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Archives for March 2009

Aborted take-off

March 24, 2009 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Thai Air
Thai Air

Thai Airways flight TG325 was roaring down the runway in Bangkok, Thailand. It was after 1 am and I was sleepily waiting for takeoff of our flight from Thailand to Bangalore, India. I remember thinking, “We’re taking longer than usual to take-off. It seems like we should have rotated nose up by now. Maybe the engines on this Airbus A300 are not as powerful as other planes and the take-off run is longer.”

About that time, the pilot slammed on the brakes. Hard. The seat belt tugged. Kay and I were both wide awake now.

It takes a while to get 19 tons traveling at 170 miles per hour slowed down. Three hundred people on flight TG325 were  hoping there was enough runway left.

There was. The Thai pilot was a professional. He did all the right things and we were always safe.

As we turned around to taxi back towards the terminal, Kay commented that she had prayed twice during the evening for our flight to India. She had felt an unusual prompting to pray. The Lord was preparing the pilot, the flight crew, and us for an aborted take-off experience. Kay’s prayers were a part of that preparation.

That is why your prayers are important. Air travel is pretty routine. Except when it isn’t! We do it all the time. It’s amazing how regularly flights take off and land safely. Baggage arrives as expected most of the time.

God allows things to happen “normally” most of the time. Most things are so “normal” that we forget to “pray without ceasing.” But sometimes, he has special opportunities to trust him built into our daily schedule. I don’t know whether it’s special faith-building opportunities, or whether the always-present-but-rarely-seen spiritual warfare breaks out in a skirmish in our part of reality.

But prayer is a very important part of both faith-building and war-fighting. I wrote a few months ago about an amazing thought from John Piper (click here to view Piper video clip):

God, the sovereign ruler of the universe, has ordained that prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray. When James 4:2 says ‘you do not have because you do not ask’, it doesn’t mean ‘you would have anyway even if you did not ask because I’ve got a plan’.

This was a difficult trip from the perspective of airlines and travel. Long flights. Missed connections. Delays. Missing bags.

But in the end, we had one of the most profitable meetings of our global technology leadership that we’ve had. Ever. And we trained 30 leaders in India how to use our measurement system to capture statistics and stories of the amazing things God is doing in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. They will soon train their hundreds of staff. We will soon be even better able to publish abroad the amazing things God is doing throughout that entire region of the world.

And prayer is a major a part. Prayers were part of getting us to Thailand and to India. Prayers were part of the effectiveness of the training. And prayers will help Sam and Robin and Bibisho and others as they lead in helping everyone know someone who truly follows Jesus.

“Prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray.”

Filed Under: ccc, Prayer Requests, Thoughts, Travel

Beware of Quicken Starter upgrade limitation

March 23, 2009 by Keith Seabourn 6 Comments

Quicken no-convert warning screen
Quicken no-convert warning screen

OK. I’m not happy. This is a not-so-happy post about my favorite money manager, Quicken. I did the buy-TurboTax+Quicken-and-get-$30-rebate thing. As I installed Quicken, I was informed that the Starter edition “can’t convert a data file from a previous version of Quicken”!!!

This is enough of a change that Quicken felt the need to alert me before installing itself. That’s a good move. It would have been even better if I had been alerted before I purchased the product!

I grabbed the original box and checked to see if I’d missed some fine print. Well, I kind of did, maybe. In the really fine print, the box says “Quicken Started Edition 2009 imports data from Quicken 2008 only.” I have Quicken 2002 on my computer. I’m on the road and have Quicken 2008 at home but never upgraded. So, I don’t know which is correct yet — the inside of the box or the warning dialog box. The dialog box did not say my version was too old, it said none, nada, zippo conversions from previous versions.

So, now I don’t know what to do. Do I pay for the upgrade to another Quicken version so I can use it while on the road? Or do I wait until I get home, install Quicken 2008 to see if Quicken 2009 can convert data files from Quicken 2008?

