Episode 160 - Imagining Business as a Christian Vocation with Eric Stumberg
If you’ve long wondered what your “calling” in life might be, then you’re going to enjoy today’s guest. Eric Stumberg is an entrepreneur with expertise in services, wireless technology, and helping people find their call.
At this stage of his Christian and professional journey, Eric is leaning more fully into equipping the saints for and in their Kingdom work in the marketplace— through the church, his company, and faithful relationships.
Today, you’ll get to hear him talk all about that as well as why he believes that business is theology.
Episode Transcript
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Eric Stumberg: This money isn't for you. This is for your kids if you actually do the right stuff. So when we look at kind of wealth gaps and what's the if you could leave something to your kid to help them go to college or get to start, maybe that you didn't have to do, this might start the same thing that my dad gave to me. Right. Which was some capital, some care capital and a way to go forward. And so I think people are made to own things. We are since creation, but I enjoy it and take care of it. And if you don't own it, as I say, nobody washes a rental car. You don't see people washing rental cars unless you work for the rental car company.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast here in our virtual studio suite in SPA with William and Rusty. Gentlemen, good morning. A spa what spa did we did? We operate needed to go a studio suite by. You need a third act. And I just want with spa.
William Norvell: I can't believe we got an upgrade. Nobody told me.
Rusty Rueff: I like it. I like it. I like it. I could tell it's kind of like, you know, we do sort of hang out and sort of, you know, in a Jacuzzi. It's not a Jacuzzi, but we mix things up, we mix them. So, you
Henry Kaestner: know, I don't know what kind of mental picture our listeners have actually about us at all. Even what we look at. Like, I think that I'd like to think that most people think that I've got dreadlocks, but I you know, people don't know. I think like where we're sitting,
Rusty Rueff: I think people make up stories about us is what they do. They make up their own stories.
Henry Kaestner: They make up their own story. And I think that they should go with that. Storytelling is a big deal. I think that that's so much about the entrepreneurial journey.
Rusty Rueff: That is it is it is an ability to tell a story. So I'm excited. And William is told about today's guest because we're going to hear about storytelling.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Eric Stromberg is a guy who has completely leaned in to storytelling. He's got his own story. We're going to hear that. But he more than anybody else, he's done so much for telling the stories of entrepreneurs that are driven by their faith and doing it really, really, really well. And many of you will be familiar with his work with faith and company. We have had a lot of fun working with that content from Faith in Company with a right now media collaboration, the the FDE eight part video series, which we're going through and leading. I know, William, you're leading a group, right?
William Norvell: I am. It's been a ton of fun. You know, he can sign up on Faith Driven Entrepreneur ERG. But yeah, we've got 15 entrepreneurs from around the country watch an eight week series. And it's been amazing to hear different stories of where people are, where God's calling them the struggles they have. And this faith and our videos have been just instrumental in being able to share some of the stories of God's entrepreneurs out in the world.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I hosted a group, too, and we've got entrepreneurs in our group from around the world. I'm with South African, Uganda and even that for an exotic country called Canada, everybody gets together and we've got, you know, three or four minute video which we can hear about from Africa. And then about ten to twelve minutes of teaching from Judy Greer, who's a great friend of ours and great pastor and very, very thoughtful about the space and an opportunity to process that with fellow entrepreneurs. And so that's interesting to you. We're going to be doing more classes coming up in March and then I guess every couple of months throughout this year and then beyond. And also some number of people that did it in the fall are now leading their own groups, which is kind of cool, but it all starts with story. God is weaving a story, Eric. Good morning, welcome to the program.
Eric Stumberg: Good morning. Morning. I am Rusty.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you for being here. So we do want to get into what you've been able to do or what God has done through you of faith and company. But you somewhere along the way realized the power of story. And undoubtedly it's through your own story and what God's done in your life. So we like with every one of our guests, understand a bit about where you come from, where faith entered its way and into your life. And then before we talk about your haven't been so catalytic in telling the stories of so many other entrepreneurs, tell us your own. Who are you? Where do you come from, please?
Eric Stumberg: Yeah. So I'm here. Sumburgh I'm the youngest of four siblings and I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. I'm a fourth generation San Antonio.
Henry Kaestner: And so my grandmother was born in San Antonio. So some point in time maybe our families
Eric Stumberg: can so close as a small city. So one of the noteworthy acts of my ancestor was a 15 year old immigrant from Germany whose parents sent him to Texas to a better life without by himself,
Henry Kaestner: by himself at 15,
Eric Stumberg: 15. So he came in through the Houston coast and he served with General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto. He was Sam Houston's bugle bearer at 15 years old. Wow, that's very cool. We've been here a long time. I don't have it with me. But the bugle in general, Houston gave his saber's we have a sabor from him that we gave to the museum.
