by Married People | Apr 11, 2019 | Resources
Everything we do in marriage either brings us closer or further apart. It’s as if we’re constantly on a sliding scale, moving back and forth, further apart or closer together with our spouse.
Every couple would prefer to be closer—closer emotionally, closer physically, closer mentally. But so many times, we find ourselves drifting more and more distant from one another.
Growing closer doesn’t happen instantly. There’s no one magical thing every couple can do to fix a mixed-up marriage. Getting closer happens one small, intentional step at a time.
That’s Where Your Church Comes In
There are marriages in your church that are broken. There are couples in your community that have grown bored with each other. There are relationships in your city that are lost and confused. And they’re not sure who to turn to for help.
Your church can be the solution to disconnection. You could provide them with the encouragement they need to keep going. You could be the difference in whether or not they stay married or not. All you need to do is help them take a step closer to each other.
That’s why our theme for this year’s Annual Marriage Ministry Bundle is CLOSER.
For those church leaders who have been with us for a few years, you may have noticed that we’re no longer calling this resource the Strategy Pack. That’s because it’s evolved into something more. And we want to be clear about what we’re calling it to be able to reach more churches and more couples.
What Comes in the Bundle?
As with every year, the Strategy Pack gives your church everything it needs to start a marriage ministry from scratch or improve what you’ve already got going. When you sign up for the Pack, here’s everything that comes with it.
- Two larger group events, featuring communicators Ted Lowe and Ted Cunningham
- A six-week small group study, called Closer Connection, with communicator Johnny Laurent
- Four new quarterly date nights—to give to couples to do on their own
- One year worth of MarriedPeople Monthly
- Promotional graphics and videos to spread the word in your church and community
- Access to an Orange Specialist who will answer all of your questions
What’s New This Year?
Along with a new theme every year, we also like to add even more great resources that make the Annual Bundle even better. Here are just a few of the items that are new in CLOSER.
- Leadership training documents, showing you how to promote and evaluate your ministry
- Connection to the new Married People Membership, including a free month for your couples
- Pre-made slide decks for event promotion and communicators
- Pre-made email templates to make it easier for you to communicate with your audience
- Countdown videos and sound effects to use during your event games
- Date night guides with details on how to decorate and package your quarterly dates
- Spotify playlists specifically for events and date nights
- Stock photography that you can use on your website or social media
How Can I Get It?
The new Strategy Pack will launch at The Orange Conference 2019 on May 1-3. Starting then, they will be available for purchase online for $249 from the Orange Store. On the store, you can also purchase previous years’ strategy packs as well.
We create the resources. But only you know the marriages in your church. Only you can help couples get closer. We’re just excited to help you to make that happen.
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 | Mar 28, 2019 | Resources
This month on the blog, we’re talking all about email marketing in your marriage ministry. That means featuring our email resource—MP Monthly. This is a tool we’ve used to help churches build marriage ministries for the past few years.
We recently refreshed the look and format of MP Monthly. Not only does this give it a more modern look that matches our new brand, this refresh also makes it more accessible for couples. Each monthly email is full of bite-sized content that’s easy for any couple to practically do.
Another great advantage of the redesign is that it makes it easier for churches to customize the content to fit their needs and audience.
What if I don’t want to send an email monthly?
Not every church wants to send out these emails every month. Maybe you want to send it out more frequently so that couples have less content to tackle more often. You know your audience better than we do, and we want your church to mold our stuff to meet your circumstances.
Sending out a marriage newsletter weekly (or even bi-weekly) might be too much for some churches. But it might actually make a big difference for some couples. Weekly marriage reminders delivered directly to their email inbox might be a welcome change for them.
Customize MP Monthly for your church
We designed MP Monthly into different blocks that are each action steps for couples—read this, watch this, etc. They get six each month, and are encouraged to pick two to three steps to do.
If you wanted to send the email out more frequently, you could pull apart the content and send out the pieces separately. That could be three steps, twice per month. Or it could be one step every week. That might be easier for couples to tackle.
That would mean the MP Monthly name no longer fits. But you could just as easily call the email MP Weekly, or MP Moments, or anything else your church can come up with. The point is that you can customize it how you want. We want your church to be the hero when helping couples.
Is customization right for us?
Not every church is going to want to customize the content. Sending out smaller emails more frequently will take more work. There is a little more of a learning curve when it comes to customization, but we can help you out with that.
Plenty of churches send out the email content exactly as is—and there’s nothing wrong with that. Working with MarriedPeople is supposed to make things easier for you. That’s why we’re here. But adding custom content and frequency can still be a worthwhile step to take.
Does your church customize MP Monthly? How?
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 | Mar 7, 2019 | Resources
You may have noticed that we recently announced something new at MarriedPeople—a premium membership for especially for married couples. It’s like an online library full of the resources we’ve been creating for marriage ministries over the last several years.
That means plenty of marriage videos, ebooks, date nights, and so many more things specifically to help the average married couple. Plus, new stuff gets added every single month.
But what does this mean for your marriage ministry? Even though we’ve created this for couples, we still want your church to succeed when it comes to helping couples. That’s why we’ve built in a few ways that you can use the membership to your advantage.
Point To Membership as a Next Step
Since the beginning of MarriedPeople, we’ve talked about the three different environments where you can empower marriages: larger groups, small groups, and individual couples. Most of the resources we create for churches place a heavy emphasis on those first two environments.
The MarriedPeople membership helps to serve the third environment—individual couples. This was done intentionally, because that’s where couples spend the majority of their time.
