Chris Bright 0:06
Welcome to the thinking church podcast with me, Chris bright. Every week, I'll be speaking with a church leader about ministry strategy, and getting to grips with not just what they do, but the thinking behind why they do it. So without further ado, let's get on with the show. Well, my guest today is Tom Elliott's Tom is a comedian, and a magician as well. And he's also a Christian. So I was really excited just to, to meet Tom a few months ago. And I really wanted to talk with Tom, just about his work his career, how he does, what he does, how he merges those, the the worlds of comedy, Faith evangelism. And so we're going to dive into all those kinds of topics today, Tom, it's so great to have you on the podcast
Tom Elliott 0:58
Chris, thank you. Loved love being with you. And we've already started half the conversation. So I'm glad you clicked record now. Because we're already in the depths of the content.
Chris Bright 1:08
We really are. And maybe this is a good point to pick up. Because I mean, these are not in my notes at all. But as soon as we started talking, I said, Well, what does your your day look like? And and then I asked you, well, how do you how do you even go about writing Comedy? And maybe that's a good place to start. You're a comedian, How on earth do you come up with the ideas for something that's funny, because I can't even begin to think where I'd start.
Tom Elliott 1:33
So I've got a little bit easier than perhaps a stand up comedian because a stand up comedian starts with a blank page effectively, because I'm a comedy magician, all of my, all of my comedy is rooted in in a trick of some nature in a routine of some nature. So I've already got the premise if you like, I've just got to try and find the lines and the banter in the opportunities to make people laugh within that trick. And so I must say right at the beginning, I've got an easier than someone that's just telling stories, because I feel for those guys, because they start with blank at the process is this You literally I mean, a lot of this stuff to be fair materialises when you're on stage, so things will happen, people will say things and it gets a laugh, and inside your little head, you go, I'll save that. And you or you try and work it in purposely, even if it was an accident kind of thing. So a lot of it materialises on stage. But other than that, it's a case of sitting for hours on end, brainstorming mind mapping ideas, like thinking of the lines that you say and using that as a maybe set up and then you try to think of it like a punch line or a tagline on to that that might get a laugh at. To be honest, what happens is you end up spending more time brainstorming and mind mapping. And once in a while, you then find the kind of punch line to it if you like.
Chris Bright 2:57
I mean, there's just so much so much that I mean, I remember hearing, I was reading a book, and they were talking about how the legendary American comedian Bob Hope, would write his comedy. And they, the fact was, he didn't because basically, yeah, he didn't write his own comedy. He had, he had a team of writers that would write his jokes for him. And what he would they would do is they would write a whole lot of jokes, and then he would go through them and anyone that he laughed at, he would mark down. Yeah, and go through it. And then he would go through the list again. And if he laughed at a second time, he mark that one down, I think if it was if he laughed a third time at the joke, so if it was funny three times in a row, that would be the one that would make it to his show. And the craft and the art I think we'd sometimes think that comedians and and you know, and yourself in a comedy magician, you think you just sort of go up, got there, and everything's off the cuff. But there's so much more planned and thought through even the off the cuff moments, planned and, and thought through. And
Tom Elliott 4:00
yes, absolutely. And sometimes I think what you think is hilarious. When you write it, you take it to stage and you go, it's not as fun as I thought it was an equally stuff that you thought wasn't funny. Suddenly, audiences are rolling around for laughter. So it's a mystery. You just got to get out there and do it. It's kind of it's like learning to play an instrument but in public, so you just fail in public constantly. And then occasionally, you pick up what's right, and what works. Yeah,
Chris Bright 4:29
you kind of go through that. Okay, that was the wrong note, or that just wasn't a note at all. And I've heard I think I remember hearing Kevin Hart, talk about how he would just go to sort of just sort of show up at comedy clubs and just, you know, those kind of open mic nights and just test his material. That way. I just wanted because I mean, I mean, this is thinking church. So this is you know, I'm trying to see how I can synthesise this into into the church was, but I think any pastor is listening to this and thinking about writing, a preaching a sermon and how You write things. I think that there's taking the time to write down and think and craft the sentence and craft those things, you know, the funny moments, the poignant moments. I think there's something there. Yeah. Is it? expound on that? How else could it there are other ways in which we can think about crafting that message and crafting that? Those moments maybe?