Henry Kaestner: There's this story.
Eric Stumberg: So, yeah. So I'm so
Henry Kaestner: so I want to talk about your story. But what do you do after you've been the bugle boy for Sam Houston? What do you do with the rest of your life?
Eric Stumberg: So the family had an end in San Antonio and so in San Antonio, like again in the early eighteen hundreds. This is the largest city in Texas. And so. Right, because that was the mission frontier. And and so there was a Amen and a stable. And so there's a street in San Antonio called Sumburgh Street, and that's actually where you enter where you would park your horses and carriages and all that. And so he became an entrepreneur. You're going to stable on and in when you would come to do business in San Antonio.
Henry Kaestner: OK, very cool. All right. So you get three siblings. You're growing up in a family. Is it a Christian family?
Eric Stumberg: Christian family. So I'm three generations of intact marriages, three generations of faith. So, yes, I was super rooted in place, very rooted in family. And I have very rooted in kind of, I would say, entrepreneurial heritage of business.
Henry Kaestner: You were talking right before we went on about some of the different things we all had done in college that were semiarid and real. What was your first sense that you wanted to be an entrepreneur and what what did that look like?
Eric Stumberg: So I don't know if it's entrepreneurship, but I love to work. So my grandfather had a construction business and when I was 10 years old, that was my first job and I worked as a mechanic's helper and a diesel shop. I've got a picture of myself when I was 10 with steel toed boots and a hard hat, and I thought that was a great picture. And so my wife pointed out that, hey, your zippers unzipped the way. So now that picture is ruined forever. And I was like, I really love that picture. Yeah, Photoshop, but I always love to work. And I always worked in the family business. So that's how I started working when I was 10 and being part of, you know, that heritage. And so my dad was a super hard worker and grandfather on both sides of the family.
Henry Kaestner: So tell us about the story of another thing that we share, our faith and semi's San Antonio heritage, at least for me, years of very, very significant, but is a background in entrepreneurship, in telecom. So what is Tengo Internet? How do you
Eric Stumberg: think your Internet designs, builds and supports outdoor connectivity solutions? So we build Wi-Fi networks for primarily outdoor hospitality venues and it's evolved from that. But primarily we're in forty nine states and Canada, essentially we're we're the largest provider of outdoor hospitality Internet in the country.
Henry Kaestner: So so there is a point in time where we were in forty nine states with the podcast and we weren't in South Dakota. And then we went on a campaign to get some listeners in South Dakota. Now that's a vibrant place for us. What's your state that you don't have?
Eric Stumberg: Why can't get our TVs to drive to Hawaii? So that's the problem. So maybe that's Elon Musk thing, if we can kind of shoot him over there under the ocean or something.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, OK, so how did we get started?
Eric Stumberg: So a precursor to that, I had been at School of Business and the ninety five ninety seven. I worked for Dell Computer and in the late 90s they were thinking about this thing called wi fi. So I didn't know really a lot about what it was, but they knew they were losing market share to Apple and K through 12. So they figured out how do we how do we sell our notebooks? Here's this wireless thing. Go figure it out. And so we and a few people kind of had a skunkworks project. And I learned about Wi-Fi at Dell. And so I left Dell in two thousand one in March. And I didn't know what I was. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I was kind of done. But I love the Wi-Fi, the ability to connect people. You know, that old model Henry is like they used to have docking stations and you'd go to a meeting and you go work and you go back to your docking station and submit wi fi made it to where you didn't have to dock. And if you were in a meeting that wasn't productive, you could make it productive. Right, because you were still connected. You know, you could check out of the meeting and check back in. So maybe not a good motivation, but I learned about it then. And I really felt like I started to work with airports at early stages about the business traveler, the travel path and how they could stay connected all along the path. That was really compelling for me at the time. Dell was really a commoditization things. They weren't building new things in this very nascent. So I felt like I really want to build something related to this. And so I left. I knew I had about 18 months of technical knowledge. I had about 12 months of money. And so I took six months off because I was burnt out to figure out what I want to do next. I went to Mexico and went down to San Miguel day in, day out, a friends whose parents had an apartment and took language school. And I turned off my phone. So my only connection to the outdoor world was Internet cafes. So the name Tango Internet means I have Internet. So that's how I connected to the people. And things that were important to me was going to Internet cafes I was looking for I knew I wanted to be on the front end of a startup and lots of things. Nine 11 was that year, so. Right. Capital markets dried up and I remember being in Tough Kinnamon, Pennsylvania. Henry, I don't know if you remember where that is right outside of Philly. My brother's business partner had died. I'm sitting there with my brother the day before the funeral sleeping. He's six four so we're in this upstairs room has he's like Eric what are you going to do? And I was like, I don't know her. You know, I really feel like this wi fi is going to be big, but I can't find anybody that wants to do it the way I want to do it. And he goes, well, I mean, you said you're one of the smartest people in the world and computers are great like that and around wi fi. So why don't you do it? Want to start something? And literally in that November night in Philadelphia, just outside of Philadelphia, I got commissioned by my brother to start this company. So launched it in January of twenty two.
