Apple came through by pushing my unit through some pretty impressive hoops and got my new (replacement to my broken MacBook Pro) MacBook Pro to me the day before I head out to WFX in California! Yes, I’m happy, but this is a great lesson in several things that apply to anyone at any organization.

Here’s the three takeaways for Apple or any organization that wants a loyal clientele:

• Communicate between departments (or ministries)
• Don’t let the “Standard Procedure” get in the way of highly unique situations
• Customer Service (or a hospitality/greeting ministry) matters more than you think

When Apple Care learned of their mistake, they first tried to simply follow standard procedure and told me, in essence, “we’re sorry, we messed up, but there’s nothing we can do about it”. But with persistence, it turns out that, yes, there’s a highly unusual way for them to work between departments, clarify some procedure (and hopefully follow up with some internal training) and make the situation right.

Because departments (or ministries) are filled with people, the standard operating procedure is in place to make the typical stuff flow smoothly. But the atypical stuff needs to be addressed by people, not policy. Making the atypical situation custom requires a bit more effort but, in the end, a raving fan of their can-do attitude and someone that now has a better story to tell my friends than the one of the failure on Apple’s part.

Because a couple of key people took some extra time, I was taken care of and my needs were met. They righted the wrong of their system and have gone above-and-beyond to make things work out right. That is great customer service! In the same way, when someone has an issue at church, giving them pat answers isn’t going to solve anything. Instead, because we’re all about people in church (a great tag line, by the way - kudos to Gateway Church), people help with situations and people (leaders) do our best to right any wrongs.

With social media like Facebook and Twitter becoming common-place, we either can let the negative story be told or a highly positive one that does even more good to our reputation.

Today, everyone has a voice. They will be heard. Do your best to help them tell a great story, not a negative one.

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!