Christian comedian Jeff Allen has a God-given talent for making people laugh, whether it’s a church in the heartland or a crowd in Vegas. But he also has a powerful testimony of a life and marriage saved by God. This week he spoke with New Man about the tragedy in his past as well as his current project, The Apostles of Comedy tour and DVD, in which he performs with Brad Stine, Ron Pearson and Anthony Griffith.

 

 

Jeff Allen: I saw the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and I said that would be a fun thing to do with three friends—to go do comedy together and share a message. That was probably about four years ago. We had to find the right guys. I picked guys that I knew were strong Christians.

 

The DVD is great; it’s almost like a movie. We weave a story in and out of the comedy bits and you get to see behind the scenes and meet everyone’s families. It leaves the viewer with a lot more than just a regular comedy act. There’s a storyline—people laugh and people cry.

 

For example, Anthony [Griffith] told us about when he had to deal with his 3-year-old daughter dying. He was doing Tonight Show appearances back then, and he would go from the hospital to do Johnny Carson and then back again. And he talks about what he learned about God from that.

 

Actually, I had never worked with Anthony before. He does secular shows, but a friend told me that he is a really strong Christian, and now that I know him, the guy’s faith is amazing. He has been through some really tough things in his life, but he has a great faith in Christ and he’s hilarious on top of it. So now I’m trying to sort of introduce him to Christian audiences.

 

It’s a rare thing to see guys giving one-liners and then a few minutes later sharing about their lives really openly. But the reviews have been really good and we are hoping that churches can use it as an outreach.

 

Allen: Hanging out with comics again. When you work stand-up comedy, you work alone. For all the years I did clubs, you work with guys every week and you don’t get to know them. And then when I started working churches, you work by yourself. So that was the best part, just hanging with these guys.

Of course, we’ve only done the movie so far—we haven’t gone on tour yet. We’ll see how it goes on then. We might want to stab each other by the end of the first month.

 

Of course, even if that happened—which I’m sure it won’t—it would make for good comedy. I’ve heard it said that comedy equals tragedy plus time. It’s like the vacation where everything goes wrong. While you’re going through it it’s hell, but two months later when you’re talking about it with your friends it’s a riot.

 

 

Allen: All the comics and our families tell stories from our lives. There’s a good story for guys, actually. In one part, we asked all the wives what their favorite thing to do with their husbands is when they get home from a road trip, and even though all the interviews with the wives were separate, they all said the same thing. All three wives said they like it best when we sit down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and just talk with them. Guys should remember that.

 

Allen:  I think the marriage was a result of God saving me. We were 10 minutes from filing the divorce papers. We had filed for bankruptcy, but we had nothing to divide up. Then Tami had a change of heart, and she said, “Let’s go home; this is a mistake.” It was that little voice she heard.

 

At the time, I was really searching for answers to the big questions and I was on what I thought was a journey of self-help and self-discovery, but it was all about my life. That’s the thing I try to convey to a lot of men--that the whole time I knew there was something wrong with the way I was behaving. I looked at my brother and my dad and I saw their self-centeredness. I was confused, angry and bitter, and in my confusion, it was all about myself.

 

The first part of reconciling was that I stopped blaming her. One of the most important things that Alcoholics Anonymous showed me was that I was responsible for my problems.

 

Tami was raising children and trying to make ends meet on a husband who had given up a career. I understand now, looking back, that this was a woman who was wanting to love her husband and wanting her husband to love her, and it just drained her. At the time, and she shares this on the DVD, she went through an affair.

 

In the midst of our trying to reconcile this, I found out about the affair. But, even though I was about two months from becoming a Christian, God was revealing to me more and more about my own self-righteousness and my own problems. So I couldn’t say anything bad to her.

 

You know, statistics say that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. And I would say that it goes up to 80 percent for entertainers and 90 percent for drug addicts, which I was; so it’s really just a miracle from God that our marriage survived.

 

 

Allen: God put a man named Phil in my path. This guy was a multimillionaire businessman from Dallas who was also trying to start a comedy career at the same time. We got together to play golf, and during our conversation he shared his faith with me, which I didn’t appreciate at the time. But he gave me these Bible tapes and told me to listen to them. I didn’t listen to them for a year-and-a-half, during the process of Tami and I getting a divorce.

 

And the whole time he was discipling me. He would call me, and we would talk. He never criticized me for not listening to the tapes, and all he’d ever say to me was, “How are you and Tami doing?” At the time life was just unbearable, but Phil told me that he and his wife prayed for me every night.

 

But after a year-and-a-half, Tami went away to be with her family during the summer and took the kids. While she was there, her family started to try to convince her to leave me. But that’s when I started listening to the tapes. The first one was Ecclesiastes, and I was blown away. After I listened to a few more, I knew this was the Word of God.

 

After a month of listening to these, I called Phil in tears and told him that I believed in God. I was going to Dallas for a show, and so I met him there. He took me to church, and when we got back to his house he shared the gospel with me, and I broke down and accepted Jesus. I just felt his huge weight lift off my shoulders, and God gave me peace. He saved my life and my marriage.

 

That’s what I share at churches, and the response from men and women has been amazing. 

 

 

Allen: Oh, yeah! Please—life is hard enough. You know, I’m not naïve. I don’t expect people’s lives to be transformed by my comedy act, but we all need distractions. If humor wasn’t meant to be a part of the godly experience, then why does laughter bring so many benefits physiologically?

 

You don’t think Jesus laughed? I think when Jesus looked into His disciples’ hearts—especially Peter’s—sometimes He would just laugh.

 

Is there a place for the court jester in God’s kingdom? I hope so because that’s the only way I know how to show Christ’s love.