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50 years of God’s goodness

July 30, 2026 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Keith and Kay in robes Kay and I celebrated 50 years with Campus Crusade for Christ in July. Here are some highlights over the years. We’ve also documented these years in a Google Photo Album here.

See Photos

The Nigeria years (1976–1992)

This journey begins in 1976 at the Campus Crusade for Christ headquarters in San Bernadino, CA. Keith, Kay and baby Jennifer attended training before arriving in Nigeria in March of 1977.
Teaching Electronics and Discipling Leaders in Bukuru, Nigeria. Keith served as the head of the electronics department, where he taught vocational skills and discipled students and teachers. Keith and Kay led couples Bible studies with other lecturers. Among those discipled was Peter Agu, who is now a university professor and a major ministry leader himself. God added Daniel and Jonathan to complete our family.
Translating and Dubbing the JESUS Film: Keith directed the production, dubbing, and recording of the JESUS film into 10 major West African languages which made the Gospel accessible to millions of people in their own native languages. Kay typed the scripts in languages she could not understand. Keith developed a wordless Four Spiritual Laws and follow-up sessions to enhance ministry among oral cultures.
Kay actively ministered to women by leading discipleship Bible studies and participating in the Women’s Bible Study Fellowship. She also coordinated physical fitness classes for women and faithfully played the organ for morning church services.
Kay taught second grade at Hillcrest School, a missionary school located in Jos: Kay served the missionary community and local families by teaching second grade and later elementary physical education at Hillcrest School in Nigeria. She considered it a great privilege to help children from diverse nationalities learn to trust Christ while providing them with a quality physical and academic education.
Evangelism, Discipleship and Church Training: From 1977 to 1992, the Seabourns served full-time in Bukuru and Jos with the Great Commission Movement of Nigeria (the local name for Campus Crusade for Christ), training laypeople to use print, video, and audio tools for evangelism and discipleship.
Assisting Other West African Nations: In the early 1990s, the Seabourns expanded their reach by helping other West African countries record and dub the JESUS film. This included Keith travelling to Gambia to record the film in Mandinka, as well as producing languages for Ghana and Sierra Leone.

The Faculty Ministry years (1992–2001)

Keith pioneered internet outreach by launching the “Telling the Truth” project and Leadership University. These platforms equipped Christian professors and students worldwide with apologetics resources to defend their faith and share the gospel. Joining Christian Leadership Ministries (CLM, now renamed Faculty Commons) in 1992 after returning to the U.S., Keith was tasked with exploring the new Worldwide Web. In 1994, he officially pioneered and launched Internet Ministry. By 2001, this family of websites had ministered to more than 20 million visitors, serving over 18 million truth articles to individuals in 134 countries.
Kay successfully maintained CLM’s nationwide network of over 10,000 university professors, verifying addresses and ensuring faculty members received The Real Issue publication. Her diligent administrative work was essential in equipping these educators to use their platforms of influence for Christ.
Keith established the Virtual Faculty Office Project: To counter the popular misconception that scholarship and Christianity are incompatible, Keith created Virtual Faculty Offices on Leadership University. This project allowed Christian university professors to publish scholarly writings and personal testimonies, growing from 16 to 47 offices online by 2001.

The Global Technology years (2001–2013)

Keith and Kay established the Global Technology Office: Upon Keith being selected as the first executive-level Chief Technology Officer for Campus Crusade for Christ in late 2001, Keith and Kay established the Global Technology Office to help identify, build, and deploy strategic digital solutions across the global organization. Kay led the wives of technology staff to find places to engage in ministry since they sometimes felt disconnected at the global headquarters. This new role required moving to the CCCI- HQ in Orlando in 2003. Daughters-in-love Michelle and Meredith joined the family and we were blessed with five grandchildren during this era.
Keith founded the MinistryNet Global Conferences: Beginning with Budapest in 2005, Keith founded the MinistryNet conferences. These gatherings equipped ministry leaders from dozens of countries to build strategic digital plans, eventually leading to the establishment of Digital Strategies as a core ministry strategy of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Kay coordinated critical logistics and administration for massive global conferences, including the Pamoja Africa gathering. During this continent-wide event, she assisted with registration for 2,400 people and helped facilitate computer training labs for African staff.
Keith led the development of the Global ConneXion Community Platform: Keith’s team developed and rolled out mygcx.org (Global ConneXion), a community platform that saw the rapid formation of over 4,000 unique “communities of purpose” to facilitate global peer-to-peer collaboration.
Kay utilized her skills to train women leaders from various countries, equipping them to use digital strategies and share their faith. Kay’s training in education was invaluable in helping equip and resource Cru staff.
Keith led the innovative mLearning (mobile learning) initiative to deliver seminary courses via mobile phones. By loading courses like the “Essentials of Christian Living” onto microchips, he enabled pastors in remote African villages to receive vital leadership training.

