by Tim Walker | Mar 23, 2017 | Spotlight
We have amazing MarriedPeople partner churches. These marriage champions are taking the MarriedPeople resources and doing things that are above and beyond anything we dreamed about.
We want you to meet them. So once a month, well spotlight a different church that is impacting not only the marriages in their church, but in their community. We want you to meet people from churches of all sizes, large and small, in various types of communities, whether urban, rural or suburban, with budgets big and small and volunteers plenty or scarce. Regardless of how different these churches may be from yours, we think youll find some relevancy to where you are.
We gave them a list of questions to find out more about their church, their team and their ministry. This month, we would like to introduce you to Ashleigh Patterson at Lakeshore Church in Rockwall, Texas.
Church: Lakeshore Church (Rockwall, TX)
MarriedPeople champion: Ashleigh Patterson
Size of your church: 1000+
Approximate number of married couples: 300-400
Describe the area you are in: suburban
Tell Us About . . . You and Your Team
I am full-time on staff (as Nursery Director).
How did you get involved in marriage ministry? I was asked.
How many people are on your marriage ministry team? Five totaltwo on staff and three spouses
How did you recruit your team? They volunteered.
Tell Us About . . . How You Use the MarriedPeople Resources and Strategy
What resources do you use from MarriedPeople? Strategy Pack
Larger Group Experiences, Small Group Experiences and Date Nights
What does the calendar year look like with your marriage strategy? (How many one-night events do you do? Date Nights? Small groups? Do you send E-ZINEs out every month?)
We do an annual Marriage Seminar using 2 large group experiences and 2 separate one-night events throughout the year.
What are some of the unique challenges to planning events in your community, and how have you worked around them?
Youth sports are a big deal, and other large community events. We just try to be aware of what is going on when planning for the year.
What has been one really great thing that has come from using MarriedPeople resources? Tell us a story. We had a small group that was formed after our Marriage Seminar this year and it has really taken off. They finished the Married People small group materials and asked for more curriculum so they could keep meeting. The participants of the group are building stronger marriages and having a lot of fun!
What has been your biggest success so far? I would just say that all the events have been great because of the resources provided! It makes it hard to fail!
What has been your biggest fail and what did you learn from it? We didn’t have much success the first time we tried to get couples to hashtag a photo, so the next time we did it we REALLY emphasized it and had more participation.
Whats your dream to happen next? I would like to do bigger date night events!
Thanks, Ashleigh, and the awesome team impacting marriages in Rockwall, TX!
For more about Lakeshore Church, check out their website.
To connect with other MarriedPeople leaders, request to join the MarriedPeople Leaders Facebook group.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Mar 22, 2017 | Resources
While our team is busy putting the finishing touches on our new annual Strategy Pack, we wanted to give you a sneak peek at what is coming soon.
The new CLEAR Strategy Pack will be available for purchase April 1. At the launch of CLEAR, many of the files for the Larger Group Experiences and Date Nights will be available, with some additional files being loaded before the end of the month.
The Small Group materials, included in the Strategy Pack and listed below, will be available for download in mid-May.
Our theme for 2017-2018 is CLEAR with one simple statement:
“Marriage has enough questions. Get CLEAR.”
The 2017-18 MarriedPeople Strategy empowers you to empower couples to get clear. Here’s a description of what’s in CLEAR Strategy Pack.
Larger Group Experiences
There are four Larger Group Experiences. Here’s a summary of each one.
Get Clear on . . . God’s Help. You have a big fan of your marriage—God. He wants you and your spouse to succeed, to be the best version of the two of you. And He’s provided a Helper, the Holy Spirit, and a great tool to help you do that—simply pausing and praying.
Core 4 Habit: Love God First
Communicator: Michael Owens
Get Clear on . . . What’s in Your Backpack. Every one of us is carrying something every day. For some it’s baggage from the past, but for a lot of us, it’s just the pile-on of everyday life and the demands that come from adult-ing. You probably know what is wearing you down, but what about your spouse? What is he or she carrying? We need to see past our own stuff, and get clear on what’s on our spouse’s heart and mind.
Core 4 Habit: Respect & Love
Communicator: Ted Lowe
Get Clear on . . . Technology. Technology is a part of our lives. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not. But technology is either of those things in and of itself, it’s a tool. And we can use it to connect with our spouse more, or disconnect and distract.
