You’ve probably seen their hilarious videos. They’re hilarious, creative, and a whole lot of fun. But what you might not know is that their friendship has spanned 30 years and they’ve learned some things along the way. The Skit Guys Eddie James and Tommy Woodard join Julie Lyles Carr for a hysterical and thoughtful conversation about the challenges and rewards of friendship.
Interview Links:
The Skit Guys: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Book: Smells Like Bacon
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: You’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast where you’ll find encouragement, information and inspiration for the life you’re living, the kids you’re raising, the romance you’re loving, and the faith you’re growing. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. Let’s jump into this week’s episode.
Today on the AllMomDoes podcast I have Tommy Woodard and I have Eddie James, except you might know them better, sorry guys, as The Skit Guys. If you have ever gotten to see in church, something that feels like a really well done SNL skit, these are the guys that you have been seeing. Guys, thank you so much for being with me.
Tommy Woodard: Uh, Julie, thank you for the compliment. Yeah, that was great. That was now. That was a great compliment. I know. Right?
Julie Lyles Carr: So no pressure, but I do need you to be exceptionally funny on this interview today, now that I have lobbed that up there for you.
Tommy Woodard: Everyone will lower their expectations. They’re going to be blown away.
Julie Lyles Carr: Okay. Excellent. I think that’s always a great way to just launch into anything. If you’re not familiar with this, get guys, these two came up with a really great method for ministry, which is through storytelling and humor and those moments in a service, maybe when you’re in a, in a church service where, you know, the worship teams needing to hustle off all of their equipment so that your pastor can come on and preach.
These are the guys that can fill that space for you via video. When did you guys first get started in this type of ministry work?
Tommy Woodard: Uh, well, we started, we really started doing skits, I mean, at the end of Eddie senior year in high school. And, uh, did that live and then, I don’t know, I would say around 2000 or so little after that, we started making short films.
And, uh, man, they just, they took off and churches started using them and we realized, oh, that’s the most effective way to help the church. And so I guess since probably 2000, and I’m going to say 2004 or five is when we’ve been seriously making, uh, short films for churches.
Eddie James: Yeah, we hit that really sweet spot that once churches started, you know, Hey, let’s put in screens or Hey, let’s, let’s use video.
Um, and, and you’re right. It really was a, a segue, uh, or another way, you know, in church services, it was always let’s pray. And why we’re prayed if you were to look up from a congregation, there’s like seven things going on stage, a scramble. The prayer came to segway and. Um, and has started using videos.
And we really, you know, I, I do believe you do what’s possible and you allow God to do the impossible. And it just seemed, that was a beautiful time where we just said yes, and took a chance. And we started making videos. There was a guy that went to Tommy’s church named Brian, who does still does all our videos to this day.
And it was like, let me, let me try to put you all on film. And we just started putting out videos for churches. It really, it was a beautiful time. Yeah. Beautiful.
Julie Lyles Carr: Cinderella story. There it is now back up because Tommy, you said something that you had seen Eddie starting to do some things like this, and you had kind of jumped at, you know, just this, but you talked about, this was at the end of high school. So, I want to back up and understand more about the Genesis of your friendship. So, this was not something that you guys met on a church volunteer team, and this idea came forth. You guys have some history. So talk to me about that.
Tommy Woodard: Oh yeah. I was, I mean, I was a believer, but I was. Oh, uh, a struggling believer, uh, in high school, you know, went to church about once a month. Uh, and the truth of the matter is we’ve found out who each other was because I stole Eddie’s girlfriend. And that was, she was smart. I think she dated me for about a week before she dumped me. But yeah, that’s, that’s how the story began. Ed, you want to pick up from there?
Eddie James: Uh, it seems like sometime after that, yeah, she, she finally figured. Um, you, you were, you were more of a jerk than I was. That’s probably true. That is true. Um, we became buddies, you know, when you, when you, you know, when you whatever, whatever that was, we became buddies and, uh, lo and behold, probably we were those class clowns. We were those guys in, in high school that would just try to make people laugh on the bus.
If we were going on a trip somewhere. And then Tommy invited me to church, September 17th, 1987. And it wasn’t like, I, you know, started speaking in king James and went, oh yes, they’ll brother. That would be thine so great. I mean, he said there’s going to be pizza. And I went, oh, okay, well then, I’m in. And so, I went to church with him and uh, heard about Christ and it changed my life.