The Global Church Movement years (2013–present)

Keith and Kay refined church planter training materials: Keith and Kay led a team to refine and improve GCM’s core church planter training, called MC² (Multiplying Churches and Communities).
Keith and Kay travelled globally Launching Church Planting Initiatives: Taking numerous trips to Africa in 2013 and following years, Keith and Kay began to train MC² trainers. Training conferences inspired and mobilized pastors and denominations to engage in the Great Commission. They visited over 60 countries around the world during this era.
Keith coached Global Church Movements (GCM): Keith coached GCM leaders like Ignatius (Kenya), George (Nigeria) and Adama (Mali). Later leaders were Apollos (Nigeria), Tamadji (Chad), Miktile (Ethiopia) and so many others. Since 2010, 314,905 new churches and missional communities have been planted.
Keith and Kay model long-term engagement in the Great Commission: In recent years, Keith and Kay have spoken and modeled marriage and lifetime engagement in the Great Commission.
Keith helped found and launch Coalition of the Willing: Keith is a founding board member of Coalition of the Willing (COTW), a multi-organization collaboration to see a church planted in every village among every people. The iShare tool built for Campus Crusade for Christ and then donated to COTW is used to track every village and identify gaps where there are no local churches.

Refresh and Renew :: U.S. Staff Conference

July 8, 2022 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Dr. Tariku Fufa is the Global Church Movements leader for the Africa region. Kay and I work with Tariku and Buze, his wife, as they lead in Africa. We give strategic support.

We recently completed the first face-to-face conference for the entire African region. We called it Addis22 meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

During this conference, we strategized and planned a massive church-planting focus for the month of May this year. The results of this 30-day focus were staggering and humbling. Through diverse strategies like personal evangelism, mass media and digital outreach, Jesus Film shows, compassionate outreaches distributing clothing and food, Bible distributions and follow-up of new believers, we saw God do amazing things.

256 trainings equipped 22,357 trainees for church planting.
1,672 new churches and groups planted.
863,145 people heard the gospel of Jesus through personal and mass evangelism.
101,566 people prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.

This fruit came through 30 days of prayer and fasting, training, evangelism, discipleship and intentional group and church formation. The Addis22 conference was a significant time to pray and plan, to refresh and reconnect with God’s mission, and to prepare for this 30-day church planting focus.

Conferences can be very helpful in reconnecting us with God and his heart for the lost. They are times of peer learning and iron-on-iron sharpening.

Next week, Kay and I will join 5,000 staff at Cru’s U.S. staff training in July. This time together refreshes our vision, renews our call, and prepares us for our next year of ministry.

Stories from around the world

March 10, 2020 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

“The nation of Equatorial Guinea in West Africa is certainly experiencing new waves in the planting of churches since the country’s independence in 1968. The 72 church planters we trained in September 2018 in the Multiplying Churches and Communities strategy have planted 147 churches in the last 12 months.” – Apollos Jabbo, Global Church Movements leader, West Africa

“In an undisclosed country in Southeast Asia, currently there are an estimated 45,000 local churches, up from 25,000 in 2007.” – John Becker, VP for Global Collaboration, GACX

“By the grace of God, all the churches in Chad are working together in the harvest and are now fasting and praying together for the nation and the growth of God’s kingdom.” – Tamadji Moyalbaye, Global Church Movements leader, Chad

“Last week, more than 60 Cru USA staff and partners attended our first US Global Church Movements staff conference, and we are ready to partner with churches and mission organizations and launch a national church multiplication movement.” – Dave Robinson, national director, US Global Church Movements

“Arobogast Henga, a former fisherman from an island in Lake Victoria, Tanzania has experienced an amazing multiplication of churches with 25 generations in two years.” – Dismas Shekalaghe, Global Church Movements leader, Southern & Eastern Africa

Plumb lines

April 4, 2015 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

When things go bad, it’s seldom because of a disagreement about the destination. It’s almost always a squabble over the day-to-day itinerary, the pace, or the best route to get from here to there. [Larry Osborne, Sticky Teams]

How do you build a team culture? Culture is about how we behave, why we behave the way we do in our organization or team. It’s more complicated that posters on the wall.

