Video Transcript: Humor For Communication

All right, welcome, again, to the effective communication class. For the next few  sessions, we're going to be looking at tools that you can use for communication.  And this lecture is about humor, how to use humor to effectively communicate.  First of all, Jesus used humor, it's, it's not obvious. You sort of have to read into  the culture. Humor is one of those things that is very cultural, cultural, sensitive.  Language sensitive. A lot of times if, if, if you know, one language and you learn  another, you often don't get the nuances of their humor and across history. It's  difficult to catch on the people's humor as well. So Jesus said this in Matthew  7:4, how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye  when all the time, there's a plank in your own eye? I mean, just reading the  words you don't know if everyone laughed, but my guess is they did. I mean, the the picture that Jesus has is, you know, I'm, I'm nitpicking about something in  your life, when I have this huge thing. So I have a plank board in my eye, and  Jesus is creating this exaggerated picture, which is humorous. Luke 6:39, he  also told them this parable, can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall  into the pit? So you know, you picture a blind person trying to lead another blind  person? How's that gonna go? Matthew 23:24 You blind guides, you strain out a  gnat. You have a bowl of soup, and there's a fly in your soup and you take the  time to get that fly out of the soup, but you swallow a camel. All kinds of humor.  I'm just gonna go through a whole list of different kinds of humor. There's can  jokes, there's one liners, there's exaggeration. Incongruity, Self deprecating, self, aggrandizing. deadpan. That's where I tell a joke, but I don't laugh. The straight  face. That's deadpan laughter sometimes we can just laugh. People will laugh.  physical humor, do funny things, you can act things out and they can be funny.  situational humor. This is where you describe something that happened to you.  Alright, I just want to look at some of these give you some examples of each one of these. You get the idea one liners. These are some one liners. Worrying  works 90% of the things I worry about. Never happened. Get it? I like work. It  fascinates me. I sit and look at it for hours. Okay, that's incongruity. You think  that the person likes work. But in the end, it turns out, he doesn't do much work.  Materialism, buying things you don't need with money, you don't have to impress people that don't matter. So these are one liners, there's just one sentences that become sort of humorous. You can find many of these things on the internet.  Canned jokes. These are, these are jokes that someone has worked out, then  you learn them and you memorize them. I'm not very good at these kinds of  jokes, because I can't remember, people will tell me a joke. And a week later, I  have no clue what the joke is. But this is one that I do remember. And this is how it goes. A man joined a monastery. And it was one of those monasteries where  you weren't allowed to speak. So you join the monastery and you don't get to  speak but in this particular monastery, you got to say two words. Every 10 years  so. This brother Bartholomew joins the monastery. And for 10 years he doesn't  get to say anything. So after 10 years, the monsignor the head of the monastery

calls him into his office. And he says in brother Bartholomew, you've been with  us for 10 years. What are your two words? And the brother Bartholomew looks  at the Monsignor and says Food. Bad. Monsignor say, okay, well, those your two words will. We'll talk to you again in 10 years. So 20 years. Brother Bartholomew goes back into the office of the Monsignor. Monsignor says, Well, Brother  Bartholomew, you've been with us for 20 years, and another 10 years, what are  your two words. Brother Bartholomew. Looks at the Monsignor and says Bed,  hard. Monsignor says, well, thank you, Brother Bartholomew. We'll see you in  another 10 years. After 30 years, brother Bartholomew goes back into the office  of the Monsignor says, Well, Brother, brother Bartholomew you spent another 10 years you've been with us for 30 years. What do you have to say? Brother  Bartholomew, sort of pauses, thinks about what he's going to say. And he looks  up at the Monsignor and says, I quit. And the Monsignor looks at Brother  Bartholomew and says back to him. Well, I'm not surprised. Because all you've  been doing since 30 years is complain. I like that one. It's about the only can  joke that I can remember. By the way it goes well with a sermon on  communication. Incongruity. I have a picture that sort of illustrate this by the way I found this particular story on the internet and supposedly this is the funniest  joke in the world. At least on the internet. At least that's what they claim they did  some studies and this one is funny for some reason. Okay, this is two hunters  are out in the woods when one of them collapses he doesn't seem to be  breathing. His eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the  emergency services he gasps my friend is dead. What can I do? The operator  says calm down. I can help first let's make sure that he's dead. There's silence  then the shot is heard back on the phone the guy says Okay, now what  incongruity is your thinking one thing again you're thinking the guys on the  phone you know what should I do? The operator says make sure he's really  dead that means you check his vitals to see if there's might be some life and if  there's life we can maybe do something about it. Your not supposed to shoot  him and I'm supposed to make sure so it's this misunderstanding, this  miscommunication this thing that's so this is impossible would never happen.  That's incongruity. exaggeration. I'm so hungry. I can eat you. So what's this  about? You know the phrase? Perhaps you don't have this phrase. But in the  United States in America in the English world, we have this phrase, I'm so  hungry, I can eat a horse. Self deprecating self deprecating is when you put  yourself down, that you're sort of the object of the joke. So here's a minister, I  just use a picture for this one. The title of this week's sermon is, I just spent all  week working on a sermon and I got nothing. By the way, this form of humor, at  least in my church works the best. Whenever I poke fun at myself, whenever I  say something that I failed at, I tried to make this happen. And then you know, it  just didn't work out. Remember a couple years ago, water was coming into our  basement through the basement window that the there's a well in the basement,

