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Remaining Dangerous

March 8, 2013 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Are you infected?

There is an insidious disease among Christians. Over time, we often lose our willingness to do daring and dangerous things, especially within a fulltime vocational organization, and ESPECIALLY when we are in a headquarters and distant from the rawness of field engagements with the kingdom of darkness.

I watched Act of Valor recently. It opens with a thought that the worst thing about growing old is that other men stop seeing you as dangerous. I’m not sure about that statement, but it got me to wondering, does Satan view me as dangerous? Am I still dangerous to the kingdom of darkness?

J.B. Philips wrote

The real danger for professing Christians lies not in the more glaring and grosser temptations and sins, but in a slow deterioration of vision, a slow death to daring, courage, and a willingness to adventure.

While searching the internet for this quote, I found J.B. Philips on Vision.

You’ve heard the saying, “The best Defense is a good Offense.” Yet often, as professing Christians, our focus is more on sin management—not dropping the ball—than building a thirst for the end-zone. It’s as if we only possess a Defensive Playbook—worrying more about being scored against, than scoring. But vision, daring, courage and adventure are in the Offensive Playbook. And the more we practice plays from that book the less our Defense needs to be on the field.

I like the phrase “building a thirst for the end-zone.”

To often in Christian circles, our focus is more getting along with each other rather than scoring. We feel often feel on the defensive, explaining ourselves to each other, making sure all the right people are included, moving ahead slowly and tentatively.

As I thought through some of these things, different people came to mind. People who I have known as dangerous to Satan and his kingdom.

Who is the most dangerous follower of Jesus you know? Maybe it’s someone you know now. Maybe it’s someone you worked with in the past.

What attracted you to this person? What character traits?

Send an email to this person today, if he/she is still alive. Thank them for modeling dangerous living, thirsting for the end-zone, refusing to be safe.

Filed Under: ccc, Personal, Thoughts

Asking Who before What

February 27, 2013 by Keith Seabourn 4 Comments

Stan Oakes taught me to ask Who? before I ask What?.

I’m a Birkman red leader. I’m a strategic thinker and planner. I tend to quickly see a path forward and launch aggressively. I tend to start towards a solution quickly and clean it up as I go. My mind gravitates toward questions like

  • What are the success criteria?
  • What are the milestones?
  • What are the next steps?
  • What resources are needed?

When we were conceiving of the Leadership University web project (www.leaderu.com), Stan would always lead by asking questions like

  • Who else should we invite into this project?
  • Who should lead this part?
  • Who can contribute?
  • Who has done something like this before and knows the pitfalls?

And I learned a new leadership focus.

Jim Collins addresses this Who? then What? focus in his powerful style. This is worth 3 of your minutes if you are a leader.

Using Who? then What?, Stan went on to re-launch The King’s College in the most famous address in the U.S., the Empire State Building.

What are you leading that could benefit from a Who? focus?

Filed Under: ccc, gto, Leadership Tagged With: Leadership

Using Facebook

November 22, 2012 by Keith Seabourn 1 Comment

“How do I use Facebook to share Christ with my friends?”, asked the student.

Kay and I were asked this question several times last week. We were in College Station, Texas participating in Grace Bible Church’s GO missions conference.

Perhaps you have been asking this question also.

Our internet ministry colleagues in Ethiopia have invited people to join in a day of using Facebook to share God’s love with Facebook friends. 244 people will spend time on Saturday, November 24th using Facebook as a platform for reaching out. Maybe their plans can help you with some creative ideas.

The objectives of this Facebook outreach are to encourage students to share the good news with their friends and to create multiple opportunities for them to know Jesus. Some of the strategies we are going to use are

  • Sharing short personal testimonies on video or text (Here is an excellent worksheet to help you prepare to tell your story)
  • Using Short films (See the Global Short Film Network site for excellent films. Also, the IAmSecond.com site has excellent testimony films.)
  • Sending private messages to their “Inbox”
  • Sharing Bible verses (Colleague Miheret has suggested 20 encouraging Bible verses here)
  • Sharing pictures

How are you using Facebook to live out your faith among your network of friends?

 

Filed Under: ccc, Ministry Tagged With: evangelism, social media

Management and Leadership

August 1, 2012 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Bestselling author Seth Godin says:

Management and leadership are totally different things. You think you are being a leader, but you are probably being a manager. Managers figure out what they want done and get people to do it. Managers try to get people to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper with a few less defects. But this is not leadership.

Leadership is about finding the right people, agreeing where you want to go, and getting out of the way. Leadership means embracing the failure of your people if it will lead to growth. Leadership means not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, just knowing its going to take you where you want to go.

Watch the video on Michael Hyatt’s blog.

Godin obviously has his preferred explanation of leadership and management based on his successes in life. He didn’t go bankrupt although he almost did. But more startups fail than succeed, so his rosy “Leadership means not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, just knowing its going to take you where you want to go” is foolish apart from a trust in God’s sovereignty and plan. Perhaps a better philosophy is: Leadership doesn’t meant you know what is going to happen tomorrow, but it does mean you are confident it will take you where God wants you to go.

There are good insights in this video. He actually covers many topics with a common theme of modern leadership.

  • Management and leadership.
  • Being willing to lead through the hard decision to fire unprofitable customers. In my leadership in a non-profit mission organization, I translate this into making the hard decisions to cancel a project or terminate an agreement that has become a barrier to moving ahead with our strategic plan.
  • Do remarkable work that people cannot live without. Don’t settle for being a little cheaper or better than the next guy.
  • Don’t wait for improved conditions, rather ship now, deliver results now.
  • Put your work out there and allow a tribe to gather around who like what you do rather than going after those who don’t like what you do.

Filed Under: ccc, gto, Leadership Tagged With: Leadership

You are connected

April 8, 2012 by Keith Seabourn 4 Comments

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Did you know? 
You are connected to the Mountain of Fire Celebration Centre, a recently planted church in the small village of 
Sensi, Kenya?

This is David
David Rogers who was completing his PhD and thought that his research could be used to advance missions in remote areas by training and discipling via a mobile phone. It was David
who shared an idea with Keith
Keith Seabourn who realized this was an important strategic direction and committed the Global Technology Office to lead Campus Crusade in this area. It was Keith
who asked Jerry
Jerry Hertzler to give leadership to helping get prototype mobile learning courses developed and implemented. It was Jerry
who worked with George
George Mamboleo the African leader of the Go North church planting program, who recognized that mLearning could deliver needed training for this project to plant 20,000 churches in Africa.
At the same time Mike
Mike Waid had joined Jerry’s mLearning team. Mike leads a Bible study group in Orlando in which there is a Kenyan banker
who is named Robinson
Robinson Mokua who is also helping plant churches in Kenya. He had helped Nahason Mayaka plant the Mountain of Fire Celebration Centre church. But Nahason lacked basic pastoral training. From Mike, Robinson learned about the Pastors Training in Leadership in a mobile phone which became possible in Kenya when coordinators were identified
who Kay
KaySeabourn and Mark and Karin trained to use mobile phones to train church planters in their country. Kay and I are able to participate in this chain
because of You
You and your prayers and gifts in response to God at work in and through you.

Kay and I thank you for the critical part you contribute to helping ministry happen around the world!

Filed Under: ccc, Prayer Letters Tagged With: mlearning

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