The Back Pew is the inspiration of cartoonist Jeff Larson. The way Jeff tells it, the name The Back Pew comes from the place he and his buddies sat during church services in their junior high school days. Namely, he says, because none of them could sing. Knowing Jeff I suspect it was more a convenient place to hide and have nonsense away from the penetrating gaze of the pastor!

When Jeff started to develop his cartooning skills he decided to post them on a web site to share with others. There was a recognition in him that if visitors come to a strange (meaning not their usual!) church, they would inadvertently head for the back pew. From there they could inconspicuously “weigh up” the message and the messenger then, if necessary slip out quickly and quietly if they did not like what they had seen and heard. He reasoned this then that the Back Pew would be a good name to give his cartoon ministry enabling him to invite visitors to come and join him and see church life, theology and the bible from his unique “Back Pew” perspective. It has worked well - his web site has, in the past four and a half years, attracted nearly 7 million visits! Many visitors have become regular “Back Pewees”!

Apart from studying computing, Jeff also studied at St Paul’s Bible College (now Crown College). Having been brought up in a Christian home and having a strong church background in his small town Wisconsin boyhood, he feels well suited to treat the Back Pew as his own peculiar ministry to a needy world. His mission statement reads, “Bringing God and humour to a world that needs both.”

Now residing in Maple Grove, Minneapolis, (Surely the coldest place on earth in February!) Jeff has signed up with Bydeezine who will work to develop and market various products bearing Back Pew cartoons.

Jeff Larson has a quirky and incisive sense of humour that comes out in his work. Not all of his cartoons are “funny”. They are not meant to be. Single frame cartooning can be used for more than sharing a gag, and lots of Jeff’s gags are well worth sharing, but cartoons are also used to sometimes simply make comment or, in Jeff's case, to share some “Back Pew” observation.

Jeff has a sensitive and gracious spirit, so many of his cartoons are drawn to encourage people in their daily Christian walk, particularly those struggling to cope with life. Others sometimes poke fun at pomposity, hypocrisy and the other ills that we all recognize at different times in church life. Sometimes he challenges us through his cartoons to look at the foibles and failures we all go through in our attempts to live for God in an increasingly Godless world.

But the one thing comes out most of all is Jeff’s sincerity! The Back Pew is his life’s ministry. He confesses that he may not always get it “just right” but he works very hard to try to make it so, because he is in awe of the fact that God can use something as simple as a cartoon! He also has about him humility in all that he does, along with a sense of wonder that God truly blesses his “ministry”, as testified by responses he receives to his daily email cartoon bulletins.

Jeff is married to Mary. Wife and mother to his three children, school teacher, dog walker and live in critic of his tendency to use 15 words in his cartoons when 3 will do!