On assignment from God! Lifetime Journalist Mark Elfstrand

Mark Elfstrand is a bigger than life, career journalist and spent years on the nation's original Christian radio pioneer, Moody Radio.   Mark shares his journey from a family Christian start to a stadium crusade "alter call"  and then a tearful encounter and lifetime commitment  after listening to a  Steve Green song  on his car radio:

"So desire to tell His story
Of a love that loved enough to die
Burns away all other passions
And fed by Calvary's love becomes a fire"

...and that fire burned brightly as he shared life stories, engaged with callers and joyfully entertained hundreds of thousand of listeners with his positive encouraging and lighthearted radio conversations.

You'll hear about how a family death impacted his life,  and about his own health scare years later.

Although not on the air now,  Mark is a busy man.    He's a speaker, blogger, coach, media consultant and elder emeritus at his local church.  Find out more about his current projects by visiting him at  Http://www.ElfstrandGroup.com.

If you would like a free copy of his booklet "Recliner Reflections" simply shoot him an email.  He' be happy to send one out to you. 

mark@elfstrand.net   or 312-498-9507

You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube at
https://youtu.be/y4qUIEy9cKg

"Amazing Greats"  is a library of interviews with highly successful people who have amazing career and life stories and who share how God has impacted their journey.  Hosted by broadcaster Ric Hansen & produced by Klem Daniels.   Available on Apple,  Spotify, iHeart, Google and our  YouTube Channel. 
Please help us grow our audience by "liking", "subscribing and "Sharing".   Thanks so much. 

Transcript

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Ric 0:00

Well, here we are. Hi, I'm Rick Hanson. I have the opportunity today to sit on the other side of the table from a guy who usually is the interviewer. He's been doing amazing interviews for over 40 years on talk radio stations in Sacramento, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. He started two nonprofits and two for-profit companies. He's currently the executive director of ministry leadership at Christ Community Church in Plainfield, Illinois. He's written a book, hosted a podcast, and writes a blog called Forward Thinking. Welcome today, Mark Elstrand. First of all, just touch on some of the locations you've been in. Physically, you've been in Sacramento, Dallas, Pittsburgh, a lot of time in Chicago. You've been in secular radio, you've been in Christian radio. And so, Mark Elf uh I knew I was going to mess up your last name, Elfstrend.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yeah, it's really easy, like a little elf, a Christmas elf, and a strand of hair.

Ric 1:00

There you go. Elfstrand. I got it. Okay. Such a pleasure to be with you. And I I, to be honest, a little bit intimidated because you're the guy that's the interview master. You have any idea how many interviews you have done over the years? It'd be a thousand, five thousand. Have any any clue?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Well, I can uh assure you it's well over a thousand. I'm probably going to guess closer to about 2,500, uh, considering my time at those multiple markets that you just talked about in multiple years, and you start adding the number of days I was on the air, and then sometimes two interviews or three interviews a day, and yeah, that number ratchets up pretty high.

Ric 1:38

Yes, it does. So you but you started um you have a kind of your origins here in my hometown, which is Seattle, uh, not in radio, but in in schooling, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yeah, I went to Lutheran Bible Institute. Uh, my father had been the business manager there from 1953 to 59. And then after uh high school, um they gave me a one-year at the time, a one-year offer to come to this two-year school. So I did. And uh during that period of time, uh, my uh my roommate, who was a farmer from a farm community in Washington, uh came back from spring break and brought a 10-watt radio transmitter. Oh, seriously. I hooked it up in our room, and of course, we were at a Bible school, so I was playing Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Chicago, and uh who knows, maybe a little Santana in there as well. But we're just uh having fun, and it was one of many distractions that uh made them suggest I not return for a second year.

Ric 2:36

So uh the 10-watt radio station got you like about two blocks away, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

It was it was exactly right, yeah, just over the campus uh at 130th between Aurora and Greenwood in North Seattle.

