Being a youth pastor at Liberty Assembly of God proved to be a valuable training ground for Chris Wineland’s current profession as a standup comedian.

“Especially in youth ministry, you’ve got all these crazy, wild teenagers, so you just learn to go with the flow, which is very improv,” Wineland said. “In the comedy world, when something comes up that’s unexpected, you always say, ‘Yes, and …’

“It’s like the rule for improv. So I think I learned that with youth ministry at Liberty. I really taught me, when a teenager has some crazy idea, you just have to go, ‘OK, how do we keep moving from this point on?'”

In the last decade, the 2008 Champion High School graduate has gone from working with teens to being featured on Dry Bar Comedy and appearing on such shows as “Huckabee” and “Louder with Crowder.”

He returns to Liberty Assembly on Aug. 23 to help the church celebrate its 90th anniversary by headlining “An Evening of Clean Comedy.”

Back in 2013, for a story when Wineland was recording his comedy set at the old Oakland Center for the Arts’ downtown Youngstown location, Wineland said, “I’m not really a Christian comedian; I’m a Christian who’s a comedian.” It’s a description that still applies, even when he’s performing at megachurches with congregations of more than 10,000.

“I’m blessed to do a lot of comedy clubs, and I tour to all sorts of different places,” he said. “One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that being a Christian is a big part of my life. I got saved when I was 17. But when people go to a comedy show, no matter where it is, whether it’s a church or a comedy club, they want to laugh first and foremost, so I give them that. I try to be as relatable as possible, and off the stage, behind the scenes, if there’s a Q&A or VIP or anything like that, I love sharing anything that people would ask about.

“It’s not about trying to prove to somebody how much you believe, what you believe, it’s more like everybody here just wants to laugh, and we can go from there. I’ve been doing that now for years where it’s just clean comedy, and I think people are pretty aware, especially if they follow me on social media, where I stand.”

While his travels have taken him around the country, Wineland said he hasn’t performed locally in a decade. He is sure to have a bigger crowd than when he was starting out and would show up at Taco Bell in Niles and try out material on whoever happened to be sitting inside eating a chalupa.

He may be bringing back some of that older material for the Liberty Assembly show.

“My first television performance was on a TV show called “Huckabee” (hosted by one-time presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee), and I would say 90% of that show was inspired by my time in Youngstown, Girard and that whole Warren area,” Wineland said.

“I’m definitely going to be taking a lot of that and reutilizing some things, definitely dusting off some stuff. I have some funny stories that I used to tell about my time at Liberty, so I’m going to bring that back as well.”

He also will be doing some newer material that will be featured in upcoming specials that are in the works, and he would like to get on one of the late-night talk shows (one of his first writing gigs was submitting jokes via fax to “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

However, Wineland has found websites such as Dry Bar Comedy and Tik Tok and other social media platforms as an effective way to directly reach new audiences.

“I used to believe the golden comedy era was in the ’70s with Jay Leno and all those guys coming up, but I’m starting to think it might be now,” Wineland said “There’s certainly the potential to get seen by a million people through a Tik Tok video or something that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Now I’m able to put up a clip and see than 100,000 people saw that by the end of the day.”

If you go …

WHO: Comedian Chris Wineland

WHEN: 7 p.m. Aug. 23

WHERE: Liberty Assembly of God, 6779 Belmont Ave., Liberty

HOW MUCH: $25 VIP and $15 general admission. Tickets are available in advance at chriswineland.com and at the door.