PREACHERS, ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?

Some of the best counsel I ever received as a young man came by way of something I overheard said by a highly respected older preacher whose ministry had been greatly blessed through the years. He said: “There was a time, early in my life when I realized that, when in the pulpit, I was little more than the devil’s clown. When this changed, it made all the difference in my ministry.”

My friend’s counsel has never been more needed than it is today when humor has become a prominent part, if not a mainstay, of much that passes for the ministry of the Word of God. Inappropriate pulpit humor is something that merits some soul-searching on the part of many preachers and churches today. It’s something that still warrants repentance on the part of those who indulge in it; still something that will make all the difference for good in the ministries of those who cease and desist from it.

The need for the Word of God and those who preach it to be taken seriously has never been greater than it is now. as we live in these last of the “last days;” — unprecedentedly “perilous times” when “evil men wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived,” and Truth is “fallen in the street” as never before (2 Tim. 3:1-5, 13; Isa. 59:14). Tragically, the Word of God and those who preach it have never been taken less seriously than now, when tomfoolery in pulpits has never been more on display.

These times demand nothing less than what has always been demanded of preachers, and that is the maturity of thought and behavior that biblically qualifies and identifies men who are truly called to preach (1 Tim. 3:2-4; Tit. 1:7-9). Because this has been and is being ignored, the clowning around of men in pulpits goes gets worse and worse, ranging from the simply silly to that which borders shockingly on the sacrilegious.

Consequently, preachers and preaching are taken less and less seriously. The carnal mixed multitude is attracted to it all, but others no longer find pleasure and profit, as they once did, in listening to preaching and are rightly disturbed at the prospect of their children gradually coming to believe that nonsense is perfectly fine in pulpits, and that not much that is associated with the pulpit needs to be taken too seriously.

There is absolutely no place in pulpits for carnal comedy, cuteness or cleverness. The explicit command that preachers have to “Preach the word” leaves no room for the liberty that many preachers take to clown around in one way or another while in the pulpit. Preachers who do it are like the priests of Ezekiel’s day of whom God said, “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean … and I am profaned among them.” In contrast to this, God makes it clear that the business of ministers is that, “they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.” (Ezek. 22:26; 44:23).