you know in the ground, it's below ground and the water was filling up the well  and it was coming into the basement. So I got my whole family up and we're  getting the scooping up this water out of this well because it was overflowing  through the window and I was throwing it into the sump pump. And the sump  pump is what some it's like a pump that that takes the groundwater and throws it out and back outside in case it's raining so much so I was throwing it into the  sump pump and then it would pump it out. And we did it for like an hour but we  were getting nowhere, is like, I kept scooping the water out of this window well,  and putting in the sump pump and the sump pump would kick it out. But more  water would keep coming into this thing. And we spent an hour trying to do, and  we made no progress whatsoever. I'm wondering, where's all this water coming  from. And finally, I looked outside the little window, and there was a deck above,  above it, so you couldn't see. But that sump pump, it had a pipe, and it went up.  And then it went outside, and it went outside that deck. And then the pipe went  right into this board of the deck. And all was doing is coming right back into the  well, that we were trying to empty. So we were just creating a vicious circle. We  were taking the water out of here, putting in the sump pump, sump pump was  putting it out there in the water was going right back into the well. So when I told  that story, my my church just roared with laughter. Why? Because it makes me  look stupid. And people like it. Sometimes when a leader fails, because the  leader is talented, flitters, gifted, he's got all these things. He's got all these  insights, he knows the Bible, he knows what he's doing. And they like it when  the leader fails a little bit. Because then you're more like they are at least how  they feel. Well, what does humor do? I mean, what's the point of humor, and by  the way, humor is everywhere. You know, when I go to the airport, or I go to a  public place, I go to the mall, or I go to the store or I go anywhere, you watch  people talking, and within a minute and a half, somebody is laughing. People  are laughing all the time. We love humor. Well, what does humor actually do in  communication? First of all, it's a commercial. I learned this the hard way. I  would preach a sermon, and I have all my points and everything that I want to  say. And I noticed people they would listen. But then I'd sort of lose them. And I  tried to figure out what what the deal is. But I started analyzing culture. You  know, if you read old books, sentences, sentences were way longer than they  are today. What when I went to the Philippines back in the 80s, people would  have church services for three hours and people would listen. But in the United  States, people will never listen to that length of time. It's like our attention span  is getting shorter. Why is that? Well, part of why it is is television, you watch  television, or you're watching a movie, and you know, you're watching. And after  15 minutes, all of a sudden the commercial comes on. You're in this drama, and  it's very intense. And you're wondering what's going to happen, or there's a sad  thing, and you're right in the middle of the story, and all of a sudden, someone  comes on and they're selling toothpaste? Would you like a brighter smile, then 

