Marriage Ministry Crash Course: The Launch Countdown

by Todd Graham

So, you get the importance of having a strategy to help marriages in your church and now you are ready to get going. That is awesome and this is going to be one of the best things you have ever done for your church—but do yourself a favor and put some energy and thought into launching it well.

Prior to a churchwide launch, get a few key couples together and share your vision over a meal. If you’ve purchased the MarriedPeople Strategy Pack, while you are there, give them a date night and show them the E-ZINE for the month. It only takes a few excited couples to catch the vision and get the strategy going strong in your church.

The Strategy Pack is your well thought out adversary in marriage ministry so study it well prior to launch. It is laid out seasonally, so you can look at the entire year in advance to plan out the touch points that you are going to hand people for their marriages.

Calendar the quarterly Large Group events first, then build the rest of the components around those events. Build in the date nights some time in the two months that follow each seasonal Large Group gathering. And schedule a five-week block for a MarriedPeople Small Group during a quarter that works best for your church’s schedule. The E-ZINEs are also a great follow-up, and are intended to be sent out by you at the beginning of each month using an email management system like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

If you are familiar with the First Look or 252 curriculum dashboard from Orange, then this is going to be super easy to navigate. It runs on the same system that you are used to. If you are not using the Orange curriculum and you are new to the dashboard, the learning curve is only a few minutes, and there are videos in the training tab to help you get started.

My favorite component is the monthly E-ZINE. It is fun, fast, guy (and girl) friendly, and it gets couples engaging with each other about their marriages within the walls of their own homes at least once a month (which is statistically 1x more than most couples actively engage on the topic of marriage). At the beginning of the month, we pull the E-ZINE from the Married People dashboard, drop it directly into MailChimp and it immediately goes out to all of the married people in our congregation.

My best piece of advice is to launch this BIG. Promote it early and make every promotion a celebration of epic proportions! After all, if you are wanting your congregation to make marriages a priority, than believe in what you are doing with the strategy. With a little effort, your church will become a community hub that makes good marriages GREAT!

(Note: Got a question about putting together a launch plan for YOUR church? Join our MarriedPeople Leaders Facebook Group—it’s free—and interact with other leaders like Todd Graham who have either been there, or are in the process right now of putting a team together, or just starting the journey.)

 

Todd Graham is the Minister to Children & Families at Oceanview Baptist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and a MarriedPeople advocate and fanboy. He is married to his best friend Trina and has 3 amazing kids.

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