![[WEBINAR] Leveraging Volunteers For Your Marriage Ministry](https://i0.wp.com/marriedpeoplechurches.org/wp-content/uploads/Free-Webinar-Graphic-1000x667.jpg?resize=1000%2C667&ssl=1)
by Married People | Aug 29, 2019 | Training
Church leaders like you are busy. You’ve got a lot of things going on. You have too many responsibilities at your church. And you don’t want one more weighing you down.
This may be one of the reasons why you’ve been hesitant to pursue starting a marriage ministry at your church. You understand that helping married couples out is important, but you barely have time to pour into your own marriage.
What if there was a way your church could help marriages (including yours) without you having to do all of the work? There’s one key element which can make all the difference in a successful marriage ministry.
Empowering Volunteers
That key element to pulling this off is volunteer leadership. You can’t do it all yourself, so why not empower others within the church to lead this new ministry for you? Even if your church doesn’t have a staff member or budget to start a marriage ministry, you can still find a couple of volunteers.
Engaged volunteers are the sign of a healthy church community. Almost no church can (or should) run effectively on the staff alone. By handing this task off to volunteers, you’ve giving them the opportunity to serve and grow.
We’ve made our resources turnkey enough that they can be carried out by a volunteer. All you’ve got to do is give them the freedom to go.
But how do you find the right volunteers? How do you train them to lead the right way? How do you equip them to succeed at helping marriages?
How to Leverage Volunteers
These questions are the focus of our next quarterly leadership webinar. Married People founder Ted Lowe will be diving in to uncover how you can leverage volunteer to lead a marriage ministry. And as always, we’ll have time for Q&A, so have some questions ready to ask!
How is your marriage ministry leveraging great volunteers?
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
by Married People | Aug 22, 2019 | Resources
Married People exists to serve church leaders like you. All of the resources and content we create is with you—and the couples you reach—in mind. Everything we do is built around helping churches help marriages.
That’s why we value the input of church leaders like you. We want our resources and content to better serve you and your congregation. Our hope is that we can provide something that can help any church create an amazing marriage ministry.
To do that, we need to hear from you. How are we doing? What could we do better? How can we best continue to help you and churches like yours?
Who Are You?
For the first-time ever, we have separate surveys for churches who use our resources and those who don’t. So you can participate regardless of if you’re a long-time partner or if you’re hearing about us for the first time.
Both surveys are short and easy to fill out. And if you complete either one before the end of October 2019, you’ll be entered to win one of six $25 Amazon gift cards!
Take a Survey
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
by Married People | Jul 25, 2019 | Leadership, Resources
Perhaps the best part of being a Married People church partner is having access to an Orange Specialist. What’s an Orange Specialist? They’re real-life people who helps you to use the resources that you get as a part of your partnership.
An Orange Specialist (or OS for short) is more than just a customer service representative—they’re part leadership trainer, encourager, coach, community builder, and technical support. An OS is what makes Married People a partnership, and not just a product.
As a Married People church partner, your Orange Specialist is Misty Phillips. And since she does so much work behind the scenes, we thought we’d introduce you to Misty. Let’s get to know her and how she can help your church do marriage ministry better.
What’s your ministry background?
I served in preschool and elementary ministry for over 25 years. In that capacity, I oversaw birth through sixth grade, and led more than 150 volunteers.
What is your favorite part of being an Orange Specialist?
Connecting with leaders to help them WIN as they do strategic ministry to kids and families. And listening to stories of everything that God is doing in local churches of all sizes.
What do you wish churches knew about Married People?
Married People has developed a key strategy for your church to be intentional about supporting marriages. This is a year-long strategy, not just a one-time thing. We help leaders practically engage in creative experiences with major impact.
What is your role as the Married People OS?
You might have questions, or need assistance with your strategy of reaching marriages in your church. As the Married People OS, I’m here to help and answer all of your questions.
If you’d like to walk through all the great content in the Married People strategy, or have any questions before purchasing, please reach out!
Why do you think churches should pour into marriages?
I believe investing in marriages at your church is one of the best choices your team can make. Sometimes, we forget that ministry to families includes investing in marriages. Churches who are intentional about helping pour into marriages are a smart bunch!
Are you married?
Yes! I’m in my fortieth year of learning how to do life with my husband. We’re both still learning in each phase of our lives. Together, we raised four amazing kids and now share in the joy of eight grandchildren.
Together, my husband and I have served in children’s and family ministry. Together, we’ve experienced gains and losses. We’ve been so grateful as a couple to have life experiences around other couples learning what marriage really means.
