Grades six through eight), and it was not good.

First of all, this guy seemed to think that the best way to communicate with middle school students was to talk really, really, loudly. His tone of voice never changed at all. He kept the same “I’M-SHOUTING-SO-YOU-SHOULD-LISTEN-TO-ME!” tone of voice throughout the entire thirty-minute message. Not only that, but he violated the first suggestion on this list by using as much “Christian culture” language as possible. He talked about being “sanctified,” “God’s sovereignty,” and “showing reverence before the almighty throne of God.” It was one of the most wholly dissonant sermons I have ever heard. On one hand, his tone of voice was (literally) screaming, “Please pay attention to me! I’m relevant! Listen to how loud I can talk!” However, his actual words were communicating an entirely different message, which was, “I have no interest in anyone here understanding a single word I am saying.” The final result was a roomful of bored teenagers.

The best preachers I know are great at establishing intimacy with the other people in the room. I’ve heard several comedians talk about this dynamic. They talk about how a good crowd in a good room can make you feel like you’re all experiencing something together. It is not merely a person standing on a platform and talking as if he or she is totally unaware that there are people in the room—it is establishing an awareness of one another, speaker and listener. It isn’t a lecture; it’s a conversation. The youth pastor in the story above didn’t seem to understand that, and I get the feeling that if the room had been completely empty it wouldn’t have changed a thing about his delivery.

This goes back to being aware of our listeners and our surroundings. If you think of your listeners as participants in a conversation, they will think that way, too.

The art of the spoken word—preaching, teaching, comedy, or any other kind of speaking—can be a powerful medium. If you are a public communicator, may you seek to engage people and to constantly seek to elevate your craft. 

Go to Part 3.

How Preachers Can (and Should) Learn from Standup Comedians

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a standup comedian. I became a preacher instead, and it turns out that those two professions are more similar than you might think.

It’s not just about being funny (although being funny is never a bad idea); it’s about the art of the spoken word. It’s about using only your voice to make a connection with a group of people.

A couple years ago, I became convinced that preachers could improve their communication skills by learning what standup comedians already know. I spent months listening to hundreds of hours of interviews with comedians, reading books about great standup comics, and listening to comedy albums. I wanted to learn how to do standup comedy because I was convinced that it would make me a better preacher.

At one point, I even went to Open Mic Night at a local comedy club and put my name on the list. Open Mic Night is typically where working comedians go to work out new material, but literally anybody can put their name on the list and get a five-minute timeslot. So that’s what I did.

During my five minutes onstage in the dimly lit comedy club, I told two stories and received exactly three laughs from the room. My first laugh didn’t happen until nearly two minutes into my time. I can tell you that those first two laughless minutes were long and excruciating. When the whole point is to make someone laugh and you are unable to do it (and everybody in the room is watching you), it feels pretty terrifying. When I did get those three laughs, I felt a huge rush of joy and relief.

I didn’t go to Open Mic Night because I want to start a career as a standup comic. I’m not funny enough, and I hate staying up late. So I’m automatically disqualified from that particular line of work. No, I went to Open Mic Night because I wanted to know first hand how it feels to do what comedians do and to feel the fear and pressure that comedians feel.

Most preachers have it too easy. They forget how nervous they felt the first time they ever delivered a sermon or spoke to a roomful of strangers. They forget how hard it is to win over a reluctant crowd. Comedians never forget what this feels like because they have to do it every night. Preachers get lazy because they become convinced that they’re good enough. People show up to church on Sunday mornings regardless of how hard they work on their sermons, which leads preachers to believe that they are great at preaching.

I once read a survey stating that 85% of pastors believe they are above average at preaching. How could that even be possible? By the sheer laws of mathematics, at least 35% of those pastors are delusional. Most comedians have no such delusions. If people are laughing, the comedian is succeeding; if people are not laughing, the comedian is failing. If you spent twenty minutes trying to be funny and nobody laughed at all, you probably wouldn’t tell anybody that you were “above average” at standup comedy.

When it comes to preaching, this comparison with standup comedians is not about needing to be funny. Like I said before, it’s about connecting with a group of people using only your voice. Preachers (and all public speakers, for that matter) have the power to evoke some kind of mental/emotional response from their listeners—laughter is one of those possible responses, but it isn’t the only one. We also can make people feel things like wonder, curiosity, hope, joy, relief, or catharsis. But we must be willing to do the work and to employ some of the same tools that comedians naturally know how to use.

Here are three things preachers can do to think like standup comedians:

1.    Understand the Art Form

Let’s not kid ourselves: Preaching is an art form. There may be a few pastors out there who bristle at this language and would argue that there is nothing “artistic” about preaching because it’s our responsibility to convey Truth and that thinking about it in terms of art reduces it in some kind of way. However, every time someone stands in front of other people and speaks with some kind of goal or agenda, that person is engaged in performance art.

In his excellent book Born Standing Up, legendary comedian Steve Martin says this (specifically speaking about school teachers): “Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.”

Steve Martin is pointing out that standing in front of people with something to say is, whether we like it or not, an act of performance. In other words, it is art.

The best preachers I know understand this. They understand that they are attempting to use their allotted time to engage people’s imaginations and that if we want to make people use their imaginations, we need to use our own. We need to be adequately prepared; we need to understand when to go fast and when to go slow; we need to understand when to be funny and when to be serious; we need to understand to overall structure of what we are talking about. It’s not just standing in front of people reading Bible verses—it is using your voice to engage the minds of others. That is what art does, and it takes a lot of work.

2.    Don’t Take Your Listeners for Granted

In my opinion, one of the worst things a preacher can do is be boring.

Most preachers I know who are not aware that they need improvement seem to think that their listeners will keep showing up regardless of how good the sermon is. I know lots of pastors who don’t start preparing until the Friday or Saturday before they are scheduled to preach. They don’t think it matters. Why? Because people keep showing up, and even one or two of them will tell the pastor “Great job” after the sermon. So as people keep attending church, and the pastor spends less and less time thinking about the sermon every week, that pastor will begin to feel like everything he does is excellent. He doesn’t even have to try, and people keep coming back. Some of the worst sermons I have ever heard were delivered by preachers who have been in the same church for twenty years. Conversely, some of the best sermons I have ever heard were also delivered by preachers who have been in the same church for twenty years. The difference is in how the preacher thinks about his or her listeners.

3.    Get Better

The best preachers I know are always trying to get better. They are not satisfied with preaching the same sermons over and over again, and they are constantly looking for new ways to engage very old ideas.

This is a practice that the best standup comedians are fully engaged in. In the documentary Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is trying to write all new material after his long-running sitcom (Seinfeld) has gone off the air. This is fascinating to watch. Throughout the documentary, Seinfeld—one of the world’s most successful standup comedians—spends weeks agonizing over every word in every joke. This guy could stop working right now, and he’d never have to worry about money or fame ever again. He has nothing left to prove to anybody, and yet he goes to Open Mic Nights and tries to deliver new jokes. He keeps going back, reworking each joke over and over again, never convinced that he’s done getting better. And that is why Jerry Seinfeld is a legend—he’s never convinced that he is already as good as he could possibly be. He’s always getting better.

As a preacher, I spend part of every day trying to make sure I’m doing each of these three things. I know that I have a long way to go and that I have a lot to learn, and I never want to be the kind of preacher who stops trying to be better.

If you are a public communicator—preacher, teacher, or otherwise—I hope you understand how powerful your art form can be. I hope you use your talent and platform to do something beautiful and that you will keep getting better.

I’ll revisit this topic a few more times in the next few weeks. There’s a lot more to talk about here.

Go to Part 2.