Free book on humor

Is humor a forgotten area of Christian ministry? Leslie Flynn’s classic book is one of only a handful on this subject published in the past 50 years. When this book was first published, back in 1960, the church was a much more formal institution. Along with the rest of society, we have all loosened up somewhat since then! Humor is certainly used far more widely these days within Christian ministry. And the therapeutic role of humor in health, both mental and physical, has been proven by clinical trials. The message of the book is remarkably undated, and it remains highly relevant today. It remains the only book which covers the entire subject in depth. Flynn is a highly-professional and clearly focused writer whose starting point is a firm conservative evangelical position.

Despite the changes of the last half-century, I am not sure that the church as a whole understands the biblical context, indeed mandate, to use humor. And many find it very hard to perceive the extent to which humor and whimsy is embedded into the vast majority of the books of the Bible. The cultural and linguistic gap between us and the books of the Old and New Testaments can prevent us understanding the frequent use of irony, whimsy, word-play and puns. We expect no humor, so we see none.

This is tragic, because humor has a remarkable role, especially in evangelism. It is a way of smuggling truth past people’s defenses into their hearts. It should be seen as an integral part of effective Christian communication and proclamation.

• More about humor – including other books and links

Download the book

The book is offered in several formats for all needs and computer platforms. Each file is easily printed on American or European standard paper sizes, and is set with 10pt main text, giving a book of about 75 pages, or about 57 pages if you do not print the appendix. It is also easy to save these files on your hard disk, or a diskette, for later reading.

• PDF format
  Note you also will need the free Acrobat Reader software on your computer – download it here. File size of the book is 700k – the download may take 90 seconds on a normal dialup connection, and nothing will be visible in your browser till the download is complete. To save the book so that you can read it later, click on the small square graphic at the extreme left of the Acrobat toolbar (once the book has completely downloaded) – when you hover your mouse over it, you see the message 'Save a Copy'. Choose a suitable directory to save the file into, such as 'My Documents', or 'My Ebooks' (within 'My Documents' on latest Windows versions), any other directory you choose, or a floppy disk. Note that you can navigate between the different chapters and sections by clicking on Acrobat's vertical tab Bookmarks which gives clickable navigation within the document.

  Click here to download Serve Him with Mirth as PDF file.

  
  

• MS WORD
  You can download the book in safe virus-checked WORD format (600k file) in about 90 seconds on a dialup connection. If you also have MS WORD installed on your computer (and you click 'open' rather than 'save') it will open the page within MS WORD, but only after the download is complete – nothing will appear to happen at all until the download is complete! Then to save it, go to file > save on browser toolbar. Otherwise, save the file in a convenient directory within your computer e.g. 'My Documents' (or 'My Ebooks' which is located in latest Windows versions within 'My Documents') or any other directory, or a floppy disk. Then open it in Wordpad, or any other program capable of reading WORD files (including the free WORD Viewer from Microsoft). MAC users with WORD installed can read this file.

  Click here to download Serve Him with Mirth as WORD file.

  
  

• RTF page
  If your computer cannot handle PDF or WORD files, download the book in Rich Text Format (RTF). This can be read by any word-processor on any operating system. Appearance may not be quite so good, and page breaks may sometimes appear in unhelpful places. Save this 375k file to a suitable directory on your computer, or onto a diskette.

  Click here to download Serve Him with Mirth as RTF file.

  
  

• Microsoft e-book format
  If your computer or portable device has Microsoft Reader installed, download the 294k file here.

  Click here to download Serve Him with Mirth in Microsoft e-book format.

  
  

• HTML page
  The book is also available as a single long web-page – a printer-friendly conversion from the WORD document. As it contains complicated MS formatting code, it may not display well on older browsers. To save the page, select file > save on your browser toolbar, and save this 600k file in a convenient location.

  Click here to download Serve Him with Mirth as HTML file.