Pastor’s comic strip takes lighthearted look at church life

The best ideas are born in the shower.

Inventions and story plots rise from the steamy tiles and chrome fixtures. Sunday sermons have their genesis in the soapy suds of lather, rinse and repeat.

The Rev. Mike Morgan had a power-shower revelation in 1991. That’s when he came up with the idea to start a weekly comic strip that makes both Bible-thumping Baptists and pretentious Presbyterians laugh at themselves.

He called it “For Heaven’s Sake!”

“Church people are funny folks,” said Morgan, now the senior pastor at Greensboro First United Methodist Church. “They just are. They don’t mean to be, but people who take their faith seriously say and do some funny things.”

Morgan grew up dreaming of seeing his work in the funny papers. His ambition was kindled as a young editorial cartoonist for The Macon Telegraph. Then, before he reached the age of 30, he answered a call to the ministry.

Five years later, while serving as an associate pastor at Mulberry Street United Methodist in Macon, Morgan was approached by the late Ed Corson, an editor at The Telegraph. Corson wanted him to do some freelance artwork and resurrect the editorial page cartoons Morgan had started when he worked at the newspaper from 1981-86.

“I thought about it and prayed about it, but I told him my politics were not always going to be the same as everybody in my congregation,” Morgan said. “As an ordained minister, it was no longer just my opinion. I was a little hesitant to do that.”

In the shower one morning, he asked himself: “Why don’t I draw about the world I’m in now?”

“Macon is a church town, and readers would relate to a comic strip about the church,” he said. “I could be the cartoonist turned pastor who draws a comic strip about a church. What would you say about this, for heaven’s sake? That’s it! That’s the name of the strip!”

Next month, “For Heaven’s Sake!” will celebrate its 25th anniversary. It made its debut in The Telegraph in 1991. It is now syndicated in about a dozen newspapers.

Mark Twain once said, “There is no humor in heaven.”

The creator of “For Heaven’s Sake!” took a different stance.

At the fictitious Mainline Memorial Church, the pulpit became his playground. He wanted to make worshippers look in the mirror and chuckle at the folly of church life. His stable of characters was laughable and loveable — from the bumbling but well-meaning senior pastor, Rev. Righteous, to the nontraditional associate pastor, Hal A. Luyah, a young black minister with his own rap video.

When gathering his material, nothing is sacred, although hot-button topics such as politics rarely get any playing time.

The cartoon panels are a composite of 27 years in the ministry at Mulberry and Ebenezer United Methodist in Macon, First United Methodist of Hazlehurst, Crossroads United Methodist in Conyers and Trinity United Methodist in Cartersville. Morgan also has served as editor of Georgia’s United Methodist newspaper, the Wesleyan Christian Advocate.

He grew up in Conyers and was drawing comic strip characters before he could write the words for them. He would sketch “speech balloons” over a tiny blue duck and tell his mother what he wanted the duck to say so she could write in the words.

He wasn’t sure he could make a living as an artist until he went to junior college at Young Harris, where he met his wife, Karen. At the University of Georgia, he majored in fine arts and graphic design. His cartoons were published in the campus newspaper, The Red & Black. His mentor and role model was Jack Davis Jr., who died on July 27 at age 91. Davis was well-known for illustrations of his beloved Georgia Bulldogs, and he was one of the founding artists for Mad magazine. His daughter, Katie, was in Morgan’s design class at UGA.

‘STACKS OF HATE MAIL’

Morgan worked as an artist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 18 months before taking the job as an editorial cartoonist at The Telegraph in 1981. His cartoons and caricatures tickled funny bones and ruffled more than a few bonnets.

“I had stacks of hate mail,” he said, laughing. “They showed me a little bit of love, but it was mostly hate mail.”

His oldest son, Thomas, was born in Macon in 1984. A year later, Morgan began to hear the call of the ministry. By Labor Day 1985, he was on his way to the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

“I quit my perfectly good job, sold our house in Jones County and moved into my parents’ basement in Conyers with my wife and 2-year-old in tow so I could go to seminary,” he said.

“For Heaven’s Sake!” made its debut in The Telegraph in September 1991. Creators Syndicate picked it up a year later. At one time, more than 20 newspapers across the country carried it on their weekly religion pages.

Morgan has never killed off any of his characters. Instead, he has enriched them and added others.

“All of them are modeled after people I know from different churches,” he said. “I will never admit who they are. One character may look like somebody I know but have the personality of somebody else.”

Most of his ideas are culled from the powers of observation. He has been known to carry a pad and pencil to church meetings.

“Inevitably, somebody will say something, and I usually don’t tell them at the time. But I make a note that, with a little tweaking, it would be a funny cartoon idea,” he said. “Sometimes people recognize themselves in those cartoons, and that can be a little dangerous.”

Although some members of his congregation might be guarded with their words when they are around him, he doesn’t believe anybody seriously contemplates whether what they say might end up in the comic strip.

He still believes it is wise to stay clear of politics. But he cannot resist weighing in on social issues and religious debates. And he doesn’t always have to wait until the Fourth of July to see fireworks.

He once had a parishioner in Conyers cut out of one his strips and put it in her pocketbook. When she saw him, she pulled it out and waved it in front of him.

“Is this about my husband?” she demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Morgan said. “Do you see your husband in that strip?”

“Well, uh, … yeah,” the woman said.

Morgan is “grateful for every pair of eyes” that reads “For Heaven’s Sake!” He plans on continuing it when he retires from the ministry. He has had too much fun to stop. He considers comics to be a long-term medium, with great staying power.

“Blondie” and “Snuffy Smith” have been around for more than 80 years. The legendary strips “Peanuts,” “B.C.” and “Beetle Bailey” all started in the 1950s.

“From the beginning, I could see it as a way to reach people who were not in my church,” Morgan said. “And someone who might not go to any church might stumble upon it and think it’s funny.

“It also has been a ministry getting Christians to laugh at themselves because sometimes they take themselves so doggone serious. It’s a way of saying something that might make people angry if I said it from the pulpit. In a comic strip, they read it and laugh at themselves.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Pastor’s comic strip takes lighthearted look at church life."