Ericast 308 - Making Old Friends

Every once in awhile, someone -- like an old friend -- says something really profound that pivots your life. Want an example? Here's your show.

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It's still "the weekly podcast that comes out about once a month" but I'm bringing back the "listener feedback at the end of the month" theme... because I couldn't sleep.

I did get some feedback way back in June. Every so often I think, there's got to be a better way to automate these podcasts and stitch files together and maybe we could just take the feedback and push it straight into a feed...

...okay, so maybe that's not a good idea, and maybe automation isn't all that it's cracked up to be.  But we do get calls from reliable longtime listeners, like the one Matt made right after I was talking about informercial giants...

How long will be it before spelling things out with the phone keypad makes no sense?  I'm glad my car dashboard still includes it because I only know our main office number based on how it's spelled.

Anyway, that brings is to the final call of this month's show, which came right after the last episode about my Tall Mike Stand.

I called and talked to Mike after he left this message, which was great, and we didn't get to dive into the church-naming conversation.  Some other time!  As an aside, Gimlet Media has a podcast on "startups" and the series from a year ago was on "church planting"... where one of the things they mention is competition for attendance numbers so that the math works out to become financially self-sustaining.  That's also a topic for another day.  But during that call with Mike (after I mentioned how wonderfully amazing it is that we can pick right up in the conversation after being away from each other for years) he said, "You can't make old friends.  You can make new friends, and they might become old friends, but you can't make old friends."

And it's funny that he mentioned the church-naming thing, because we actually visited our old Berean Baptist stomping ground a couple weeks back thanks to a break in our Oak Hills Church schedule.  We walked into our small-group classroom and picked right up where we left off three years ago.  Jonzer was at the coffee cart upstairs (and apologized for being behind on listening to the podcasts; I pointed out I was behind on recording them, so he was probably fine). It was really strange to drop into an environment like that and get another living example of the value of "old friends".

So, if there's any advice in this podcast, I guess it's to go out and make some old friends... and you do that by either strengthening the old friendships you have, or make some new friendships and keep them strong enough to become old.

Let me know what you think!  701-645-3742 (which, while you're using a device that can spell something out, spells out 701-645-ERIC).