Tom Elliott 5:24
Sure. I mean, I appreciate Not all churches have this kind of resource, but you could easily create it in some way. But I've heard of some of the bigger churches, maybe in the state, and sometimes they get their kind of preaching team together. And they just kind of Mind Map ideas and tell stories and, and because when you do things in community with others, particularly comedy, comedy, is very hard on your own. But when you bring a few other people in, it starts to materialise, because you naturally, that kind of social humour just turns up. And so same with preaching, whether including humour or not, if you can just get together with a bunch of guys and just mindmap ideas, discuss it, dig deep in it, just explore all different routes and angles, and, and everything else, by by bringing people together and creating something together, you'll you'll pick up on what's going to work when you take it to the platform, stage, whatever it is. And so, yeah, I'd encourage you to bring people together when you're when you're preparing your sermon, because you bounce off each other.
Chris Bright 6:32
Yeah, I love that. And that's actually something that I do. So I work with my church, and part of my job is that I will, I'm not a preacher, so I'm not a particularly good public speaker, in that sense, but what I will do is, I'll come and speak with the preachers, and when they're, when they're preparing, we work in kind of series. And so yeah, three or four weeks at a time. And so I'll, I'll come in, and my job is just to kind of bring ideas and just help, you know, when we're going down that this line of Scripture, where does this link to that link to? And then are there any ideas that that can spin off and, and work towards? I think that's really interesting. How, you know, comedy writing, preach writing, there's, you know, it's a similar art form in that sense, in that you're trying to find those ways and it's, it's always better in groups, I think for churches, but you know, if your church, many churches are really small, but you can still get people maybe just have a, an hour session on Zoom or something like that in an evening and, and just talk about it work out where, where are some things that you know, where's that leaving? What what are what are you getting, when you hear that and those kinds of things? I think that's really fascinating.
Tom Elliott 7:40
Yeah, no, absolutely. And yeah, I'm there's something about trying it out, as well as something about just putting it out there that all of a sudden, you realise you might have spent hours thinking about it on your own, but it's only when you when you suddenly realise you've got to speak in front of people that it clicks, or you suddenly go actually know what we're doing. Can't use that. It's not going to work. I don't know what it is five minutes before a gig that you suddenly go no, why did I think that was funny yesterday, when actually no, no, no, the pressures on to go and use it? Suddenly, you decide not to?
Chris Bright 8:13
Well, I was, I was watching. I've been watching series, two of the chosen who have you heard of that show? Yeah, yeah. And I really enjoying it. But I am they have these kind of extra bits and pieces that you can you can watch. And they're talking about this moment, I've not actually got to this episode yet. So I'm excited when I get to the episode, where Jesus is preparing his sermon on the mount. And he's, he's kind of finding the cheese trying to find the right way to say about, you know, give his illustrations and he's talking about, you know, how am I going to phrase this and, you know, and they wanted to kind of capture that humanity of Jesus, even Jesus had to prepare his his messages, he didn't just sort of come out and just speak, he prepared and he works. And he honed his message. And I've even heard it before that. The some of the reasons why some of the messages in the Gospel could be slightly different is because Jesus would have most likely preached that sermon a number of times, in a number of slightly different ways, depending on where he was at. So if he, I've never thought of that. And so I just like just like, you know, when you're going to do comedy, you know, you might just, you know, you know, the audience and you might just slightly just tweak it, you know, if you know something about a certain town, you might suddenly tweak a joke, or just how you're going to present something just because you know, that you can get a laugh when you mentioned that thing in that place. You know? Yeah.
Tom Elliott 9:39
I'll give you an example. Sorry to interrupt grid. I'll go for I'll give you an example. So I before COVID, used to run a quarterly variety night in a place called Bentley in Doncaster, right so lots of different acts, but I was host and I picked up one one evening that we were on the up in Yorkshire they greet each other with Al Cocker right? And so I decided, right, that's becoming a regular thing. So every time I went on to host this evening, I greet the audience with Gawker, and it's not even funny particularly, but it got a laugh because I was trying to be Yorkshire man without being Yorkshire man. And it's just ridiculous. So it got a laugh, but I think more so because it was local. And it was specific to that event.
