c. 2006 Religion News Service

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ Dr. O. Wendell Davis writes no-nonsense sermons.

“I write as seriously and with as much passion as I can,” said Davis, pastor of Union Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.

He reduces those scripts to outlines. He prays. He prepares to move into the pulpit on the wide platform in the sunny auditorium where the large congregation gathers.

He stands to preach _ and every week it happens: laughter.

While Sunday services have hardly earned a reputation as comedy central, a handful of ministers are embracing humor as a way to connect with their congregations. Some even celebrate the Sunday after Easter (April 23) as “Holy Humor Sunday.”

When Davis finds an ironic point, the congregation joins him in a laugh that rolls across the crowd. The elders on stage wave their hands in approval. Choir members jump to their feet with smiles flashing around the room.

“If in our worship we didn’t touch everyone in the building, from the bereaved to the rejoicing, we haven’t done our job,” Davis said.

Laughter is an integral part of worship at Union Chapel, but Davis wasn’t always so comfortable with that notion.

Worship, after all, is a serious matter.

Davis has pastored at Union Chapel for 17 years and at other churches for nine years before that. It’s only in the past few years, he said, that he’s been comfortable with those moments when his energetic personality breaks through the scholarship of his prepared sermons to touch his members’ funny bones.

Davis had tried to repress all that funny stuff. His wife told him to stop fighting it.

“She told me that God works with our personalities,” Davis said recently. “And my grandmother told me to take God seriously in every area _ but never to take yourself too seriously.

“That’s the kind of church we have, and I’m grateful for that. And I don’t take myself so seriously that I don’t think the Lord himself doesn’t laugh at me sometimes.”

The Rev. Dennis Fakes, pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, admits that Garrison Keillor’s radio essays that include anecdotes of Lutheran life have brought a new reputation for humor to his dignified flock.

“You know how to tell if someone is Lutheran?” Fakes asked recently, sitting in his study after pulling some books on holy humor from his bookshelves. “When the minister cracks a joke during the sermon, a Lutheran will smile right out loud.”

Fakes takes a minute to laugh at his own joke, his mustache turning up cheerily on both sides of his mouth.

Fakes is a contributing editor for “The Joyful Noiseletter,” a monthly religious humor publication. The publication is promoting Holy Humor Sunday as a lighthearted way to attract people to church on a weekend when attendance traditionally dips.

Like most comedians, Fakes collects good material wherever he finds it. Two of his collections of sermon-tested anecdotes were published by CSS Publishing Company in 1983, “Point With a Punch,” Volumes 1 and 2.

“I like to collect humor,” Fakes said. “I like to be around people who like to laugh. And making a point with humor is probably one of the most effective ways of getting a point across.”

Fakes points out there is humor in the Bible, too _ but often it takes a child to see it.

Elton Trueblood, a Quaker theologian, wrote a book about humor in the Bible, Fakes said, after he was reading from the New Testament one night to his little boy and the child started laughing.

“A beam in someone’s eye?” the little boy asked, referring to the expression used by Jesus to describe hypocrites who get upset over a gnat in someone else’s eye while having a log in their own eye. “That’s funny.”

“Children get it,” Fakes said.

Fakes is careful about the humor he uses.

“I don’t want people to go away remembering the joke and forgetting the point,” Fakes said.

And, as the recent flap over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad reinforces, the use of humor in holy matters needs to always be mindful of who’s laughing. Holy humor, he said, acts as a bridge, not a wall.

“Laughing with people,” Fakes said, “not at people.”

Remembering to keep humor in the holy, Fakes said, is part of being a healthy person and a healthy congregation.

“One of the sins of the church,” Fakes said, “is taking itself so seriously and failing to see the joy and humor our faith gives us.

“That’s the final punch line for Christians, isn’t it? Ultimately, our faith says that everything is going to be all right.”

MO/PH END RNS

(Kay Campbell writes for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain photos of O. Wendell Davis and Dennis Fakes, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

With sidebar: RNS-HUMOR-SUNDAY