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.

On many occasions I’ve said, “If you show me that you love my kids and have a passion to help them grow, then I will love you.” Now don’t read to deep into this. As a believer, I know I’m called to love everyone—and I do. However, when I see someone choosing—or better yet, volunteering—to intentionally pour into my kids, then my love for that person goes up astronomically. This is true with their teachers at school, their lacrosse coaches, their small group leaders or a neighbor who takes time to listen to our boys and engage them in meaningful conversation.

As a lead pastor, I believe this idea, concept, theory or whatever we choose to call it, is true in the church as well. I believe that when we fully grasp and support what is going on in our Family Ministry environments, parents notice. Then, when parents see that we are passionate and love what goes on in Family Ministry, they love their church even more. Now, merely walking through the hall and “glad handing” and giving everyone a pastoral smile doesn’t count. Everyone sees right through that. When I say we should passionately support our Family Ministry environments, I mean we should know what is going on to a point that we can stand up in “Big Church” and trumpet our strategy for partnering with families so they can be the most effective spiritual leaders in their home.

If you are a lead pastor and your church utilizes the resources Orange provides—or better yet, your Family Ministry staff is doing their best to implement the Orange Strategy to partner with families, then I highly recommend you join your staff and attend Orange Conference. I’ve listed five benefits that I believe all lead pastors will experience from attending Orange Conference—and if not all five, at least three!

1. Attending Orange Conference is way more fun and engaging than any adult ministry or senior pastor conference.
2. When families realize the lead pastor truly cares about what is going on in Family Ministry, (i.e., He attends a family ministry conference) families will actually want to attend “your” church even more.
3. When families realize the lead pastor supports what is going on in family ministry, they actually serve more and give more to the church.
4. When the family ministry staff realizes their lead pastor cares so much (and attends Orange Conference with them) about what they are pouring their lives into, the staff will be happier and more productive.
5. When the lead pastor realizes how incredibly well Orange has thought through a strategy for the church and the family to work together, in order to pour into the next generation, he will be excited to share this in “Big Church.”

Powell is the lead pastor at Rock Point Community Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., a North Point Ministries Partner. He is married to Amy Grisham, an Orange Specialist, and has two sons.

Have you ever looked at your job, a specific challenge or even seemingly simple and mundane tasks that have to get done, and rather than thinking through the best way to tackle it, you just jump in and see what happens? We’ve all done it. We think the extra time on the front end is a waste and it’ll be okay to figure it out as we go.

Unfortunately, many times a scattered approach is chosen over a strategic one. We start by trying a bunch of stuff or programs, see where it hits, see what people get excited about or attend (and maybe they attended because they had nothing else to do, or maybe they didn’t attend because it was scheduled on a bad day) and, from the response of the crowd, determine if the program is continued.

This process is repeated annually and more and more stuff is added and the calendar gets more and more packed and nothing really goes together or leads to a specific strategy.

Since there was no clear reason for beginning something, there is no clear reason to stop it. If the goal is a full calendar so the church kids stay out of trouble and the size of the church building is justified, then lots of programs will follow.

However, if a clearly defined goal is stated for each program, if a clearly outlined strategy is put in place, then you no longer have scattered programs but you take intentional steps toward your over-arching strategy.

The benefits of having a clear strategic plan and knowing where you are going before you begin are numerous:

1. You can measure and evaluate if you are headed in the right direction.
2. You have an understood filter to run every possible program through before you start it.
3. You have a clear mission and vision to share with everyone who asks why you do what you do—or don’t do what you don’t do.
4. The families who attend your church have a clear understanding about the direction you are leading their children as you partner with them.
5. The leaders of each environment understand why they are doing what they do.
6. Resources can be appropriately allocated in order to make the strategic programs a memorable and fun experience. Or said another way, you can do a few things and do each of them very, very well.
7. And, this one is very important: You prevent your staff from burning out and wrecking their marriages and lives because they are constantly at the church setting up, implementing and cleaning up after another scattered program.

With things like organizing your sock drawer or cleaning out your garage, a scattered approach is probably okay. But for things that really matter, for things that have the potential to impact families and their children like a church’s family ministry environments do, it’s well worth our time to develop a strategic plan for all our programs.

As I lead Rock Point Community Church, my goal is to make sure our staff stays focused on creating strategic programs. We lead with the end in mind and completely understand that less is more. While it definitely takes time to develop a strategy and then make sure everyone—from staff members to volunteers—is trained and they understand it, the impact we see with families is completely worth it.