Idea #3: Use the church’s regular scripture progression as an “excuse” to address the issue during the sermon.
One of the things I respect about Love Church is that their church family reads through the Bible each year, and Sunday teaching is always on one of the scriptures of the week. The weekend of our marriage conference and Sunday morning discussion, the text just “happened” to be 1 Corinthians 7:2-5, a passage about how important it is for spouses to fulfill each other’s intimate needs.
Any sort of regular “read through the Bible” program gives a pastor the opening to say to the congregation, “Well, 1 Corinthians 7 (or Hebrews 13:4, or Genesis 2:24…) is one of our passages of the week. So here goes.”
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a normal “sermon.” For example, at Love Church the pastor and his wife had a conversation onstage together, and then invited us up into an informal panel discussion for the second half. Another church recently created a “Marriage Sunday” and invited us to teach. There are lots of ways to handle the topic of sexual intimacy in church, while keeping it both encouraging and sacred.
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