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.
