Rebecca Davis

AFA Journal staff writer

December 2016 – Dr. Joe McKeever claims to be the youngest 76-year-old a person will ever meet. At least that is what he says until he looks in the mirror and is met with a reflection that shouts otherwise. He has a love for life, laughter, and fun and is passionate about knowing, pleasing, serving, and sharing Jesus Christ. His life is a ministry.

He spent the majority of his adulthood pastoring churches in various cities before retiring in 2009. He continues to minister all over the Southeast through preaching, writing, speaking, and drawing. He draws a daily cartoon for Baptist Press, writes a series for LifeWay’s Deacon Magazine, and blogs daily for church leaders at joemckeever.com. He recently told AFA Journal what it is like to live unto the Lord through seasons of love, loss, and a lot of change.

AFAJ: When did you discover your talent as a cartoonist?
JM: My mom started me drawing when I was five, and I kept at it. In seminary, after I got caught sketching a cartoon on the board concerning the previous day’s lecture, the student paper asked me to submit a cartoon per issue. Around the same time, I began sending a religious cartoon to accompany a devotional I was writing for a weekly small-town newspaper. After seminary, the Alabama Baptist newspaper asked me to submit a cartoon each week, and that was the start. Since then, my cartoons have been in all kinds of religious publications, and I’ve done several volumes of religious cartoons that sold in the hundreds of thousands.  

AFAJ: Tell me about your sketching “ministry.”
JM: I draw thousands of people a year. In every church where I preach, I get there early and stay late to sketch as many people as possible. I can sketch a person in a minute, sign it “joemckeever.com,” put the date on it, then write their name in bold, imaginative letters at the top.

I do programs for middle and high schools on lessons in self-esteem. Many public schools will let me do this. Teens eat it up. They love to be sketched. There is a beauty about every person.

AFAJ: How are you handling the recent changes in your life?
JM: Change is life. Nothing is static. To be alive is to change. You just deal with what comes and try to get through the difficult parts. I take comfort in the verse that says, “For the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross.”  When trouble or hardship comes, you go forward, knowing there will be joy on the other side.  

Twenty-one months ago, my wife of 52 years died suddenly. Thirteen months later, I met Bertha. Within 24 hours, Bertha and I knew the Lord had put us together. Sometime soon, Bertha and I will marry.

AFAJ: What does it mean to live by faith, through the good and the bad?
JM: It’s all about Jesus Christ – believing in Him and obeying Him, looking to Him for the resources and directions, and then leaving the results to Him. We do things by faith, looking to Him. We trust Him for the strength and leave everything else in His hands.