Good title, right?

Now a confession. It’s a misnomer.

I was never afraid to stand in front of a group and speak. Not ever. In fact, quite the opposite.

As a fourth grader in our little West Virginia schoolhouse, teacher Margaret Meadows would periodically invite class members who had read an interesting story to stand and share it. I recall Violet Garten (love that name!) was so good at it. But when she called on me (I’m the guy frantically waving my hand) and I walked to the front of the class, I broke the rules.

I did not relate a story I had read somewhere.

I made one up on the spot.

That is serious something or other, I don’t know what. Was it a love for being the center of attention? Self-confidence on steroids? Not given to introspection, I’ve never tried to answer that, but I am confident that little snapshot reveals a world of insight on who I later became. Positive and negative.

In high school, one of the requirements for presidents of local chapters of the FFA (Future Farmers of America) was the ability to address an audience of our members for a full 30 minutes.  As president, I don’t recall actually doing that, but addressing audiences 30 minutes at a clip would end up describing my life. I’m a Southern Baptist preacher, you understand. The Lord called me into the ministry in April of 1961, so you do the math.

When friends tell me they hate public speaking with a dread, that they would rather take a whipping than stand in front of a group and speak about anything, I’m speechless and cannot begin to identify.  So, I did something.

I asked my Facebook friends who dislike public speaking to tell us why.

Most of the responses boiled down to variations on one theme: fear.   They feared forgetting their speech in the middle of their presentation, being rejected by the audience, boring them, and outright failure.

Several dreaded the attention being on themselves.  One or two said they are intimidated by crowds. More than one feared tripping while ascending the steps to the podium.

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That year Junior Roman’s cotton was the best ever seen in that part of North Alabama. His twenty acres looked like a December snowfall in Wyoming. Had the bolls suddenly turned loose and dropped the cotton to the ground, it would have been knee deep. When a half bale to the acre was the rule for most farms, people drove for miles to gawk at Junior’s crop.

I had been looking for just such an opportunity. My pride as a farm boy was at stake, and here was the chance to redeem it.

It all stemmed from our high school classes in vocational agriculture. When we were not discussing the sex life of Herefords and Durocs and vicariously of sixteen-year-old males, we turned the class into a primitive macho testing ground where every one sought a territory over which he was the champion.

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“Jesus said, ‘No doubt you will quote this proverb to me, “Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” No prophet is welcome in his own hometown’” (Luke 4:24). 

John Fogerty’s group Creedence Clearwater Revival is unforgettable to anyone who has owned a radio in the last 50 years.  Some years ago, in an interview with Dan Rather, Fogerty was remembering a key moment early in their career.

The group was one of many bands to perform at a particular event.  As the final group to warm up, and thus the first band to appear on stage, suddenly CCR found they had been unplugged.  John Fogerty yelled to the sound man to plug them back up, that they weren’t through.  The technician did so reluctantly, then added, “You not going anywhere anyway, man.”  Fogerty said, “Okay.  Give me one year.  I’ll show you.”

One year later, the group was so hot with multiple hit records (“Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising”) that “we were too big to play in that place any more!”

Turning a putdown into a healthy sic ’em!

As a new seminary student I began pastoring a church on Alligator Bayou some 25 miles west of New Orleans.  This was April of 1965.  The church averaged 40 in attendance, as it had done for the two decades of its existence.

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Joe  has been posting articles here for over 20 years.  There are literally thousands of articles on this website, directly for the most part to pastors and other church leaders.

To see Joe’s cartoons, there are several ways.  We have a link above to some of them.  Or, you may just google “Joe McKeever cartoons” and thousands will come up.  The website for the Baptist Press has run one of Joe’s cartoons each weekday for two decades. Go to www.bpnews.net and click on “comics” and pull up a chair.

We have a few videos here, also.  I notice we haven’t a link to my books.  My email is joe@joemckeever.com if you are interested.  Or if you have a question.   Or wish to invite me to speak or draw at your event.

Thanks for visiting this page.  Let me know how we can be of help to you.  Oh, you may see my ministry schedule here (link above) also.

I know precious little about humility. However I know one big thing: God requires it in His people.

Scripture is filled with teachings, examples, violations, commands, and encouragements regarding humility. Even our Lord Jesus Christ was humble and became our example. (Try these passages for starters: Matthew 11:29; John 13:14-15; Philippians 2:5-8.)

Scripture tells believers to put on humility (Colossians 3:12), be clothed with humility (I Peter 5:5), and to walk with humility (Ephesians 4:1-2).

The Lord wants His children to be humble so badly that He has given us seven aids to accomplish this and to keep us that way.

1. Common sense.

Look around at the billions of people. You’re just one of them. Look above at the zillions of stars. You’re sitting on one small planet circling one humble star. They’ve been around for eons, while you have only a few more years of life here. If that doesn’t humble you, you’re not paying attention.  (See Psalm 8)

2. The Holy Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, humility…. (Galatians 5:22-23).

3. Our family.

I heard the wife of a well-known preacher say on television once–and probably shocking her audience–“I tell my husband, ‘Don’t start that big shot thing with me. I saw you in your shorts this morning.’”  (My wife thought the woman spoke out of turn, that she should not have said that publicly.)