Core 4 Habit: Practice Your Promise
Communicator: Mo Isom and Jeremiah Aiken (husband and wife duo)
Get Clear on . . . Your Team. Who are the people surrounding your marriage? Friends. Family. Co-workers. Neighbors. Acquaintances. Those are the people in the background of your lives. Are they adding value to your relationship? Are they encouraging you to be the best version of your US? Are they bringing clarity?
Core 4 Habit: Have Serious Fun
Communicator: Ted Cunningham
Small Group
Clear contains a six-week small group study that is different than anything we’ve ever done before . . . for a very good reason. Here’s a description.
Get Clear about . . . Money. We’ve partnered with our friends at brightPeak to offer you what we believe is one of the best small group studies on money out there! Why? Because it doesn’t just talk about money from a practical standpoint—it looks at it from many different angles, including the emotional side of money. With short videos provided 5-10 minues of teaching, this study is written in a very clear, easy to understand and easy to lead format. Also, there are some fun, hands on activities as well. This isn’t just information about finances, it’s an experience—one that will help you and your spouse get clear about your finances.
The CLEAR Strategy Pack also contains four date nights, as well as access to 12 issues of MarriedPeople Monthly.
For those of you who have purchased a Strategy Pack in the past, you’ll notice a few key differences in CLEAR:
- The CLEAR Strategy Pack contains just one promo video . . . but we promise you, it’s really, really good. You’re going to want show it multiple times for your different marriage ministry environments.
- As noted above, our small group study is six weeks, and it’s a study on money that’s interactive, fun, and inspiring. (Those are words seldom used to describe a study on money.) Each session contains a short 5-10 minute video and is easy and fun to lead. Participant’s guides are sold separately in a digital format only. Prices vary based on the number of users who need access.
- We’ve switched up the style of our video communicator videos for the larger group experiences. We’ve also invited some new friends to join us this year. We think the couples in your church will really enjoy meeting and learning from them.
- A new Scope and Cycle document to help those of you who want guidance to know when to use what resources in your marriage ministry strategy.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that you still have a MarriedPeople Orange Specialist who can help you navigate both the content and the strategy of a pro-active marriage ministry!
We can’t wait to show you more about CLEAR. Don’t worry. You won’t have to wait much longer.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Mar 9, 2017 | Spotlight
We have amazing MarriedPeople partner churches. These marriage champions are taking the MarriedPeople resources and doing things that are above and beyond anything we dreamed about.
We want you to meet them. So once a month, well spotlight a different church that is impacting not only the marriages in their church, but in their community. We want you to meet people from churches of all sizes, large and small, in various types of communities, whether urban, rural or suburban, with budgets big and small and volunteers plenty or scarce. Regardless of how different these churches may be from yours, we think youll find some relevancy to where you are.
We gave them a list of questions to find out more about their church, their team and their ministry. This month, we would like to introduce you to Monica Humpal at Williamson’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Mooresville, NC.
Church: Williamson’s Chapel United Methodist Church (Mooresville, NC)
MarriedPeople champion: Monica Humpal
Size of your church: 2,500 membership, 1,000 average worship each Sunday
Approximate number of married couples: membership: 850, active: 400
Describe the area you are in: We are a suburban lake community, roughly 20 miles from Charlotte, NC, which is a large urban city.
Tell Us About . . . You and Your Team
I am full-time clergy on staff.
How did you get involved in marriage ministry? I heard MarriedPeople’s Ted Lowe speak at the Orange Conference, and that was the catalyst to beginning to explore this ministry in our church and community. I saw both the need in our church and the lack of marriage ministries around us, so I created it using the MarriedPeople resources. Now it’s part of my job.
How many people are on your marriage ministry team (including you)? 12
How did you recruit your team? I hand-picked team members to ensure we had representation from all ages and stages of life.
What are the demographics of the couples in your church? Mostly couples, in their 30’s-40’s, with kids
Tell Us About . . . How You Use the MarriedPeople Resources and Strategy
What resources do you use from MarriedPeople? We purchase the MarriedPeople Strategy Pack every year. We usually do three of the large group events a year, and we give out the Date Nights at each event. We also send out the MarriedPeople E-ZINE every month.
