Why a Dying Pastor Calls These His Best Years

Told he had two to three months to live in January, Allan Finnegan says these are the best years of his life — and means it.

About this episode

Allan Finnegan is a Baptist minister from Liverpool, a stand-up comedian, and the author of I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This — Church, Comedy and Cancer (Broad Place Publishing, 2026). On the 20th of January this year, he was told he had two to three months left. He’s still here, still finishing things, and remarkably at peace.

In this honest, often funny conversation Allan talks to Matt about the comedy course that quietly changed his preaching, the hour he spent crying in a Tesco’s car park because he’d realised he had no friends outside church, the night his old mates told him they thought he’d been dead for thirty years, and what he’s learning about finishing well now that the medicine has stopped working.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome and Wednesday Night Finnegans
• 01:23 The book — I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This
• 03:30 How a preaching class led Allan to a stand-up comedy course
• 06:20 Why comedy techniques make for better sermons
• 10:58 Certainty kills faith — giving people permission to doubt
• 13:24 “I started a podcast instead of a prayer meeting”
• 14:30 Becoming the minister he never wanted to be
• 17:43 Trying to engineer being sacked
• 18:32 Crying in a Tesco’s car park in Litherland
• 21:00 Walking back into a Bootle pub after thirty years away
• 24:00 Why comedy saved his faith
• 28:27 Comedy needed him less than he needed comedy
• 32:50 Steve the nudist Baptist minister
• 35:08 Britain’s Got Talent — the four yeses
• 38:30 The Zoom semi-final disaster and the £9 Primark shoes
• 42:18 “It’s only a freckle” — the cancer diagnosis
• 50:00 Told he had two to three months on the 20th of January
• 51:34 “I am truly in the hands of God now”
• 52:38 The last sermon and the last comedy gig
• 53:56 What Allan has learned about finishing well
• 54:42 Philippians 1:6 as the verse that holds his life together
• 1:00:00 Just keep turning up

Key references

• Philippians 1:6 — “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” Allan’s anchor verse since he came to faith aged 16.
• Jonah — Allan reaches for Jonah’s story to make sense of his own. The hard work, he reckons, often needed to be done on the messenger as much as the message.
• I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This — Church, Comedy and Cancer by Allan Finnegan (Broad Place Publishing, 2026). Available on Amazon in Kindle and Audible. The audiobook intro is read by Allan; the rest is narrated by Christian comedian Andy Kind.
• Wednesday Night Finnegans — the podcast Allan ran with Tom Grant during and after lockdown. Tom has also been a guest on What’s The Story — listen to his episode here: crowd.church/whats-the-story/breaking-out-of-our-comfort-zone-being-part-of-an-eden-team-tom-grant
• Comedy Trust Liverpool — where Allan did the six-week stand-up course (taught by Sam Avery and Brendan Reilly) that started everything.
• Britain’s Got Talent 2020 — Allan’s audition at the London Palladium got four yeses, with Simon Cowell calling it the best audition of the day.

Quotes from the episode

“Certainty kills faith. Faith has to exist in the doubts and the uncertainty.” — Matt Edmundson

“I always thought I was kind of the worst Christian, and I was just putting this veneer on to hide so no one would get through and see that I was really rubbish at following Jesus.” — Allan Finnegan

“I started a podcast instead of a prayer meeting. Still got no idea how I got away with that.” — Allan Finnegan

“I am truly in the hands of God now. I’m not receiving any medication to make me better or keep me better. I am only receiving it for palliative care.” — Allan Finnegan

“I think what I’m learning about finishing well is sticking in there. God will finish it. I just need to stick in there. Just stay. Don’t give up.” — Allan Finnegan

Links

• Crowd Church — crowd.church
• More episodes of What’s The Story — crowd.church/whats-the-story
• Allan’s book on Amazon — I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This — Church, Comedy and Cancer (Kindle and Audible)
• Broad Place Publishing — Allan’s publisher

Crowd Church — a community for those who might not see the point of church.