And I said, yes. And that night. It really was, we little by little, little by little, you know, when you start to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus, that those first steps it was, well, what are we going to do? And our youth minister saw us always making fun of him on Wednesday nights. And he said, Hey, why don’t you start using your powers for good instead of evil and do a skit every Wednesday night.
And we’re like, what? That would be great. And here’s what you have to know. Um, skits in the eighties. This is for all of us, all of you listening, there was no humor in church. Okay. You know, and, but this, God…
Tommy Woodard: God did not like to laugh in church prior to the eighties late, I guess probably the nineties yeah.
Eddie James: Changed his mind later. Right. He would love that.
Tommy Woodard: He also allowed you to dress casual. He also let that he dropped that.
Eddie James: And flip-flops Sunday. Yeah. That came later early two thousands. Uh, this was, this would have been a skit for all, for everyone listening. This would have been a skit in the eighties. Hey Joe, you seem really sad today.
Tommy Woodard: You need Jesus.
Eddie James: Okay. That would have been a skit because you had to get the Jesus pretty quick. Or it’s like, why are you even on the stage? Why are you in there? So we were like, well, that’s not even at a high school. I remember going, well, that’s looking at these skid books gone. That’s not how we talk. So we decided to steal everything from Saturday night live and try to make it Christian.
It’s not easy, very hard to do. It’s hard to redeem those kids, but we did. We not knowing a lick of the Bible, but learning along the way, um, started going around Oklahoma, uh, for gas money and, and chicken dinner and doing Saturday night live characters and making them Christian and, uh, really fig I mean, it was like a comedy club, you know, for
yeah, 18 and 19 year old or 18 to 17 year old. So, and learning the Bible along the way, uh, and going, okay, I think this is what the Bible is saying. I want, you know, and so those are really beautiful.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. You know, I think when I look back because my husband and I were involved in some of those skits, um, the early skits and everything was so earnest. It was so earnest, lots of earnestness, but I, myself came from a family that humor was absolutely love, one of our love languages. I always feel like that that’s one that got lost in the five-love language. Laughter and food, you know, I know there’s five others, but those are the two that I really, you want to speak to me, that’s what I’m going to need. And I don’t know why that got kind of lost in our Christian upbringings if it was ever there to begin with.
But I do. I think Jesus has a sense of humor. I look at some of the things that he does and the ways that he teaches the disciples, and we have a couple different ways we can read some of that, right. Kind of flat and stern, but sometimes I think, you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was kind of giggling a little bit through some of the things that he was having to guide the disciples through and help them see.
Tommy Woodard: Julie, we sure hope he has a sense of humor if he doesn’t,
Julie Lyles Carr: we’re all kind of cooked if not, but I think he does.
So, how did you deal with, because I have to imagine when you are coming through an environment that is grappling a little bit with how much are we going to quote unquote, allow worldly tools to infiltrate our church experiences, and I’m using air quotes, as I say that, but how much are we going to allow that to infiltrate what we’re doing?
And at what point does it become too much? Because you know, a lot of humor is to point out the unexpectedly obvious. And sometimes to do that, you’ve got to surprise people, shock them, go a little bit further than maybe they thought you were going to go. And of course there are ways to do that that are more common that we see in our world today.
And there are ways that I think you really have to finesse it and be really clever about how you’re doing it. What was some of the early reception to what you were doing and how did you navigate that? Because you’re making up this medium as you go for this audience. And I would have to think that there were times it might’ve felt kind of discouraging or you might’ve had people come up and say things that you thought, Ooh, are we on the right track? What was that journey like?
Tommy Woodard: That’s a great question. I mean, when we first started, like, like a lot of the congregation would sit stoically as we are just we’re, we’re pulling out our best stuff.
Like we know this kills, we know this is funny, you know, and they are just stoic. But then after everything was over and they’d come up and shake your hand. They’d be all to what does fantastic, man, I’ll tell you was I was dying, you know, and I was like dying. I thought you were dead. That because, so there was, it was kind of this thing of, there was something that told us this is right.
This works. Even if the response you’re getting back is not what you want in the moment, you know? And there was probably a lot of conversations, ed, you remember this stuff better than I do with sponsors like the pastor or whoever brought us in afterwards going, Hey, I hope that was okay. You know, and it would be the pastors who would be going, that was fantastic. Yeah. This is exactly what my people need, you know? So I think that it was a part of it.