Ric 2:47

That's that's funny because in my my background's radio also, and I did the same thing I did in my bedroom as a teenager. I had a little 10-watt radio transmitter. So it is big fan club. I guess we all started that way somewhere along the line. So yeah. Well, that's very cool. Then uh you got into radio. Um, give us your like uh 60-second or whatever it takes uh resume of where you've been, which stations were secular, and then when you made the transition into a Christian radio station.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yeah, well, I'll kind of quickly just move over to I I wound up uh being drafted, went into the Air Force, um, and then cross-trained into broadcasting after a couple of years, was stationed in Iceland for one year, and I became the television sports announcer for American Forces Radio and Television Service, which was uh a very cush job, I might uh add. And so I was there for one year. When I got out, I decided to go to college at night, back to college. And uh in the meantime, I got myself my first radio job, which was in secular radio, just outside of Sacramento. And I was there for a year and uh a little under a year and a half, and then of course, you have to go through this. I said, you know, I just got to learn to be fired. So I did get fired from that job, and took a little break and then got hired at a country station, uh just uh a little bit north of Sacramento, and I was there for a period of time. And that though, uh, when I was on the air one day, is when my radio career took a big sort of splash. And I'll explain if you'd like.

Ric 4:15

That was all music radio, uh initially, right? So you're playing the hits and I'm playing the hits, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Country music hits and yeah, AC hits, and yeah.

Ric 4:25

We're finding out more about Mark Elstrand, talk show host from Chicago, today on the Amazing Greats podcast. So uh so then then you uh left the Sacramento area and headed where?

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Well, actually, this is that uh I got a telephone call while I was on the air at this country station from a fellow who went by the heir name of Chuck Roy, and he still holds the ratings record for afternoon drive in Sacramento. He was a hot jock. I don't know, you may remember the names like Dwight Case. Um, you know, Dwight went on to some pretty successful, uh a pretty successful radio career, and Dwight was one of the people that Chuck had worked with, but he was a really good radio talent. And I thought, you know, now the guys in San Francisco or Los Angeles, and he's calling me. I'm on the air, and he wants to know if I'll come to work for him. Oh wow. And I said, Where are you? And he said, Grass Valley. Uh yeah. And that was about uh 40 miles from Sacramento, and uh, but he said, just come up and meet for breakfast, and I did, and I wound up working with him for about six years. But Chuck knew the radio business. He went to the famed Don Martin School of Broadcasting in Los Angeles, and so he he really did understand the radio business very well, and I learned a lot, and um so that was uh also in in the on the secular side of things, and still music, music radio, right? Yeah, well, it was you know personality driven. I mean, he he really put that into a personality style radio station, gave me a lot of freedom to do some of the silly, crazy, wacky things that radio people like to do. Yeah, uh so in any case, I was there for about six years.

Ric 6:00

Those are the fun days of radio, right? Where you were um able to do a lot of fun stuff and be crazy and be creative. And yeah, that was that was good times of radio days.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah, well, you you may remember the love boat and and of course the fame TV show. So we decided to do a cruise ourselves. Of course, we weren't anywhere near the water, so uh we were cruised from from down to a pizza restaurant and put people on flatbed trucks, and it was a one-way trip, and people, of course, said, No, no, how are we getting back? I don't know. That's your problem. And it sold out. We did it twice. Just one of the many silly things we did while I was there.

Ric 6:39

Yeah. So when did you when did you uh when did you transition then into talk, a talk format?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah, well, uh let me just give one more of the music side of that. So I wound up going to Dallas and um and getting involved in Christian radio. And when he was there, he called me to come down and be his morning host. So I was at, well, it's it's a pretty big station still today. KLTY are the call letters now, but uh they those call letters had been lost for a period of time, and so they called this station Kojo. I hosted the morning show uh on this contemporary Christian radio station, the 100,000 watt station there, and then I transitioned over to KCBI, which is owned by First Baptist Dallas, both Christian stations, and um and I did some interviews in between on those stations and and such, but really that was about the end of my musical side of my radio life.

