One great hire can make the difference

Movies made by Marvel are on fire, aren’t they? Guardians of the Galaxy is the highest grossing movie of 2014 so far.  In fact, over the last 4 years:

• Iron Man 3 finished 2nd only to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in 2013 with $409 million domestically
• The Avengers finished 1st with $623 million domestically in 2012
• Thor finished in the top 10 with $181 million domestically in 2011
• Iron Man 2 finished in the top 3 in 2010 with $312 million domestically.

Those are some impressive results at the Box Office.  But Marvel wasn’t always a home run hit in the theaters. Other than the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises (the Toby MacGuire one), Marvel had a lot of very sub-par performing movies.  Remember the Fantastic Four, DareDevil, Elektra, or Ghost Rider?  Those were all far from blockbusters.

But one movie changed Marvel’s future.  Iron Man!  In the Halls of Great Superheroes, Iron Man wasn’t exactly an “A” lister.  However, Iron Man was an overnight success racking in over $98 million the 1st weekend on its way to making over $585 million worldwide (Thanks Wikipedia for that info). Because of the both critical reception and commercial success, Iron Man spawned a series of other movies and ultimately helped to make “the Avengers” the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time!

What made Iron Man so successful?  According to Paul Petrone in Business 2 Community, it was one good hire…Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. crushed it as Tony Stark and Iron Man and made everyone fall in love with him and this Marvel universe.

So, are you saying that if we create super heroes for our ministry, we will be racking in the bucks?  No, but what I am saying is… 

[Tweet “One good hire can make all the difference in your ministry”]

Whether it is the recruitment of a volunteer leader or the hiring of a staff position, one good hire can make all the difference in your ministry.  For example, at New Life, we just hired Cory Sullivan, a volunteer leader, to take over the High School Ministry, lead our Sunday Night program and ultimately be coached up to assume the Youth Pastor position.

Just working with Cory over the first few months has been awesome. He has taken over more and more responsibility and has such a desire to learn and grow in this position.  And, he has a great vision for Student Ministry, a vision that has inspired and encouraged me, the volunteer leaders and the students.  It’s a really exciting time.

There was a renewed excitement within the group leading up to last night’s first student gathering of the fall and during the time.  It was really cool to see Cory take ownership of the group and lead the students and leaders.  Is Cory the “right hire”?  Time will essentially tell, but what I can say is as Cory is getting more confident and learning as he goes, he appears to be just the right leader at the right time for this ministry.

Finding that right person comes in a variety of ways.  Maybe it is a former student who had all the potential in the world to great things who is now old enough to lead others.  Maybe it is someone random who walks through the door wanting to serve.  There is no magic formula to how the right person comes to our ministries or else we’d all be doing great, effective ministry all the time.

But what is clear to me is that when I seek God and go to Him with my heart and desires (Matthew 6:33), He takes care of it according to His will.  And, when He takes care of it, I need to not mess it up.  That means I need to be training all my leaders up to be rock stars and to be used by Him in mighty ways.  I cannot live my life waiting for that person to walk through the door and make a difference.  I need to properly invest in who I do have, so that they can grow and be who God desires them to be.  Otherwise, I’m not being a good steward of who He gave me to lead.

Finding that right person who can energize and mobilize the group you lead is great to have around. Unfortunately, it may be some time before you find an Iron Man in your ministry.  It won’t happen overnight.  So keep seeking God and striving for His will in your ministry and see how God blesses it.

What about you?  How have you seen the right hire help a ministry before?