Eddie James: Yeah, it was a mean looking back, I mean, cause we’ve been able to do this since high school, you know, Luke 12:48 too much is given much is expected. With that, um, responsibility or Spiderman, I think in the movie Spider-Man it was, yeah, it’s true.
Great power comes great responsibility. Possibility. I do think another thing our youth. Um, said to us, Hey, no matter where this goes, no matter, you know, we have seen so many bands, so many musicians, so many people that have come and gone, and it really is they get the taste of success and they forget about the church.
They forget about the, the lingo of the church and what makes people come to church, and what a pastor needs. Um, he told us way early on, always stayed, plugged in local church and, and we have done that. I don’t, I’m not patting ourselves on the back, but I think that, um, to answer your question, it’s really been our saving grace because all through all these decades, we have been able to use the, you use our, our time at the church, or whether it’s a staff position or whatever, to try out skits or try out a video, and you get to listen to your home team laugh. You get to listen to your home team go, oh, that was really good. And there is something universal about that.
If, if this church thinks it’s good or deemed it worthy, you could go many, many places and you’re going to get the same response. So I think staying plugged in the local church has helped. I know to this day we can show a skit guys video, um, that w a video that will go, you know, all over the place and I can sit back as a audience member and go, okay, that need to be shorter.
Okay. We, oh, uh, no one heard that line because people were laughing right there. So we’re constantly just in the mode of, of what can we do to help the church? What can we do to help the pastor whoever’s using these things as a segue or as a setup. Um, and I think that that’s helped. We’ve also. Yeah, I think just being able to perform at our churches and having that instant feedback, you leave that church and you go to other places going.
I feel like we’ve got some good footing here to make a difference.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think part of what we can sometimes miss I’ve, I’ve talked about this with some other guests who are bringing some different art forms into the faith community. And in that sense, it’s a Renaissance because it used to be the church that was the portal for so much artistry, whether that had to do with architecture and the cathedrals, whether it had to do orchestration of music, whether it had to do with calligraphy and in print and publishing, you know, That that used to happen.
The church used to be the first point of that, the leader on that. And so there are ways that we’ve kind of been behind for a while, that we are trying to catch up when it comes to really embracing those who’ve been given creative gifts in a fresh way in for the encouragement of the faith community.
Within that, I do think that when it comes to comedy, we need that permission sometimes I think to laugh. And I think that’s what you guys have really brought to the table because it does still seem, I’m sure you may still have experiences like you did in those early days, people trying to decide if this is an appropriate response, depending on the community and the culture of the faith community, where they attend. One thing to me that always resonates when I get to see all his work, the fact that you guys do have such a friendship and you understand you have this chemistry, you know how to play off of each other. Even when you’re playing different characters in the skit or whatever is happening, there’s still this symbiosis, I mean, maybe you guys are like the Meg Ryan and the Tom Hanks of the skit world.
I don’t know what it is, but there is, there is this play that really works well. Speaks to the depth of your friendship, this friendship that you’ve had since high school. How has it been navigating, creating something fresh and all the things that life brings us into? Even outside of our work with the friendship you have, because you know, it’s not necessarily that often that we find particularly guys who have friendships that have lasted since high school days.
Eddie James: True. I think because of like, I came from a home that wasn’t very loving, um, you know, as a. As I live and breathe to this day, I go, you know, sometimes you’re just doing the best you can in a family. There’s not a lot of intention that the chaos is there because the ripple effects seem to just one decision after another gets made.
And you just kind of feel like you’re just harried and scurried. And that’s what I lived under. And Tommy did not. Um, I, I do know because of that relationship, Tommy was the friend for me in high school. And as we kept getting older, that just. Showed showed me what normalcy looked like, what love looked like.
And I think for a needy kid, a needy teenager, a needy 20 something trying to figure out I don’t want to stay needy. I don’t want to be needy. I, I want goodness. I want, I want what their family seems to have. Um, there’s a health there. There’s an emotional health there. Um, so for someone like me, that was really appealing and the fact that Tommy would go, I mean, it wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t like, yes, let me be your Miyagi. I’ll be your Miyagi. And I would show you the way it was. There was enough goodness there at the front that, um, I think with both of us, uh, we both came to the table with different things and still to this day. We’re, I think we see in each other how God has made us very unique.
