Top 20 Most Embarrassing Preaching Stories

If you’ve been in ministry for any length of time, you’ve probably had an embarrassing preaching moment or two. Or seven. I know I have.

I was thinking about this the other day, and thought it might be fun to send out an email and ask our list of pastors about their most embarrassing preaching stories. I figured I might be able to write a blog with them.

The stories started rolling in, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve laughed the last few days reading through all of the submissions. A few of them made me straight-up fall out of my chair.

This post could’ve been the length of a small book, but I’ve whittled down the responses to the top 20. I hope you get as much a kick out of these as I did. I’ve left open a comments section at the end of the blog so you can add your most embarrassing preaching moment to the conversation.

But, for now, let’s laugh at each others’ pain.

1. Lavalier + The Flu

“My most embarrassing preaching story was back in the early 80’s and my 1st experience with a ‘lavalier’ mic! The choir sung and I got up to preach, but I was still getting over the stomach flu!

I felt some moving so I called the choir back to sing and ran out as they sang, “Let the Lord have His Way.” I barely made out of the auditorium. Suddenly, my wife runs into the men’s restroom and said, ‘Your Mic Is Still On!’

Needless to say when I came back to the pulpit, we just dismissed!”

– Robert

2. “Rooting” for Jesus

“The pastor preaching was not embarrassed, but I certainly was. I’m a United Methodist Pastor, but I come from Australia.  I immigrated to the US in 2005.  The US and Australia might share English as a common language, but it doesn’t always compute.

A couple of years ago, my Bishop got all excited while preaching to a couple of thousand clergy and laity, and started to tell us —loudly and with much gusto—to start ‘rooting’ for Jesus.

Now if he’d said it once, I would have moved on… but he said it over and over again.  You must ‘root’ for Jesus!!!

Root—down under—does not mean ‘cheer.’  It’s a slang word that means…’mommy and daddy sharing an intimate moment of fellowship’… if you get my drift!  :-)”

– Mike

3. The Day Santa Died

“I was on staff at a church where, one year, we held a special Christmas family service. We decided to have all of the children sit with their parents during the message. The service went well, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the drama, games, and Christmas music.

Then, it came time for the sermon to begin. With a burst of enthusiasm, my pastor begin his message with the line: ‘I remember how old I was when I found out that Santa wasn’t real…’

He had forgotten the children were in service, and spilled the beans to everyone.

I’ll be honest, it was just a little bit funny to see all of the parents lunge toward their children, covering their ears in a frenzy. For those who weren’t able to distract their little ones, the effects were instant. A few of the kids gazed at the stage in disbelief. Other turned to their parents in deep sadness.

I always remember that service as the day Santa died.”

– Wade

4. Donkey

“As the pastor, I was giving the welcome and announcements to begin our service. It was Palm Sunday so I was briefly sharing how Jesus rode into town on a donkey, to which I inquired of the audience if anyone had come to church on a donkey.

A reply came from a woman in the audience. She points to her husband and says. ‘No, but I came with one.’ Hilarious.”

– David

5. A Little “Breezy”

“I was invited to speak to a bunch of high schoolers at a popular Christian high school in Memphis. While I was preaching, I saw some girls on the front row that keep giggling nervously. I couldn’t figure out why they kept laughing—even during my serious parts…

When I was done, I walked off the stage and felt a little ‘breezy’ in my nether-region…sure enough, I had preached the entire sermon with my fly down.

And to make it worse, a girl walked up to me (from my church) and said, ‘Just thought I’d let you know your fly’s down.’  Then she walked off laughing.  Ouch.”

– Beau

6. Thin Glass

“Many years ago, when I just started pastoring, I felt led to preach on brokenness. Because the church was smaller, the baptistery was separated from the platform only by a waist-high partition.

I decided to bring a drinking glass to the pulpit and, at the appropriate moment, turn and slam it into the baptistery, whereupon it would shatter, making my point with a great shattering sound.

I went to the local dollar store and bought the thinnest, cheapest drinking glass that I could find to ensure that there would be no problems with shattering it. As I wound my way through the message, I came to the appropriate moment. I turned and slam dunked that cheap, thin glass into the baptistery.

Not only did it NOT shatter, but it bounced repeatedly with a deep (and very loud) sound and finally bounced its way to the bottom of the baptistery where it rolled until it finally settled in the deepest part of the baptistery!
The congregation was doubled over howling and laughing, and I was as well. They never forgot it and neither have I!”