Henry Kaestner: And so fast forward to today. We know you're in forty nine states and in Canada, but not Mexico.
Eric Stumberg: You have been in Mexico and Cabo San Lucas, but it just got really dangerous for us to have service technicians and just hard. And so we kind of decided not to grow. And so we transitioned out of there and focused on the states and Canada.
Henry Kaestner: Got it. OK, how many employees do you have now?
Eric Stumberg: We have forty eight employees.
Henry Kaestner: I'm going to hand it over to Rusty and William here in a second. But I've been rippin over the last 48 hours or so on corporate culture. And before I hand it off to these guys who are going to delve into more of the storytelling aspect of things and stewardship and so many other things that you and I have riffed on in the past, talked to me a little bit about corporate culture. What's the culture look like a tango? What might be different about being at tango than another wireless provider?
Eric Stumberg: Yeah. So can I give you a little context for how I think about it and then I can give you an answer, please. So I think one of the problems and just our culture in general is most of the institutions that are supposed to help form people are really damaged. The families stressed. Right, educational K-12 institutions. So there's not a lot of positive formation happening in institutions that are supposed to be intermediaries, rate government, not great education, not great family, not great. And so I want our company culture to be something that was positively formational to the person. Right. Because if they can't get a healthy culture somewhere else and we can be that. And so if you think like, OK, well, how do you work that out? So then I want that because I think that's the opportunity when we have 40 to 50 hours of someone's life a week, that if they could be better for having worked at our company, then that would be the indicator of a good culture. So we you know, everything is about like mission and values and culture. And so how do we do that? I mean, our our values are really important. We found out we had military employees working for us and out of San Antonio and military people are used to very high code of conduct and bunch of Marines. Right. They know duty, honor, you know, semper fi. And so that really started me thinking about I need to have a mission that's worth fighting for and people are living for and. Values that are worth fighting for, so under this positive formation, I had to have something that was compelling, right, for people who had laid down their life for the Constitution. So that was one. So it really made me think about it. This has to be worth fighting for and living for. And then secondly. Right. And they come from God. So we have some specific things that I think are important. They're important to me. Excellence, right. God is excellent promise. Keeping God keeps his promises or promise. Keeping is one culture where people don't keep their promises. And so what happens? You don't trust them. So God keeps his promises so you can trust him. Right. And so being part of a team. Right. So you're not alone. We're never alone in the kingdom of God. We're with God and we're with this people. Growing doubts about discipleship were never static or simply growing in our Christ likeness and then agility, right. We adjust. And so those are our five core values are all important and really this long relationship with people. So when we started learning, it was a lot of our military veterans had PTSD. And so this started to be like, well, so how can we help? Right. And then so we started this because PTSD is a very difficult emotional coping, controls lots of damage. So they started healing these guys and heal. And when we would hire new military veterans, they knew what would happen. So here's one of the stories. This guy two months in, first job from the military. Some 19 year old Millennial's is tap, tap, tap, tap right next to him in our call center and just super irritating, right? This guy grabs him in a headlock. It's just, hey, man. And then so the director of our ADNOC is a vet and he goes out there to other people, go out there, they put their hands on this guy, said, hey, man, we don't do that here. And so they know what it's like to transition back. And so we became a place where if you're a veteran, we really wanted veterans because we loved their values and their ability to deploy them anywhere and know they would do the right thing. They're dependable. And we also knew that anybody who's killed somebody or who's been wounded or seen their friends or brothers wounded has some type of injury, moral injury or whatever. But if we know that, we know how to care for them. Right. So we were military friendly contractor. That's our designee. So we started it was like, oh, that's one of the things I think we do for the world's right to just being who we are has nothing to do with Internet services. It just the culture of doing that.
