When our children were young and afraid of monsters hiding in their closets and under their beds, my wife and I would tuck them in with a prayer and a song. Each had their own song with lyrics and melodies we wrote just for them. In fact, we recorded a "Mommy/Daddy" cassette tape for each child with Bible readings, personal affirmations, and their song. Most nights after prayers, they would turn on their tape player to listen to their Mommy/Daddy tape, often rewinding it to listen again and again. Singing over them soothed their savage breasts. 

Zephaniah 3:17 says that God does the same for us. As a loving Father, he comforts us with His presence and His voice. Unlike human parents though, He never parts. And unlike human parents, His voice never tires of singing. That's a good thing, because we never outgrow the need for comfort. There will always be a savage breast within us that can tamed only by His song.

What lyrics of comfort do you imagine Him to be singing about you?

KD: Here's the way I would evaluate it: at my worst, God chose to use what I was doing to impact the Kingdom and at my best, God chose to use what I was doing to impact the Kingdom.

I used to speak frequently to junior high students. Now there's a audience that doesn't give a lot of positive feedback! They climb the walls and swing from the chandeliers during the entire time you are speaking. On one occasion my audience  of 80 kids were given Q-tips and straws and they were blowing them at each other. Of course, when it came time for my talk, they sat them all in one corner of the gymnasium. But they didn't collect the straws, nor the Q-tips. So, during my presentation I am getting hit in the left eye and then in the head. It was when I had just told my funniest joke and some kid in the back sneered "Ha, Ha, Ha," that I thought, "Okay, that's it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more Mr. Funny Guy." At that point, I turned into Jonathan Edwards and began to speak to those poor souls, those "sinners in the hands of an angry God." I told them they were hanging over the pit of Hell by a thread and were certainly going to burn. 

I remember that night well because I was sick with laryngitis. And I was also sick with the worst attitude I could possibly have had. I spoke out of anger and retribution for their lack of respect. At the end of the night I said, "If you want to trust your life to Christ, stand up." About forty of them stood up. "Sit back down," I said, figuring that I had screwed it up by making it look too easy. So I started telling them that their friends might leave them. I made it sound like trusting Christ was the worst thing you could possibly do. Finally, I said again, "If you really want to trust Jesus, stand up." And the same bunch stood up and went to the back of the room to pray to receive Christ.

As as I walked past them on my way for a drink of water, I heard a boy about 12 years old, praying the most sincere prayer of commitment that I have ever heard in my life, probably to this day. He had responded to the most horrible, misrepresented presentation ever given by entrusting his life to Christ.  I realized then that God looked down and saw my bad attitude. He saw the bad presentation. He saw all of it and said, "There are 40 kids that I love and want, and I am going to use what you are doing." 

And there have been times when I have stepped before an audience of 58,000 men at Soldier's Field in Chicago and absolutely knocked the ball out of the park, as far as I was concerned. My heart was right. I was in the right frame of mind. I had given the best presentation I have ever done. In that moment, God looked down and said, "There are several hundred or several thousand men here that I want, and I will use what you are doing." So at my worst God used what I was doing to advance His Kingdom and at my best God used what I was doing to advance his Kingdom.

BMC: There's got to be times when you don't feel like being funny. How do you stay engaged? 

KD: Part of the way that happens is that I am not a funny guy off-stage. I received another strong criticism from someone who said that I was faking what I do on stage, because off stage they thought I was aloof. I am the farthest from aloof you can possibly get. On personality tests, I rate off the charts as an introvert, as someone who is a loner and not comfortable in crowds. Yet, the safest place on earth for me is on the stage, because I really am alone. On-stage, I am in control. If there's any place where God has been working with me lately, it's to challenge me to trust him in places where I am not in control. He's challenging me to work on developing one-on-one relationships, where humor doesn't necessarily carry the day. I think my friends would say I am a funny person and fun to be around, but I am certainly not the life of the party. I am not the guy that makes it happen, I am more introspective, serious and somewhat demented!

BMC: As you look at the next phase of your ministry, what lies ahead for you?

KD: My current passion is to continue doing what I am doing as effectively as I possibly can. As I look toward the future, I am toying with and praying about the idea of helping folks in my stage of life; to encourage them, to make them laugh, and to help them find hope in this season of life.  I'm thinking about writing a book on this season called "Skating on Golden Pond." There's a lot happening in this stage of life. We become parents to our parents and they take on the role of children; we lose our parents; we watch their health fail; we watch a generation of younger people devalue their elder's role in society. 

