Crown Financial Ministries
Howard Dayton, Founder

We are thrilled with our start with our new COO. He is everything and more than we hoped.

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Here's the whole behind the scenes story told by all the players...

Bigger Buckets

This story is less about quality search work and more about the impeccable timing of God.

One of our recently completed searches confirmed the wisdom of English novelist Mary Webb, "The well of Providence is deep. It's the buckets we bring to it that are small." We witnessed God's divine orchestration of people and events, demonstrating His impeccable timing. We found the well of God's provision overflowing and it all started with a need.

Howard Dayton, founder of Crown Ministries, needed a Chief Operating Officer. His fifteen-year ministry of helping small groups apply financial principles from God's Word was feeling the growing pains of effectiveness. Over 200,000 people have discovered how much God has to say about their wallets and they have learned to become "consistent savers, generous givers, and prudent consumers," as described on Crown's web site.

In addition to seeing black on their personal budgets, Crown graduates are entering into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ and unbelievers are meeting their Savior because of the vision God gave Howard. "Scripture is relevant to practical life and leaders are trained to love students," he says.

Howard and many others had been praying for a Chief Operating Officer (COO). "If the Lord was to accelerate the growth of the ministry we needed more in-house capability," Howard said. For three years Crown conducted the search on their own, but according to the founder, "We had no time or expertise to even know what we were looking for."

After three years, Crown's need for a COO pressed and Howard called us for our systematic approach. We began our process when Bret Dalton met with Howard Dayton and the leadership of Crown in Florida. According to Howard, "Bret drew out what we were looking for. We had a gut feel, but he quantified the criteria."

Before we began looking for candidates, Bret studied Crown Ministries' environment and vision. Crown's founder was impressed with Bret's diligence. "Bret learned a lot about Crown and even trained in our small group Bible study. He learned our culture, which is relationally-driven."

We created an opportunity profile that described the COO position, and conducted our research. We then screened and interviewed almost 100 people and the top six candidates were presented to Crown. Despite our diligence and commitment to "establishing a good relationship and not just completing a hiring transaction," a good fit for Crown could not be found.

It is at this point in the story when military leader and US president Dwight D. Eisenhower's words rang true, "plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." We followed our proven process and still the COO position remained unfilled. Truly, our planning proved indispensable to Crown's understanding of their need and the candidate who best filled it. Yet, the search was proving more lengthy than normal.

This story is less about a COO search and more about the impeccable timing of God. His plans are perfect, and finally the Lord brought to our attention the ideal person for Crown's COO position in David Rae, former president of Apple Computers in Canada.

According to Bret, "As we started the Crown search, I sent a copy of the profile to David as a 'source,' someone who would know others that might be qualified and interested. I had known David for a number of years, and knowing his impressive background, I did not think he would have personal interest."

Fast-forward ten months.

Over six months after the start of the search and after having received the profile from Bret, David and his wife were about to start a Crown study with several young couples they were mentoring. As David began to prepare for the study, he visited Crown's web site to order small group study materials. While on the Crown web site, David noticed an announcement about the COO search. He clicked on the link to find a brief description and another hyperlink to our web site where he read the full profile.

David called Bret to discuss interest in the COO position. Bret recalls, "It seemed that David's expertise exceeded Crown's need, but God's hand was responsible for making the connections and we were not going to stand in His way."

Bret knew of David Rae's management expertise, growing the Canadian branch of Apple Computers from $80 to $450 million. He knew of David's spiritual commitment evidenced by his subsequent move to Navigators where he was ministering to executives.

Howard Dayton was impressed with David's administrative skill and love of Christ. "The Lord knew exactly the perfect person. I trust David implicitly."

While God was helping Crown clarify their administrative needs, He was moving David from Navigators to a new leadership opportunity and planning the merger of two ministries. A week before David joined Crown, Howard met with Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts, and discussed a possible merger of their financial ministries. The ministry merger demanded a COO who could lead a rapidly expanding, international organization and understand their vision for communicating biblical principles in an economic context.

In the end, we more fully understand God's purpose in bringing David to Crown. September 29, 2000 marked the start of Crown Financial Ministries, a marriage between Crown Ministries and Christian Financial Concepts. David Rae, chief operating officer, will provide key administrative leadership to this international ministry and, according to him, allow Howard Dayton and Larry Burkett to "be quiet before the Lord and focus on the ministry's vision."

We will surely be bringing bigger buckets on our future searches as we revel in the thrill of dipping into God's well and watching His plans come together

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