Ric 7:32

So, how did you make that transition? You know, my my whole career was in in music radio, and I uh uh dreaded the idea of having to carry a whole four-hour show with just you know talking.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, how'd you do that? Yeah, yeah. Well, uh there is a spiritual component to this. Oh, good. So I I actually left the radio business um from Dallas, and a friend of mine hired me to be his operations manager for a trade show company back in Sacramento and gave me a three-year deal. And um, and so we one of the things we put on was the government technology conference, which is really a big deal in New York and Texas and California. So I was there one year, coming home from work one night, and was listening to um a song by the Christian artist, Steve Green, and my CD player, and the lyrics came up so desire to tell the story of a love that loved enough to die and burns away all other passions, and fed by Calvary's love, becomes a fire. And I don't know, Rick, exactly what was going on there, but all of a sudden I just began to weep in my car. Just picked up this company car a couple of weeks before that, and I couldn't go home right away. I think, what is going on here? What is what is happening? And so I I just uh said sovereignly to God, you know, if you're trying to communicate to me, you better speak English because that's the only language that I understand. And uh within just a few moments, it was if these words were literally inscribed across my heart. If I wanted you in full-time ministry, you wouldn't go. And I said uh in response to that, you're right, I don't want to do that. And then uh catching my soul in a very bad spot, I said, You know what? Uh, I will go anywhere and I will do anything for the kingdom of God. But if you want me somewhere else, you're gonna have to get me there. And about a week later, my friend Chuck, who again I'd been with in Grass Valley, then in Dallas, had been hired by Salem in Pittsburgh and called me and said, I know you got a great deal there, Mark, but I need a talk show host. Whoa. Uh said, uh, would you just would you just start the conversation with Salem and see where it goes? And so I did, and then they flew me down at some point to Camarillo, and I met with Ed Atzinger, the head of Salem, and such, and they decided to hire me. And so I moved to Pittsburgh and was there for uh seven years, and that was the start of my talk show life.

Ric 10:01

Wow. So and and so uh your whole talk show career has been uh a Christian talk show career, right? You didn't do a secular show.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

That is correct. Music, secular, more secular music, but Christian talk show, right?

Ric 10:16

Yeah. We're talking with Christian Radio's premier talk show host and author, Mark Elstrand. Tell a guy who was totally intimidated by the idea of being a talk show host, um, how how that went. You know, I still have nightmares about dead air, you know. What if I can't think of something to say? What if my record doesn't start? Um, did you go through any of that?

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Uh actually, no. And uh the the reason is that it really is about prep. And um and to that degree, I always went in with plenty of things stacked up. Now, I will admit to you that while in Sacramento doing that trade show, I used to listen to this very mediocre talent doing talk radio with some something like Limbaugh.

unknown 10:58

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

So I heard him for a couple of well, yet a year and a half before I moved to Pittsburgh. And of course, he had been in Sacramento, uh, interestingly enough. And and uh so I I kind of had a feel for the way that you know that that he put things together. But there's nothing like doing it yourself, as you probably know. But when a combination of guests, when you start having guests, you realize, well, I know how to interview people, I've I've done that before. And then I would go in with a stack of things that I knew that I would be interested in talking about. The downside of my being in talk radio at the beginning was there was no internet, unlike today, where you can I could pull up all kinds of things to talk about. And uh so you had to take newspapers and clip the stories out and stack them up and take them in. And then then the real uh to me, the art form in it is to find things, ways to frame things so that it forces people to say, I'm not I'm gonna respond to that. I don't like that, or I'm going to, you know. So you have to help, you have to create the tension that is necessary for talk radio to exist.

Ric 12:04

And that is uh the case in Christian talk radio as well as secular, huh?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah, it definitely is. And sometimes on spiritual topics, sometimes just on what's happening in the world. Um so even with you know the situation in Afghanistan, which has been, you know, very much in the news, and we're taking in families from Afghanistan. Um, how well are they vetted? Would you be willing to do this? What what what would be your concerns about this? I mean, yeah, you know, there's some dynamics to that that you could begin to flesh out pretty easily and call get people to call in.

Ric 12:36

Absolutely. Uh yeah, yeah, talk radio is all about that compelling factor. You know, how how do you keep it compelling? How do you keep them hanging in there and responding? Because uh the other fear I would have is nobody calls. You know, nobody you're you're you're you're talking along and you don't get a phone call. Yeah. So you're wondering, A, is anybody listening? And B, am I just not hitting the right chord here?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, and it can be uh it could be both a little bit of both. I mean, it's not that nobody's listening, it's just that they're they're not connecting necessarily, or they're not they're gonna, I'm gonna listen to you for a while. You know, you'll start out with an opening of three to four or five minutes of setting your tone, maybe maybe longer than that, and uh, you know, just give your personal views on something, and they're listening to you. And maybe they're not ready to engage as of yet. So you say, well, let's let's talk about this. Phone lines are now open, da-da-da-da-da. And nobody calls right away. But uh, all it usually takes is one or two, and then you can start to wipe the sweat off your brow.