The old adage says, “No man is a hero to his valet.” To the President’s children, the commander-in-chief is simply “Daddy.” To the superstar’s children, he is daddy.

4. Our friends.

Our closest friends are not in awe of us. They will tell us our breath smells bad, that we need to use a hankie, or if we have a stain on our clothing. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy (Proverbs 27:6).

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“…you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold…” (Revelation 3:16)

Mediocrity is a warm blanket.

Mediocrity is remaining with the bunch that finishes neither early or late, that turns in work much like everyone else’s, that is satisfied with pretty good.

Mediocrity is the head in the sand when the storm is raging around us.

Close your eyes until it all blows over.

Mediocrity is the coward’s way out when life-or-death decisions are being made.  “Well, let’s give this some more thought.”  “Let’s not be too hasty here.”  “We don’t want people to think we’re extremists.”

There’s safety in mediocrity.  We’re like everyone around us.  We don’t stand out.  No one criticizes us. They don’t even see us.  We blend into the landscape.

Our English word mediocre comes from two Latin words, medi meaning “halfway,” and ocris meaning “mountain.”  Somewhere there is a list of everyone climbing to the crest of Mount Everest.  But no one ever bothered to note those who got half way up and turned around for home.

As a pastor, I’m tempted to criticize those who choose mediocrity rather than daring, who play safe and avoid risks.  Yet I often live that way too.  In my personal life and church leadership, I tend to choose the conservative, safe way.  The outcome I fear is not so much failure as criticism.  I’ve refrained from writing to the editor of a local paper on a controversial subject for fear of becoming the focus of criticism.  My ego is too fragile.  I’m confident I could not take it.  Or, is the caution I feel actually maturity telling me not to squander hard-earned trust on some cause not worth the price?  We’ve all seen foolhardy people who rush in where angels fear to tread, when they should have been quiet and stayed at home. Hard to know.

We want God to do a work in our midst, but we want Him to leave us alone. We desire seeing people saved and homes united, but not if it means God gets hold of us and insists on changing us. Work around us, Lord, we seem to say.  Not in us and through us. Self-defense mechanisms are all working overtime. If we would be or do anything for the Master, we must face and overcome this gremlin.

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“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (Matthew 23:13,14,15,23,25,27,29).  “Woe to you, blind guides!” (Matthew 23:16,24,26).  “You serpents, you brood of vipers!” (Matthew 23:33).

The Lord has this thing about hypocrites.

He doesn’t care for them much.

You and I have learned something God hasn’t managed to do: to accommodate ourselves to those who say one thing and do another.

Take the beer company of St Louis, for instance. We read this and it sounds normal to us. It took a secular writer to point out the hypocrisy in their moralizing.

“We are not yet satisfied with the league’s handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code.” –Anheuser Busch, responding to recent scandals in the National Football League (TIME magazine, September 29, 2014)

Humor writer Ian Frazier nails the famous beer company for its duplicitous moralizing in the same issue of TIME magazine.

In recent weeks the NFL has been under attack for its mishandling of the serious misbehavior of players who, among other things, knocked out a wife in the elevator and was caught on tape doing it, and beat a four-year-old child leaving whelps and open wounds on his skin.

The famous beer company, known for its massive advertising throughout every sporting event available, takes the NFL to task for its pitiful reaction.  Such behavior is against Anheuser-Busch’s moral code and culture.

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Remember the 1985 movie Back to the Future?  Here’s something about it you’ll find interesting…

In his book A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, actor Michael J. Fox points out that some people take far too seriously what they see on the screen:

No matter how fantastic a move’s premise is, there are always a special few who buy in and accept the (craziness) at face value, like the hoverboard (seen in his 1985 movie Back to the Future). I’ve fielded more questions about hoverboards than any other aspect of the trilogy.  Otherwise sane people were convinced that these devices actually existed, especially after (Director) Bob Zemeckis made tongue-in-cheek comments to the press about parent groups preventing toy manufacturers from putting them on the market (this resulted in hundreds of kids calling Mattel, demanding hoverboards for Christmas).  Believe me, if someone had actually devised and manufactured a flying skateboard capable of propelling a surfer on an invisible wave of air, he didn’t let me in on the secret.  It could have spared me from hours of dangling like a flesh-and-blood Pinocchio.  Alternately strapped into every manner of harness, hinged leg brace, and flying apparatus the most sadistic special-effects engineers could devise, my foot stapled to that pink piece of plastic, I spent hours attached to metal cables, swinging from sixty-foot cranes, back and forth across the Courthouse Square set.

People believed those things existed?  Apparently there is no boundary outside which some people will not stray when it comes to gullibility.  If it’s on the big screen, it must be true.  This is a variation of a greater truth: If it’s on the internet, it’s automatically true.

This is where we all roll our eyes.

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