by Tim Walker | Feb 14, 2017 | Training
Marriage ministry can be awesome.
It can be fun.
It can be challenging.
It can be lonely.
The MarriedPeople team wants to help you navigate all of it, and surround you with people who are like-minded as well. That’s why we think attending the Orange Conference 2017 is a really, really good thing for those of you who are helping marriages.
Here are the marriage ministry breakouts we have planned for OC17. Find the ones that fit where you are and what you need. And our team will also be around, either at breakouts or in the Orange booth, to answer questions during the conference. You can also connect and meet your MarriedPeople Orange Specialist, Nancy Squires (who is really quite wonderful).
We hope to see you there!
OC 17 Breakouts
Our Best Us
Timeslot: Workshop 1
Room: Room 15
Speaker: Ted Lowe
Track: MarriedPeople
Are you married and on staff or volunteering at your church? For this breakout, take off your ministry hat. This breakout is about being a husband or a wife. This breakout is about helping you and your spouse become your best US—not a replica of another couple, but the US God intended you two to be. Ted Lowe, author and director of MarriedPeople, will give you some practical tools to help you and your spouse keep your eyes on each other in the midst of life and ministry.
Using One Night Events to Reach Your Neighbors
Timeslot: Workshop 2
Room: Room 15
Speaker: Ted Lowe
Track: MarriedPeople
You have a great church and great people, but not everyone wants to come to your church on Sunday. It’s not personal. It’s just not their thing. But your church can still reach your neighbors because while they may not be sure how they feel about church, they do know how they feel about their marriage . . . they want it to be great! And with an authentic, fun-filled night with relevant teaching, your church can help marriages in your church AND your community.
MarriedPeople Interactive
Timeslot: Workshop 4
Room: Room 15
Speaker: Ted Lowe
Track: MarriedPeople
When it comes to marriage, every day is full of challenges and victories. And to be honest, just getting out the door Sunday morning can put most marriages to the test. That’s why you need MarriedPeople, the marriage division of Orange! Join us to explore the three facets of the MarriedPeople strategy and curriculum: inspiring large groups, empowering small groups, and equipping individual couples. You’ll leave with well-tested, practical ideas for creating and maintaining a proactive marriage ministry in your church.
Marriage Ministry: Your Toughest Audience—Singles, Millennials & Military
Timeslot: Breakout C
Speaker: Ted Lowe and guests
Track: Married People
Every area of ministry has its challenges, and marriage ministry is no exception. How do you talk about marriage in a way that appeals to the men in your church without isolating the women (and vice versa)? How do you help military families who experience extended times apart? How do you appeal to millennials, while also engaging older couples? And what about singles—how do you talk about marriage without neglecting these vital members of your congregation? Join us in this breakout, as Ted Lowe and guests tackle these questions like these and more.
The MarriedPeople Strategy: Whys and Hows
Speaker: Coming Soon
Track: Married People
MarriedPeople is the marriage division of Orange. It’s a foundational Orange concept that what happens at home is just as important as what happens at church. We get that with kids, but it’s also true for the married couples in your church. Because as any married couple can tell—disconnection happens easily, connection takes intention. Your church can be strategic in helping couples connect. This breakout will walk you through some ways your church can be marriage heroes and impact couples inside your church and in your neighborhood.
Come join us at The Orange Conference 2017 and find out how your church can help marriages—for couples inside the walls of your church and your neighbors!
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Feb 2, 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 Heather Matarazzo at Rolling Plains UMC in Zanesville, Ohio.
Church: Rolling Plains UMC (Zanesville, OH)
MarriedPeople champion: Heather Matarazzo
Size of church: 650-700
Describe the area you are in: Rural. We are the largest city in our area, surrounded by little town and farms. In general, we are a very poor community.
What are the biggest challenges your particular community faces? Culture of poverty, working poor, drug abuse
Tell Us About . . . You and Your Team
I am full-time on staff as the Director of Children and Family Ministries.
How did you get involved in marriage ministry? I truly felt that we couldnt be saying we are partnering with parents and then leave them hanging when it comes to their marriages. We send take home activities to our families and expect them to teach their children while hanging onto marriages and sanity with both hands.
We have a culture of divorce in our area and families with absent fathers.
Rolling Plains is in a unique position, we have many young married people without children yet and active present young fathers willing to invest in marriages. This seemed a great way to encourage and reinforce this group and show case another way at the same time lending support to those struggling in a non-threatening way.
