Humor Us!

OwenHanley Lynch, Alyce M. Mckenzie

Description

Homiletics textbooks often discourage the use of humor in preaching, regarding it as trivializing or distracting. The result is that many preachers have failed to understand humor’s positive power, demoting it to the opening joke to get a guaranteed guffaw to warm up the crowd. Humor Us!, the second volume in the "Preaching and…" series, is a collaborative effort by homiletician Alyce M. McKenzie and humor scholar Owen Hanley Lynch that promotes humor, a force capable of great good, to its rightful place in the pulpit. Establishing humor as a divine gift, Humor Us! opens to preachers the world of humor studies with its positive portrayal of humor’s usefulness to speak truth to power, unite people in their common humanity, and strengthen them to cope and survive in tough times.

Humor Us! helps preachers understand how humor works and shows them, in very practical and specific ways, how preachers can put it to work in their sermons. It combines the wealth of knowledge of two highly regarded scholars-practitioners to show how humor can become a potent tool for sharing the good news in sermons. McKenzie and Lynch prove that humor, when applied thoughtfully, can foster compassion and a sense of common humanity, help challenge an unjust status quo, and invite listeners into a shared experience of the presence of God.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Preaching
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie
• SMU

Informations

• Publié par: Presbyterian Publishing
• Date de parution: 06 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781646983148
• Langue: English