And we compliment that we respect it. We don’t try to get in the same lane with each other, but we give each other air to breathe and there’s no jealousy. There is just do your thing and I’ll do my thing and let’s see if God can do his thing with it. Um, I would think that’s how it started any, anyway.
There was just a very good respect of, of who we were and what the, what it seemed like we were about at the time.
Tommy Woodard: Yeah. Yeah. Eddie taught me to be tough. He was like that friend you make that just got out of prison.
They’re like, it’s an interesting thing because like, there was a lot of our friendship in the early days that would struggle because of competition of trying to be the best, trying to be the funniest, trying to be the smartest, you know. Um, and, and probably somewhere. I don’t know in our early twenties, maybe I’m hoping, we kind of realized, okay, God created us unique.
Like we’re each different. Um, we each have different, um, talents and gifts. And so we don’t have to try to out better. And, and so I think one of the real keys in our friendship was fairly early on I liked like to think, after we’d kind of worked through some things we got to that place of going okay. You know, I will never be as creative as Eddie James is, so I’m not going to try to out-create him, you know?
Um, and, and so we just kind of, I think we complimented each other rather than competing with these.
Eddie James: Yeah. And if you were to ever see us on stage, like, uh, you know, I remember Billy crystal, you know, getting asked about Robin Williams, you know, or, or Billy crystal being asked, Hey, who’s, who’s the, who’s the funniest guy to you?
And he goes, oh my best friend, Robin Williams. I will never be able to think as fast as him. B as quippy as him be reactionary, is he, is. He goes, I just, even when we’re on stage together, I Marvel at what he does because I can’t do it. And it is, it’s a double Dutch jump rope. And I would say the same about Tommy.
If you ever see us live or anything, um, there is a double Dutch jump rope happening still after 30 years of like, I just got to keep up. Um, but, and, and I’m in awe. Will be on stage. And I’m like, where did that? Oh, and I’ll be listening to the audience laugh. He has no idea the audience is laughing. So then that’s how we’re gifted too.
I’m like the director. So I’m half of an actor, but I’m also listening to him and being an audience member at the same time. Going, that is so funny. Oh my goodness. I got to remember that to tell him, to keep saying that. Um,
Tommy Woodard: I’ll be thinking, is there not, oh, there’s an audience. Okay.
Eddie James: There’s a reason behind this beautiful koinonia and all of that.
And I think it just took two people to go, why would we want to oust each other? Or why would we want to, um, hurt each other? Why, why wouldn’t we look at this as good. And then the fact is at Skit Guys, at sdkitguys.com, there is 14 staff people besides us two, you know, and you go from the late nineties when we became quote unquote skit guys, a ministry, we have never sent out a piece promotion about us. It’s the phone from old friends. From old friends, from youth ministry friends to today that what we do today, there was never a let’s take pictures and put it out on a piece of parchment paper and send it to churches. And so I think we look at that as just a real big blessing and to go, this has been given, we need to be honorable with it.
The business side of it, the ministry. All of it. And our friendship comes first. How do we navigate this, um, with what, who we are and what God has given us, to where success or the trappings of words, or, you know, an event, or any of those things we’ve seen, so many people just get bombarded by and swept up or no wave by thinking, oh, this is it.
I’ve made it. And then did you see them crash and burn? I, I, I think two are better than one in this instance where we keep each other accountable to go, Hey, You know, you smell bad. And so do I, let’s just, let’s just stay humble and keep doing this.
Julie Lyles Carr: I do think it’s interesting because when we talk about female friendships versus male friendships and female friendships certainly have their own challenges.
But I, I hear from a lot of women that they’re concerned that they feel like their husbands don’t have a deep guy, friendship with someone. And one of the things that I do wonder about that, I do think you’ve touched on, I’d like to hear you expand a little bit more, is women certainly have their own competitiveness within their relationships, for sure.
But I think that culturally, it feels like it’s even more heightened potentially with guys and particularly guys who are in this field, because a lot of us women included were so defined by our work or how our ministries going or how things are going in the home or how things are going corporately… and when you put two guys on the same playing field in the same, the same sphere, do you, how did you learn to let go of some of that competitiveness? Because I think that it is something that can help us aspire to greater things and to push ourselves farther. We know that if we go out for training for a race and we run with a friend, we typically can run further, farther, faster than we would have if we hadn’t had that pal along.