How many people are on your marriage ministry team (including you)? Four, but we are in the process of growing this team.
How did you recruit your team? Direct ask! With clear vision and commitment of time
What are the demographics of the couples in your church? We have young marrieds, retirees, parents with kids and couples without kids. We actually have them all in fairly even amounts, but with slightly higher numbers of parents with children due to the 22 babies born in 14 months last year.
Tell Us About . . . How You Use the MarriedPeople Resources and Strategy
What resources do you use from MarriedPeople? Larger Group Experiences, Small Group Resources (just beginning this), Date Nights and the monthly MarriedPeople E-ZINEs
How do you use them? In what settings? Events, small groups (just starting)
How do you communicate with your couples? Handouts, bulletin, verbal announcements, emails, church website, social media. Social Media is our biggest asset.
Does your marriage ministry have a social media presence? Facebook
Do you encourage/invite couples from the community to your marriage events? Yes
How do you reach couples outside your church? Social media and word of mouth. Our church also sponsors a Community Center in our community and we promote date night there. Also, our local MOPS group actively promotes our events.
What has been on really great thing that has come from using MarriedPeople? We have had the opportunity to put together multigenerational events which have included a couple married a 8 months in their early 20s and couple married over 50 years in their 70s and both couples marked the same answer on their feedback card- How great to laugh together with our friends.
What has been your biggest success so far? Our first date night we were able to take pictures of our couples together (My husband taught himself on YouTube for the event) and give many of them their only portrait together. I included the pictures with an invitation to our next event. 
We also used the portraits on postcards and posters and web to promote the next event.
Give us an example of how you took a MarriedPeople resource and made it your own. We just last week had 30 couples participate in Date Night is in the Bag a drive thru date night. Couples drove under the awning of the church I ran out and handed them a bag with one of 6 dates in it (I didnt even know who received which date).
The date were silly things they would never do together, tie dye a t-shirt for each other and talk about the silly time you have spent together, paint your spouses portrait and talk about your happiest time together so they are smiling in the portrait are a couple of the date. We gave them silly names like Rembrandt Rendezvous and asked couple to post pictures of the date on our Facebook page to encourage others to laugh together. In the bag we included everything they needed for the activity, a snack, an invitation for them to our next night out event plus an invitation to give another couple. We also included a Bonus date (from Married People curriculum) with instructions to go on this date before our night out next event. The response was amazing. 
What has been your biggest challenge? Honestly the same challenges with any eventchildcare and finances.
Whats your dream to happen next? We are planning on fully expanding into small groups next year and hoping for a sermon series kick off.
If MarriedPeople could equip you with one resource, what would it be? I would love to hear some of the out of the box ideas being usedunconventional really works well in our area.
Anything else? One more thing that I think has really helped our events take off and be embraced by our church. I targeted specific couple of influence in our church met with them and explained married people really well and cast vision for how it would impact our church and asked them to be involved not as volunteers but as ambassadors- show up at the events, talk about them before and after with other couples and on social media. This gave us by in and made it legitimate much faster than if these specific couple had just attended the events.
Thanks, Heather, and the awesome group of volunteers impacting marriages in Zanesville, Ohio!
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Jan 31, 2017 | Resources
Planning a Valentine’s or MarriedPeople event in the next couple of weeks? Make sure your decor is both man and woman friendly. It sets the tone. It lets couples know that you have their back, and, especially for guys, it lets them know that you created this event with them in mind too.
At our Marriage Ministry One Day event in November, we asked one of our MarriedPeople partners and decor gurus, Archie Rish, to decorate the tables for the event. He came up with some great ideas utilizing items from the Dollar Store, Walmart, and a few other sources.
So look over these images. Be inspired. And come up with some ideas that fit the couples in your church and your community.
(hint: this is just blocks of wood and 4US cards from the US Strategy Pack)
80s theme
yes, that’s a real cake . . . and it was delicious!
painted footballs, can of boiled peanuts (it’s a Southern thing), box of Cracker Jack’s
jars of candy and 4US cards from the US Strategy Pack
painted globe, 4US cards, a piece of wood, and maps
coffee urn, coffee cups from the Dollar Store, coffee beans scattered about—the table smelled so good!
We would love to see some of your decor ideas as well. Post them in the comments section or on our MarriedPeople Facebook page.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Jan 23, 2017 | Outreach, Technology
by Tim Walker
Most couples know they should date. But the reality of schedules, children with stomach viruses, money, and just the thought of the same old thing quickly become deterrents. After a while, you just quit trying.
