Finding The Right Person

Transition Time

It is not always easy. But whether it happens fast or it drags out over a long period of time, I have found that you can be sure of finding the right person if the process is bathed in prayer.

At the beginning of this century, I told our Board of Trustees that we needed to find an executive director for this ministry. The ministry had exploded in growth, and I had become overwhelmed with management duties. I realized that my time was not being well spent. I needed to spend most of my time studying, editing this magazine, preparing our radio programs, writing books and praying.

For almost five years, the Board searched for just the right person to manage the ministry. We prayed and prayed and kept coming up with no serious candidates. And then, at one of our Board meetings, the chairman suddenly turned to me and asked me to leave the room while the Board’s 22 members discussed an unspecified matter.

After what seemed like a very long 30 minutes, I was called back in. I was informed that they had just voted to make my daughter, Rachel Houck, the ministry’s office manager. (Her title was later changed to Chief Operating Officer.)

The Board explained to me that they had been closely observing and evaluating Rachel’s administrative ability for some time. (She was serving the ministry in many ways.) Based on their observations, they had decided that she had the supernatural gift of administration (1 Corinthians 12:28).

I was totally surprised by this decision. Rachel was stunned. The Board had special prayer for her, and she has served with distinction as our chief operating officer for several years now.

Sometimes finding the right person can happen quickly. Again, early in this century, I told the Board that we needed to make our website more effective. At that time it was mainly an archive of articles about Bible prophecy. I wanted us to have an interactive site that could be used as an evangelistic tool reaching out to people all over the world.

We kicked the idea around for a while and then decided to act on it. I told the Board that it would be next to impossible to find the right person because I wanted one who was both an expert in Bible prophecy and website creation, management and development. I doubted that such a person even existed. But I discovered that with God, all thing are possible (Matthew 19:26).

I put a simple ad in this magazine, and a week later, a friend of mine in Kentucky called and said there was a person on the staff of his church that he thought fit the bill. I called that person, and he was very enthusiastic about what I had in mind. He also had all the qualifications! And just like that — within a few weeks’ time — we called Nathan Jones to become our Internet Evangelist.

I began searching for a replacement for me many years ago. I wanted to get a person in place who could take over the leadership of the ministry should I drop dead or become incapacitated. I soon discovered that trying to find the person with the kind of leadership qualities I was looking for, who also was an expert in Bible prophecy, was not going to be easy. For one thing, seminaries had pretty well stopped teaching Bible prophecy.

But then one day as I was praying about it, the Lord reminded me that when He called me to establish the ministry, I had no seminary education, and He prompted me to look elsewhere. That’s when I thought of Tim Moore who I considered to be a natural born leader and who had a passion for God’s Prophetic Word. I called him to see if he would be interested in coming on staff, and he said he would, but that the timing was not right since he had just been elected to the Kentucky Legislature.

Six years later, Tim called me one day and said the timing was right for him to go to work for Lamb & Lion as a part-time evangelist. He was immediately elected to our Board and ordained by them for ministry. Four years later they called him to become my successor. A transition plan was put in place, and the decision was made to make that plan public with this issue of our magazine.