But at the same time, the danger still exists. You could trip each other. So how have you navigated that place and what is your wisdom through this experience that you can share me. And again, we primarily have female listeners, but a lot of those female listeners are married to guys who may be struggling in terms of trying to find, find friendship.
And maybe they’re looking in places that it’s just going to naturally spur some competition. So how do you guys run well together not throwing elbows, not unintentionally tripping each other or intentionally dripping?
Tommy Woodard: Yeah. That’s a great question. I want to say something before I answer the question that I think that the general idea is that women have better friendships and more friendships, and that men don’t.
I think in reality, women are expected to have friendships, and so they say they do the depth of those friendships, I think is quite questionable. Um, and I think that men have friendships. They just don’t talk about it. Like, it’s just how we’re wired so differently, you know? No guy is going, except for, I think, and no guy is going, you’re my best friend, you know?
I mean, but they’re there, you know. Right. Now having said that, to answer your question, I think we are blessed in the sense that as men, many times, we find our self worth in our job. But if you’ve ever sat on an airplane next to a stranger and they said, what do you do for a living? And you went, I do skits.
You can’t find no self worth in that for churches. Yeah. Well, the followup question is like, oh, have I seen you on TV? Know, are you in comedy clubs? No. Oh, where do you do this? Church.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right before baptisms at church.
Tommy Woodard: Yeah. Yes, exactly. So, you know, we’ve been forced to find self-worth in another place because it’s not going to come from our job, you know. So there’s a natural blessing right there. But I think as, as men, men have to stop finding their self worth and defining themselves in their jobs and their abilities. Um, because it is, it’s just a, it’s a meaningless cycle, uh, you know, because your job’s eventually going to end and you’re going to have to retire. And at some point you, you, you know, you’ve got, you have a retired person who, if they’ve just found their purpose in their job, they’re now purposeless. You know, so I think, I think one of the real keys is recognizing, man, you are God’s creation. He created you for a purpose and it’s not the same purpose as everybody else on this planet. And then you get to learn to celebrate your friends purposes.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right.
Eddie James: There’s a, there’s a great quote. Um, most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. There is something in our caveman instinct to where we don’t know how to use words. And, and, and the sad part is we can, then it gets, you know, scrapped, extrapolated on Disney to where every dad is a bumbling dad, married to the beautiful woman, and we can go on and on and on.
Right. Um, we, we take that, that sense of, I can’t, I can’t say what I feel, but I feel so deeply. And we make it into a meme and a gif, to where men are kind of dumb or ignorant or, you know, or were unsensitive or insensitive to things. But, but I think, I think that line of, I think we all lead lives of quiet desperation, even more so than ever before, men and women.
I know we did a friendship series at our church and and my pastor, you know, people are quoting the pastor and, you know, just a regular sized church, and I’m watching all these women cause it’s the women on Facebook that are talking, not the men emoting. It’s the women that are emoting and it’s, and, and I was so blown away to see so many women be vulnerable over Facebook going,
cause one of the things that was talked about, um, is, uh, when it comes to a friend, you know, to, to confront them, to talk to them about things, you know, and, and you’re watching women go, I don’t have friends like that. I have great, I have PTA friends or I have friends that we kind of get in a little huddle and we can go over here and we can, you know, do this and this and this, but I don’t have any friends that I can really just, just when it comes to the quiet, dark nights of the soul, who do I go to?
And I think we’re all in that boat to some extent. Men just don’t like uh, seem weak. And, but when we can get, intimacy is into me, see when we can get to that intimate word when we can get to that space, I think we all can find a good friend. But it’s hard. I think it’s hard across the board for anyone.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, it is hard. And of course, as we are rounding the corner of final, you know, wrapping up year two of the pandemic, I know that when I was on staff during the tenure that I spent, It was really fascinating because even with women, I felt like I was looked to, to create mechanisms by which women could have friendships, which was really fascinating to me because yeah, I can assign you a mentor, I can assign you to a table, that does not mean ipso, facto, that a friendship is going to burgeon from that. And. It is, it is something I think we really, in our faith communities were struggling with to figure out what it means to be friends and where the line is between friend and get myself a therapist.