How do you communicate with your couples? Bulletin, email, verbal announcement in worship, church website, social media
Does your marriage ministry have a social media presence? Our marriage ministry does not, but our church does. We use the church’s social media accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
Do you encourage/invite couples from the community to your marriage events? Yes, always!
How do you reach couples outside your church? Social media, word of mouth, local paper. We encourage couples to invite friends to attend.
What has been on really great thing that has come from using MarriedPeople? The resources have helped us hone our ministry and make it well-rounded. Instead of having one event here or there, we now have a comprehensive strategy to help marriages and this material truly helps churches do that in an intentional way. Without this material, we were doing haphazard things such as one class on Sunday morning, then, several months later having a one-time marriage workshop, and nothing every tied together or made sense. This material flows and builds upon itself, but not in such a way that you MUST attend everything to understand the flow of the ministry.
What has been your biggest success so far? Large group events have really been successful and we have seen roughly, 1/4 of those attending each time are first time attendees who do not go to our church (from the community at large).
What has been your biggest challenge? ?Small groups. Couples don’t have time to commit to that and/or are reluctant to be in an intimate setting with other couples (husbands especially).
What’s your dream to happen next? An “Almost” MarriedPeople ministry!
If MarriedPeople could equip you with one resource, what would it be? Materials geared toward couples who are engaged or in committed relationships to get them READY for marriage.
Thanks, Monica, and the awesome team impacting marriages in Mooresville, NC!
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Feb 21, 2017 | Spotlight
We have amazing MarriedPeople partner churches. These marriage champions are taking the MarriedPeople resources and doing things that are above and beyond anything we dreamed about.
We want you to meet them. So once a month, well spotlight a different church that is impacting not only the marriages in their church, but in their community. We want you to meet people from churches of all sizes, large and small, in various types of communities, whether urban, rural or suburban, with budgets big and small and volunteers plenty or scarce. Regardless of how different these churches may be from yours, we think youll find some relevancy to where you are.
We gave them a list of questions to find out more about their church, their team and their ministry. This month, we would like to introduce you to Josh Fortney at Pathway Church in Burleson, Texas.
Church: Pathway Church (Burleson, TX)
MarriedPeople champion: Josh Fortney
Size of your church: 1200
Approximate number of married couples: 450
Describe the area you are in: suburban
Tell Us About . . . You and Your Team
I am full-time on staff. I am the Pastor of Marriage, Family and Student Ministries (NextGen Pastor, in a nutshell).
How did you get involved in marriage ministry? I felt convicted at Orange Conference one year and responded to God’s calling to move forward. I came back on fire for God to do a big thing in marriages, and our church was very receptive to us being preventative, rather than responsive, in our marriage ministry.
How many people are on your marriage ministry team? 14 (7 couples)
How did you recruit your team? My wife and I were on the look out for people who were passionate about marriage and for people who were actively living a healthy marriage. We were also hoping to gather couples from a variety of life stages.
Tell Us About . . . How You Use the MarriedPeople Resources and Strategy
What resources do you use from MarriedPeople? Strategy Pack
Larger Group events, Small Group study, Date Nights, monthly emails
What does the calendar year look like with your marriage strategy? (How many one-night events do you do? Date Nights? Small groups? Do you send E-ZINEs out every month?) We prepare date night kits for off-site date nights, 3-4 times a year. We strategically plan these around busier seasons (Christmas, Valentines Day, End of School, and Back to School). We also challenge our couples with specific intentional dates to go on through our Summer Date Night Challenge. This is becoming a staple in our MarriedPeople outreach as it makes a big deal out of dating your spouse.
We also strive to have one to two large group events a year. These come as a breath of fresh air in a busy calendar. Our small group ministry launches once per semester. This gives us a couple strategic times to implement small groups for marriages. We have done the E-Zine monthly until February-March of 2016. We went weekly on a newsletter challenging couples to reset on their marriage through grace and forgiveness. We will begin monthly E-Zines again in June 2016.
What are some of the unique challenges to planning events in your community, and how have you worked around them? Texas=Football, Friday night lights are August-December. That makes it hard to plan an event in the fall. We are praying for people to take a week off from high school football to be their best US. We have many families who are devoted to sports and school activities. We are battling the “kid-centered home.”
