The Avengers – One Of The The Hardest Parts of Leadership And Why It’s Absolutely Worth It
Leadership is easy—until people get involved.
Let’s be honest: it’s simpler when everyone thinks like you, acts like you, and wants the same things as you. But that’s not leadership. That’s cloning. At best, that’s recruitment. True leadership happens when you lean into the tension of difference—when unity is through diversity, not sameness.
Take the Avengers for example.
When they first assemble, they’re a mess. Tony Stark’s ego. Steve Rogers’ old-school virtue. Thor’s otherworldliness. Bruce Banner’s volatility. Black Widow’s secrets. Hawkeye’s quiet edge. They’re powerful individually—but almost impossible as a team. Their strengths collide instead of combine. Their differences aren’t blessings—they’re burdens.
Sound familiar?
Leading in the local church can feel exactly the same. People with different priorities, personalities, and perspectives all under one roof. It’s slower. It’s harder. But it’s absolutely worth it.
Because this is what leadership really is: learning to love, empower, and mobilize those who aren’t like you.
This summer, our church has been walking through our Discovery Class, designed to help people uncover how God uniquely designed them to serve His kingdom. Each week, we’ve watched God reveal the diversity of the room—spiritual gifts, personalities, natural abilities, passions. Every person brings something unique. And every person is necessary in order for us to walk in the fullness of God’s purpose for our church.
Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 12:12:
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.”
We don’t need a room full of the same kind of people. We need builders and encouragers, strategists and visionaries, feelers and fixers. We need it all. Because that’s how God designed His Church. That’s how God designed you.
This is more than a picture of teamwork. It’s a picture of heaven.
Revelation tells us every tribe, nation, and tongue will come together to worship the Lamb.
“…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Eternity will be full of people who don’t look, sound, or think like you. We might as well get used to it now.
So yes—it’s easier to lead people who think like you.
But God didn’t call you to easy.
He called you to something better: unity through diversity.
Because that’s where His power shows up.
In a group of wildly different people, unified in Christ, all working together.
That’s how the Church becomes unstoppable.