Ric 13:35

So it's a challenge every minute of the day. As long as you're on the air, you gotta have something going on.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Right.

Ric 13:42

Uh you know, I think as a as an just an average listener, I wonder if they realize how challenging and how intense that can be to keep things rolling. I guess you can always jump to commercials when you when you need to. That that helps.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah, you can. Uh you don't you don't want to make it about 40 minutes an hour of commercials, but yes, you can you can step in with a commercial break if you absolutely uh have to.

Ric 14:04

So, who was your most memorable interviewee? Who is the most memorable um conversation that you had in your radio career? Can you come up with some or more? One or more?

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Definitely I have uh at least one that initially comes to mind, and that would be when Dan Quayle was vice president, and I had we'd written to him and said, you know, would you be willing to come on Mark's talk show? Well, this is in Pittsburgh, you know, what does he what has he got to do with me? You know, nothing, but they agreed. And so he was in Air Force Two. And so now the Air Force Two is flying back from, I don't know, Philadelphia to DC or New York to DC or something. And next thing you know, we get this call. We were told he was gonna call, and and it's the it's the pilot on the on uh the aircraft saying, uh, you're gonna be joined here by Vice President Quayle. Can you stand by? You know, uh, yeah, how long is it gonna take, though? You know, I didn't say that, but I mean, you know, and so you're just kind of babbling on for the moment, and then the next thing you hear is Mark, Dan Quayle. Wow, so there's that momentary pause, and then you want to go, well, I'm not gonna call him Dan. So you can fix the conversation. But we talked for probably uh seven or eight minutes while he was in the airplane, but that was uh certainly a memorable uh experience.

Ric 15:18

Did you did you move the conversation to anything uh Christian or faith-based, or was it pretty much uh what's going on in the world at that point?

SPEAKER_02 15:26

I asked him a question that I would frequently ask people uh who were interested in political office who'd come into my studio, and it made them oftentimes uncomfortable. But I would say I many of our listeners would like to know what is your source of moral truth? Just curious. Say anything you want. I remember one candidate from running for mayor in Pittsburgh Boss, he wasn't sure how to answer the question, and then he said, Well, my parents, and he kind of did a little pause, and and you know, admittedly it was funny at the moment, but I didn't I didn't laugh. I just said, So your parents are the source of moral truth, then and it was just awkward, you know. He didn't quite know how to respond. I said, Well, let's just kind of move on then to you know something else. I don't remember how it happened, but I asked Dan Coyle that question, and without skipping a beat, he said the Bible. Oh, and I didn't ask him what his favorite passage was or anything like that, but uh I said, Well, that's good to know. And then we went on to something else, I think current things in the news or whatever, but that was one. But I mean, I've in interviewed uh astronauts uh over the years, and always that's a hard interview to beat because they can give you gripping and compelling stories about what it's like to leave their family behind in a rocket and be separated and the concerns that can happen aboard one of those spacecraft and such like that.

Ric 16:47

So did did uh as a Christian talk show host, did you always try to bring it back to some kind of Christian um source? Uh or was that really not uh a criteria?

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Uh no, not not always. For example, this is actually well back in my radio life, but I had an opportunity to interview Bob Hope in his dressing room at the music circus in Sacramento. Well, if I had had that opportunity, same thing on Christian radio, would I have taken it? Well, sure I would have. And we would have talked about probably things about life, about what were the most meaningful times in his life, what shaped his career. So you have latitude, so you can talk about things like that. So it doesn't always have to have that dynamic spiritual focus. Would I would I probably have said something like, uh, you think much about God? Sure, I might have asked him a question like that. Just to see where his heart is on that issue.

Ric 17:36

Of all the of uh of if there's one interview you haven't done, but you said, gosh, I would have loved to do that interview, uh, or I would love to do that interview, either a person who's alive today or not, uh, is there somebody that stands out as being somebody you would really like to have an opportunity to chat with uh uh in an interview, other than Jesus himself? Um who would you say?

