INTERVIEW WITH PASTOR/CARTOONIST JOE MCKEEVER

 

JR: Welcome to my blog, Joe. I'd like to start with the most important question - how did you come to know Christ?

JM: I was 11 years old and it was a revival meeting. Same church (and same building) where my parents had met in 1930 when she was 14 and he was 18 and was smitten once he heard her singing with her sister. I went forward during the invitation time and (rural, Free Will Baptist church) people stepped out into the aisle to go forward and pray with me. No talking to the preacher, we talked to God. lol I was crying and saying repeatedly, "O God, O God." That's all. But when I got up, I knew I was saved.

JR: I was going to ask how you got called to the ministry, but let me be more specific - How did God call you to the pastorate, and how did He call you to the ministry of cartoonist?

JM: I was 21 and a senior in college. Had joined an outstanding Southern Baptist church in Birmingham AL near the campus of my college (Birmingham-Southern, a Methodist school). Got active, loved the people, met my wife to be, was baptized (saved at 11, but never baptized because no one asked), and I flourished. Tuesday night of a two-week long revival, I'm in the choir and we're singing "Jesus Paid It All," and suddenly it seemed a curtain was drawn open and God spoke to my heart. "I want you in the ministry." That's all. Not "called to preach," as such, but called as a minister. That's significant because I have done all kinds of ministry, and it was not limited to preaching.

Never actually felt "called" to a ministry of cartooning. I'd done this all my life since childhood and as I matured into my 20s and beyond, kept getting more and more opportunities to use the cartooning as a catalyst in ministry. 

JR: Who have been your Mentors/Encouragers/Influencers/Heroes both in the ministry and in cartooning?

JM: In ministry, several pastors and a couple of seminary professors were my mentors, and I am infinitely in their debt.

In cartooning, I enjoyed meeting several professional cartoonists and being encouraged by them when I was thirtyish. In my mid-30s, I had written a note to the newspaper syndicate handling the "Gasoline Alley" comic strip to say how much I loved the artwork by Dick Moores. To my surprise, I got a note from him thanking me. And one Saturday, I returned home from an early morning meeting to have my wife inform me that Dick Moores had called me and wanted me to call him. wow. It turned out he lived in North Carolina and was going to "marry off" a couple in the comic strip and needed to know a) which side do they stand
on? and b) does the minister still have them say "Til death do us part"? Couple of years later, my wife and I went to see him at his studio below Asheville NC. He was in his 70s and such a kind soul. When he was young, he had drawn comic books for Walt Disney, then spent years with Chester Gould drawing Dick Tracy, and had taken over the Gasoline Alley strip after its originator had died. Dick was most definitely the greatest influence on my cartooning. He died in '86 just before I moved to North Carolina. Shucks! Such poor timing!! 

JR: What doors has God used your cartooning to open in your ministry, both in reaching the lost and edifying/encouraging/exhorting the Church?

JM: That's so hard to answer, Jeff, particularly the first about "reaching the lost." I honestly don't know that He has used the cartooning for that. But the second part, exhorting the church, I received an email just today from a lady in Minneapolis thanking me for the cartoons and for speaking to the church so well. I'm 82 years old and love that. Just yesterday, my wife and I drove 6 hours (round trip) to do a senior event for a church in Alabama. I sketched everyone there, spoke about the Psalms (encouraging them to "fall in love with the Psalms all over again"), and ate their lunch, then returned home. Such a blessing. I'll do several of these each month. But I would need someone else to tell you how God uses my stuff. I tell pastors (in fact, told Pastor Chris Kynard just yesterday at the luncheon) that "you do not know how God is using your stuff." A pastor will go home and tell his wife the sermon bombed. Then the phone will ring and someone will thank him and say "How did you know? That was exactly what
I needed to hear." So, we do this work the same way we do everything else: by faith.

JR: The pastor at my church (Jeremy Couture, Northside Baptist, Indianapolis) gave us three areas to pray for him: Personal walk, Priorities, and Protection. In what ways does God use your cartooning and pastoring to strengthen your walk? How do you manage the priorities of pastoring and cartooning? And what ways does God protect your ministry?

JM: Being retired I no longer have to find a balance between pastoring/ministry and cartooning. but it is such a blessing being 82 years old (and having come through a number of health challenges) to still be getting the invitations to speak and minister. Right now--post-covid!--I'm getting on average two invitations per week. - When I was pastoring, say, around age 40, I had to convince some people that cartooning is ministry and not just goofing off. My wife of 52 years, now in Heaven, was one who did not have a great appreciation for cartoons. She was supportive, however, of the time I flew to Singapore for 2 weeks and drew an evangelistic comic book for the missionaries (it was her idea). My wife Bertha (we celebrated 6 years of marriage on Jan 11) is a strong encourager of my cartooning. - I pray about the cartooning and the ideas and the effect. But I have no idea how to answer your question about "how God uses these things to strengthen my walk." I just do them, the same way someone else plays the piano and another the guitar. It's what I do. People stand around and watch me draw, and they ooh and ahh and seem impressed, but since I've literally done this since childhood, I take it in stride and thank them. 

JR: Thank you for your time. How can we keep up with your ministries? Do you have any books and/or websites you'd like to tell us about?
JM: Several ways.

1. My blog is www.joemckeever.com, where I write for church leaders (pastoral and otherwise). This website is 20 years old now and contains thousands of articles from these two decades. Scroll down the page for a list of categories. Scroll further down for the "archives," where they are listed month by month since 2003. If you're interested in reading my journal about Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of New Orleans, start by scrolling down to September 2005, then to September 1 and pull up a chair. The next two years is devoted to that subject.
2. My cartoons are posted daily by Baptist Press. Go to www.bpnews.net and at the top of the page click on 'comics.' In times past, they posted the work of six cartoonists, but they cut back to one. Even though if says "comics," plural, I'm the only cartoonist whose stuff is posted there. There are thousands of cartoons.
3. Google "Joe McKeever cartoons."
4. I have a page in each issue of Deacon Magazine, a quarterly published by Lifeway. My page is devoted to "my favorite deacon."

My personal website is www.joemckeever.com There are no cartoons here, but articles I have written for pastors and other church leaders. Started the website in 2003, so it's in its 20th years. There are literally thousands of articles there. Scroll down the page for a list
of categories.

I've published probably a dozen books of cartoons over the years. Amazon or alibris.com would have a lot of them. Some non-cartoon books I've written that are available from me (203 Garden Cove, Ridgeland MS 3917. Everything is $15 each) are--

• "HELP! I'M A DEACON."
• "GRIEF RECOVERY 101" written with my wife Bertha about the deaths of our spouses and what we learned about dealing with grief.
• "SIXTY AND BETTER;  MAKING THE MOST OF OUR GOLDEN YEARS" also written with Bertha.
• "PRAY ANYWAY."
• "HEALTHY CHURCH."