Most couples wonder what to do next after a marriage event or a Bible study on marriage. The membership can be your answer to that. Help us to spread the word about the membership as a way to give couples practical ways to thrive together.
Let It Pay For Your Ministry Budget
What’s in it for your church besides helping marriages? How about helping you to fund your marriage ministry budget? We’re very excited about our Champion program where you can earn money for every couple that you refer to us.
Champion affiliates earn 25% of the revenue they help to generate. That means, for every couple who buys an $80 annual membership through your link, you earn $20. And since our Marriage Ministry Starter Pack is $249, you only have to refer 13 couples to earn enough money to fully fund a Starter Pack.
If you’re at a bigger church, it only takes 20 referred couples to earn enough to fund a $399 Marriage Ministry Annual Pack. That’s everything your church needs to run a marriage ministry, plus that many more couples who are directly having their needs met.
Buy Memberships For Couples
What if your church doesn’t have to worry about the budget, but your local couples do? In that case, you can actually purchase memberships for couples in bulk at a steep discount. This is something we built into the membership specifically with churches in mind.
- Get 10 annual memberships for only $480; that’s only $48 per membership, which are normally $80. Do the math—that’s 40% savings for each couple.
- Get 20 memberships for $800—or $40 per membership. Which calculates out to an 50% discount on each membership.
- Get 50 memberships for $1,600—which is only $32 for each couple. That comes in at a whopping 60% savings per membership.
- And if you need even more memberships, or a custom deal worked out, we’re happy to work with your church to find a solution.
Those are just a few ways that your church can use the new MarriedPeople membership to your advantage. We’ve worked really hard to create a resource that works for both married couples and marriage ministries alike.
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
![[WEBINAR] How to Help Couples be Proactive in Their Marriage](https://i0.wp.com/marriedpeoplechurches.org/wp-content/uploads/Free-Webinar-Graphic-1000x667.jpg?resize=1000%2C667&ssl=1)
by Married People | Feb 28, 2019 | Training
Hey, church leader: you’re busy, right? You’ve got a lot of things on your plate. You’ve got more responsibilities than you have time. You wear many different hats—that’s a metaphor, of course, although you may also like to actually wear hats, too.
Guess what? That’s a lot like married people. They’re also busy. They have full plates. They have too many responsibilities and wear too many metaphorical hats. So if you’re a church leader (even an unmarried one) you can related to the challenges of marriage.
So what’s the trick to having a successful marriage and a successful ministry? Being proactive.
The Importance of Proactivity
Juggling lots of responsibilities—either in marriage or in ministry—takes planning ahead. It takes having a proactive approach to issues, rather than just reacting as they happen. It takes creating a plan and sticking to that plan.
It takes being proactive.
We all know marriage is important. But we don’t always prioritize our marriage because we get busy and get distracted by other things.
The same thing is true for marriage ministry. Most churches know helping marriages is important. They just have too many other things going on to be proactive about helping out couples. So how can your church get proactive about helping married people be proactive?
Join the Webinar
That’s exactly the topic that we’re going to tackle in our latest quarterly leadership webinar—how your church can help couples be proactive in their marriage. We’ve got a new resource that we think will be a huge help in making that happen.
So join MarriedPeople founder Ted Lowe on Wednesday, March 13 from 2-3pm EST for an opportunity to learn and ask questions. Here are all of the details:
- Topic: How to help couples be proactive in their marriage
- Speaker: Ted Lowe
- Day: Wednesday, March 13, 2019
- Time: 2-3pm EST
- Cost: Free!
Sign Up: https://events.genndi.com/register/818182175026317696/06eb58b0c3
Are you ready to be proactive?
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
![[SURVEY] 3 Reasons Why You Should Take our Annual Survey](https://i1.wp.com/marriedpeoplechurches.org/wp-content/uploads/12_18-Feedback-Group.jpg?resize=1000%2C667&ssl=1)
by Married People | Nov 29, 2018 | Uncategorized
MarriedPeople exists to make marriages better. And we do that by making marriage ministries better. We work with churches across the country to pour into leaders and couples.
We’ve seen some incredible results over the years—stories of life change and challenges overcome. But we know we can do better. We aim to keep getting better and impact more people.
To do that, we need your help. By your help, we mean take our survey. We want your feedback. And we’re not alone. You probably have lots of people asking you to take surveys. And your time is limited. You can take them all. Here’s three simple reasons why you should take ours.
1. You Could Win a Gift Card
So we’re not above a little bribery. Er, we mean incentive.
To encourage you to take our survey, we’re giving away $25 to five randomly selected participants. But you have to complete the survey before the end of 2018 to be eligible to win.
And we sure to include your email address at the end of the survey so we know where to send the gift card to. Use the gift card to improve your marriage ministry, or get something nice for your spouse.
2. We’ve Made It Easy For You
This survey won’t take much of your time to complete. Seriously—it won’t take you longer than 10 minutes to finish. It takes longer than that to get a drink at Starbucks.
We’ve included the survey at the bottom of this blog post. Or you can click here to fill it out.
3. It Really Makes a Difference
Honestly, we really do read your responses. And we really do apply it to the resources we create. Every year, we use this survey as a guide to what resources to create.
The more feedback we get, the more we can make our resources relevant to real churches and real couples. If you want to have an impact on what we do, take some time to fill out the survey.
Are you ready to give your feedback?
Married People exists to help your church help marriages. We provide resources, training, and community to church leaders who work with marriages and families.