Chris Bright 10:24
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And there'll be ways that we can, you know, you can say it to one congregation in a, you know, if you're preaching that that's going to work in a certain way, even you know, in my church, we have two different services. And so the each different service is slightly different, you know, they're identical services, but you get different types of people that sign up, and you can work things a certain way. And, and I think that that's, there's something that's really interesting, just by knowing a place knowing an area, and I think Jesus certainly did that in his, his ministry that he he knew the area that he was, he was going to he knew the people that were going to be there. He knew the little idiosyncrasies in it. So yeah, I think it's I think it's absolutely fascinating. And I've completely gone off paste, but never mind.
Tom Elliott 11:14
Right. By the way, I'm not suggesting that all pastors now go and greet their congregations with that might be slightly weird if we're in Birmingham, but whenever we go,
Chris Bright 11:24
yeah, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Tom, I'd love to hear a bit about your story. How did you end up getting into the world of comedy magician chip?
Tom Elliott 11:37
Well, it was it was back in my teens, early teens. I am you know, when it was a phase? I don't I'm not sure if it still is a phase but churches in their kids ministry used to do like puppetry stuff and these hairier puppet teams, you know, and that was a phase. I'm not sure if it's still a phase or not,
Chris Bright 11:54
but I'm not sure either. I had a long a long career in in puppetry in my teens. And we
Tom Elliott 12:01
go there's, there's a story I want to dig into at some point. So I got involved, I was kind of 1415 at the time. And I got involved in the kind of I was kind of being treated as a young leader, I guess, got involved with the puppet team in the church. And from there, I school, I bumped into a mate who did magic and tricks and stuff, contracts and whatnot. And so we got we became really good mates. And we formed this duo. And we did kids parties, and we decided let's do kids parties. We did it 30 quid a pop. I mean, we split it between us. It wasn't the most lucrative of small businesses, but but it was, it was good fun. And it was exciting, right? So we travelled around lost the show doing friends of friends of friends, kids parties, and we loved it. And he then we then it for a few years, he then got a proper job. And I thought, well, let's, let's look at this. And so I carried it on. So when I say doing puppetry, I actually went on to learn ventriloquism right. I forgot to mention that. I went on to limb ventriloquism. So it was kind of this magic and ventriloquism duo at doing kids parties that grew when he got a proper job. I was bit older, still doing ventriloquism, I wasn't doing magic at this point. And opportunities in churches started to emerge. And I did my work experience when I was 1617 with a guy that worked for the kind of National Salvation Army and he would travelling around and he would do assemblies in various schools across the country. And I went and did some and got a great response. It had a kind of gospel message in in amongst the ventriloquism routine. And I thought this is an opportunity. And I started reading up books on this to kind of puppet teams or individuals going into schools and churches doing stuff that would share something of the gospel in a creative way, in an entertaining way. And lastly, at that time, it was all directed at kids and children. And I was fascinated by it. And I absolutely loved it. And opportunities just start to emerge from there on. And I guess I started to explore at that point what it was to be have the role of an evangelist and what that looks like. And so went down that route and men find mentors and opportunities grew in that space. And then it all just came together. And but but more and more in recent years. I've thought God give me a bit of a shift, if you like. And that was that shift is that. When I look at Jesus, he did a lot of his miracles in the marketplace and not the temple. So I mean, did do miracles in the temple, but he did a lot of miracles in the marketplace. And I felt God challenged me and prompt me to go, Tom, I want you to carry the presence of Christ through comedy through magic. I don't do kids parties anymore, by the way. But use the comedy use the magic and fulfil the role of an evangelist. Obviously it looks really different in that context, but carry the presence Christ into the marketplace into comedy clubs into small theatres into schools into whatever it might be.
Chris Bright 15:07
Well, let me let's get into that thought of being an evangelist in the comedy circuit. And I mean, how would you get received? Firstly, as well. The first one is, how much does your faith interact with your, your comedy? And how does that get received on on the kind of the comedy circuit? Sure.