SPEAKER_02 18:00

I actually have uh thought about that question. It's it's difficult because there are individuals like a Ronald Reagan that to me would have been very interesting for me just to connect with, because I remember seeing him movies and movies earlier on, and then the trend I lived in California for many years and the political transition, and then being uh almost assassinated. And so the that kind of a discussion about what's that like to lie there, knowing that your life is very possibly going to end and this is it, and and how do you reconcile that with ambition and all that? So uh that would certainly be one person. Um I think there's just people in our world today, uh maybe movie stars, things like that, whose life has gone way off uh you know, way off kilt. And then you'd say, you know, uh, I think you're on the road back. I had an interview uh a while back uh with uh Corbin Burnson, and he was at his home. I we put the interview on the air uh back in Chicago, and Corbin was on the journey to for faith. And even at the time that I interviewed him, it was like in the backyard of his home studio, and uh I said, Do you think you've crossed the line? And he was hesitant to do that, uh, to say that he had done that. I told him later, I thought he had, but I think he was But great question.

Ric 19:24

What a great way to to ask that question. That was wonderful, yeah. We're finding out more about Mark Elstrand, talk show host from Chicago, today on the Amazing Greats podcast.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

And I think his fear was if he said too much, how much would it cost him in in Hollywood for admitting to that? But uh, you know, here was a guy that had a very successful career in uh different venues, and so yeah.

Ric 19:49

Yeah, very cool. Uh there's um since I've been doing this podcast, there are so many people in Hollywood and in athletics and um authors of books that are solid uh Christians and believers, and uh that's what this show is all about is to try to find those people who are willing to talk about it. Like you say, some are not so willing. Um but um yeah, that's that's what we're all about here. And and trying to find them, trying to get a hold of them is always the challenge. But so you were with Moody Radio for the longest period of your radio career. That was like 14 years, right? Right. Tell me about Moody Radio. I tell our audience, I guess, more about that because uh it's a phenomenon in and of itself.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah, well, uh my role at Moody Radio was different than my predecessors, in that we tried to put together what we would perceive as more of a major market kind of a morning program. So we had our own meteor meteorologist. Uh we had a sports person that would come on and do sports report. We had a wonderful news guy that I worked with all 14 years, uh Dave Mitchell, who would have worked for the CBS affiliate uh in Chicago as well. Uh we had our traffic six times an hour. And so there was it was a pretty fast-moving pace to this. And at the same time, we would play some music, but also we would do some interviews in there. And so the whole idea was just to keep the program going. Bam, bam, bam, bam, onto the one thing, onto the next. And uh different from what Moody had ever done in the past. And um, but it was um it was just a lot of fun because again, the pace of the show was so good, and and we we did uh things, we take the program on the road once in a while, and then we would do it live from some location, and you'd always have big turnouts for that, and we'd have special guests that would uh show up, uh authors or uh Christian art recording artists and such like that. And it just it just made life uh a lot of fun.

Ric 21:45

And the Moody history, Moody Radio started back in the twenties, right? I mean, they were one of the original Christian broadcasting companies, for sure, probably the original Christian broadcasting company, uh, but over time. You made some major transitions like you're talking about, and you're part of that.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Yeah, the history, oddly enough, um uh would surprise some people because one of the key people responsible for getting Moody Radio on the air in the first place was the founder of Quaker Oats, Henry Parsons Kroll. There's uh an excellent book that tells his life story, which is just remarkable. It's called Serial Tycoon. And uh it was he principally who did the groundwork, and he had done this because he had started advertising oatmeal on radio, and they had made some little miniature oatmeal box that they were putting out there with a coil around it that could be a little radio transmitter like thing and a receiver. And um, and it's sold 150,000 in the first month or two. And so he was already working with the Moody Bible Institute and went, hmm, we need to take advantage of this new medium. So yeah, he was instrumental in uh getting it started as far back as the 1920s.

Ric 23:02

Now, when you were on the air in Chicago with Moody Radio, was that um that was transmitted in other cities as well, right? Was it was the program picked up in other markets too?

