Note: This is one of many examples of religious humor that I have collected over the years. Where I have information about the original source, I have included it. Unfortunately, for most of these jokes and stories I do not have reliable authorship information. Like many jokes and urban legends, such information is difficult to trace.

A preacher became frustrated that a large part of his congregation was going water skiing on Sunday, rather than coming to church, so he told his wife, "This Sunday, I'm going to preach about the evils of water skiing on Sunday."

"What!?" she exclaimed. "That's a silly thing to preach about!"

"I don't think so," he said, "it's a problem we need to address."

Next Sunday as they were driving to church, the wife asks the preacher what he was going to preach about, some what warily.

"As I told you," he said, "I'm going to preach about the evils of water skiing on Sundays."

"That's idiotic!" the wife says. "First of all, it's a dumb sermon topic, and second, the people who need to hear it won't be in church! Why don't you preach about sex or something people are interested in?"

"Nope. The Lord wants me to preach about the evils of water-skiing on Sundays, and that's what I'm preaching about," he said firmly.

The wife says, "Well, I'm not going to sit through a stupid sermon like that. I'm staying in the car. You can tell the congregation I'm sick or something."

And she stayed in the car.

As the preacher was walking from the car to his study at the church, he

got to thinking maybe his wife was right and he changed his mind and gave a brilliant extemporaneous sermon on sex in modern society.

When the service was over, one of the parishioners stopped by the preacher's car and said to the pastor's wife, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well this morning. Your husband gave the finest sermon today that he's ever given since coming to this parish."

"I don't know why he thinks he's such an expert on the subject," the wife snapped. "He's only tried it twice and he fell off both times!"