William Norvell: One of the things I want to switch to one of the most profound things, and I think you have some thoughts on this that I've heard in our podcast, Patriquin, Cioni, how many people may know, said on our podcast that one day it hit him that if his dad had had a better boss. That his dad would have been a much better father, just, gosh, I'll never forget that statement. And I've heard you talk about some level of this before. I don't think we've ever dived in deep on this on the podcast. Could you talk a little bit about how you, as the CEO of forty eight employees, think about not only the decisions that you make that impact the business, of course, and the profitability and all of those things, but how it affects the people's lives and how it affects the employee, the family? I did this flowchart one time and I looked at if you have 50 employees, I think I did it on twenty five. You know, your company interacts with like a thousand people a day, right. Customers, vendors, coffee shops, lunches. So yours is probably two or three thousand. Right a day. How do you think through that decision making and how it floats all the way down through the families of your employees.
Eric Stumberg: So it's been a journey for me. So we have a hundred and twenty seven souls that are connected. Those forty eight employees that spouses, kids, anybody that's dependents. Right. So one thing is just knowing. So I would probably say when I started, I've always had a heart for customers. Right. And I've always had a heart for excellence. Probably haven't always had a heart for my employees. I probably left customers more than I love my employees. And so I got changed and God changed that, you know? So I think the first thing is I love my employees. And so I think that perspective. So that's one. I used to write their names on a whiteboard so I wouldn't use them as names and I'd write their names, their spouses and their kids. And I had to train myself to know my employees names, to know who their family was, because otherwise it's like they're just, you know, sometimes you get so isolated, you're like, just do the work, you know, I don't care. You go. So the way we thought about it is like, OK, so we want we think about calling. So we try to put people in the right place in their jobs. Right. So because if you I believe that God calls everybody to be, it gives them certain gifts and he calls them to work. So we really think about that's the right person, right seat mentality and making sure that people in the right person Rusty. We do H.R. things like we help people with temperament, assessments and things that will help them know about how God made them don't use that like this. And then we've invited their spouses to do that, too, so that their spouses with a psychologist can learn about how we do that on teams. Your work team. But what if we did that for our employees, for their home team, too? So we've added this. Hey, if you want to do your spouse or significant other, we will pay for it and we'll give you time with a psychologist and we won't be on the call. So, again, that helps them work better as a team, communication, understanding that better at home. So I think of myself as an elder of this community of people and a shepherd. So I think that leadership role is both of those things in the context of our organizational mission. On the other side, I think the manager, if I thought about things that are broken in the industry, I think the manager is the one of the big broken pieces. Right. People generally don't leave companies, they leave managers. And so if you think about. So that fits with other authority figures. Right. There's been terrible authority figures for most of my employees lives. So they have a distrust of authority, which, you know, Henry, like, well, how can you trust God if you don't trust authority? So it goes back to can I trust? And so we did some thinking about what is a manager and how do we knowing that people generally have some distrust and some brokenness because of bad authority, how do we work in that? And so you need to be trustworthy, right. So I think the manager role is one of the most important roles in our business because it goes back to people keeping you know, I believe that a Christian manager is a disciple or a manager's role is to care for and develop people in the context of organizational mission, which is what discipleship is about. So I think one of the places we try to redeem our fixed things right. Is doing a lot more training around our people in leadership is like, how do you get feedback if you don't trust the person? Because this is just going to go on my performance reviews like, no, I care for you and I think you need to work on this value or I think your work effort, if you want to be great at this work, you need to do this. And can we agree on that? Right. And so that's been one of the convictions I guess I have, is that that manager role is really critical. And so we really invest in that and invest in a bigger vision about their impact on their lives. And so that to your point where, look, I have three people who are orphans and they have terrible childhoods, didn't have that. We have tons of fatherhood issues in our company. And how do you give feedback as an authority figure when someone doesn't trust. Right. And has been hurt by that. And so there's a sensitivity just to say, oh, yeah, I know that about them. So I need to be gentler, kinder rate and adjust a little bit. Is that when you're thinking about it does.
William Norvell: And it's interesting, the thing that's coming to mind, I'd love for you to speak to some of the entrepreneurs out there that may hear this and say, you know, that's interesting. I believe some of that. I just don't have time for that. It's going to I'm going to lose profitability. I have too many things to focus on. I mean, let us into your theology of this a little bit. I mean, ask a handful of questions. So, one, does it lead to profitability? Does that not matter? Is it about caring for people? And we're going to be excellent at doing that and God takes care of the result. What's your theology of spending? I mean, this sounds like you spend a significant amount of time thinking about this and a significant amount of resources resourcing this. How do you think through why that's appropriate for tango?