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Uh well, there'd be interviews and things that I had done that they carried in other markets, but the actual live program was only based in Chicago. However, we had the Moody Broadcasting Network, it's still there, and they have a number of stations uh around the country, and then they have a number of satellites and satellitors and and things like that that carry their program.

Ric 23:31

Yeah, I have a buddy that just went to work in Chattanooga for the Moody station there. He's part of the morning morning show, Tom and Tammy Tabby in the morning. So um, and he's he's he's loving it, he's absolutely loving it. Young man.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

So well, I hope our work in Chicago uh did some uh some good in establishing uh a trend for that. My uh my producer that I hired out of Minnesota several years ago, Brian Dolin, is now the co-host at the morning show for uh Moody in Cleveland.

Ric 23:58

So, how many Moody stations are there currently? Do you have any idea?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Well, uh, you know, it's been like eight years since I left there, but I think there's still around 25 or 30 owned and operated stations. But then there's, you know, a number of stations around the country that would carry some portion, a lot or a little of Moody broadcasting network programming.

Ric 24:20

And they would pluck that from the network then. Yes, exactly right. Gotcha. Okay. So let's find out about Mark's uh personal journey. Uh, were you uh Christian from day one or um come from a family of Christians? How did how did how did you find Jesus?

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Well, I did kind of start uh with a a good foundation, so to speak. My uh father, as I mentioned, worked at uh Lutheran Bible Institute. So even from my earliest days, I would have been told Bible stories and we would have had that for our family devotions and such. And so uh that kind of progressed into my growing up years. We were always involved in church in some capacity. Uh Lutheran Church when I was younger, a covenant church. My mother was part of that church. So sometimes we go to a covenant church, but that really was my history. When I went to Lutheran Bible Institute, um David Wilkerson uh came to town in Seattle at the Seattle Center, and he did one of those evening uh crusades for a few nights, a couple of nights. And I went down there with some friends, and uh he did one of those typical calls at the end about, you know, if you feel your heart pounding within you, uh, you know, maybe God is calling you and talking to you. And and you know, you I want you to come forward. And so here there are thousands of people in the Seattle Center, and but I did get out of my seat and I just felt God was talking to me. And so I went forward, and uh, wouldn't you know I wound up like first at the stage and someone puts this microphone in my face. Um, so what are you doing here, young man? So I stumbled out something amidst my emotional uh outburst at the time. But that was, I think, the more of a personal embrace. You know, you can be raised in a family that teaches something, you can walk away from it. You can say, I don't want anything to do with this. Uh or on the other hand, at some point realize that it's got to become yours. Not your parents, but yours. And I in my life, I saw that as a key moment that that uh happened in my life. And then throughout the course of the next several years, my faith developed in various ways. When I was in the Air Force, I participated in the base chapel and was in some leadership things uh while doing that and so forth. And uh then I served as a deacon at my church in Grass Valley, and I've served as an elder at our church here. So those are some leadership positions. But uh, the most important development, spiritual development in my life, really happened after I met a uh person in Grass Valley, California. His name is Glenn Murray. And Glenn has uh worked over the years, we was in commercial real estate, but really never took a deep interest in it. His real interest was in helping people come to learn how to follow Jesus. And he got involved uh with the National Prayer Breakfast and uh the ministry of the national prayer breakfast, and of course they're governor's prayer breakfasts. And if anybody really knows the history of the national prayer breakfast, they would know that a Norwegian pastor named Abraham Varedi got this all started when he was working out of Seattle, Washington, many years ago.

Ric 27:15

Whoa.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

So anyway, uh Glenn uh Glenn got me educated about the a different way of talking about Jesus and to recognize that there are many people who say they follow Jesus, but then when you ask them really what that's like or what it means to be a disciple, uh, you get a lot of different answers. And if you ask pastors, how many people in your church do you think are authentically following Jesus? That number gets fairly low. Even pastors will tell you that. So we're obviously missing something, and perhaps that's what shows up in our culture sometimes when we just don't see the witness of uh Christ out there properly. Anyway, Glenn uh introduced me to the idea of meeting together with some business people, several who were not uh people who were followers of Jesus or even interested in Jesus, and start meeting once a week for uh breakfast, and uh we would meet in the spirit of Jesus.

