ANTHONY COPPEDGE BLOG ARCHIVE

When the people lose jobs, church giving goes down. When church giving goes down, church consulting becomes scarce. The end result? Re-evaluating my business model and, more importantly, listening for what God wants me to do about it.

Maybe it’s a change in my business model to adapt. Maybe it’s a new business. Maybe it’s employment for someone else (see my resume over on the right hand-side of this blog). All of that requires the same thing: big change

But there’s a problem: I’m not good at BIG change.

It’s odd, really. I thrive on challenge and being able to tweak and streamline. But change? Real, oh-my-God-this-is-hard change? It turns out I’ve had (and will have) a lot to learn about it.

There are three lessons that I’m learning along this road to somewhere. I’ve not got it all figured out, but these three I see clearly. I’ll give ‘em to you up-front and then tell you what I’m learning along the way.

1. God is my provider, not me
2. Humility is a process, not a result
3. I need to learn trust God completely

As a writer, I quite usually formulate my own thoughts and find ways to express those thoughts. Yet this morning I read something very personal, insightful and meaningful from a man I’ve only begun to get to know. He wrote something so beautiful and true to my own life that I found his words far more compelling than my own. Therefore, I’m using the words of Dr. Skip Moen (www.atgodstable.com) as a view into my own life. The parallels are simply amazing, though I’ll readily admit Skip is farther along in his journey and understanding than I am.

Skip writes about his journey through massive life-change and how he compares it to Job (from the Old Testament):

As Job and I travel along this road, we discover that each step of progress is a step away from the expectation of return to the old life. Perhaps that’s the message in the lost children. I have always wondered how Job could ever return to joy no matter what God restored to him if he lived the rest of his life under the specter of the death of his children. But I am beginning to see that the restoration of his fortune is an after-thought. What Job really needed is exactly what I need. Not a return to a better life after collapse but rather a tighter, closer dependence on God so that no external circumstance alters my confidence in His care.

God had to take away the false security I enjoyed to show me the truth of my existence. I am one of the most fragile of His creations. A few degrees change in the global temperature and I am finished. A shift in biological balance, a tiny change in the food chain, a small disturbance in natural resources and my world reveals itself as a very hostile place – from which there is no real protection. The first lesson of life is dependence. It is not a once-learned lesson. It is a continuous reassessment of my daily direction. It goes hand in hand with finite and fragile. Death is not entirely tragic. The presence of death in my world is a very meaningful reminder that I am a totally dependent creature, deliberately designed that way.

The second lesson I learned with Job is humility. Recognizing my inability to provide even the most basic needs of life has given me a new perspective on humility. My existence depends on grace - the grace of God and the grace of God through the hands of others. Desperation is the acid cleanser of pride. Proud people starve. Desperate people bow in humility in order to be fed. There is a reason why Jesus spent his time with the outcasts. They understood what it meant to be unable to care for themselves. Until we learn the lesson of humility, we will be unlikely to see God’s grace when it does come. We will still be shouting, “It’s my right” or “I am entitled.” I must have had a lot of pride because I had to take a great fall. Don’t ask me to be my own god anymore. I don’t have the stomach for it.

Number three at mile marker 365 (one year) is trust. The lesson here is simple: trust takes time. Abraham got up and followed God as a young man. Things looked promising. But over the decades that followed, Abraham learned dependence and humility (in some very stressful ways) until one day, a century after he left home, God said, “Now I know you really love me.” Trust takes time. My battle today is not about dependence. I learned that lesson in relatively short order. When you hit zero, you know it is no longer up to you. Humility took a lot longer. I always thought that if I just worked harder, was smarter, looked for all the angles and did all I could, I would find a way out. I had my pride. I would not take food stamps. But God can’t use a man with pride. Even in bankruptcy, that man is still claiming his own right to the world. Humility is giving up my way.

Trust is a lot more difficult. It is the positive side of the equation. What I have discovered is that trust requires failure. I have to learn through failure that I can’t trust anyone or anything except God and that the only reason I can trust God is because He says I can. Trust is not about being restored. It is about immersion in the character of the restorer, even if nothing ever gets restored. Trust is my learned confidence in who God is, not in what He does. Today, at mile marker 365, my expectations about life are being scraped away. I no longer know where I am going. My personal goal setting has lots of blank spaces. But I am learning to trust the one I follow, even if I don’t know where he is taking me. Some days it seems as though we are heading in the wrong direction. I complain, “But Lord, things looked like they were going to turn around. Why are we walking away now?” He rarely answers me. He just motions - come along. Those are difficult days. For a self-reliant, arrogant, planner like me, becoming a child who just follows along is a big assignment. I’ll need a lot of grace to complete it.

There’s a massive does of wisdom in Skip’s words. They resonated through my mind and spirit. I get what he’s talking about and am learning those three lessons under some stressful situations.

Yet there’s also hope restored to me; not of promise of a financial or employment rescue, but of the very goodness of God to be my provider, healer and comforter.

God’s walking with me on this journey. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m learning that’s OK.

