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GTO Wives

May 22, 2011 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

“Kay, I know what Keith does, but what do you do?” asked Chris. Some of you may have wondered this same thing. Actually, my role has several parts, but the one that I really like to tell others about is our team wives.

I have the privilege of working with them to discover their niche in ministry and help them be equipped for it.

How do we do this? We pray for each other, practicing new ministry skills, create individual plans for our personal development and discuss issues we face as wives and mothers in full-time ministry.

Shannon wrote,

“If you get a chance would you pray for a neighborhood women’s outreach we’re having at our house tonight? It’s called “Sweet Monday” and we hope it will be a venue to help build deeper relationships with women in our neighborhood.

Several of my friends and I have invited a few dozen ladies in our subdivision to come for a time of dessert, fun, and getting to know each other. It is a simple gathering that we hope communicates how deeply Jesus loves us as we love one another.”

Sweet Monday is creative evangelism that reaches out to women one sweet invitation at a time for Christ. Women laugh a lot, learn from each other and leave with a simple introduction to Jesus Christ. Shannon and her friends are seeing some of their neighbors begin a personal relationship with Jesus.

God has given me a passion to help women succeed. I could spend hours talking about all the ways our team wives are using their giftedness–Tammy the organizer, Lei the mentor, Ingrid the evangelist, JoAnne the discipler, Stacey the blogger, Holly the servant, Andi the planner, Kathy the giver….

We are touching lives of other women and families that God has brought into our lives. Together we are making a difference.

An Appointment with the Lord

April 26, 2011 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Today, Kay and I have an appointment with the Lord.

“Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees.” Corrie ten Boom

Today, Kay and I are engaging in the real action.

“Prayer is where the action is.” John Wesley

Today, Kay and I are engaging in the greater work.

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.” Oswald Chambers.

“I have seen many work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a person pray without working.” James Hudson Taylor

Today, Kay and I join thousands of Campus Crusade for Christ staff around the world keeping an appointment with God to engage in the real action and the greater work. Today is our Worldwide Day of Prayer.

An Experiment

April 21, 2011 by Keith Seabourn 3 Comments

I’m sitting outside the Apple store. Stunned. Replaying the conversation in my head.

“You can do without your computer for 5-7 business days, right?”

Gulp! “Um, I thought that if I called ahead, had an appointment, explained the exact problem in detail over the phone, made sure you had the parts, then you could repair it while I waited.”

“Well, we don’t have onsite repair personnel during the day. Only in the evenings. Whenever we need to put a computer on the bench, we allow 5-7 business days.”

“Oh, wow! The ONE thing I forgot to make sure about!”, I thought.

The Apple store Genius at the Genius Bar really had done an excellent job. She had been very courteous. She knew her stuff. She had quickly disassembled my Mac notebook and diagnosed the problem. I thought that the external case was bent preventing the DVD drive from ejecting a DVD. She had realized that the internal optical drive was bent also. AND SHE APPEARED TO BE ABOUT 20 YEARS OLD! How do they train this stuff into their people, I wondered. (But that is the topic of a future post, maybe.)

So, I’m leaving my primary leadership tool with the Geniuses. I lead a large, distributed part of the organization. Almost everything I do is through my computer: email, Skype, documents, calendar, blogging, engaging in discussion forums. I’m what is called a knowledge worker, and my tools are computer-based.

Fortunately, two recent actions make it possible for me to keep leading without much interruption.

My colleague Russ Martin influenced me to move everything I do into “the cloud.” I store all documents online. Dropbox. Google documents. Evernote.

My colleague Ken gifted me an iPad. We need to explore tablets. As part of my forward-looking leadership, I’ve wondered if I could use only a tablet for my work. Io think the Lord is giving me an opportunity to try it out! This blog post is my first action in the experiment!

I also have a very powerful smartphone (Android-based Google Nexus) and use it to read and reply to email, Google docs, Evernote…

With the combination of cloud-based documents, a powerful tablet iPad, and a powerful smartphone, I’ll test out life without a notebook computer.

I think I’m glad it’s the Easter holidays! Although they don’t count as business days, it is a change of focus for a while.

(Note: Perhaps the young Genius saw that my countenance had fallen, and because we have a business account, she declared that my notebook was “business critical” so I’m expedited to 1-2 day service.)

What tools do you use that are cloud-based?

Simplify

March 28, 2011 by Keith Seabourn Leave a Comment

Have you noticed how things tend towards increasing complexity? As time goes by, layers are added. Things are piled on.

I like the approach promoted by Ward Cunningham, the inventer of the wiki. He asks, “Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution. You are always taught to do as much as you can. I say, forget all that and ask yourself, ‘What’s the simplest thing that could possibly work?’”

Have you noticed that things that begin as a neighborly conversation between co-workers can escalate into a policy-based, governance-moderated process? In an effort to codify into a repeatable process, complexity can be added to both the development process and to the final solution.

Let me apply this in the area in which I lead: technology development.

In The Power of Less, Leo Babauta suggests that simplicity is a two step process. To paraphrase Babauta and apply it to technology systems development, the two step process is: identify the essential elements of what your solution should do, and then eliminate the rest. In the era of extreme programming and rapid application development, don’t build into this version what is not needed until next version. (Kind of the technology implementation of Jesus’ teaching “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

Why do we tend towards increasing complexity?

I think it is driven by a scarcity mindset rather than abundance mindset. Complexity is an effort to become efficient because time and money is scarce. But if we can find ways to keep things as simple as possible, we open opportunities for others to engage with us. We can leverage our network.

Jesus contrasted complex prayer and simple prayer (Matthew 6:7-13).

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words [added complexity]. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

Simple prayer. Only the essential elements. What is the simplest prayer that can convey my heart?

Like simplicity in prayer, simplicity in technology is a powerful path towards effective solutions.

In what ways have you seen simplicity move the mission forward?

Technologies for a startup church

March 24, 2011 by Keith Seabourn 2 Comments

Dad, I’m pretty sure I’ll be asked to set up the church local area network (LAN) when I join Imago Dei church. I’ll probably set up some type of internet connection. What do you recommend for our startup church for file sharing, printer sharing, and internet connection?

My son is finishing his degree from Dallas Seminary and will join a startup church in Phoenix. He’s pretty sure his electrical engineering training from Texas Tech means he’ll be the technology guy.

You may be surprised at my answer.

I suggested that he not build much technology infrastructure. I suggested that they use cloud-based technologies like Google Apps (docs, calendar), Dropbox, WordPress.com, and others. I suggested that they purchase an internet service for their church office but no servers. Just use a wifi network. Purchase a network-capable printer or use a less expensive printer with an inexpensive print server. For my home network, I use a D-Link DP-300U device I purchased on eBay.

How would you have answered the question?