Tom Elliott 15:28
So I mean, it's a very different approach. If you start talking about Jesus in a comedy club, you, they might take you nicely, but they're not gonna invite you back. It's one of those is a difficult one to navigate. But do you know it's been it's been amazing. So I take kind of Daniel, one approach, if you look at Daniel and Daniel went out to be the best that he could be in his in his field. And I kind of think, well, let's go into the comedy clubs, let's do my absolute best. And, obviously, there are differences between what I do and what some of the other comics do. And I don't make a big deal of it. I certainly don't call myself a Christian comedian or Christian magician when I go in. But don't make a big deal of it. But you know, it's amazing what people pick up one of the first comedy clubs I did, I was only doing 10 minutes. And the guy asked, there was another guy that I'm good friends with this guy. And this guy said to me, Tommy said, you just done 10 minutes, and you haven't like sworn or, again, don't make a big deal of it. I don't criticise other comedians for swearing or whatever their content is. But he just pointed out, he noticed the fact that there was something different. It didn't lead to a great conversation about faith, but it led to a connection with him. And he follows me on Facebook, he'll soon Yeah, he'll he'll pick up the Zune idea that I'm, I'm Christian. Until all of that pieces together, it was the beginning of a connection point. And he just noticed there was something different. And so there's various things I'm bringing, as I explore what this means more, I'm putting things in place that perhaps aren't explicit, but just make people go. Ah, that's why. That's my hope. And conversation starters, I guess, is what you'd call it.
Chris Bright 17:14
Yeah, that's really, really, really fascinating. And yeah, those I think people do pick up on, on, you know, comedians, when they are slightly different, because I think there's a, a relatively well trodden path and what you expect from a comedian, how they talk how they act? So what they talk about, so when you don't talk about those things, it tends to be it will, it will just your stick out. That's that's for sure. And that's a good thing. So I'm changing tack slightly what I'm wondering about, I'm wondering about evangelism, and that's probably one of one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to you as a, as an evangelist, you know, in that sense, and you that's something that you're involved in something you do. And churches thinking about evangelism. Give some churches, some advice, if you should advise a church, and they're saying, we want to get started with this whole evangelism, we've not been very good at it. We want to start doing this better as a church. We want to evangelise better. We want to reach people for Jesus. What can we do to start?
Tom Elliott 18:18
Do you know, I would say, so I still do, I must be clear, I still do church gigs. And I still do outright evangelistic events. So I'm trying to manage both. Okay, so I haven't gone all in on that I'm doing a bit of both, because I think that's important. But part of that is influenced by something called the angle scale. A lot of pastors may have heard of it. But this was fascinating to me when I first came across it and all it is is if you check it out on Google, you'll you can see the kind of picture of it if you like, but it just gives you an idea or, or a framework to say where are the people that I'm engaging with? So typically, and this is what prompted me to move into the mainstream space as well, really, typically people that come along to a church because they're invited by a friend, they might and they might be open to face opens conversations, they might be open to an alpha course or something along those lines. Typically, those people are maybe at a certain point on the angle scale. So my, if you look at the graph on on a Google image, there's kind of right from one to kind of 16 plus and and around the kind of five, six month the fifth, fifth or sixth step. It talks about, like investigating Jesus or having a grasp about who Jesus was. And but equally right at the bottom, there's number one is no awareness of God whatsoever, no experience of church or faith at all. And so, I think the big question to ask particularly when you're planning your strategy of how you're going to engage with people, how you're going to reach people, is where are the people? Who are we trying to reach in from those initial conversations with those people? And we get an idea of roughly where they're at. Because there's no, there's no point invite into an app. But there's, there's I say, there's no point I'm careful with those words. Hear me rightly, there's no point in inviting them to an alpha course, if they're still at stage one, and they've got no awareness of God whatsoever. No points, perhaps a bit strong. But you know, I mean.
