What stand-up comedy showed me about teaching the Bible

Three weeks, more than 2,000 shows and 2.6 million tickets sold last year. August is the month of the Edinburgh Fringe.

While the Fringe is on the list of things I aspire to experience, so far my engagement has been limited to reading the round-ups of top jokes each year. Best one-liners from 2025 included: “We named our children War and Peace – it’s a long story” (Olaf Falafel), “This spider has been in my house so long, it should pay half the wifi. As a web developer, it can afford to” (Sikisa), and “Everyone is worried about AI. I’m more concerned with what the other vowels are up to” (Rob Auton).

I’ll be reading this year’s list with even greater interest, because earlier in the summer I embarked on my latest in a long line of short-lived have-a-go-hobbies: a stand-up comedy course. A group of nine of us have been meeting in a suitably atmospherically dingy comedy club to learn from a veteran comedian, workshop material on one another, and receive feedback. Like most other people there, I’d booked the course having been egged on by a friend. I’m no stranger to a microphone, and when it comes to writing talks, I’ll often start with the jokes. So how hard could it be?

Turns out: pretty hard. At the time of writing, the final showcase – performed to an audience of friends and family – is still ahead of me. But right now it looks unlikely that a side hustle in comedy beckons. One obstacle is that a lot of the humour of standup relies on extreme emotional reactions and flexibility with the truth. As someone who’s been born with a limited emotional range and raised with a moral resistance to lying, this presents a problem. Plus, everything in me just wanted to transition from the joke and … well, make an earnest point.

Still, it was an interesting exercise to be trained in an unfamiliar form of public speaking, and the course itself was very well done. And while the content we produced was a world away from what you’d hear in a church or a Christian conference, there were a number of striking overlaps with what I’ve been taught over the years about word ministry.

1. Believe you are worth listening to.
   
   With standup, you have to believe that you’re the funniest person in the room. With Bible talks, I’ve heard it said that you should be the most interesting person in the room. If you don’t believe that what you’ve got to say is worthy of your hearer’s attention, who else will? Project a belief that God’s Word is gripping.
   
2. Trim the fat.
   
   In standup, nothing is said that isn’t a set up for a joke or the punchline. One thing we were having to be constantly encouraged to do in the class was to cut the waffle and keep the gold. That’s still a skill I’m learning when it comes to teaching the Bible… but a vital one.
   
3. Finally, there’s no substitute for standing up and just doing the thing.
   
   In fact, one of the interesting things about the course was that we started not with joke structure but with the mechanics of coming on stage and speaking into the microphone. Why? To build confidence. For most people, public speaking is terrifying.

It’s got me thinking about how I plan to train women to teach the Bible in my role at church. My instinct was to focus on the content first, and delivery as afterthought. But great teaching, like great standup, needs both – and excellent material can die a death from poor delivery. Plus, when I speak to women about doing word ministry or things “from the front”, so much of their hesitancy comes down to lack of confidence, rather than competence. We need supportive and safe spaces, like the comedy course, where women can have a go.

I’m grateful for the kind souls who sat smiling through my fledgling talks – and my stumbling standup. Turns out that great comedy, like great teaching, is hours in the preparation, minutes in the delivery, and much much harder than it looks.