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Finally A Place Where You Might Fit

posted in: generosity, leadership, relationships (Tags: , , ) - 1 Comment

Wow! What a week!

Several hundred delegates flew, drove and hitchhiked (okay maybe not hitchhiked) to fill the auditorium of C3 Church in Atlanta and be part of the C3 Americas annual conference.

To get a bit of a feel for the conference checkout the #c3americas Twitter feed.

There were a few highlights for me. Well… maybe just a slight bit more than a few. :-)

Phil Pringle’s session where he talked about faith and conscience had to be the absolute best teaching on that subject I have ever heard.

Phenomenal!

If it becomes available for download I’ll link it here. (which incidentally would be a good reason to subscribe to my RSS feed. Hit the link at the top right.)

The thing that constantly amazes me about Ps Phil is his ability to break down a difficult and controversial subject and leave you saying ‘of course, why didn’t I think of that before. It makes so much sense.’

“Your body is designed to be a temple, not an entertainment center! You were designed for God to inhabit!” Phil Pringle

“If your sincerity supercedes your faith you will find yourself living in performance.” Phil Pringle

But hey… there were many more speakers. Everyone shared absolute gold. Each one was completely unique. And Ps Chris Pringle’s session should rid you of any remaining religious devils OR make them manifest. Get the audio of the sessions if and when they become available. — hint rss feed (audio sessions are available here)

One of the many things I love about this family of churches is the freedom to be yourself. I mean really, how many of you are under constant pressure to be or act a particular way? Wouldn’t you just love the freedom to just be who God made you?

When you see the massive diversity of gifts, talents, personalities, capacity, training and experience of people throughout this movement you realize that there is a place for nearly everyone. Admittedly the religiously judgmental, the critically proficient and the defenders of tradition may find it somewhat harder to fit in… at least without a merciful reshaping of their fundamental values and insecurities. (…But God)

Oh.. did I mention the loud, worshipful, motivational, impartational, blow your mind loud, incredible, presence of God, forward looking, humbling, faithbuilding, honouring, really loud, can we do it again Stadium Night at Center Stage, Atlanta.

No?

I guess I didn’t. Why don’t you ask someone else who was there about it or if you were there, leave a comment below.

What do you think? Let’s talk.

Thank you Geniuses

posted in: generosity, ramblings - 2 Comments

Reading a post this morning from Seth Godin prompted me to post this.

I was in Detroit last week visiting family and the second day there I had problems with my 2 year old iBook. It’s been a stellar performer to this point, and since I run Leopard, I always keep a time machine drive with me.

Anyway…. my computer would only go part way through the boot sequence then shutdown. Since I didn’t know what to do, I took it to the Apple Store in Twelve Oaks. I knew there was a store there since I had bought a shiny new 16GB iPhone there the day before. BTW, this was my first visit to Detroit so I wasn’t aware of many options.

On arriving at the store, I was greeted by a pleasant individual who directed me to the Concierge service where I booked an appointment with a Genius at the Genius bar. I think I only waited about 15 minutes before I was able to see someone. 10 minutes later he told me that my hard drive needed replacing. My options: send it away for a flat fee of something like $271 and they will fix whatever is wrong (7-10 working days) or get the hard drive replaced myself. Since I didn’t have my OSX install disks and I was heading back to Canada in two days, I asked about them installing the OS which he said they would be happy to do.

Next morning I’m back with a new hard drive that was installed at Best Buy, but there is a problem with the OSX installation. Finally the tech figures out that the extra RAM in my machine is faulty. It’s Kingston, which he tells me has a lifetime warranty. (I didn’t know). He pulls it out and proceeds to install…. 45 minutes later I’m good to go. I’ll migrate my data from my Time Machine drive later that night. He pops the RAM back in, since he wants to leave it the way I brought it in and I’m off.

That afternoon I start to migrate my time machine data and all hell breaks loose. I finally find a steak knife to remove the RAM but it appears it’s too late. My iBook won’t even recognize my Time Machine drive. It looks like my data or something got corrupted. 

8:50pm I pull back into the Apple Store hoping they are still open. (Best Buy said they could do nothing since it was a mac formatted drive) The Genius I’ve been working with for the last two days happens to still be there. He’s not sure what to do, so he directs me to another specialist. 25 minutes later they have checked out the drive, changed some permissions, deleted some files and voila! I have a Time Machine drive back and working. Store closed at 9:00pm, I’m still there at 9:20pm and not feeling anyone pressure me. On top of that I was not charged for anything they did at the Genius Bar on my off warranty iBook.

FREE… NO CHARGE!!!

A customer service success story.

Apple may do some things wrong, but I’ll tell you they should do some things right. If I didn’t already have an apple, I would probably be buying one from an Apple store.

Thanks Aaron

The sad thing about all of this is that there are no Apple stores anywhere near my home. And I mean days away. Makes me almost want to move to Detroit… NOT!

 

What’s your experience been with customer support and service? 

The Lights are Being Turned On Again

posted in: generosity, ramblings - 13 Comments

A quiet week.

quiet.png

Well it was a quiet week in my part of the blogosphere. It’s like the curtains never opened and you couldn’t see any lights peaking under the doors.

Amazing how a blog can seem like a home.

Actually my life was very unquiet this week. I spent most of the week at a conference catching up with colleagues. It was invigorating, exciting and exhausting. I loved it.

I was reminded about excellence in every area of life. I also came away from the conference feeling much more motivated to do the really important things in my life. I’ve already started putting some of that into practice.

How was your week? What kept you occupied?

I’ve got an idea. I was just looking at my Kiva.org account and I’d love to help someone else get involved. Sooo…. I’m giving a $25 Kiva gift certificate to the first and the 12th commenter on this post…

Jump in and let’s talk. Oh and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!