All of that sounds real serious. But we also see our own bodies falling apart. Plumbing that stops working, for instance.  I think it's hilarious and if you can find the humor in it, it helps you face the more serious stuff. There may be some criticism if I tackle this project, because I am going to be honest. A guy said to me once, "I have been married for forty years and my wife and I have never had an argument and never had a bad thought toward one another." I said to him, "You must be married to a carrot!  You're certainly not married to a human being." 

So I expect this book to be an honest, straightforward and encouraging look at the aging process. Hope doesn't have to die when you get older. If anything, God opens up areas for us to minister like we have never ministered before, just in different ways. For me, I think God will change my ministry to become more personal, one-on-one, more relational than event and performance based. 

BMC: Thanks, Ken, for sharing your heart and life lessons with us.

KD: I am, I was born in Brainerd and spent my early childhood and young adult life on the Iron Range up near Virginia, in a little town called Sax. I think there were just two of us in Sax. 

BMC: That's just north of Lake Wobegon, I think. 

KD: Well it's quite bit a north of Lake Wobegon.  It was just a little farming community and I have wonderful memories of that place. 

BMC: That's terrific. Let's go back there. When did you first discover your comedic talent? 

KD: I think it was right after the doctor slapped me and said that's a boy! 

It really was pretty quick. I probably didn't recognize it in full form until one day in junior high English class. Our teacher, Francis W. Peterson, had just read Shakespeare's famous line, "Out, out damn spot." I had taken that opportunity to raise my hand and suggest other adjectives that could be used to describe the spot. None of them appropriate. She was not pleased, and made me stay after school. 

When you stayed after school in those days, the buses left without you. You had to call and have your parents drive 30 miles to pick you up. And when your parents came they didn't bring a lawyer they brought a two by four! I knew I was in big, big trouble.

While I was waiting for my parents to come, my teacher (who had always been very kind to me), finished correcting papers, capped her pen with those long slender fingers, and said to me, "God has given you a gift." I fully expected that she was going to expel me right then. But instead she said, "You've been using this gift to destroy my class and that is going to change. I want you to try out for speech and humorous interpretation." That was the beginning. I won every contest I entered, except for one, and was in all of her plays and drama presentations. She was a tremendous encouragement to me. She was a woman who walked past the dirt to find the gold.

BMC: She was your Mr. Holland then?

KD: Absolutely! That is an excellent way of putting it.

BMC: Were there others that came alongside of you and fanned the passion for Christian comedy in your early years?

KD: Not in the beginning, not that particular passion. You have to remember that was 1962. At that time, comedy, faith and Christianity were not really closely connected.

BMC: When did you first realize that you could have that kind of ministry?

KD: I realized that immediately, but there weren't people who encouraged me. In fact there were some who were very encouraging to me in all other areas of life. They just were not encouraging in that area. I was probably encouraged at that time more as a communicator, just as a flat communicator rather than for my humor. In fact, one of my mentors, who had profound influence on my life, expressed discouragement that I did not become a preacher. But comedy was God's intention, His call. As much as I enjoy presenting God's word in preaching, and I have been in some of the biggest churches in the country, that part of me to find humor in almost everything always shows through. In the long run, that has given me a wider audience than I would have had in any other way. I believe God knew what he was doing.

BMC: You had to have a pretty strong conviction that this was God's calling for you, to stand in the face of a mentor who is encouraging you to do otherwise.

KD: I'm going to be honest with you. I would love to say "Yes, I was so strongly convinced that God had called me in this direction that nothing could deter me," but that really isn't true. What's true is that I found comedy as a means to be accepted. I was beat up in high school. I was skinny. I was not accepted, and humor was a way to get acceptance. I quickly found that what I couldn't gain because my lack of social skills, I could achieve when I was standing in front of people doing a presentation and using humor. Now, the one who was convinced of the power of this and convicted that it needed to continue was God himself. So, he used all of that, even though it was misdirected in the beginning because I used humor for what the audience gave me, rather than me ministering to them. He used all that time and all of that training to hone this craft to a fine tuned edge that is enjoyed all over the world today. So I would love to say that I was so committed that nothing could keep me from pursuing it, but in all honesty, for the longest time, it was the only means by which I could find acceptance.

BMC: Sometimes God even uses our own self-protection to advance His cause.

KD: Indeed. I would say a lot of times!