you need to buy this or was selling a car or we're selling some food or whatever  it is. It's like right in the middle of our show. This thing is totally unrelated. And  then we get back to the show. So people are used to that they're used to this  interruption. It's It's like they have a breather. You know, we're in this intense  thing. And then we relaxed and we we think about something totally different  than then we get back into it. Well, I realized that people would assume it need a commercial every 10, 15 minutes, and it's probably every 10 minutes. And if you  don't give people a commercial, they'll take one don't drift off and think about  what they want to think about. So I give people a commercial, and what is a  commercial? A commercial can be humor. When you tell something humorous,  they step back they go. And then they forget about things and then they can get  right back to it. So one use is commercial. Secondly, it puts people at ease. You  tell something humorous. Maybe you're talking about sin or you're talking about  a problem you're talking about thing that requires them to think hard. And then  all of a sudden you tell something humorous, maybe it's a joke about yourself  and what you did or didn't do. And people relax. And when people are relaxed,  you can sort of come at them from behind the scenes. It connects us to each  other. It connects us to our struggle, our common struggle when I tell a story  about things in my life that are broken, you know, I take something apart and  then I can't get back together again. And then people think that's funny. But it  also connects us to the brokenness in our life. That's what our lives are like,  sometimes too lives get broken. And we're having a hard time putting it back  together. You know, one of the things I do when something doesn't work, the first thing I do is kick it. Right hit, it says the computer isn't working, I hit and again, if  it still doesn't work, I hit it again. And if it doesn't work after that, I throw it against the wall. We feel that way. Sometimes in life, it's, it's funny with a computer. It's  not so funny with your kids. Sometimes we do that. We kick it. We kick our  spouse, we kick our kids, we kick our boss we kick, we talked about people  behind their back, we do things because we're hurt. See the humor. It gives us  an insight into the common struggle. And we can look at it in a light way, and  then apply it to ourselves in a deep way. It gets past logical defenses, that's  what I was just doing. You're just listening to me tell the story about a computer.  But then zing I zing it back on you. And I started talking about your parenting  with your kids. And maybe that hurts a little bit. Because maybe that's what you  do with your kids. But if I came at you and I said, I want to talk about your lousy  parenting with your kids, see, now you're defensive. Now you're like, Well, I  don't think I want to hear about this. But if I start with my computer, and then go  to your kids, see, I got you with a computer because that was that wasn't that  threatening. But then I apply it to your parenting and see it happens before you  have a chance to get in defense walls up. It's a great contrast to a following  serious point where I was just doing I can make a humorous thing. But then I got to something really serious. Well, how do you find your humor? I mean, humor is

one of these difficult? How do you grab ahold of humor? What is humor? How  do you make something funny? What if you're not funny? How do you be funny? How do you memorize jokes. And that's one thing you could do is go through  and find different kinds of jokes for different situations, you have something  ready to go. But a lot of humor is just situational stuff you say in an interaction?  How do you find? Well, first of all, analyze the things that make you laugh. Start  listening to people start when someone starts laughing, or you start laughing.  Ask yourself now why was I laughing? What is funny to me and analyze what  that is. Analyze your natural humor tendencies. I did this a few years ago with  myself, I realized I'm not a one line guy. I'm not a canned joke guy. I'm not really  a joke person. I'm a situational humor person, I find humor in the situation. Or in  my response to people, especially when we're talking about something I find my  humor in. And sometimes I find my humor in poking at myself. Sometimes I find  humor in poking at others a little bit. Although you have to be careful with that  when you have to know people well enough, or they think you're really poking.  Use what works for you. Okay, you know, I heard some pastors that were really  good with one liners, they were good at jokes, and I tried to use their jokes. And  it's sort of works, cause it's just not me. So I, I had to find what, you know, this is the kind of thing that works for me. Okay, so on the one hand, find the humor  that works for you. But on the other hand, work on a kind of humor that doesn't  come naturally to you. So I do work at more, you know, telling him jokes, and so  on and finding jokes. That's a lot harder for me. I can't remember. I'll find one.  And then I'll forget it. The first sermon that I preached when I planted the church  in Vancouver, British Columbia, this is 1988. We did a phone campaign, we  made 20,000 phone calls into our community inviting them to a grand opening  service. So it's a lot of work to have this grand opening service. And we had 200  people show up to the first service. And I thought, what am I going to talk about? And so I thought, I want to talk about belonging, belonging, people of God  belonging to God belonging to each other belonging our marriages and their  families. But I was trying to figure out what funny thing that I would say. And I  remember I remember one thing or I found one thing, and I still remember it. In  fact every year I would tell the same thing, and it's a husband and wife. A  husband and wife are talking and the wife is complaining to the husband.  Because the husband is always saying that he loves his wife, Honey, I love you.  I love you, I love you. I love you. I love you. And the wife is finally tired of him  saying, she looks at him. And she's you know, you're always saying that you  love me. In fact, the husband would, would would say it so intensely. Someone  with so much intensity, sometimes say, Honey, I love you so much, I would  actually die for you. I love you so much, I would die for you. And the wife looks  back at him and says, you know, you're always say it. But you never do it. You  never actually die. So that was my little joke. Okay, so I guess I can remember  that one. I can remember the one about the, the Monsignor and the monk and 