But time alone between couples is important. It keeps them connected. It reminds them of why they got together in the first place. It’s also why we include four Date Nights in our MarriedPeople Strategy Pack. And why we create these date nights to be fun and memorable moments for a couple, not a therapy session.
So how do you get couples to move from we should do this, to let’s actually do this? How does the church promote Date Night for couples. Why not harness the power of social media?
Here are some tips and ideas to make a date night a trending topic with the couples in your church:
Save the date
Set a date on the calendar that will be the official Date Night for your married couples. Since we provide four dates a year, that means, wait for it . . . setting aside four dates on the calendar. Not everyone will be able to go out that night, and may need to set a substitute date, but by making a night an official date night, you are showing that it’s important. And you’re giving couples a marker on the calendar to work around and hold sacred.
To ensure that couples save the date (in more ways than one), send out an evite or email blast with the Save the Date dates.
Feed the buzz
As the event draws closer, create a lot of buzz online. Post messages to Facebook, send tweets via Twitter, post images to Instagram to build some excitement about Date Night. Heres an example of something you may want to tweet:
Don’t you and your spouse need some serious fun? [insert date] is the night to make it happen.
Before leaving the house
Once you distribute the Date Nights, you can encourage couples to find some place new to try with smart phone apps like Yelp or Urban Spoon. You can also let them know about special deals in the area through sites like Groupon or Amazon Local.
Out and About and offline
Unless otherwise instructed in the MarriedPeople Date Night PDF, while on their date, encourage couples to stay offline. We want them to connect with one another, and not the rest of the virtual world.
Post Post-Event
Send out an email or post online encouraging couples to upload photos from Date Night using #mpdates. Post the pics to your church website, blog and/or Facebook page. It’s a great way to show what fun date nights can be, and a great promo for your next date night.
These are just a few ideas of how you can utilize social media to create some buzz around date nights.
What are some ways your church has used social media to promote date nights?
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
by Tim Walker | Jan 13, 2017 | Resources
Sometimes help is closer than you realize.
If you’ve purchased a MarriedPeople Strategy Pack, you have some great resources to implement a marriage strategy in your church, and even in your community.
But in the mass of videos and documents and graphics and other files, there is a one resource you may have missed. One that may be exactly what you need to figure out how all of this works in your particular churchthe MarriedPeople Orange Specialist.
MarriedPeople wants to help church leaders succeed as they help marriages, not just give them another resource. One of the best ways is to help leaders connect with their Orange Specialist, better known as the MarriedPeople OS.
Not every church is the same. Some churches are big, some are small. Some are in a building, some are portable. Some are in the city, some in the suburbs, some in rural areas. And while we create the Strategy Pack to work in all those settings, some times you just need a little help figuring out the how for your particular setting.
So what does a MarriedPeople OS have to offer you, the church leader?
- A wealth of information. They talk to A LOT of leaders, people who have been there, done that. They can pass along some best practices not only from their own experience, but also from the experiences of other leaders. They can share marriage ministry trends. They can even help you customize the MarriedPeople resources to fit into the culture of individual churches.
- A network of marriage ministry leaders. The MarriedPeople OS can connect church leaders to other leaders in their region who are using MarriedPeople resources. When church leaders connect to other church leaders, their ministries can thrive as they encourage and support one another.
- A strategist for marriage ministry. They can help leaders implement the MarriedPeople Strategy. They can talk through ways to best integrate the resources into the culture of the church. They can help develop a plan to cast the vision for the churchs marriage ministry.
- Orange information. Your OS eats, sleeps, and breathes the Orange strategy. If the church leader has a question regarding the Orange strategy or other Orange curriculums, the MarriedPeople OS can answer it. If they don’t know the answer, they won’t leave the leader hanging. They will get the answer for them.
- Administrative Assistance. Your MarriedPeople Orange Specialist can help you find files, change passwords, add users, and find invoices. Need to sign up for the Orange Conference, Orange Tour, or renew a subscription? They can help with these and many other tasks. All you have to do is ask.
The MarriedPeople Orange Specialist team wants to connect with you! They want to help leaders create wins in their marriage ministries. Don’t miss out on this resource that is only a call or email away.
Email info@marriedpeople.org to get connected today, or simply select the envelope icon in the upper right corner when you log into your MarriedPeople account.
Tim Walker is an editor on the MarriedPeople team, and blogger at timswords.com.
