Hi, Bill! I agree that humor is not really compatible with an invitational attitude if it is based on inside jokes. Those inside jokes have other functions—tension relief, building the community, nurturing a creative environment, as well as some less positive aspects...but those things, as valuable as they are, don't necessarily open the door wider.
Relying as it does on unexpected associations or twists on familiar themes, probably humor is more often inside-oriented than we realize. Much of it depends on shared references. (In fact, some humor uses those references to say things that it wouldn't be safe to say directly. For example, the old "Radio Yerevan" joke from the early 1960's: Someone calls into the Radio Yerevan advice program asking how to get rid of baldness. The answer: "We don't deal with political issues." You need to know, at least, that "
Radio Yerevan" was a joke formula in the Soviet Union, not a real station, and that Khrushchev was bald.
Similarly, the Christian satire magazine,
Wittenburg Door, is probably 50% incomprehensible to the average non-believer. However, the other 50% may provide important evidence that at least some Christians are not the narrowminded terminal killjoys that are overrepresented among Christian celebrities.