Extrait

“To anyone who does even occasional public speaking, it’s obvious that humor gets attention, relaxes your audience, creates rapport, and makes your message memorable. But few books on preaching have delved into these and other benefits of humor. McKenzie and Lynch make up for lost time with this tour de force of historical research, funny stories, and advice for preachers. Their tips and questions ‘To Ponder’ alone are worth the price of this book. I was especially taken with their exploration of Christianity as a comic vision of life—as ‘the certainty of the ultimate victory of . . . hope over despair’—with its links between humor and faith, hope, and love.”
—John Morreall, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, College of William & Mary
“How refreshing and exciting to see a book that directly and principally addresses the Christian religion and humor, indeed even taking a practical stance on how pastors can use humor in their communication. This book, through meticulous and extensive research, forthrightly seeks to bring together expertise in homiletics and communication to explore the topic of humor in preaching. Exploring humor as a gift from God, the authors admirably show from a variety of different approaches why humor is crucial to the human experience and highly desirable and useful for preachers’ communication. In friendly, accessible, and at times funny text, the book explores humor and theology based on the essential humor in divine and human character, humor and homiletics and the work that humor can do in sermons, and humor in preachers’ lives that can be harnessed and used in their work and relationships. Preachers will find this work of great practical value, but anyone interested in the clashes and reinforcements of humor and the Christian religion through the centuries leading up to now will find it a fun and fascinating read. Not only did I learn about humor and its uses in Christian lives and giving sermons, I learned a lot also about preaching from reading this book, along with lots of practical advice about noting and using humor in presentations advancing the Christian church.
—John Meyer, Professor of Communication Studies, University of Southern Mississippi
“Thank you, baby Jesus! Finally, a book that truly understands the electric power of humor in preaching. As a pastor and a professional comedian, I know firsthand how the savvy homiletical leveraging of humor can utterly transform the dynamics of a room (and a sanctuary). We owe it to ourselves as preachers, teachers, and human beings to read this wonderful book, absorb its wisdom, then use it to launch the good news of hope as high as it can fly.”
—Rev. Susan Sparks, preacher, comedian, author
“As this book reminds us, Aristotle called human beings ‘laughing animals.’ People enjoy a good joke and creative use of humor. That explains the popularity of stand-up comedians and comedy clubs. This book invites preachers to tap into that appreciation for humor and learn about the benefits and risks of using humor in preaching. Through a compelling review of the history of comedy and humor as an academic study, this book draws preachers and homileticians into the various ways in which humor can appropriately be used in sermons. That includes blending biblical hermeneutics with a new word I have learned here: ‘humor-neutics,’ which invites preachers to notice and make use of the humor and irony that runs throughout the biblical narrative, and link that with their observations about the world around them. This is not a joke; this book will make for better sermons and better preachers.”
—Marvin A. McMickle, President (retired), Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School
“What a wonderful gift Alyce McKenzie and Owen Lynch have given us. In this enjoyable, engaging, and revealing book, McKenzie and Lynch show us that the God who is revealed in Scripture has a wonderful sense of humor and wants us to have one as well. In a time when there is much sadness and widespread lament in the church and our world, this daring, thoroughly enjoyable book invites us to smile, to see ourselves as a gracious God sees us, to laugh and to relish the gift of laughter.”
—Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School; United Methodist Bishop (retired)
“Preachers instinctively know that humor in the sermon can serve the gospel. Preachers also know that when humor appears inappropriately in the sermon, everyone in the room is uneasy. This superb volume—the first study of humor in the pulpit in a generation—offers a theology of humor, perspectives on how humor works, points to sources for humor, marks occasions that are appropriate and inappropriate for humor, and, best of all, offers practical guidelines for using humor in the pulpit. This book will not turn preachers into stand-up comics, but it will help preachers see and express the humor that is all around us and that can bring a special spark to the sermon.”
—Ronald J. Allen, Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Gospels and Letters, Christian Theological Seminary
“Sermons would be a lot more listenable, delightful, and effective if preachers followed the advice of this witty, theoretically solid, and eminently practical book. Alyce McKenzie and Owen Lynch give readers many fine gifts in these pages, but none is more profound or welcome than their invitation to a more joyful expression of the faith.”
—Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Candler School of Theology
“I smiled, nodded, laughed out loud, and underlined a lot as I read McKenzie and Lynch’s wise and piquant Humor Us! , rethinking how humor works or doesn’t in preaching and as the core of the life of faith. G. K. Chesterton said, ‘Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.’ Preachers will soar when they take this book seriously.”
—James Howell, Senior Pastor, Myers Park United Methodist Church
Humor Us!
Humor Us!
Preaching and the Power of the Comic Spirit
A LYCE M. M C K ENZIE AND O WEN H ANLEY L YNCH
© 2023 Alyce M. McKenzie and Owen Hanley Lynch
First edition
Published by Westminster John Knox Press
Louisville, Kentucky
23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32—10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com .
Book design by Drew Stevens
Cover design by Mark Abrams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ISBN: 9780664267018
Most Westminster John Knox Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, and special-interest groups. For more information, please email [e-mail] .
I would like to dedicate this book on humor to my students who have laughed and learned with me over the years, subjected to but never subjects of my humor.
—Owen Hanley Lynch
To Graham and Silas,
my self-appointed accountability partners who called me every afternoon to ask,
“How many pages did you write today, Gigi?”
—Alyce M. McKenzie
Contents
Preface to the “Preaching and . . .” Series
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE  The Gift of the Comic Spirit
1. God’s Gift of Humor
2. Humor as (Uniquely) Human
3. Made in God’s Image: Humor and the Imago Dei
PART TWO  The Sermon and the Comic Spirit
4. Adding Humor to Our Homiletical Toolbox: Positive Benefits of Humor
5. Strategies for Using Humor in Our Sermons
6. Three Theories of Humor: Superiority, Relief, and Incongruity
7. The Two Frames: Comedy and Tragedy
8. Foes and Fans: Humor through the Centuries
PART THREE  The Preacher and the Comic Spirit
9. The Preacher as Jester, Fool, and Sage
10. The Preacher as Comic Spirit
11. The Preacher’s Knack for Noticing Humor in Inscape and Landscape
12. Humor-neutics 101: Developing Your Knack for Noticing Biblical Humor
13. The Preacher as Last Comic Standing: Crafting Original Comedy
Index
Excerpt from Preaching and the Thirty-Second Commercial , by O. Wesley Allen, Jr. and Carrie La Ferle
Preface to the “Preaching and . . .” Series
Preachers are not just preachers. When they step into the pulpit they are also theologians, storytellers, biblical teachers, pastors, historians, psychologists, entertainers, prophets, anthropologists, leaders, political scientists, popular culture commentators, ethicists, philosophers, scientists, and so much more. It is not that they are expected to be masters of homiletics and jacks of all other trades. Instead it is that when preachers strive to bring God’s good news to bear on the whole of human existence, a lot is required to connect the two in existentially appropriate and meaningful ways.
The Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence (PCPE), 1 directed by Alyce M. McKenzie, has partnered with Westminster John Knox Press to create a book series that contributes to that work in a new way. While homiletical scholarship has long drawn on the full range of biblical and theological disciplines as well as a variety of philosophical and rhetorical disciplines, this series attempts to push the interdisciplinary dialogue in new ways. For each volume, the PCPE brings together as coauthors two scholars—a homiletician and an expert from another, nontheological field to bring that field into conversation with homiletics in a way that offers both new insights into preaching as a task and vocation and new strategies for the practical elements of sermon preparation and delivery.
This volume brings together homiletics (Alyce M. McKenzie) and humor studies (Owen Hanley Lynch). Humor has l