How This Christian Comedian Realized God Reaches People With Laughter
By Movieguide® Contributor
Comedian Ellen Skrmetti recalled the moment she realized that the Lord can reach people through any medium and how that has completely transformed her life, and career, since.
Skrmetti had always been interested in comedy, however, stage fright kept her from performing for years. During that time, though, the Lord was preparing her, placing her in a sales job where she used comedy to connect with others — refining the craft in a one-on-one situation.
Eventually, her call to comedy became too strong, and Skrmetti decided to overcome her fear. Though she began getting comfortable on stage, she still had many self-doubts and was hiding behind a persona rather than sharing herself and her stories authentically. Things changed, however, when The Second City, a renowned comedy school, began offering classes online, connecting her with world-class comedians. Through those classes, she gained the confidence to share her own stories and began posting clips of her jokes on social media.
“That light bulb just went off in my head. Wait a minute, if I can turn my stand up into [Instagram] Reels, I can find the middle aged women and the men who love them and they’ll come see me perform. But I knew they would not necessarily be in a comedy club just looking for me. I would have to do something to help them find me,” Skrmetti told the “Jesus Calling” podcast.
That change in her strategy took huge faith as it was an unproven way to grow as a comedian at the time. However, Skrmetti trusted that the Lord was calling her to big things and began to pray over her Reels before she posted them.
“Instead of just posting reels every day and every night, I would say a prayer,” she said. “And the prayer was, ‘Lord, do something so big it could only be you.’ And I prayed not just for the number of followers that would come to my page, I would pray for the people coming to my page to laugh.”
After beginning to post across social media, Skrmetti had a breakout moment when she began to focus her skits on the Lord. These jokes centered around people asking questions to, or about Jesus, and Skrmetti offering hilarious responses.
“‘Hey, Jesus, it’s me,’ was the first thing that I did,” she told Shannon Bream. “That was me, and it okay if they don’t like it, they don’t like me. And my girlfriend called me and she said, ‘I really love this ‘Hey, Jesus’ series because it’s more you. We actually are getting to see you and a lot of this is in your standup.”
It also allowed Skrmetti to honestly share about the Lord and help viewers realize that He cares about all of our lives, not just when we come to Him in times of trouble or if we praise Him during times of prosperity.
Skrmetti has now made her entire career about Christian comedy, using it as a vehicle to share the Gospel and help others understand the true nature of our Lord.
READ MORE: THIS HILARIOUS CHRISTIAN COMEDIAN SAYS JESUS WANTS OUR TEARS AND LAUGHTER
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