Witty lines from church worker pruned by hack (8)
I believe the answer is:
clerihew
'witty lines' is the definition.
'clerihew' can be an answer for 'lines' (I've seen this before). I'm not sure about the 'witty' bit.
'from church worker pruned by hack' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'from' could be 'e' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'e' is found within the answer.
'hack' could be 'hew' (I've seen this before) and 'hew' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for clerihew that I've seen before include "two couplets" , "Humorous verse form" , "Two-lined comic verse" , "Short comic rhyme" , "Short comic verse form" .)