What are your three must read ministry books?
- Think Orange by Reggie Joiner
- Visioneering by Andy Stanley
- 7 Principles of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones
Do you have any skills that most people don’t know about?
I was a theatre major. And I can play piano by ear.
If you could be anywhere other than here, where would you be?
At a Caribbean beach with family, going paddle boarding.
What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
Singer songwriter. Or a flight attendant. (Ha! Maybe it was a singing flight attendant.)
How do you want people to remember you?
Family and fun mattered. Serving others was the best. God shined.
What’s goal would you like to accomplish in the next year?
More adventure. Connect leaders together. Grow friends.
How can people get in touch with you?
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
by Married People | Jul 18, 2019 | Resources
Swag can mean a lot of things. Generally, it’s a term for being cool or hip, because it’s a shortened version of the word ‘swagger.’ Apparently, it’s also used to refer to goods stolen by a burglar. But those aren’t the definitions we’re using for swag here.
When we say swag, we mean the free promotional stuff you give away to raise awareness of what you’re doing. In that way, swag makes people feel cool and hip. And technically swag could be stolen by a burglar. But you get the drift.
What Can Be Swag?
Almost anything can count as swag. Usually, it’s got your logo on there somewhere and it’s something that people don’t mind taking for free. Such items could include:
- Water bottles
- T-shirts
- Hats
- Stickers
- Notebooks
- Mugs
- Pens
Just think of the stuff that booths had out at conferences. That’s all swag. And that’s all stuff that your church could be handing out to guests to promote your marriage ministry.
Why Swag Works
Swag is given to people for free, but you’ve got to pay to buy it. Which means you’ve got to use some of your tiny budget to get the swag. So it is worth that cost? We would argue that it is, and for a number of reasons.
- Because people like free stuff
- Because people stick them in random places
- Because it’s a tiny reminder to focus on their marriage
- Because it doesn’t cost you much
- Because it makes people feel cool and valued
We would encourage to you set aside some money (it could be as little as $100) and invest in buying some swag for your marriage ministry. Get a few t-shirts or stickers and hand them out at the next event. They’ll likely get people talking and interested in the next event you’ve got planned.
How to Get Married People Stickers
We’ve noticed that swag works from our own experience. We had some stickers and magnets printed with the Married People logo and started handing them out at events. People loved them.
Church leaders even started asking where they could buy some of their own. So we thought we’d give you some instructions on how you can do just that.
- Download some designs you can use for stickers
- Use this link to get $10 off an order from Sticker Mule
- Select die cut stickers
- Pick your size (we use 2” x 2”) and quantity
- Upload the artwork we sent you
- Submit the order and they’ll send you a file to review
- When you get the stickers, be sure to share them on social media with #MPstickers
Full disclosure: this is not a sponsored post. However, Sticker Mule is sending us some free stickers (to share with you) in exchange for mentioning them. But we mostly recommend them because they’re a vendor we use and trust for quality products.
Send us photos of the swag you create!
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
by Married People | May 30, 2019 | Training
Marriages do not fail alone. There’s research that shows that the divorce of a relative or close friend can increase your likelihood of divorce up to 75%. Even if it’s a friend of a friend who gets divorced, that increases the risk as much as 33%.
I don’t know about you, but that’s scary. It’s enough to make you to not want to have any close friends or relatives. Because we all know someone who is divorced, or might be in the future.
So what chance does our marriage have of making it? And what can church leaders do when we constantly witness separations and divorces happen in couples we know and care about?
The Importance of Community
The good news is that the flip side is true as well—no marriage succeeds alone, either. Isolating you and your spouse from everyone else and from culture isn’t going to help you. In fact, it may actually make things worse for your marriage.
That’s because community is important to relationships. We can’t rely on our spouse to meet all of our relational needs. We need other people to support us and take some of that burden off of our spouse.
In her book Hold Me Tight, psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson says “We now ask our lovers for the emotional connection and sense of belonging that my grandmother could get from a whole village.”
It’s not whether or not you surround your marriage with other people that’s crucial—it’s who you’re choosing to surround yourself with. And that’s where you as a church leader comes in.
Building Community in Small Groups
It’s for this reason that we always create a new small group study every year. This provides content around which to create the context of community. Because we know that real life change happens in circles instead of rows.
You might call this context different things in your church—community groups, Sunday school, Bible studies, or life groups. We call them small groups, but they’re all the same thing. And they’re all equally as important.
That’s exactly the topic that we’re going to tackle in our latest quarterly leadership webinar—how to build a community within your marriage ministry. Here are all of the details:
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