Eric Stumberg: So there's a couple of layers. Williams So I would say all of our services are delivered through people. So if our people aren't healthy and they don't understand the mission values. Right. It's like we're loved by God. Right. And because God has poured his love into us, we can fill out our love and love other people. And I don't think it's anything different inside of a company in your employees. If employees aren't caught into, it's difficult to care for customers. For example, if you have not been cared for and so long, if you want to have excellent customer care, you have to take care of your employees excellently to sustain that over the long haul. So our mission is to connect people for success. Those people are customers. I mean, employees, customers, rate consumers and really anybody who touches us. Right. So that's one. I think, too. It's more expensive. I mean, the reality is, if you if a little bit like what's the cost of sin and just the brokenness of people and healing takes more time, takes time, takes extra resources, takes patience. All that's lost productivity, if you will. So the fact is it does cost to margin. But again, what's the purpose of your organization? This goes back to the theology, you know, and when I think about Jesus as parables around the parable of. And so the parable of the compassionate employer said, you know what, I know you've only worked an hour and everybody else is here today, but I'm still going to pay you a full day's wage. And because I want to end, because I can so there is a trade off, you know, around productivity short term, but I guess that goes back into the mission of the organization and how you work that out. But but it does reduce profitability to some extent.
Rusty Rueff: So, Eric, you made a decision along the way to become an employee owned company. So take us through that. What thoughts? Questions about that. How's the process gone? I'm assuming you're glad you did it, but if you were going to do it again, what would you have done differently?
Eric Stumberg: Yeah, so I had a co-founder about the co-founder and I'm like twenty six and had never received outside money. And so what was happening. And I really wanted our employees, we call them ambassadors. So if I flip that in, we got the series for employees as ambassador, but I wanted them to act like owners. Right. We were talking about taking care of employees, taking our customers, taking care of the company. Right. That fact, that would be like an owner, but you're not one. And I think I got convicted that that was pretty hypocritical of me to want that from them, but not to mention them in that way or have them be owners. So that was how it started. And then it was like, well, how do I have succession planning for myself? So there's a couple of things like I'm the only person here. So how does this mission and purpose continue and what's the exit plan? And so ownership for me was solving like, how do I actually have people be owners and how do I have a succession plan for the company? And that's what it did. So I went through and looked at a lot of ESOPs and also I ended up doing Rantes Share Grants. So we're not an ESOP because what I found is not everybody wants to do the work of an owner. And so some of these things didn't solve that. And so this allowed me to disciple people great. So they would get the vision and values and join the work. The other aspect of it, which I think has been interesting, you know, my dad left me some money to start a business and fail because he grew up in the Depression and their business failed and they had ten dollars at the end. Right. And the big debt took 10 more years from our grandfather pay off. But when we look at generational wealth gaps in wealth and equity, what I've been telling my team is like, look, this money isn't for you. This is for your kids. If you actually do the right stuff, so when we look at kind of wealth gaps and what's the if you could leave something to your kid to help them go to college or get to start maybe that you didn't have, that this might start the same thing that my dad gave to me. Right. Which was some capital, some care capital rate and a way to go forward. And so I think people are made to own things. We are since creation, but I enjoy it and take care of it. And if you don't own it, as I say, nobody washes a rental car. You don't see people washing rental cars unless you work for the rental car company. So all those things Rusty is a mix of like it's going well. We have a great illustration.
Henry Kaestner: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but that's such a great illustration. You don't see people washing rental cars. There's something to ownership that's really good.
Eric Stumberg: So I talk to my wife around like, hey, ERG, just be yourself. Don't try to make sound bites. And because, you know, you always sometimes feel like I got to be something cool. But that really resonated around like. So I want people to take care of it and you learn how to take care of something. And so we're in your own mission and values. You own your role. We give people KPIs to own. You know, we let people participate and profit sharing. But if you've demonstrated all of those things, then you get invited into financial ownership of the company. Right. And it's like Henry, from family succession and family, you're passing heritage and values in addition to assets. And you need people to know the heritage and have the values so that they can take care of them consistent with the way that you would want to. And that takes time. That's great. So I've been working on this group of 13 people for four years. Right before I felt like it was time.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, it's good it's good stuff, we talked about it at the top of the episode and we did about storytelling and the importance of that. And we know you're involved with faith and company the videos, and we love them at FDE. And I think one of the reasons they're so impactful is because they do tell a great story. So so just just riff on that for a little bit about Faith and Co. and what you see there and in some, you know, nuggets of wisdom that you can impart to entrepreneurs about storytelling. Yeah.