– Eric

7. Little Guy in the Back

This isn’t a submission, but it is pretty funny. So I thought I’d share.

8. Hairs & Horses

“I was serving as a missionary in Mexico. I had a pretty good grasp on the language, but still struggled in various areas. I was in a series of messages on ‘How Great God Is’ and was expressing the love of God for His children.

I meant to say, ‘He knows how many hairs we have on our heads,’ but instead I said, ‘He even knows how many horses are on our heads.’

When I said that, I saw the older people with questioning faces, while the younger people chuckled.

The words horse and hair are quite close in Spanish—I obviously chose the wrong word. I stopped the preaching turned to a teenager in our church who was bi-lingual and asked her what I had said. When she told me that I said, ‘God knows how many horses are on our head,’ I smiled, thanked her and said, ‘God knows that too,’ then attempted to continue the service.”

– Tom

9. Diapers

“I was a new father preaching to an audience of over 300 parents and shared about how I would never change my infant son’s diapers. I went on to describe how awful the smell was, and how disgusting it would be to change the diaper. I immediately heard of chorus of boos.

I vowed to change his diaper later that day. The wave of boos changed to immediate applause.

Thus began my diaper-changing journey and the continuance of publicly eating humble pie.”

– Kevin

10. Short Sermon

“During my first sermon, I wanted the Lord to help me not to speak too much or too little.

I had writings of my script on 2 pages full of small hand written sermon notes. I preached from the pages and ended the sermon in about 10 minutes.

After the service there were so many people who offered to give me advice on how I could expand the sermon.”

– Dan

11. SEX!

“For 15 years of student ministry, I’ve had ‘the sex talk’ in my preaching calendar.

I tried to come up with some really awkward ways of making things less awkward.

One of the first things we do each time I preach on sex is to have the students stand up, turn towards wherever the adults are in the building and scream, ‘SEX!’ as loud as they can. Then they look at each other and scream ‘SEX!’ as loud as they can.  Finally, I created an interactive message—complete with a hand motion that called for the students to blurt out, ‘Sex!’ every time they saw it.  Every. Time.

One fateful Sunday, I was preaching in the main service; it was Youth Sunday. Our group of however many students were all sitting in the font, on my left, having helped lead worship, done human videos, and basically run every other aspect of service to this point.  The only problem was, my hand motion for ‘Sex!’ was something I did a lot when preaching.  And the students picked up on that.

Apparently, they conspired.

As I was preaching to the main congregation, all the sudden I heard about 30+ students yell, ‘SEX!’ right in the middle of my message.  I have no idea what I was talking about at that point. All I know is that adults’ faces were colors I didn’t know existed. Old people were passed out (and it wasn’t the Holy Spirit), and I had some explaining to do, mid-message. 

Fortunately, once I explained to our congregation what was going on, they were pretty gracious.”

– Scott

12. Grab the Dictionary

“Just starting out in ministry (20 years old), I was teaching a Sunday School class through one of the books of the Old Testament. I had a middle school, homeschooled girl ask what circumcision was. What I SHOULD have done was to tell her to ask her parents when she got home…

Taken aback for a moment, I spotted a dictionary on the shelf in the back. I grabbed the dictionary and read the dictionary definition. Pretty much lost the room for the rest of the time.”

– Mike

13. Deuteronomy 23:1

“I was preaching about Law vs. Grace and used Deuteronomy 23:12-14 as an example for crazy laws. One of the students genuinely volunteered before service to read the passage out loud…when it came time to read, he misunderstood what verse I said to begin with and just started at verse 1. I lost all attention for the rest of service.
Deuteronomy 23:1 definitely shouldn’t be read out loud in a youth group.”

– Hannah

14. Fiery Darts

“My ‘awkward’ moment was a spoonerism on ‘Fiery darts’ of Ephesian 6:16.

I accidentally said, ‘Diery Farts.’

Happily, I had a great assembly and we all rolled around in fits for a few moments and were all quite refreshed after our little event.”

– Bruce

15. Dad & Drugs

“A few years ago, I shared a story with my young kids that I had smoked cigarettes for one week when I was in elementary school. I forgot about it shortly thereafter.

