Jeff Foxworthy has spent 42 years making people laugh. But ask him about his greatest professional moment, and he’ll tell you about the night he made Johnny Carson laugh.
Ask him about his most meaningful work, and he’ll tell you about the wild game dinner where everything went wrong: no microphone, no spotlight, just a comedian standing on pallets in a field with car headlights illuminating 2,000 men.
Then, three years later, a stranger tapped him on the shoulder at church to say, “I gave my life to Jesus that night.”
It’s a story that captures something essential about humor’s power in ministry, and why Young Life’s approach of leading with laughter, relationship, and “a party with a purpose” resonates so deeply with him and his wife, Gregg, who met Jesus at a Young Life camp in Colorado as a teenager. Both of them have been amazing friends to Young Life, and we got to talk with Jeff about comedy and ministry.
“Why shouldn’t loving Jesus be fun?” Foxworthy asks. “Jesus says, come to me like a child. We ought to be the happiest people on the planet.”
The Release Valve
Before Foxworthy walks on stage, his last thought is always the same: everybody he’s about to look at is going through some kind of struggle. Physical, emotional, financial … the specifics don’t matter. “That’s the commonality,” he explains. “And with humor, that’s what you’re looking for, is that commonality.”
He admitted that he’s not naive enough to think laughter makes people’s struggles disappear. But he’s witnessed enough over four decades to know its therapeutic power. “I do think laughter is the release valve that keeps the boiler from exploding,” he says. “It allows people to set that struggle down for just a minute and refresh themselves, and then they’re recharged enough to go pick it back up.”
Students walk into Young Life club each week carrying heavy loads we have no idea about. We know this on one level, but when you realize that these silly skits and moments of laughter actually have amazing potential to let God work, it makes those moments pretty important.
When Foxworthy was a kid, growing up without his father, living with his grandparents, becoming the funny kid at school to cover his pain, he remembers thinking, “Nobody else feels this way. Nobody understands what’s going on in my head.”
Comedy became his way of discovering he wasn’t alone. And when he tells a joke about Captain Crunch scraping the top of his mouth and 2,000 people burst out laughing, he knows they’ve all had that same absurd thought and probably believed they were the only one too.
“That’s the thing with teenagers,” Foxworthy observes. “You’ve got to make them feel like you’re not the only one that feels this way. You’re not the only one that’s confused. You’re not the only one that’s scared. You’re not the only one that doesn’t know what to do. And I think Young Life does a beautiful job of that.”
The 85% We Share
Comedy has the power to intersect with faith in powerful ways: “My job as a comic is to make you feel like you’re something bigger,” he explains. Take two people on opposite ends of a topic and ask them what they want out of life and what their heart truly desires. “I bet they would agree on 85% of the things. But we don’t celebrate that. We don’t celebrate the 85%. We yell and scream over the 15%.”
Young Life’s relational ministry thrives in that 85%, the shared human experience of wanting to belong, to be known, to matter. When kids are laughing and singing together at camp, “they are emotionally and spiritually connected in those moments. And that’s about as good as we get as human beings.”
In The Moment
Comedy is a lot about observation, and comedians are often some of the most observant in our cultures! You have to be watching out for those things that could be the next epic joke. As Christ-followers, maybe we ought to be more like a stand-up comedian too! Maybe we should slow down and observe to see what is happening around us.
It might not be necessarily for the next epic joke, but it might just be to maximize a moment where God is working.
Jeff’s been in a Bible study with a group of men (including some of our Young Life staff) for nearly 18 years. They’d always have a lesson plan to work through Isaiah or another book of the Bible. But if someone walked in struggling, “Isaiah got closed up” while the group listened, prayed, and reminded that person they weren’t alone.
“That was just as much God as Isaiah is,” Foxworthy reflects. “That’s what the body is all about. To love each other.”
We can plan all we want in Young Life, from Campaigners Bible studies to crazy club activities, but sometimes we need to be open to God needing something different from that time.
What Young Life Leaders Need to Hear
Foxworthy’s advice to Young Life staff and volunteers is simple but profound: You have no idea what God is up to.
That disastrous wild game dinner with no stage, no microphone, and no lights taught him an essential truth. He drove home shaking his head about the missing equipment, the chaos. Three years later, he learned one person gave their life to Christ that night. His wife said something that stuck with him: “God didn’t have to show that to you. You could have gone through your whole life not knowing that.”
“It’s the same thing with being a Young Life leader,” he emphasizes. “You don’t know. You’re going to get to heaven and somebody’s going to come tap you on the shoulder and say, you’re not going to remember this, but because of you, that’s why I’m here.”
Would you drive four hours and stand on pallets in a field if you knew one person would join the Kingdom? Absolutely. “You can’t put a price tag on that. And you can’t put a price tag on the effect Young Life leaders are having. It’s not earthly value; it’s forever value.”
Sometimes it’s not even about whether the skit landed or the club went perfectly. Maybe it brought someone into the room where another person could see they were having a bad day and pull them aside.
Loving Jesus was never meant to be grim. We ought to be the happiest people on the planet, and Young Life keeps giving kids a glimpse of what that looks like.
By refusing to separate joy from the gospel, we can model what loving Jesus was always meant to look like. Not grim religious duty, but the kind of vibrant, fun community where laughter and truth coexist, where kids can be themselves, and where the Good News actually feels like good news.
Special Thanks to Jeff Foxworthy
