When the Church Becomes the Punchline
How Satire Became a Survival Tool
I have been thinking a lot about why church satire has found such a strong following online lately — skits, reels, stand-up, meme pages with millions of views. On the surface, it might look like cheap shots at faith. But for many of us who survived spiritual abuse and high-control church life, it is not mockery for mockery’s sake. It is therapy. It is community. It is a way to say, “Did you see that too? Was it this absurd for you as well?”
When everything exploded in our world, when the illusions shattered and we could no longer deny we had been part of a toxic church, we found ourselves standing in the wreckage, trying to make sense of stories too horrific to retell without tears. Our eyes, once so tightly shut, opened wide and painfully. We began hearing the stories of others, piecing together what had happened to them, to us, to our families. It was like discovering you had been living in someone else’s dark fable for two decades.
And in the middle of this reckoning, we laughed.
Not because any of it was funny, how could it be when so much of it was vile, manipulative, even criminal? We laughed because sometimes the weight of it was too much for tears alone. Among us, the advocates and the survivors, humour became a balm. It was a relief valve when the grief, rage and shame threatened to drown us. We were all scarred by the same man, caught in the same net, and we were beginning to understand how we had ended up so loyal for so long. So we laughed at the absurdity, the cringeworthy moments, the so-called sermons, the endless self-aggrandising monologues we once swallowed as spiritual gold.
One of the clearest turning points for me came just before we sat down with
, back when we still had not grasped the full depth of the twenty years we had given away. I was on Livestream duty that Sunday service, mid-February 2023. Pastor Austin, as I will call him here, began telling a story I had heard at least twenty times before.He launched into it the same way he always did: “Some of you may not have heard this story, but years ago I won a free trip to Bali…”
The moment those words left his mouth, I cringed. I knew exactly what was coming. It was always uncomfortable, wildly inappropriate, and certainly not child-safe. The gist: a woman supposedly broke into his hotel room in the middle of the night, dressed in skimpy little attire, tried to crawl into his bed, then stole his things. He would ham it up for laughs, reenacting his panic, yelling about what his wife would think, what the church would think, what the media would do. “My nephew just won Idol, it will be in the headlines!”
I was at the Livestream desk, fingers hovering over a bright red button labelled Content Alert. I had created that button precisely for moments like this, moments when Pastor Austin veered into territory that should never go out on a public stream. If I pressed it, a little ticker would crawl across the screen: “This content may not be suitable for young children.”
I should have pressed it. But I did not. Because I knew what would happen if I did: he would tear strips off me afterwards, humiliate me in front of everyone, demand an explanation for daring to flag his story as unfit for public consumption. So I sat there, paralysed by fear, letting the nonsense roll out into cyberspace. And once something is on the internet, it never really dies.
When he finally wrapped that up, awkwardly tying it into a vague parable, he jumped straight into another story. This time about how he had been robbed on a recent trip to preach in a country town. Except he had not really been robbed; he had left his boot wide open overnight, and some local kids swiped his laptop, iPad and bag. He spun it, as always, into a spiritual parable: “God will return what the enemy has stolen.”
Never mind that the enemy here was probably just bored kids from a tough neighbourhood. He painted them as devil’s agents and, worse, publicly revealed the addresses he had traced through Find My iPad. He did not just do this once; he broadcast those addresses during church service in that town, and again online in our local service the week following. The sermon from that country church remains available on YouTube for anyone to find. It was blatant doxxing, dressed up as a testimony.
And then, in that same breath, he mocked the very pastor who had invited him to speak. He told the crowd how he had tried calling this host pastor at five in the morning, desperate for help. He’d phoned him 15 times until the host pastor finally picked up at 7am. Pastor Austin laughed so hard he could hardly talk: “Maybe he was deep in prayer, seeking God, praying in the Spirit!”
His ‘joke’ was meant to make people laugh. But really, it was another backhanded swipe, belittling the man who had trusted him with his pulpit.
We laugh about this now, those of us who fled. We laugh because it is so preposterous that for years we called this nonsense wisdom and repeated it like gospel. We laugh because our laughter keeps the wounds from festering. And maybe that is why church satire is finding its voice, because when truth has been so thoroughly mangled, sometimes laughter is the only honest sound left.
