HUMOUR in church is a powerful way of empowering congregations to engage with the Bible and to live out the resurrection. That’s the key message from Sheila, who uses her academic background in theatre studies and theological training to take passages of scripture and turn them into a three dimensional, dramatic experience for congregations she speaks to. Her methods are useful for preachers who want to bring a biblical text alive and for Christians wanting a more creative way to look at scripture during private study time.

Ken Norman, from New Tricks Training, joined Sheila for a half-day workshop at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. Ken himself is a comedian and a writer and his company provides workshops and training to help people improve their sales and presentation skills.
Sheila is naturally very funny. She could have an audience or congregation in stitches without the use of the various props, including one of her dog’s chews and the skeleton she recommends for preachers. (You can pick one up from Ebay for about £50.)

Sheila’s and Ken’s aims as presenters are to make what they speak about accessible and interesting to audiences. “This isn’t just about comedy and presenting, but about helping people take away another view of a text,” says Ken, pointing out that the average attention span is about 20 minutes. “A presenter may have three points to get over and they have achieved that if their audience walk out knowing those points. There’s nothing worse than if an audience forgets what they have been told and it’s a crime if people going to church aren’t leaving with a call to action.”

Sheila is known as a joke teller in her role as a hospital chaplain, but also runs sessions on reflective practices and spirituality to nurses and medical students.
She says humour is important because it engages people. “It makes people feel safe. They respond in a way which means that they take ownership and then take an interest in what else follows on. Instead of being preached at, they are preaching with me.”

Her PhD thesis follows the work of The Revd Canon Professor Leslie Francis, from Warwick University, an expert in religious education, theology and psyc

hology who has looked into a potential imbalance in the proportion of Anglican priests who are introverted, compared to the proportion of the general population.

It seems to Sheila that traditional Anglican liturgy, including the Book of Common Prayer, geared towards an introverted mindset which often ends at the cross. Sheila, who likens this way of doing things to watching a Shakespearean tragedy, such as Hamlet or Macbeth, where the show ends with lots of dead bodies. However, if you watch a comedy like As You Like It, the ending is full of joyous people, which can be likened to the joy of people who are living the resurrection. “It’s about 

finding the innate comedy in the Gospels – the Jesus who laughed. It’s led to a style of preaching I am now trying to encourage.”

Her session was based on what she learned doing an MA in Shakespeare and performance at Warwick University. “If you read the Gospels as a stage script you have to work at breaking the text apart. You are working more like a script writer or stage manager.”

She presented the five Ws and the H – Who, Why, Where, When, What and How, which are important in many forms of communication. “When you go to the theatre that’s exactly what they have done. We did this with Shakespeare and I use exactly the same technique with the Gospels.
When talking about her life Sheila mentions that God’s tenacity should never be underestimated. Sheila became a Christian at the age of 17, and immediately sensed her calling, but had to get through the Anglican selection process. She went on to study Philosophy and Literature, where she fell in love with Shakespeare and went on to complete her MA. She has worked as a mortuary technician, police officer, been married, divorced and remarried and finally, five years ago, got ordained.
“I should have known better really, but as well as having a sense of humour, God has tenacity and that shouldn’t be underestimated,” she says.

She points out that the narrow paths are the ones that are windy and bendy and more interesting, rather than long and straight. “We need to be less puritan and

 have more fun. With extreme puritanism it seems more socially acceptable to be dour than to be jolly.

“When you talk to people in a way that suggests you have a colourful past, that’s honesty rather than piety. Humour looks at the crud of life and turns it into what we reflect on and laugh at. It’s a whole philosophy as well as a theology of doing things.” Email Sheila on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would be interested in a comedy workshop in your parish. For more from Ken Norman email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or www.newtricks.co.uk.
Pictured above is The Joking Jesus, painted by Hugh Dodd www.hughdodd.com for the online exhibition Laughing Jesus jesuschrist.uk.com.