In Fun

Sigmund Freud wrote: "The most favorable condition for comic pleasure is a generally happy disposition in which one is in mood for laughter."

This concept is called "in fun." If you want your audience to laugh, they must be in fun. You, speaker, must be in fun. The emcee or program coordinator must be in fun. The whole program should be designed in fun. Do anything you can to be sure your audience knows that it's OK to laugh.

Time Of Day

The first speaker of day for an early morning program should not expect hearty laughter. People are not conditioned to laugh a great deal in early morning. Many won't even be awake yet. Use more information and less humor. It's important for you to know when not to expect hearty laughter. It would be a waste of time to use your best material at a time when laughter normally wouldn't be expected. The poor response also brings your energy level down. Many consider brunch and lunch to be best times of day to expect a responsive audience. In afternoon people are starting to get tired so don't expect laughter to be as intense.

Male/Female Makeup of Audience

All-female audiences tend to laugh more easily and louder than all-male audiences. Audiences that consist of more than 50 percent women are good too. The presence of females provides a good buffer and makes it OK for "big-ego" men to laugh.

Size

No, I'm not talking about how much you weigh today. I'm saying that size of your audience has a direct effect on types of humor which are most appropriate. Members of small business groups tend to be too self-conscious to laugh much. Use short one-liners. Don't use any long stories or jokes. In larger groups it's OK to stretch to jokes and short stories.

Pre-Program Research

The more you know about your audience, better able you will be to pick humor that will get greatest response. Your research before program will also allow you to uncover group's inside humor.

Seating

The best seating arrangement for laughter is semicircular theater style. When audience members are seated close together on a curve, they can look to their left or right and see faces of each person in row. This togetherness allows laughter to pass immediately from one person to other. Contact NSA member and seating expert Paul Radde for advanced seating information.

Choose Funnier Words

Your word choice can be key to creating a successful witty line or a dud. In particular, words with "K" sound in them are funny. Cucumber is funnier than mushroom. Cupcake is funnier than pastry. Turkey is a funnier word than loser.

Deliver The Punch

Some humorists will disagree, but I say deliver your punch line to one person and make sure that person is going to laugh. You must punch line out a little harder and with a slightly different voice than rest of joke. Lean into microphone and say it louder and more clearly than you said setup lines. If audience does not hear punch line, they aren't going to laugh.

Deliver punch line to a person you know will laugh, so that others will be positively influenced to laugh. How do you know if a person will laugh or not? Pay attention to those who have been laughing, those nodding their heads in agreement with you during program, and those you identified before program.

Pause

Pausing just before and just after your punch line gives audience a chance to "get" humor and laugh. Absolutely do not continue to talk when laughter is expected. If you do, you will "step on" your laughter and squelch it quickly.

Make It Relevant

If you make all your attempts at humor relevant to your presentation, you get an automatic excuse from your mother if your humor is not all that funny. If your humor is received as funny, so much better; but if it isn't, at least you made your point. Audiences will be much more tolerant if humor ties into subject at hand. Use this formula:

A. Make your point.

Perusing my list brought back some marvelous memories. I smiled as I remembered each sermon and where I preached it. Of course, I'm at that stage of life where old memory juices don't flow as deep as they once did.

Occasionally, I ran across odd sermon that didn't really look familiar. I must have preached them because they were on my list, but I had no recollection of them.

Every minister has three kinds of sermons in his repertoire.

(1) Sermons that hold wonderful memories as he reflects back on them. The preacher's main occupation, of course, is preaching. And nothing delights him more than pursuing his occupation with all his might.

When a sermon comes together, it is a magnificent thing. I grant you this doesn't happen often, but when it does it's wonderful.

The bad thing about a really wonderful sermon is you can only preach it one time. To me, this is not fair.

A singer, for example, can sing same song over and over and over. If it's a really good song, people in audience will even request it.

My idea of heaven is having people request that I repeat one of my good sermons. To date, no one has made such a request of me, which may mean none are worth repeating.

(2) Sermons he wishes he could forget and hopes everyone else has. Looking over my list of sermons, I was surprised by how many fit this category.

Here's a good example, "How to Give in To Your Wife Without Giving Up Your Manhood?"

I was 28 at time and had been married for about seven years. I thought I had a good grasp on this thing called marriage. Also, I thought I had some wisdom to share along this line. If memory serves me correctly, what I thought I knew I didn't.

I do remember Gracious Mistress of Parsonage setting me straight on that sermon. My manhood was severely challenged and I have never repeated that sermon since.

Here's another sermon I wish I could forget. "When Your Get-up and Go Got up and Went, Where Do You Go?" I have no idea what I was trying to get at. I sure hope I never run into any former parishioner who remembers this one.

(3) Finally, sermons long forgotten even by preacher himself. I noted that in 35 years of preaching I had quite a few belonging in this category. As I tried to remember some of these long forgotten sermons one thought struck me.