At church yesterday I sat next to Warren. Warren is 50 years old and had never been to our church. In fact, Warren had never been to church.

I learned that Warren is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic and now has sclerosis of the liver. He was sitting next to his mother Maggie who had prayed for him for many, many years. Maggie held Warren’s hand like I imagined she did when he was a little boy.

Sitting next to Warren gave me a fresh perspective of a place so very familiar to me for sixteen years. I am on the inside getting a glimpse of what it looks like from the outside.

My daddy was a great story teller. Family gatherings almost always ended up in the living room with one of us kids begging, “Dad, tell the one about…” He loved family history and those stories shared over the decades among aunts, uncles, cousins and grandchildren helped us to realize how we are all connected and a part of the same story. Dad also said with a twinkle in his eye, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story,” so we knew we had to pay attention in case something about the story had changed!

No one in our format seems to openly doubt the power of a story, but I’m surprised how few talent tell stories on the air… much less do it well. It seems that we give lip service to story and then go about our business sharing data or talking about something on Facebook, the ultimate lazy man’s show prep.

Memorial Day is often considered the official kick off of summer. But more importantly it is a time set aside to remember those who gave their lives for our country.

This time of remembrance is a good time for us to reflect on how we’d like our radio stations to be remembered.

We get a glimpse of this each year as we compile the Station of the Year entry. It forces us to stop our day-to-day busyness and ponder the most noteworthy things of the preceding twelve months. We discover some things stand out, other things are vapor in the wind.

When people talk about your radio station…

do they speak of the 25-minute music sweeps with fewer commercials, or do they talk about how you help people help people?

Do they talk about how Jack and Jill read “This day in history” from Twitter every morning at 7:20, or that your station cheers on moms and dads for the most important commitment they’ll ever make – raising good kids?