Ric 28:13

And um dancing around dancing around a little bit there, but yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Yeah, one of the guys asked Glenn one time, what the H does that mean. Yeah, and uh but but if you actually think about it, uh you know, you say, Well, what is your impression of Jesus? Well, I know he's a good teacher, he was a good man. Well, actually, he had a lot of remarkable things to teach, and we're gonna take a look at you know what that means, what he said, and see if what you agree with and what you don't. And so it was really a very safe environment for guys to come really and build friendships, have breakfast together, build friendships. And that was my first. I started another one of those groups in Dallas when I moved there. I started another one in Pittsburgh. We still have reunions today, usually in Myrtle Beach. Uh and uh and I mean some of the friendships have just been deeply impactful to me through this. Um, and so that kind of connected me to that particular world of reaching out to people. The second thing was when I got involved in men's ministry, and um I I learned a great deal through the process of connecting with Robert Lewis. You may have heard of him, uh, the men's fraternity, and just how many men go into through life and have never connected to the idea of manhood and have never been affirmed as a man. And uh so we held a uh retreat uh in the Naperville area, and uh Press Gillam, who's an author and a friend from Dallas, Texas, came and I missed the final session. He actually asked the men in our room, most of whom were 35 to 50, if they would like to be affirmed into manhood. And if that never had happened for them, would they be willing to stand? He told me about this the next day, and I thought, you're nuts, you didn't do this, did you really? And I said, Well, what press what happened? He said, Half the men in the room stood. Amazing. So there is a uh really uh a tremendous need here for guys to be able to learn that following Jesus is a manhood thing, and that God wants to affirm us as men and in our role. And uh so um I did a series at our church that a few years later called Ten Passions of a Man's Soul, and that became a book that Moody Publishers put out in 2005.

Ric 30:34

We're finding out more about Mark Elstrand, talk show host from Chicago, today on the Amazing Greats podcast. Yeah, I was gonna mention that because I I looked at the book. I have not read the book, I didn't didn't have a chance I um to get through it, but I will buy it and and read it. Um but it looks like it's very interesting. So that's that's been out for a while um and is available on Amazon, I know, because uh that's where I looked it up at. Um so that's great. Um tell me uh about a the the flip side of you've mentioned a couple of uh places in your life where Jesus showed up, where he was very visible and made significant um impact on your life. Uh what about the flip side of that? How about um a challenge spiritually, a faith challenge, uh an unanswered prayer? Um have you experienced that as well?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Yeah, the deepest one uh happened um when I mentioned to you that my father, when I was in Montana, that's where I graduated from high school, my dad was there for two and a half years. But uh in my junior year, my father died of a heart attack very unexpectedly at the age of 55. And uh I I didn't fully understand the dynamics of what was going to happen uh to me at that time. I had no other male influence in my life around me. Uh, I was now going through life without a father. Uh, but more importantly, I began to develop this fear because my grandfathers on both sides had already died. Now my father had died. I'm all of 16 and I'm next. This this fear, this irrational fear began to take hold in my life and was with me for really uh quite a number of years to the point where I didn't want to go to a doctor's office because my father went to the doctor and he died at the doctor's office.

Ric 32:23

Oh, seriously.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

And I began to be fearful. I didn't want to be around ambulances, I didn't want to be around just the medical thing because everything brought back the memories of losing my father. And despite the fact that I was a man of faith and I didn't question that there was eternal life and so on, I was having an incredible time getting past the emotions. And that really developed into some panic attacks that I had for several years. I don't have many more, but I did for several years. And um, and and there was really a very, very challenging period of time. So then in um uh 2005, I go to the eye doctor and they tell me that I I'm probably diabetic, they could see it in my eyes. So I finally had to just uh and went went to the doctor and got that checked out. And then he said, You know, Mark, there's something in your neck here I don't like. And that started me on a path of about two and a half months of tests. My cardiologist, I didn't ever want to hear that word. Now I'm sitting in front of one. He said, I don't like it, Mark. You look healthy, but something's not right. And so about two weeks, three weeks later, they did an angiogram and called my wife in to look at it and said, You see where the flow is supposed to go, there's nothing going. And uh we had uh had quintuple bypass surgery at the age of 53. And um I was terrified that of what this was. It was like the very thing you would dread all your life, knowing that my father what had happened to him. And um, and yet uh God brought me safely through that and uh used that experience. But I mean, I remember about three weeks, four weeks before that angiogram, I was at Moody, got off the air, and this great dread, great fear just overwhelmed me. And I was walking through the bowels of the institute, going, I don't I don't even know what to do. I am I am so out of it right now, and how will I get through this? And um, yet I had friends who prayed for me and helped me walk through it. And I remember one thing my one of my best friends, Ray Carmichael, said, he said, You know, Mark, now isn't the time for you to show off your faith. Now is the time for you to just trust the rest of us who are putting our faith in God that He's gonna take care of you. And really, that turned out to be a great encouragement uh encouragement for me. I actually have a little booklet, happy to send it to you for free, um called Recliner Reflections that I wrote after my heart surgery.