Any of you have ideas?

Update: I’ve spent about 2 hours researching this “can’t convert a data file from a previous version of Quicken” problem. It’s real. The Quicken Community forums have some unhappy long-time users of Quicken. (Read here…) I found this statement in the forums: “The Starter Edition is for new users only. You cannot open a Quicken file from a previous version with the Starter Edition. You will need to upgrade to Quicken Deluxe or higher to convert and open your Quicken data file.”

Looks like the marketing folks went overboard in segmenting the market.

Filed Under: Personal

Good followership

March 12, 2009 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

I read a good article this morning: Good Followership by Janie B. Cheaney (World Magazine). I appreciated her insight, near the end, “good followership relies on trust – in the Head, not the man.”

This has been an important lesson throughout my life. I know it’s important because God keeps helping me learn it, and relearn it, and relearn it, and relearn it… This lesson, which I’ve never seemed to learn, has names associated with it – Jim, Don, Yemi, Tim, Stan, Mike, Roger. I can recall the hard parts of followership associated with each of these leaders I’ve had.

You’d think that I’d catch on and finally pass the application test. Must be something about a hard Seabourn head.

God wants me to look through the difficulties I’m having with _____ (fill in the blank with your personal adversary in a leadership role). God wants me to not even see _____, but to see Him — the sovereign, in charge, never confused Creator King whose #1 purpose in my life is to help me conform to the image of Jesus Christ. He knows that the greatest good to Keith comes when Keith is most like Jesus Christ. And the best way to become more like Jesus Christ is to allow the difficulties in life to chip away at anything that doesn’t look like Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t know of some of those un-Christlike areas unless I had leaders I have difficulty following. Unless I have experiences that I’d rather not have.

As the author of the article puts it, “If our leaders take a wrong turn, God can correct them with useful lessons learned. If we throw away some good years following the wrong man, God can restore those years. An infinitely creative Father can even create good from evil. In fact, it’s His specialty—if we trust Him, and continually ask, what would He have us do?”

There are specific answers that we have to wrestle with – do I change to a different ministry? Do I move to a different church?

But I think the first answer to “What would He have us do?” is to look through the leader to the Lord who is using the leader to help me become more like Jesus Christ. I think that once we’ve answered this correctly, then the specific answers have a more appropriate, seemingly-lesser urgency. Like the Scott Krippayne song says:

Sometimes He calms the storm
And other times He calms His child

Filed Under: Thoughts Tagged With: followship, transformational leadership

Rwanda internet

March 11, 2009 by Keith Seabourn 1 Comment

Got this today from a friend visiting Rwanda. She had not expected to have any kind of internet connection so she did not plan on participating in a conference call today. Life is changing, around the world!

This place in Rwanda has wireless internet!!!  I have no idea how widely they have it at the hotel, for example, I don’t know if it reaches my room.  I’m in the meeting room at the moment.  This is amazing. The “shower” in my room is one where you have to stand in a bucket. That is, adding a shower to the room was an afterthought. It does have an instant hot water heater in the showerhead, but it didn’t work this morning. So, a bucket shower with a water heater that doesn’t work but with newly installed wireless access point!

Filed Under: Stories, Travel

Leading with Power :: Prayer

March 7, 2009 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

You can now pray for our Global Technology team. We’re producing a monthly prayer calendar online. Click here to get to the prayer calendar.

I’ve been impressed by God with the thought of leading with power. There are many facets to leadership. There are skills that improve my effectiveness. There are heart attitudes that qualify me for effectiveness as a leader.

Leading with power is what I’m learning now. The power source is God, and God’s power is unleashed through prayer. I took a huge step in understanding this last fall when I watched a short video of John Piper explaining that prayer cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray. I wrote about that here.

One of the staff on our team has created this online prayer calendar. Leading with power. I invite you to pray regularly for the Global Technology team. Let’s unleash God’s power.

Filed Under: Prayer Requests Tagged With: leading with power

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