Rohan Dredge, in Creating and Discovering Culture, develops some ideas on creating culture. His point: “Listen deeply to what is already in the organisation and evaluate courageously who you need to be to accomplish your mission.” He proposed good parts of the process.

I was in an organization where the director gave a talk every year on the ethos of the organization. It was the first time I had experienced that kind of talk. It was a good part of the process and one which I continued when I became an organizational director.

But I think Larry Osborne has outlined an effective culture-shaping process in his book Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page. The chapter is Staff Alignment and the topic is what Osborne calls plumb lines.

Here are some excerpts:

When things go bad, it’s seldom because of a disagreement about the destination. It’s almost always a squabble over the day-to-day itinerary, the pace, or the best route to get from here to there.

The most powerful tool I’ve found for overcoming these differences and for making sure that my staff is aligned in terms of their day-to-day values and decisions is something I call “ministry plumb lines.”

The purpose of plumb lines is to clarify how we plan to go about reaching the lost or glorifying God in this church at this time.

Effective leaders are almost always a little bit weird. They approach ministry and life a few degrees off center. That’s what sets them apart. They see and sense things that others miss. But sadly, most leaders have no tool to communicate their thought process or the unique values and perspective that drive their decisions. Again, that’s where the value of plumb lines comes in. It gives your staff and team something to gauge their own thought processes, assumptions, and decisions by. It gives them a track to run on.

If forced to choose between a great mission statement and a clear set of plumb lines, I’d choose the plumb lines every time. That’s because the devil and most disagreements are in the details. I find it relatively easy to get our entire staff headed in the same direction and aiming at the same goal. I find it much more difficult to ensure that everyone is taking the same route to get there.

I had wrongly assumed that alignment around our mission and goals automatically meant agreement about the best methods to get there.

What Osborne is talking about is creating an organizational culture that lives out the mission and values in daily decisions by every member of the organization. That’s culture.

Seeing an example of Osborne’s plumb lines in one area is very clarifying:

North Coast Church’s Plumb Lines for World Missions

Everyone needs Jesus. Since no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, we will give top priority to ministries and missions that actually bring people to Christ rather than those that focus solely on meeting physical needs.
All people are of equal value in the sight of God. Therefore, we will give top priority to ministries and missions where the harvest and return on investment is greatest.
The local church is God’s plan A. There is no plan B. Therefore, we will give top priority to ministries and missions that either plant churches or build up existing local churches.
Middlemen just get in the way. Therefore, we will not function as a middleman filtering communication or doling out financial support. Instead, we will encourage direct contact between our people and the missionaries and organizations they support. This will result in a less impressive missions’ budget, but it will produce far greater hands-on kingdom involvement.

Each begins with a cultural value statement then embeds that value of the church into a practical action. Osborne says this is how the church extends it’s values throughout the organization with consistency.

Who does your team need to be to accomplish your mission and how are you developing those values?

Getting to 4th generation church multiplication

October 5, 2014 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

“If you are not getting to fourth-generation church multiplication, it is probably because you are going too slow.”

I sat back in my chair in the restaurant and thought about the boldness of that statement. I had been invited into this conversation with George Patterson by Jared Nelms and Koudjo Nenonene of The Timothy Initiative. George is a retired church planting missionary.

George went on to say, “To get to 4th generation church multiplication, go fast. When you go fast, people focus on obedience and on following the commands of Christ. When you go slow, people focus on knowledge and on getting the details right. Multiplication is usually a casualty.”

George was saying that rather than focus initially on depth of knowledge and the right details, which will come over time, focus primarily on obedience and on rapid reproduction immediately after salvation. This missional DNA is the health that will grow churches. Depth and maturity will result over time as healthy churches obey Christ and grow.

George emphasized baptizing as soon as practical and engaging new believers in sharing Christ with their family and friends immediately after salvation. George also talked about the basic commands of Christ that needed to be taught in the first weeks of a new church. He identified seven general commands of Christ that he sees demonstrated in the early church in Acts 2:37-47:

Repentance, belief, and receiving the Holy Spirit through regeneration.
Baptism
The breaking of bread in the Lord’s supper
Loving your neighbor and impacting the community
Prayer
Giving
Making disciples

George feels that these basic commands of Christ are crucial in the first few weeks of a new believer’s life and the early weeks of a new church’s life. He said, “If you are not teaching the basic commands quickly, Satan will rush in and fill the new believers with good things, biblical things that keep them from crowning Christ as Lord. The key is obedience to Jesus’ commands, not knowledge of doctrine or theology.”

If you would like to hear more from George Patterson, I found an excellent interview online courtesy of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.