Dirty Jokes in Church

Saturday was an interesting day. As I mentioned on Monday's post, the Otter Limits talent show was that day and I spent about 10 hours there. One of the things we did was to do a soundcheck and run through some things. It also gave us a chance to meet everyone and make sure that everything good to go.

One guy who was on the roster didn't show up and hadn't returned the organizer's calls and we didn't know who he was, so we figured he wasn't going to show up. He was doing a comedy act and it's wasn't going to be a huge loss, especially considering that we had 27 other acts. Well, at the 6 o'clock call for performers, here he comes. He's an older guy, probably in his 80s. It ends up he does some janitorial service for the church and saw the requests for acts and signed up. Well, his time came up and he went out on stage, and proceeded to be very funny, but I'm sure gave our organizer what I can only call "sphincter-clinching moments" (patent pending).

Here are some examples of jokes.

• What's the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk? A drunk goes to a lot less meetings.
• I went to the Social Security office last week to pick up my check and there was a new clerk there. She looked at me and said that I wasn't old enough to be getting Social Security. I said that I was and she said I'd have to prove it. Well, I didn't my ID so I asked her what I could do and she said to pull up my shirt and show the gray hairs on my chest. So I did and got my check. I went home to my wife and she asked how I got my check without my ID and I said that I pulled up my shirt and showed her the gray hairs on my chest. My wife says, "Well, if you'd pulled down your pants, you would have gotten disability."

Acts were only supposed to last for five minutes and this one was getting precariously close to seven, so he was about to get pulled, both for length and content when he finished himself. The other two guys in the tech booth with me were laughing very hard, both at the jokes and the sense of uncomfortableness that we were sure the organizers were feeling.

At the end of the show (2 and a half hours later[!]), we were cleaning it up and talking about some of the acts and of course that act came up. We were all getting a good chuckle about it and its inappropriateness for church. Well, one of my guys that's kind of my left arm on the tech team, Pat Ford, made a comment that stuck with me. The comedian does not go to Otter Creek and apparently isn't a Christian. Pat's question was why should we expect him to know what was acceptable and what wasn't. He saw a request for acts for a talent show and did his talent, which was telling slightly off color jokes.

Pat's point, which I think is excellent, is that if we are serious about being Jesus to the world, then we are going to encounter people who don't think, act, or talk like the majority of people at Otter Creek Church of Christ, which means they won't be upper middle to upper class and mainly Caucasian. And if we are serious about inviting people like that into community, there are going to be bumps in the road where we learn to adapt to each other. And those are only the obvious cases. For instance, some people might not know that one of the acts at the show is a recovering drug addict and homosexual. And there have been bumps in that road. The thing is that those bumps have a tendency to be sphincter clenching but if we are serious about developing an open community where people can explore faith (and even perhaps not coming to faith), then we have to accept those bumps and that church won't be the safe place or sanctuary that people might think it is supposed to be.

And we might hear a few off-color jokes.

But the people that come in might experience the Holy God, either miraculously or through the service of His people.