We also have a Saturday evening worship service at our church. That means we’re limited on our facility usage. We have been creative by making meals for couples to grab after worship and head out on a date. We also try to meet people where they’re at in their busy schedules by giving them things they can do as a couple while they’re at kids games, practices, traveling to and from events and even while they’re apart.
We are continually praying for married people to step up and prioritize their marriage. We know God will repair, restore, and invigorate marriages through His church. MarriedPeople gives us a strategic way to reach couples.
Share with us one way you took the MarriedPeople resources and customized them to fit your church. We try to make the date nights our own. One of the small things that made a huge impact was adding a hashtag that is specific to our church. We have seen, as well as others in our community, the #pathwaydate hashtag pop up often. It creates a buzz and gets people excited about dating. We took small activities from each date and put them on a punchcard for couples to complete last summer. They had to go on dates, complete the activities, and post on social media in order for their date to count for the competition. The winning couple got a weekend at a Bed N Breakfast, 2nd place got dinner at a fancy restaurant, and 3rd place got an at home date kit. It was a great blend of the date nights and a fun way to challenge people in the summer time.
What has been your biggest fail and what did you learn from it? Valentines Day 🙁 We got people to pre-order food, but we didn’t get them to prepay. So we had a number of meals we expected selling and ended up selling only a fraction. It was a fail on me, but lesson learned!
Whats your dream to happen next? We want to build our large group event to be a staple in the calendars of couples. We hope to bring in the date night comedy tour, but we need to build momentum in order to do that. We would also love to see a large number of married small groups develop from this US series.
Thanks, Josh, and the awesome team impacting marriages in Burleson, TX!
For more about Pathway Church, check out their website.
To connect with other MarriedPeople leaders, request to join the MarriedPeople Leaders Facebook group.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Feb 16, 2017 | Spotlight
We have amazing MarriedPeople partner churches. These marriage champions are taking the MarriedPeople resources and doing things that are above and beyond anything we dreamed about.
We want you to meet them. So once a month, well spotlight a different church that is impacting not only the marriages in their church, but in their community. We want you to meet people from churches of all sizes, large and small, in various types of communities, whether urban, rural or suburban, with budgets big and small and volunteers plenty or scarce. Regardless of how different these churches may be from yours, we think youll find some relevancy to where you are.
We gave them a list of questions to find out more about their church, their team and their ministry. This month, we would like to introduce you to Jonathan Curry at Greater Works Outreach in Monroeville, PA.
Church: Greater Works Outreach (Monroeville, PA)
MarriedPeople champion: Jonathan Curry
Size of your church: 400
Approximate number of married couples: 150
Describe the area you are in: suburban
Tell Us About . . . You and Your Team
I am full-time on staff in Children’s Ministry and leading the Contemporary service.
How did you get involved in marriage ministry? We saw a huge need and wanted to be involved with parents of our students.
How many people are on your marriage ministry team? 8
How did you recruit your team? Face to face, built on personal relationships already established.
Tell Us About . . . How You Use the MarriedPeople Resources and Strategy
What resources do you use from MarriedPeople? Strategy PackLarger Group events, Small Group study, Date Nights, monthly emails
What does the calendar year look like with your marriage strategy? (How many one-night events do you do? Date Nights? Small groups? Do you send E-ZINEs out every month?) We run our ministry during the school year and host alternating large and small group experiences at the church usually. We meed every 6-8 weeks and we try to have “just for fun” events that couples can just come to and connect with each other.
What are some of the unique challenges to planning events in your community, and how have you worked around them? Scheduling is everyone’s issue, so we instead of putting our eggs all into just one event, we broke it out to a six-week alternating schedule. That way if you have to miss one event, you don’t miss the whole principle being taught.
Share with us one way you took the MarriedPeople resources and customized them to fit your church. We really take them as is so we don’t customize them too much, but we will exclude elements for time or replace some of the games with our own silliness.
What has been your biggest success so far? Success is in the eye of the beholder, but to me, the fact that everyone who comes has come consistently and they have found a niche in our church has been beneficial to them and to us as a church.
What has been your biggest fail and what did you learn from it? We tried early on to be way too serious and approach this topic with simplicity and education, but we have since grown to understand the value of honesty and laughing at ourselves.
Thanks, Jonathan, and the awesome team impacting marriages in Monroeville, PA!
To connect with other MarriedPeople leaders, request to join the MarriedPeople Leaders Facebook group.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
