Hello, welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Today's episode is titled, What's My Name? Now, I assure you, I'm not asking you if you know my name.

Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. It's okay either way. Instead, this is a quote. It represents a question that I get asked

at least twice per year, probably more often than that, but I'm certain at least twice per year,

and it is almost always terrifying. And let me explain on that. I am a gospel preacher, so a handful of times every year I get

to travel around to other places and preach for the week, and it's just a really great thing. I'm

glad to get to do it. So usually I walk into the building on a Sunday morning, and I know almost no one

there, maybe just a small handful of people. Now, here's the thing.

They all know me, not because I'm important or anything like that.

It's just they've been advertising the meeting for a month.

Everybody's got a flyer on their fridge, and there's the preacher's name.

And, you know, in the end, all they have to remember is one guy's name, and they usually do pretty well with that. So on Sunday morning, all of these people extend their

hand and they say, hi, Chris, thanks for coming. And then they tell me their name. And I get

dozens, if not hundreds of names coming my way. And to be honest with you, I really do just

forget almost all of them pretty much immediately. It takes a long time to learn names for me,

but especially when they're coming in by the dozens.

Now here's the thing. I've started to notice, as I said, a couple of times a year, someone will walk through the door and extend their hand and look me in the eye and they just say their name again.

Like they're just confirming to me that I know their name.

It is clearly important to them that I learn their name.

And so they've said it to me now twice.

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