the Monday Morning Debrief: Capitalizing on the Unexpected

This past weekend, “The Purge” beat the rest of the movie box office by becoming the #1 movie for the weekend.  Why is this a big deal?  Because no one expected this kind of success.  With just a $3 million budget and movies like “Fast and Furious 6”, “the Internship” and “Star Trek”, many didn’t expect “The Purge” to finish in the middle of the pact.  In addition, there were few big name actors in the movie, unless you count Ethan Hawke on the same level as Vince Vaughn, Vin Diesel, the Rock or Owen Wilson. So, the unexpected success of this movie was a huge win for Universal and everyone involved.

This is a cool story Tom, but what does this have to do with ministry?

Simple.  We all have unexpected success in ministry from time to time.  Maybe it is a new program idea or a new mixer that has students talking.  Regardless of what it is, we have all tried something that we didn’t expect much from that ended up being a huge win for us.  For me, a simple idea involving dinner that we tried a few months ago turned out to be a huge eye-opener for our ministry.

But with every unexpected success, the question is how do you capitalize on that to help your ministry?  Each situation is different and how you respond will be different as well.  But one thing is clear, if you don’t act your unexpected success will be just another one-hit wonder with no follow-up success.  Milk it while you can to build momentum and even community with students and see where God takes your ministry.

What have you done to capitalize on your unexpected successes?  Post a comment so that we can learn and benefit from each other.