Ric 34:50

Oh, I'd love to get a copy of it. Um, are you suggesting that you would give anybody in our audience a copy of it? Yeah, okay. Well, I'll I will um I'll I'll put that in the in the show notes that that's uh available and and we'll make it available. Thank you so much for sharing that. I know you know it's always easier to share the great stories and not as easy to share those that are you know more challenging.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

So yeah, yeah.

Ric 35:16

So what about you were mentioning earlier? How how about you? Do you have a favorite uh verse of scripture that that you you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah, Psalm 138, 8. Uh King David uh wrote it, the Lord will fulfill his purpose for my life. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake, do not give up on, do not forsake, do not abandon, do not forsake the work of your hands. And uh I've kind of I'm not real big into the idea of life versus. I don't know how we claim them as our own, but that's the one as close as I can get to claiming for my own. And I I pray it virtually every day.

Ric 35:54

Yeah, and that's that's a that's a beautiful one, too. That's that's perfect. So tell tell us how can we um how can we support you and what you're doing now? I know you do have a great blog. I've read most of the the blogs that I could uh before we talked. Um, and that is called Um Give me the name of it again. I have it written down here.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah, well, we we put it under our website, Moving People Forward.

Ric 36:18

And uh then forward thinking is what you're doing for the blog, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Okay, yep. And um, and so that comes out once a week. And you know, I probably get a little more into the uh events of the world and and my thoughts about that than than maybe some people might prefer. But you know, your my faith ought to ought to have an impact on my thinking about the way that the things then happen in our world. And so I try to give perspective on that, and usually with a humorous twist, but also with a a Bible application uh in it uh as well. So it comes out every Monday.

Ric 36:49

Yeah, and you can't separate you, you shouldn't be able to separate the two. I mean, your spiritual life and and the world really ought to be one, and that's exactly what you're doing. So well, thank you, Mark. Thank you so much for your time. Uh and how can we support you uh other than um buying the book and maybe getting the pamphlets you're gonna offer up? Um other are there other things that we should be following?

SPEAKER_02 37:12

I uh occasionally still speak at uh retreats for men, and um you know I have done some leadership kind of work as well. People could go to elfstrandgroup.com, which is our website, and kind of see the kind of activity that I am involved in. My main thing right now is I'm helping our church uh part-time navigate a merger with another church. So that has me tied up several hours a week. But uh, but I I would say this, Rick. One of the most important things of coming to this place in life is I'm not trying to get anywhere. I'm not trying to impress anybody, uh, I'm not trying to win any big awards. I'm simply trying to be responsive uh to what happened when I was 40 years old in that freeway experience, coming home from work to be available to God, to go on assignment wherever he wanted me.

Ric 38:02

Amen. Amen. Let's let's end it with that. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, this has been a great chat, and we will um uh this is gonna be our episode number 20. So this is our first full year of podcasts and uh so so happy that you could be uh with us today. So thank you, Mark. Certainly so good to be with you. Great stuff. That is awesome. Thank you for joining us on this trip into the life story and Christ journey of Mark Elfstrand. And thanks to producer Clem Daniels, thanks to George Tolls for sharing his Rolodex and connecting us with Mark. And of course, we always appreciate your acknowledging us with a like and hoping that you'll share this podcast with your friends. Until next time, God bless.