I mean, it’s, I’ve seen people just blow past some things and I’m like, whoa, that is, that is some early days for dropping that bomb, you know? So I love that y’all are really exploring what it means to develop friendships. And not only just friendships, but part of what you talk about is lifelong friendships, and the friendship that you have with each other, because I’m, I feel really blessed. To me, one of my very best friends is, um, or do my very best friends are my brothers. So I’ve had these lifelong friendships with them, but one of my brothers was smart enough to marry the girl he fell in love with when he was 12. I’ve known her since she was 12. They didn’t get married at 12. Let me clarify.
They got married in their twenties. But you know, she’s someone I’ve had in my life for a long time. So by proxy, because Rob was smart, uh, I’ve gotten to have Jill in my life for that long. And I have a really deep friendship, um, with a couple of girls that I went to college with. I moved high schools a lot.
So college was where I had to really dig in. I, but I, startled with how infrequent that is for a lot of people. And we have a lot of people coming into our faith communities, looking for friendship, but they don’t know how to be a friend. And when you don’t know how to be it, and we’re not helping people learn how to be it, then they’re still going to feel lonely in their faith communities.
What are some things that you think are hallmarks of how to be a friend. The kind of friend that you have a lifelong friendship with that, you can continue in relationship with through different seasons and challenges and experiences in life, regardless of your gender or your other experiences.
Eddie James: I said that the word needy in high school and, and you, you, you just said it too, like.
We’re all needy. You didn’t say the word needy, but what you described sitting at a table and Cheryl’s going to be a girl mentor, right? Like, like Cheryl’s a great woman. She’s going to sit at the table. Maybe some koinonia will develop between one of them, but then, you know, someone else jumps in and you hear 15 years of a, of a person that’s been hurt. That that’s the word needy. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not, it’s not a horrible thing. Right? We are needy people, especially in the world we live in today. So what I described in high school still goes on today. And to answer your question, I know in my friendship with Tommy, there are still to this day and it’s the vulnerability to be able to go, Hey dude, I just feel real needy. I feel real paranoid. So I’m going to ask you a question. I don’t know if this, I think, I think I’m blowing something way out of proportion, but I’m just going to ask you. Now we’ve made that normal.
Okay. We’ve made that normal over 30 years in a friendship. Tommy saying to me, I feel insecure about this so I’m just going to ask you Eddie. When you’ve developed those types of verbiage things over time that’s that’s where it gets deep and that’s where it gets good, but it all started out. Hey, you want to hang out.
You want to go off bond, want to go see a movie? You want to go do this? And you build those yeses into the deeper layers. But I know still to this day in my hurts, my habits, my hangups, I have done things to my wife, to Tommy, to the, my coworkers, to my kids. I have done things with my baggage that I have to go back and make amends to out of my neediness, out of my paranoia, out of my insecurity as a friend, as a husband, as a father.
And I have to go back and go, I’m sorry, or I have to go, Hey, what did you mean by that? And sometimes you feel really dorky and insecure and weird, but to me, When you’re that honest and open, you’re going to find people that are going to do the same thing for you. And that’s how the friendship builds. But it’s not always unicorns and roses.
It’s not always greatness. It’s a little baby steps along the way to go ahead and be vulnerable. I mean, that, that’s what I would, I would say. That’s what hit me.
Tommy Woodard: Yeah. I think to kind of expounding on what Eddie said about midway, there was on the yeses, like, like one of those keys is to say, yes. Uh, we are so quick to say no these days, you know, Hey, you want to go grab a coffee?
You know, do you want to, I don’t know what you do now. Go bowling. Do you want to go stand six feet apart? Somewhere like, you know, like, and, and, and, you know, We’re so quick just to say no, you know. And, and the, I think you’re going to start developing friends and becoming a good friend when you start saying yes.
Yeah. Why not? You know, I mean, and, and the caveat I would put on that is make sure that it’s healthy for you and legal, you know. If it’s not, please say no. But those yeses, those yeses, as Eddie said, those yeses build up. And it could begin sitting around where, you know, you’ve been assigned at church, but to say, yes, you know, I’m not having that thought in your head of nobody really wants to be with me.
You know, I’m sure, you know. Take a chance. I mean that w we miss out on so many great things, because we just don’t say yes.