so on. I can't remember any others. So I still might have to work a little cards,  and then I have categories. And that requires work for me. Most of my humor  just comes I have no I don't have it prepared. It's just there it is. All right  examples of sermon humor. And the only reason why I'm going to give you this  example is I just did on Sunday, we're in a series we're reading through the  whole Bible. And when the Genesis story of Jacob and Esau and and the kind of humor that I use is more situational, Jacob and Esau, they're twins. There's  they're fighting in the womb, they're fighting as to who's coming out first,  because the firstborn gets a double portion of the inheritance twice as much. So  Esau and Jacob are fighting inside, in fact, so much so that their mom goes to  God in prayer and says, What's happening to me? And God says, Well, there's  two nations fighting, the older one will serve the younger one. So then they're  born. And it says that Esau came out first. And he was red. In the old translation, it really means he was strong. He was very, he was ruddy. And he comes out  first. And he's described as a hairy garment. So you gotta wonder What does  Esau look like? So he comes up first. And so how I describe it to my  congregation is okay. Esau comes up. He's got a Cabela's camo, onesies  dressed in camouflage. He's got. He's got a cigar in one hand, he's got a gun,  on the other hand, and he's got a full beard. And he comes out saying what's  happening? That's the kind of guy that Esau is and Jacob, they notice that this  younger one has a hold of his heel. Right? He's turned a hold. You're not getting out for a Sunday. Now first, right? He's doing all the reason he's weaker. Jacob  is described as a smooth man, he hangs around the tents. He's pulling. So they  name him Jacob. And Jacob means overreacher. He's, he's trying to get what he doesn't have. Okay? And both both of these names describe who they are. Well, the next section, so Jacob comes out. He's a smooth guy, the next thing says,  Jacob was a smooth guy. Esau was this hairy guy. And, and by the way, how  hairy he must have been, when when when Jacob and his mother were going to fool Isaac the father who is blind, and Jacob wants to steal the birthright. He's  supposed to go in there and pretend he's Esau. And Jacob says to his mama,  haha, you know, I'm a smooth guy. I mean, Dad's gonna touch me and feel me  he's gonna know that I'm not Esau. So what is? So what is? What is his mom  do? She takes a goat takes the skin of a goat, Velcros the skin on his arms in  his neck. And it works. I mean, Jacob feels this goat hair and goes, Oh, that  must be my son, Esau. I mean, what kind of hairy guy was he humorous, but all  right, the next scene is it says Jacob was a smooth man. Esau was a hunter,  and he's going out there hunting and so how I make it humorous. I sort of  related to today and say, Okay, what as I'm describing Esau, you know, he's got  the camo on. He's got the big beard. He's, you know, he's got the gun on the  bow and the thing and he's out there hunting and so on. And he drives well,  what kind of car like he would drive like a jeep. You know, when the big tires and you know, the lift kit and he's, you know, he needs a stepladder just to get inside

this Jeep. That's the kind of car that Esau would drive now. Jacob, Jacob, it says he hangs around the tents he's he's more of a hobby lobby kind of guy, a  crafting kind of guy likes hanging out with the women and making soup and  recipes and things like that. What kind of car would he drive? Now when I said  this, you know, and I asked this question this past Sunday at my church,  because I have a Prius. I have a Prius and a jeep. And when I said What kind of  car does Jacob drive, they all yelled out Prius, because they wanted to poke fun  at me. But the kind of car I described, Jacob is driving is a cabriolet, Cabriolet as a Volkswagen, it's, it was a convertible is kind of this. It was really a chick car  really. And so that's what I see in Jacob. Jacob would drive a cabriolet. So what  I'm doing is I'm taking the Old Testament story, but I'm using some of our  contemporary things to paint a picture. And sometimes when you do that, it's  humorous. So you can take passages, you can make some humor. In describing scenes, you can use humor and how you act some of the scenes out but humor  is a grease. It sort of gets the communication go goes underneath the radar, and so that your serious point can be made. So, experiment with the humor in your  communication.