Chris Bright 20:24
Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I'm just finding the angle scale on here. Now, oh, just this the first time I've actually ever heard of this. And I'm going to check that out. That sounds absolutely fascinating, because I think putting in a strategy, you're going to want to take, you know, taking people from, you know, one to 16. In, you know, in, in one event, or one moment is just, that's not very likely, I remember hearing a statistic once that said that, on average, someone that comes to know, Christ, has had conversations or met 10 other Christians in their life. So yeah, you know, essentially, your job is to take people 1/10 of the way if you're meeting someone, and the church's job is to only take them a little bit of the way, you know, and, and, and there'll be other things that so it could start with, you know, a coffee with someone, or it could start with a comedy night, you know, or something like that. But that could lead to an alpha course, or it could lead to something else. And that, and having strategies to take people along that pathway is a really good idea and, and carefully thinking, Okay, what sort of things are going to help people, you know, who are unaware of God's just become aware of God? Yeah. How would you do that? Just at its very simplest. You know, it's very simplest way to make someone just aware of that God exists.
Tom Elliott 21:44
Absolutely. So I'm putting an emphasis on. So again, if you check out the angle scope, I'm putting an emphasis on the first three, four steps of that journey. So no awareness of God, some awareness of God contact with other Christians interest in Jesus, right. I'm putting an emphasis on that space, because I feel like, that's where a lot of my friends are at. But also, that's where in terms of comedy clubs, that's who I'm probably who I'm encountering, in the interesting thing with comedy clubs and, and listening to a podcast interviews other comedians, is, there's a lot of people that have got issues with the Christian faith, you find those people that have had presumptions, or they've had bad experiences here and there, or they've, whatever it is, and so they're, they've kind of gone back to stage 124 Because they've, there's a disinterest in. And so it's fascinating, fascinating to think about the angle scale, but I guess my advice, my thought for churches is think about where people are at and do that accordingly. Stage one, you probably want to be thinking about talking about using the word language around well being or hope or purpose rather than perhaps some of the more kind of faith based language that you might use later on.
Chris Bright 23:04
Now, that's really fascinating. I was speaking yesterday, we're doing a podcast with some called Justin Brierley. who presents a show. Yeah, and you know, great, great guy. And unbelievable is a fantastic show. And, and he was saying about how what he's noticed is this. And we really interesting to get your thoughts on this is there's been a shift in, in, I guess, the, the public thoughts, which was, maybe about 20 years ago, there was a lot of this kind of new Atheism, stuff that Christianity was wrong and evil. You know, it was it was just, it was just bad. It was bad for the world. And now there's been this kind of shift where talking about faith and talking about Christianity and the the moral framework that we have, and that we've inherited, that the West has inherited from Christianity that's starting to become much more prevalent. In today's society, people are more open. Yeah. How have you found that being on, you know, doing doing comedy doing doing magic doing those kind of things? And how have you noticed this has Have you noticed a shift in people when you when you explore topics of faith? How has that? Have you seen any change in that for you?
Tom Elliott 24:18
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I haven't experienced any particular kind of resistance to faith. So going back to what you said, were a few years ago where the church was wrong and, and difficult, and people were genuinely against that I haven't really encountered much of that. You hear it a little bit. I listened to a podcast called The comedians comedian. And it basically interviews comedians about their writing process. But also, the question, the big question is interesting is are you happy? And so and that's fascinating to hear. Kind of all the mainstream comics that you hear, see on TV and answer that question. It's utterly fascinating. But the the interesting thing is a lot of comedians have at had a bad experience of church or if they've turned away from church for some reason, or it surprised me just how many reference face even when faith wasn't a direct question. Sadly, it's often negative. But it's fascinating to hear that. And but I guess but But overall, I think we're we're in a generation, we're in a season where people are, I guess that they're very open to it because it like anything goes kind of season, I guess. And so people are a bit more open because people are a lot more accepting of you believe what you believe. And I believe what I believe. I guess that brings some challenges with kind of sharing our faith as well. But I think we are in a very open season of being able to talk about the way we live our lives.
Chris Bright 25:57
Well, thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast. This is only halfway through the podcast, and you can listen to the full conversation by joining our members podcast, just go to our website, www dot thinking dot church and you can sign up to our members podcast there. It only costs the price of one coffee per month so it's well worth doing. So why not get a coffee, listen to the podcast and learn something new. We'll see you again for this podcast next week. So bye for now.
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