Humor, God, and the One-Minute Worship Service Jan17

Humor, God, and the One-Minute Worship Service

At first, I wasn’t sure whether to put this under preaching, or maybe worship, since that’s the ostensible subject matter, or humor. But of course it is about humor, both 1) the effective use of humor to make fun of ourselves and our world and invite us thereby to imagine different possibilities and 2) what can go happen when the joke goes awry. Sometimes humor fails because it’s not done well – a poorly told joke or ill-timed punch line. Sometimes it fails because the hearer doesn’t have enough context to make sense of it – the “you had to be there” humorous stories usually fall into this category. And sometimes it fails...