Jason Deuman, dressed in khaki-colored jeans, tennis shoes and a casual button-down shirt, stands near the front door of a local brewpub and waits for his turn to take to the stage.
Meanwhile, the evening’s emcee tries to warm up the small audience that has come for a few brews and a two-and-a-half hour comedy show. But he doesn’t do very well; most of his profanity-laced jokes about drug use and dysfunctional families fall flat.
Deuman will have to follow with hopes of doing better.
And he does. Deuman gets plenty of laughter during his 12-minute set with jokes about his upbringing, his wife and family and his 92-year-old grandfather-in-law who recently got remarried. After his final joke, Deuman ends his set and walks off the stage to loud applause.
The night went well for Deuman. But he says that being a comic is just “a hobby” and that, as much as he loves hearing an audience’s laughter from a standup stage, he won’t be giving up his day job for it.
Deuman is a church pastor.
Deuman heads up Creekside Church, an Assemblies of God church that started in North Seattle, moved to Mountlake Terrace and is now located in Lynnwood. He has been a part of the church for nearly 20 years, first as a youth pastor and for the past nine years as its lead pastor.
“I love this church; these folks are wonderful,” Deuman emphasized.
“Any middle children here? Who cares.”
Deuman felt called to church ministry while in junior high, about the same time he first took notice of how standup comedy could be enjoyed by those who profess a Christian faith.
“My parents … they had a Mike Warnke (1970s and ‘80s Christian comedian) record,” Deuman said. “Turns out the guy was a total scam artist, but whatever. But they would play that record and I didn’t understand all of it at the time but I remember laughing.”
As Deuman was discovering the comedy recordings of Warnke, Mike Lowry (another Christian comedian) and Weird Al Yankovic, he also began getting involved in various youth activities at church, including a worship band and a drama team.
“I joined the drama team because this is another ministry I could do, where you go and do different skits,” Deuman said. “I think that’s where comedy really started to come alive for me.”
After graduating from Lake Washington High School, Deuman stayed in Kirkland to earn his undergraduate degree from Northwest University. Then after a short stint working at a church in Kirkland, Deuman joined Creekside and also began pursuing a master’s degree from George Fox University in Portland.
Taking a break one night from church responsibilities and his master’s studies, a friend invited Deuman to an open-mic night at a Seattle comedy club.
“I’ll go and I’ll do a set too (even though) I had never done comedy before,” Deuman recalled thinking at the time. “I’ll write some jokes, say them to some strangers, see if something happens.”
“I did way better than I thought I would,” Deuman continued. “Most people do their first open mic and they bomb hard and they’re like, ‘well, I did it; never again.’ But I was like, ‘that was actually really fun.’”
That first night at what is now Laughs’ Comedy Club not only whetted Deuman’s appetite for performing standup, but intrigued him with the whole field of comedy.
“There were people who were doing just nonsense, nothing significant,” Deuman said. “Then there were also people who were actually revealing some very deep pain in their life and found ways to bring humor from it. That’s super interesting. It was just a very real and authentic moment for these folks that was also quite funny. I was like, ‘there’s something here.’”
Deuman began listening to more recordings and watching more videos of standup comics. He even made humor the subject of his Masters’ degree thesis.
“That was just so eye-opening for me, that humor doesn’t just have to be fart jokes,” Deuman said of his initial studies of standup comedy. “You can actually do stuff and move people.”
“I’m a pastor; I meet with people and it’s weird at my church — they know I do comedy. And I’ll be meeting with a couple and the husband will say, ‘this isn’t going to end up in the act, is it?’ Then I’m like, ‘oh, that’s the narcissism she was talking about.”
After dipping his toe into standup comedy years ago, Deuman took an extended break from it while his two children were young. Now that they’re teenagers, Deuman has returned to going out two or three times a month to perform at open-mic nights and the occasional paid gig.
While some may question if preaching sermons from a church pulpit can mix with doing standup in clubs, bars and brewpubs, Deuman stressed that he is simply pursuing his authentic self.
