As I think about our Sunday morning worship experience, I strongly believe people should have fun at church. Yes, the messages must be biblically sound, helpful and meaningful, but I believe people are just plan tired of boring church.
Realizing that having fun can be hard to do when you have a to-do list that’s a mile long, I partnered with Ted Lowe and MarriedPeople to make it happen. As a church, we help marriages that are hurting but we also spend intentional time helping healthy marriages stay healthy. With the help of MarriedPeople, we created a 60-minute Sunday morning service where we tackled the tough topic of adultry (Proverbs 5:1-20). While what the Bible said was very tough for some to hear, the resources from MarriedPeople helped us share a solid biblical truth with an incredible dose of fun and laughter.
Now, I know some of you are thinking, What about all the singles in the room? I had the same thought, so I talked with several during preparations for the service and they all said that they either want to be married or know married people. But to go the extra mile, and to acknowledge and engage everyone in the room, we told all singles that if they thought today was a total waste of time, they could stop by our Welcome Center and pick up a Starbucks gift card and at least get a free coffee out of it. Interestingly enough, no gift cards where picked up.
To create the mood for the day, we had a violinist playing in the entry foyer. Once in the auditorium, our key -boardist played classical music and servers handed out bottles of water and doughnut holes. (This isn’t in the MarriedPeople resources, we added it. One of the great benefits of partnering with MP is that you can adapt their resources to fit your service style, your in-house talent, and your available time and resources.)
Once the service began, we opened with a little Van Halen, then a MarriedPeople video, followed by a love song called “4 Chords.” Then our host played a game with pre-selected contestants. Next, we showed another MP video, sang a Michael Buble song, showed another MP video prior to me speaking for 30 minutes. We closed with “God Gave Me You” by Dave Barnes. All of that happened in 60 minutes. Can you believe that?! The feedback from the morning was more than normal and everyone raved about the day. I have to say, it was A-Ma-Zing.
The way MP has thought through this makes it really easy to implement on Sunday morning. From the high quality videos to multiple song and game options, to an existing script, to the “Can’t Wait Date Card,” for husband and wives to enjoy together, this truly is an event that is easily implemented. This is the needle in the haystack we were looking for.