In my last post, I talked about how Apple Care misinformed me about the actual shipping date of my replacement MacBook Pro 17″. Fortunately, I had a recommendation from one of the Apple Care techs to downloaded a shareware version of Carbon Copy Cloner. This software has literally saved my presentations and computing for next week!

By making a true clone back-up of my MacBook Pro hard drive, I’m able to use my wife’s MacBook and boot from my back-up hard drive. The result? I’m working on my Mac again by using the hardware of my wife’s MacBook.

When I’m back from my trip I’ll be able to boot my new MacBook Pro from the back-up drive and simply use Carbon Copy Cloner in reverse to put my back-up onto the new hard drive. Once complete, I simply reboot the new Mac from the internal hard drive and I’m literally using my old Mac - programs, preferences, passwords and all - on new hardware.

On a PC, I’d be out of luck AND spending hours and hours installing software and transferring files.

As a result of this misadventure, I’m making a STRONG recommendation for churches to use Carbon Copy Cloner on ALL of their production Macs as a way to have a real back-up to boot from in case of a simple hard drive failure. Using Firewire 400 or 800 from an external 7200 RPM drive will ensure fast playback of even video loops in software such as Pro Video Player and ProPresenter.

I simply can’t say enough good things about Carbon Copy Cloner! This is MUST HAVE software for your Mac!

I’m a fan of ‘the right tool for the job’ and as such I’ve been a proponent of both Macs and PC’s for years. For most of my uses (business, personal, presentation, editing, graphics) I’ve been a big fan of Apple’s line of Mac products. Unlike many of the die-hard Apple fanatics, I don’t drink the Apple Kool-Aid that says they’re the ultimate company with the ultimate products. I do, however, think that they usually do a much better job of making stable, reliable products and almost always have better customer service.

Usually doesn’t mean ALWAYS, and I’m in what was a preventable situation because of Apple almost getting it right. And that’s why I’m ticked.

Sadly, I’m sitting here typing this up on my blog not on my MacBook Pro 17″, but on a 4 year old desktop PC I had moved away from after my upgrade to Mac. The reason I’m not using my Bluetooth wireless Mac keyboard and Mighty Mouse with my MacBook Pro is because I’ve had well-intentioned people in Apple Care (product warranty for Apple) not communicate some very important details to me during this week. Details such as “your replacement computer won’t get to you in 48 hours as promised because it’s coming from flipping CHINA!!!”

Like all computers, Macs are subject to failure rates. I accept this, which is why I purchased Apple Care to have a full three year warranty on my hefty investment. During the past 34 months, I’ve had three major issues and a couple of minor ones.

The good news: Apple Care looked over my account history and decided that I’d been through enough issues and are sending me a brand new MacBook Pro 17″.

The bad news: Because they have to match the specs as close as possible to the one they’re replacing, adding a 7200 RPM hard drive instead of the standard 5400 RPM hard drive means it’s shipping from CHINA and won’t be here until sometime late next week.

The REALLY bad news: I’m presenting three sessions at WFX next week. I use Keynote on my MacBook Pro. I leave Tuesday morning of next week and, as of this writing, will be without a computer or my presentations (the entire system was backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner onto an external hard drive AND via Time Capsule). Still, no computer, no presentations.

What ticks me off about this is how easily preventable this situation was just a matter of days ago. When the process started, I was ‘guaranteed’ (their words on the phone) by Apple Care that as soon as I shipped off my old Mac, when FedEx scanned in the item, they’d send me the new computer via next day delivery. Max downtime, 48 hours. Wow! That’s awesome customer service!

It turns out that, no, that’s not quite right. Because of the flippin’ 7200RPM hard drive, it’s now gotta come from CHINA. CHINA!!

“We’re sorry, Anthony, but there’s nothing we can do about this inconvenience.” Their one ‘helpful’ solution? GO BUY A NEW COMPUTER AT THE APPLE STORE AND THEY’D LET ME RETURN IT WITH NO RESTOCKING FEE ONCE I’M BACK FROM MY TRIP. Sorry, Apple, not everyone has billions like you do (or, in my case, $3,000) lying around in the bank just waiting to be spent on their products.

I went back and looked through my notes on this situation. To date, I’ve talked with four people in Apple Care, one person in Apple Agreement, one person at the local Apple Store (Southlake, TX - Nanci, the manager has been very nice and helpful, but policy is keeping her hands tied) and one person in Customer Support. 7 Apple people inside of a week. The evidence sure looks like Apple’s left hand (Apple Care) and right hand (Support) don’t communicate together very well.

I’ve tried getting my old computer shipped back (but it was shipped out ground by Apple and is still in route), tried getting them to change the order to a stock computer, tried getting a ‘loaner’, tried talking to supervisors and managers. Heck, I’ve tried everything I know. In the end, I’m stuck because I was given inaccurate information that, coupled with the timing of my trip next week, has me in an impossible situation.

I pay more for Apple products because, usually (though not in the case of my old MBP), they are better products with far better customer support. I seem to be in the small percentage of Apple customers that inevitably slips through the cracks. It just really, really stinks that this slip-up was totally avoidable by Apple and I’m the one stuck out in the cold.

Unhappy and very disappointed with Apple,

Anthony D. Coppedge