“I’m trying to be more true to how I am wired,” he said.
“When I’m not writing a sermon I’m thinking about jokes,” Deuman explained. “I have a journal; I write 10 minutes of jokes every day. I’m just constantly trying to produce stuff. Not all of it is good — a lot of it is bad. A lot of it will never leave that journal.”
Deuman believes that doing both preaching and standup has improved his skills in each craft.
“I love talking about the Bible, I love talking about jokes and doing comedy,” he said. “Just like ‘as the tide rises all ships rise with it,’ doing both I think helps me get better at both.”
Then there is the concern among some of Deuman venturing into an arena that is not known for being family- or church-friendly.
“They’re not questioning that I’m doing it,” Deuman explained. “It’s more like the environment: ‘You’re going into bars. And people are talking about their sexual encounters, they’re talking about all these things that are worldly.’ But I’m not. I’m not talking about those things.”
Being authentic is key, Deuman said, to being a comic and his personal journey into standup. He feels no compulsion to use vulgar language or raunchy material in his act and instead is inspired to follow in the footsteps of various “clean” comics in the industry such as Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld and Nate Bargatze.
“Knowing who you are is going to keep you true to what you want to do,” Deuman said. “And so knowing that I am not going to go and tell blue off-color jokes, that’s just the reputation I have. It’s not who I am. And nobody has ever said, ‘hey, why don’t you tell jokes about your sex life?’ I don’t think it’s that interesting.”
“I see a lot of (comics) defaulting into sexual encounters and different kinds of stuff and that’s their life. But that’s not my life,” Deuman continued. “So it would be disingenuous for me to try to do that. So I have no real draw to it.”
Deuman also sees his standup appearances as a chance to model Christian faith values.
“My hope is that by being in these spaces people might actually see my life and my words as positive reflections of Jesus,” he said.
“My daughter got me a Fathers’ Day card and it was really sweet. I opened it up and it said, ‘Dad’ — so we’re on the right page — ‘Happy Fathers’ Day. Thank you for being my free Uber driver; 3.5 stars. Music sucks, talks too much, needs better snacks.’”
While Deuman has a yearning to put himself in the spotlight and “tell jokes to strangers,” his wife and two kids tend to let him venture out in this pursuit on his own. His two kids, ages 15 and 17, are too young to enter into many of the venues where their dad is performing anyway — and his wife is usually too nervous for his sake to tag along.
“My wife doesn’t come; it makes her very uncomfortable because she thinks, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to go well,’” Deuman explained. “I do have a joke about this: ‘we’re positive that she’s going to outlive me because she’s got good genes. So she only wants to watch me die once.’”
Deuman doesn’t see a lot of Creekside Church attendees at his performances either.
“I have zero expectations that church folks will come,” he smiles. “Usually it’s late.”
Will there be a time that Deuman would consider leaving the church to pursue standup full-time? He says no for a number of reasons, the first being that he feels he has so much more to learn about the art form.
“I am like a baby in comedy,” Deuman said. “There’s so much stuff I don’t know as far as performing goes. There are folks who give their whole life to this. And I am not there. This is a fun hobby, a fun opportunity to meet people who are outside of my normal church environment. I feel like I am still learning so much about comedy.”
Deuman also cited the need for full-time comics to be on the road constantly.
“You travel so much and you spend so much time alone on the road, I just don’t go for that,” he said. “I’m a homebody and all I really want to do is go home. It’s not really my calling to be a comedian, I think.”
“There are folks that, this is their dream, to be a standup comic. It’s not really my dream; it’s a fun hobby,” he concluded.
“I was at Costco and I saw something freaky — there were two ambulances by the entrance to Costco. What could possibly be going on that there would be two ambulances at Costco? But then I remembered that everything comes in bulk at Costco.”
— Story and photos by Doug Petrowski
Real first and last names — as well as city of residence — are required for all commenters.
This is so we can verify your identity before approving your comment.
By commenting here you agree to abide by our Code of Conduct. Please read our code at the bottom of this page before commenting.