Some months later, I concluded the Sunday sermon with an altar call for anyone that wanted or needed prayer, and about thirty-five people responded. Together with the ministry team, we spent several minutes ministering to people at the altar and, while most of those who responded to the altar call were still praying or being prayed for, I offered the benediction and dismissed the congregation.

My son, probably eight years old at the time, ran down the aisle to the platform and said in a loud voice, ‘Dad, remember when you used to do drugs?’

I am not sure what prompted this question, perhaps something I had mentioned in the sermon. Embarrassed I looked around to see if anyone had heard my son. To this day I am not sure if the people at the altar were deep in prayer or pretended not to hear him to save me the embarrassment.”

– Gil

16. Mail Problems

Technically, this isn’t a “preaching” story, but it’s too good not to share.

“One of my most embarrassing ministry moments happened in college. Our Christian Student Group on campus had a ‘big brother/big sister’ type of mentoring group on campus where two older students (a guy and a girl) would ‘adopt’ a class of freshman students and mentor them the first semester. We were to encourage them, pray for them, and get to know them as they adjusted to life in college and being away from home for the first time.

About two weeks into the semester, I noticed one of our freshman girls walking across campus and, even from a distance, she looked sad.

I walked over to her and greeted her with a warm smile and a very friendly greeting, asking her how she was and how things were going for her so far at college.  She looked up at me and with innocence and worry said, ‘Things aren’t going so well. I’m having male problems.’

Unbeknownst to me, one of the other freshmen guys on campus had become attracted to her and was trying to convince her to go on a date with him. She had no interest, though.

Now, when I heard her say this sentence, I was unaware of her battles with this ‘creeper’ guy. I was merely trying to cheer her up.

What she had told me and what I heard wasn’t the same thing…

I heard. ‘Things aren’t going so well. I’m having MAIL problems.’ I thought that she may be having trouble with the combination to her mailbox or her family hadn’t sent her any letters or packages yet.

So, I did what any good ‘big brother’ would do. I put my arm around her, gave her a friendly (and innocent) side hug and said, ‘Don’t you worry. This happens to EVERY student when they move in on campus. I was here two weeks my freshman year before I GOT ANYTHING. If you want, I can help you out.’

She took a step away from me; her face dropped to the ground and her eyes got as big as saucers.

It was THEN that I fully understood exactly what kind of problems she was having. ‘OH…. M-A-L-E problems,’ I shouted. I was mortified and embarrassed beyond description.

We still laugh about that to this day. Hilarious now, but mortifying back in college.”

– Gary

17. Trust Exercise

“During a conference session, the youth pastors assembled along with all the youth workers. We were doing trust exercises and part of the process involved being handed across the assembled (sort of crowd surfing) after a trust fall into the crowd. Anyway, I had recently lost a great deal of weight and all my clothes were very loose on me.

About halfway across, my pants slid off and by the time I reached the end, I was in my boxer shorts. I dashed into the men’s room and one of the workers brought me my jeans.”

– Jeff

18. Grapejuice

“My youth ministry days provided an awkward moment…

We were conducting Youth Sunday. My teens planned everything, including doing the Lord’s supper. The problem was they didn’t know how much grape juice to get and didn’t get enough.

About half way through, I noticed people making horrible faces when then drank from the cup.

I learned that the teens had run out and, seeing a Frozen Italian Ice truck, had purchased a gallon of Grape syrup. They used that to fill the remaining cups while not bothering to dilute it.

We certainly made an impression on the adults that day.”

– Seth

19. Important Announcements

“I was an enthusiastic new youth pastor and had just been asked to lead the service. I was so excited. I was going to really get everyone excited about church and the service.

It all started off well and people seemed to enjoy the energy I was bringing.

But then the time arrived to give the announcements. So with all my young enthusiasm, I stood up and said let’s get these announcements done with so we can get back to more important things.

I opened the bulletin and the first announcement was condolences to a church member who just had a close relative pass away. I think the second announcement was about something just as important, but by now I knew I was in deep trouble and I cannot remember the rest of the service.

By the way, I survived and am now the senior pastor, so they did not fire me thank goodness.”

– Gary

20. Snot Cannon

“A pastor sneezed while he was preaching hard and the mother of all snots fired out like a canon. It took him about 5 minutes to clean up and regain his composure. I can still see it when I close my eyes. He occasionally references it still years later.”

– Adrian

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