As part of the "Blogging 101 for Pastors" series [click here to see all the posts], I've been asking several proflic blogging pastors or believers to answer five basic questions about blogging.

Dr. Joe McKeever is our next 5 Blogging Questions responder. He is the director of missions for a Baptist association in New Orleans. In addition to having more than 40-plus years of pastoral experience, he is an excellent cartoonist. Seriously, if you don't believe me, go visit his cartoon site now.

As an admirer of his work, I originally contacted him about two years ago to draw a cartoon illustration for a project I was working on at Midwestern Baptist Seminary. His kind of talent makes me jealous. :-)

Here's his answers:

1. Why (or how) did you start blogging?

Back in 1996, a new trustee of our New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary visited our church one Sunday and I took him and his wife to lunch. Don and Audrey Davidson (he's now the pastor of FBC Alexandria, VA) were such wonderful folks that the relationship continued.

I discovered he had a weekly fax, which he wrote and sent to 100 of his members around town. They would post it on their company's bulletin boards. I thought it was a great idea and started doing the same. Soon we discovered that e-mail is cheaper than faxing something long distance.

Gradually we went to the internet and dropped the fax aspect altogether. In 2004, we had built our weekly emailing list to over 3,000. Then I changed jobs and left the church I'd been pastoring since 1990. I now work with all the Southern Baptist churches in metro New Orleans.

My son Marty, who does computers for the Bank of America in Charlotte, NC, had reserved a domain in my name, saying "eventually, you'll be needing this." So, now we started posting my articles on www.joemckeever.com. Then, when Katrina devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005, we changed the entire focus of the website to the rebuilding of this city and our churches.

We email the articles out each Sunday and Wednesday nights to some 1,200, but far more than that visit the site each day to keep up with local goings-on.

2. What subject do you post most about?

What's going on in New Orleans. But being a pastor, I often drop in my observations on various subjects or insights about various Scriptures.

3. What are your favorite blog tools?

Actually, I don't have any. Marty has taught me to post my own articles, but beyond that, I know nothing about this business. He's my webmaster, and I am so grateful for him.

4. How often do you post?

Well, it used to be weekly, then after Katrina, so much was happening it got to be two or three times a week, and sometimes it was daily. Finally, Marty suggested that I can post whenever I wish, but we'll email these articles only twice a week in a manner not to clog up people's mailboxes. I am prolific--and wordy!! (When friends tell me I write too much, I say, "Learn to scan!")

5. What one piece of advice would you give for prospective blogging pastors?

Even if you are my age--I was born in 1940--you can do this. Don't be afraid to try. You will soon discover a whole new ministry. For those who don't write well or do not enjoy it, you might be interested in how I came to write: for the entire decade of the 1990s, I kept a daily journal. I mean, handwritten. I would buy these wordless books (hardbound) at bookstores and write about what happened today, experiences, insights, etc., and on Saturday, I'd write briefs of the next day's sermons. Ten years. That's long enough to "find your voice." It fills 46 hardbound books and takes up one shelf of my study. Eventually--fifty years from now--someone will read these and decide to turn it into a book because of the recurring characters, some good, some otherwise.

Do it. You'll grow to love it.

[[ THANKS, DR. MCKEEVER! I LOVE YOUR WORK! ]]


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