Starting Off Right: Your First Few Years in Marriage Ministry (Part 1)

by Ted Lowe and Doug Fields

When I (Ted) started marriage ministry in the local church in 2001, I felt alone. As I looked across the country, I saw very few churches that had a holistic approach to marriage, or any approach for that matter.

Today, Doug and I are both very encouraged with the number of churches leaders who are going after it. Some have a plan, others are asking, “How do I get started?” For the latter group, this post and the next two (to be posted the next two Tuesdays) is for you.

Step One: Get buy-in from senior leadership
Let’s start with the obvious. You need to recognize where the power for change (or at least powerful influence) lies—senior leadership. Depending on your church structure, this could be anyone from the senior pastor, the executive pastor, the person overseeing family ministry or the head of elders to the janitor. The senior pastor may not supervise you directly, but we encourage you to make sure you’ve got buy-in from the ministry leader before beginning this ministry. If the senior pastor isn’t supportive of it, you will really struggle to implement a marriage strategy.

Step Two: Identify the point person
This person needs to be a self-starter who can take an idea and run with it. He or she needs to be comfortable working with other leaders and have the ability to recruit others for help. There’s no one type of personality that fits for all situations—we’ve seen both extroverts and introverts win in this role—but the common characteristic of a good leader is one who has the ability to make things happen on his or her own. If he or she has to wait for you before making decisions and moving forward, this process will stall out and drive you crazy.

Step Three: Cast Vision with A Core Team of Leaders
Here’s a leadership truth you can bank on: Everyone wants to be invited to something. Invite people to join you in leadership. What’s better than helping marriages? Invite people onto this roller coaster called marriage ministry—it’s guaranteed to be a wild ride. One suggestion is to choose heart over skills, always. We’d much rather teach a good-hearted person the needed skills than try to teach a skilled person to have a heart.

Step Four: Pause to Pray
We assume you’ve been praying during this entire process, but we also know it’s easy for ambitious leaders (that would describe both of us) to move too fast. We like ideas and movement and want to see both appear quickly. We get it and appreciate your enthusiasm. But, slow down. Breathe. Take time to pray and talk to Jesus about your ambitious dreams and desires. We suggest talking to God before, during, and after, and always seek the wisdom that He promises to provide. Jesus was (is) God, and even He waited 30 years before starting His ministry. And what was one of His first leadership decisions? He went into the wilderness to fast and pray.

We will be back next week with Part 2 of Starting off right: Your First Few Years in Marriage Ministry.

 

This series of blog posts is excerpted from the book, Married People, How Your Church Can Build Marriages That Last. For more helpful tips on starting a marriage ministry, click here.

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