Eddie James: Isn’t, that is not amazing how we, we end up writing the end of the chapter. We could be at that table. Uh, no matter who we are, men’s group women’s group, whatever, and we could sit with seven different people and we have already written the end of the chapter to that story, to that hour going, I’m not going to make it with anybody here.
No, one’s going to like me. I don’t fit into all these, all these people are just a notch below Jesus. I am not going to make it here. We will talk ourselves out of anything instead of allowing God. We do the possible and allow God to the impact.
Julie Lyles Carr: Absolutely. You know, I really do hope that people hear in this, that wherever you’re going, wherever you’re trying to seek friendships, if that’s something that you are actively wanting, if you’re feeling that you’re lonely, if you’re feeling that you want to have community,
there is effort that goes beyond just showing up. And I know for some people showing up is a really hard thing to do. I get it. And if you have been wounded before, particularly in a faith community, if you’ve been wounded by a friendship, it can be really hard to show up again. But what I hear both of you talking about is this place that not only being to developing new friendships, and if you’re someone who has lots of friendships, being willing to widen your circle. To serve someone who needs that. But also the place of maintenance. You know, I think a lot of times we talk a lot in marriages about what it requires to have a long-term marriage and the maintenance and the, the humility and the forgiveness and the grace.
But we forget that that can also be the same thing in friendship as well. I think we sometimes have a modality of thinking that friendship, weirdly should be simpler, easier, more copacetic than our marriages. And that’s not really the case. So I love that you are willing to share what you have experienced in your own friendship with each other, and what that has meant.
You have a new book out all about friendship, called Smells Like Bacon, The Skit Guys Guide to Lifelong Friendships. Where can listeners find out more about your and I have to imagine most of them are very familiar with who you are, but there may be some people out there who haven’t heard about the work you do, and this lifelong friendship that y’all have had. So where can they go to find?
Tommy Woodard: Yeah, uh, Julie, they can go to skit guys.com. That’s the easiest way to get there. Um, that’s uh, our website, we have a lot of videos there for churches. We also have a skitguys.com/sgtv, which is just a place to go watch videos and have fun. We created that for the whole family.
Um, we have, uh, three nights a week, something called bedtime Bible Stories where Eddie and I take about, you know, 20 minutes or so. And that’s for the whole family. Uh, we started that when COVID kicked in. We thought it was going to last about, oh, you know, well, COVID was going to last about six weeks. So that’s what we thought.
And we’re now on what we’re calling season five of it. Uh, but you know, it’s just a fun time. Uh, each and every Sunday night, Tuesday night and Thursday night, 7:00 PM central. That’s on, uh, you can find information about that at skitguys.com. And then, um, the book is just available at Amazon or anywhere you buy books.
Eddie James: And Julie with the book, um, Smells Like Bacon, it’s what’s so crazy as everything that we’re talking about today, um, is in there. You know, you talk about saying, yes, that’s in the book. I’m talking about maintenance. We call that the circle of honor friends who are the people that you would hold an honor.
Onus on me taking responsibility for things that you do. Uh, we, we have a chapter in there called the tunnel of chaos. Uh, the tunnel of chaos leads to the tunnel of love. It’s not pretty, it’s not easy. If it’s a marriage or a friendship, but you go through the tunnel of chaos at times, you sit in that ugly goose to get to the beautiful Swan, in a marriage or in a friendship.
And so, everything that we’ve talked about. Those are chapters in our book. We call them little bacon bits and smells like bacon. So it’s fun. It’s funny. And there’s all those bacon bits in there that you can, you can unpack little by little.
Julie Lyles Carr: And you know what? This is the kind of bacon with no nitrates and it will hurt your hips.
Tommy Woodard: That’s it. But it tastes better than Turkey bacon.
Julie Lyles Carr: It just does, you know, well y’all thank you so much for being with me today. Tommy Woodard and Eddie James, the book is Smells Like Bacon. I am just so thankful you guys have stopped by, and I know that you just have a wealth of wisdom that’s really going to help everybody with their friendships, with their outlooks on life and the permission to laugh in church. Thanks so much for all you do.
Eddie James: Yeah. Thanks for having us.
Julie Lyles Carr: Check out the show notes for all the links, info and other goodness from this week’s episode, with a big thank you to our content coordinator, Rebecca. I’ve got a request, please go like and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does make a difference in helping other people find the show. And I’ll see you next week here at the AllMomDoes podcast.