CARBONDALE (AP) _Baptist minister Paul Wrenn really sinks his teeth into his mission, promoting his sermons by lifting the heaviest member of the audience with his mouth.

But he bit off more than he could chew when he pulled up a 385-pound coal miner and lost five front teeth.

“With the mouthpiece that I had, I didn’t want to lift him,” recalled the 5-foot-10-inch, 335-pound preacher Wednesday in a telephone interview from his home in Clarksville, Tenn.

“I wanted him to jump on my stomach, but his boy said he had a bad leg and couldn’t jump,” said Wrenn, 40, insisting, “It didn’t hurt or anything. I was more embarrassed than anything else at the time.”

Wrenn, who for the past 12 years had performed his teeth-lifting feat, 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. And to his credit, Wrenn’s heaviest tooth lift a few years back had been 404 pounds.

Then came Christopher’s Joe Pierce, who stands just over 6-foot-8.

Before a crowd of about 225, Wrenn managed to lift Pierce about 5 to 6 inches from the ground, according to the Rev. Allen T. Speer, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Christopher, about 25 miles northeast of Carbondale.

As Pierce dangled, Wrenn’s leather mouthpiece—connected to a nylon rope and leather weightlifting belt—slipped.

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.”

But Wrenn, describing his unusual practice an “attention getter,” finished his 30-minute sermon and about three hours later received dental attention.

It took eight shots of pain deadener before the roots could be extracted. Besides his teeth lift, Wrenn also allows the heaviest person in the audience to jump on his stomach as he bends huge spikes and drives nails into boards with his hands.

“It’s just a novelty thing,” he said, “you know not everybody is interested in going to church.”

Wrenn noted that he still has 24 teeth left, but not enough to continue his feat of teeth.

“Well, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to keep up the teeth lifting,” he said. “Maybe I’ll scratch around and try to come up with something to take the place ….”