Church satire on social media has become something wildly popular and strangely comforting. Years ago, I remember discovering a John Crist skit that had me crying with laughter because it was so painfully real. A Christian band desperate for a record deal, told by their manager that the only way to get a hit was to shoehorn in words like storm, valley, desert, water, fire, oceans — all the clichés you hear on repeat in worship music.
As I go back and rewatch that video, my heart feels heavier than it did the first time I laughed at it. What John Crist did not know, back when he made that skit eight years ago, was that the entire Christian music industry would be turned upside down in 2025 by the very people and band he casually referenced for a punchline — the Newsboys and Michael Tait.
In the skit, it was just an innocent jab at the formulaic way Christian songs cram in words like water, fire, oceans, to guarantee airplay. We all laughed because we recognised the truth in it — I even played it in church once, oblivious to how deep the rot really went behind the scenes.
But in 2025, the headlines hit. Allegations surfaced, survivors spoke out, and behind the polished worship albums and world tours lay years of stories that no one wanted to hear until they could no longer be silenced.
For anyone reading this who needs sources, I point you to the Roys Report, one of the few independent Christian outlets willing to dig deeper than press releases and PR statements. Julie Roys and her team documented the unravelling — from the detailed testimonies that first appeared in early 2025, to the patterns of cover-up, intimidation, and quiet settlements that so often follow when celebrity pastors and artists are exposed.
Church Satire: it’s like Seinfeld, but for church life — funny because it shows us exactly how we are.
After our toxic church exploded and we escaped, I found myself watching more and more of these comedians who peel back the curtain on everyday church culture. There are a few whose videos never miss the mark. Every clip hits too close to home. But the unsettling truth is my laughter comes from recognition. I am laughing at things that should never have been normal.
Jonathan Malm is one who keeps feeding us bite-sized skits, each one landing with the unexpected precision of an Aldi middle aisle special. It feels as if he has been secretly watching our story unfold all these years, crafting a sketch for every piece of the chaos, somehow turning parts of our pain back into laughter.
I laughed way too hard at this one just this morning, because, well… I was that ex-staff member who set up all the passwords. Fortunately for those who remain under the church lock and key, we stuck to a foolproof system. Three slightly different versions of the same password, all variations of the church name mashed up with a couple of numbers and a conveniently memorable date. Honestly, a toddler could have cracked it. But I guess the real punchline is this: somewhere behind those locked accounts, my name is now a vile word on their lips.
Some video skits push right up to the line, revealing spiritual abuse, celebrity pastors, church money machines, secret lawyers cleaning up scandals. Pastor Austin did not own ten mansions but he did sit under a similar delusion.
Austin’s Disneyland vision shaped everything. We were meant to be the hub, the gateway to the city, the force that would influence culture, government, education and entertainment all at once. And that grand vision always demanded more. A bigger building, a larger crowd, a deeper pocket, the next shiny project. Seven storeys high, a soccer field on the roof, why not? Nothing was ever enough when you believed you were building the kingdom and a theme park at the same time.
Working at the church office was like bouncing on a trampoline loaded with broken glass. I recall the laughter in the staff room. Back then it felt like safety, a sign we could exhale for a moment. Now I see it for what it really was. Pastor Austin’s booming laugh echoed through every hallway. People would mutter, ‘Happy as Larry’. If Austin was laughing, you knew you could breathe a little easier. If he wasn’t, you shrank yourself down and tiptoed through the day, hoping not to draw his eye.
Most of his laughter was sharp. It came at someone’s expense. Stories told from the pulpit, stories told in private, laughter that hid sin or cut down staff or congregation. Laughter used to keep people small.
But laughter can also save you.
In these years since it all cracked open, we have laughed, we have wept, and we have laughed again. We have even talked about creating our own skits, not just to process the chaos, but to help others see it for what it was.
Because no one makes jokes about a church that really lives out the words of Jesus. But when church becomes performance, when it trades truth for image, when it abuses and controls, sometimes the only way to expose it is to laugh.
If you find yourself laughing too, maybe pause and ask: is this funny because it is absurd and harmless, or funny because it is true and tragic? If it is the second you are not alone. Laughter might just be the doorway that lets you see what your heart has been trying to tell you all along.
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No idea what this could be connected to? Or maybe I do. Who knows....