Eric Stumberg: So the reason faith came about because I went to a retreat in 2013 where Jeff End-user, who'd written the book, Why Business Matters to God, was speaking before that. That's the first time I think about my road to Damascus. That's the first time that I heard that Jesus called people to be business people. You could call them right. And that God cares about business and this whole theology of business. And so if you ask me why I'm on this show, that's probably why I like working that out. Calling and the purpose of business and how they integrate so far, I think is really important, because one is it's people's stories. And when you look at generally in the Christian church, the exemplars of the faith are not people like you or me. They're not business people. And so that's probably the biggest is the exemplars are practitioners that are trying to be faithful to what caused them to do in the context of like this imagining business as a Christian vocation. And how would you actually create that? And what I found Rusty is that the people are most blessed by the people are being interviewed, just like all are blessing me today to say, actually, what you do matters. It's really good. Keep at it, you know? And so the people who were the example are still and probably have been the biggest benefactors of it. And I've learned a lot from them. So that's what I'm probably most proud of, is, you know, they're being catalyzed in their faith just because somebody was equipping them by caring and affirming.
William Norvell: It's amazing, Eric, and I'm not going to make you choose among your children, but I might make you choose among your children. I've watched a lot of the faith and co videos. Some are just absolutely incredible. So I'm going to ask this hopefully in the best way possible. When you think of some and if you wanted to point our listeners to one that just had an impact on you. Right. That you remember back and you say, well, that was a story I had never heard or I hadn't heard it told that way. Where could our listeners go and maybe learn that story?
Eric Stumberg: I have to get the name of it. It's a relatively new one, but it's about this guy in his 70s. And I don't know if you've seen this one, but he invented the mercantile exchanges. I mean, Goldman Sachs. Have you seen this one? I'll pull it up. And he said, like God wanted him to take over his dad's patent portfolio and turn it into something and. And he's like what he's told me not to raise money for, it was not to get for it and it's just this obedience to something. And then his wife says, I would love to stop doing it, but I don't. But God hasn't released me from it. And his wife goes, I would love for God to release you from it because I hate it. But, you know, it might not win and it could just be to go up in smoke. You know, all of this effort for 20 years could go up in smoke, but you should. But you know what? And the Old Testament, that's what happened. They burned offerings and they were pleasing aroma to God. And I was like, what if I was like 20 years of life in this organization? And would it be OK if it was a blazing offering, if it just totally crashed? And so I think, though, my am I so it better be worth it. That's probably the one that probably sits with me right now.
William Norvell: Amen, what a beautiful picture, what a beautiful picture. Well, unfortunately, we do have to move to a close, but before that, I want to verify one thing. My brother worked for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for 10 years. People definitely do not wash rental cars. I can say that with a
Eric Stumberg: big smile
William Norvell: so you can feel free to use that slogan as much as you want. It's a fact. And we can always phone a friend and we can call my brother, verify it if you need it. But as we do come to a close, one of the things we love to do is try to hear how the word of God is impacting our guests lives and how that could potentially impact our listeners lives. And so I would love to invite you to do is share with our listeners where God has you, in his word, could be something this morning that he brought to light. Could be something you've been studying for a season. Just welcome our listeners into your world in your walk with God's word.
Eric Stumberg: Thank you. There's probably two scripture passages that are that are kind of hitting me right now. And one is kind of in mark one when Jesus is baptized. And so it's God says to Jesus, you are my beloved son. And I'm well pleased with you and just for me to rest, that actually God thinks about me like he loves me in this place with me. And then I think the second one is in Hebrews around like hold fast to our confessions because God keeps his promises. And so I put those together around like, well, if God loves me, he thinks to me like God is pleased with me. And he keeps his promises and I'm just free to serve. I don't need to strive. I don't need to please conform. Right. I'm not trying to make up for something. And so that's played out. I feel like I'm called to be a bearer of hope in this season. So how do I better hope in the company in these people's lives? So that's one end into making space for God to work. You know, I feel like that's not Cramerton. It's like how do I create space and all of these realms for God to move? And so those are the two things that I've been really Rusty in God's love for me.
William Norvell: Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing your time. Thank you for sharing your story of what God's done through your faithfulness tango and through through everyone that's involved. They're just extremely grateful for you.