Promotes dental health. 
Do dentists agree with this?
Preacher Loses Five Front Teeth Lifting 385-Pound Man in Sermon GimmickPAUL DE LA GARZA
January 21, 1988
CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) _ A gimmick gone awry took a bite out of Baptist minister Paul Wrenn’s sermons when he pulled up a 385-pound coal miner, using a special leather mouthpiece, and lost five front teeth.
Wrenn said he still has 24 teeth left, but ″there’s no way I’m going to be able to keep up the teeth lifting.″
″Maybe I’ll scratch around and try to come up with something to take the place,″ said Wrenn, who had been promoting his sermons by lifting the heaviest member of the audience with his mouth.
Besides his teeth lift, the 5-foot-10, 335-pound preacher also allows the heaviest person in the audience to jump on his stomach. He also bends huge spikes and drives nails into boards with his hands.
But the 40-year-old preacher who lives in Clarksville, Tenn., blamed the mouthpiece and his own poor judgment for Sunday’s mishap.
″With the mouthpiece that I had, I didn’t want to lift him,″ he said of 6-foot-8 coal miner Joe Pierce.
″I wanted him to jump on my stomach, but his boy said he had a bad leg and couldn’t jump,″ Wrenn said Wednesday in a telephone interview from his home.
″It didn’t hurt or anything. I was embarrassed more than anything else at the time.″
Wrenn was in the region Sunday speaking at the Southern Illinois Bible and Evangelism Conference. Earlier that day, he had one successful tooth lift in Carbondale and two in West Frankfort.
A few years back, Wrenn’s heaviest tooth lift had been 404 pounds.
Enter Pierce.
″What was going through my mind was that the man had the power to do it,″ the 34-year-old Pierce recalled. ″I was comfortable because I had watched him before. I’ve heard of him through the churches and stuff.″
Wrenn used a mouthpiece connected by a short nylon rope to a weightlifting belt Pierce wore. Pierce lay on the ground as Wrenn stood over him.
According to the Rev. Allen T. Speer, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Christopher, about 25 miles northeast of Carbondale, Wrenn managed to lift Pierce about 5 inches from the ground as about 225 watched.
Then the mouthpiece slipped and Pierce crashed, leaving Wrenn’s five front teeth dangling from his mouth.
″He didn’t complain, and I know that man was in pain,″ Speer said.
″You could tell that folks were hurting for him,″ he said. ″I was sitting around some young people, and some of the girls just cringed. They couldn’t believe it.″
Pierce said he felt no guilt because Wrenn had selected him for the stunt.
″I was shocked that the man hurt himself that way,″ Pierce said. ″It was something for this to happen, for him to lose his teeth.″
Wrenn finished his 30-minute sermon, and about three hours later received dental attention. It took eight shots of painkiller before the roots could be extracted.
″It’s just a novelty thing,″ he said of the tooth trick. ″You know not everybody is interested in going to church.″
https://apnews.com/fbeca5130d66b0240e87a14db82d06e5
