Marriage Enrichment

Dear Pastors

Marriage Enrichment

My guess is that 98% of my readers of this blog are married and have been married for quite some years. Therefore you know that ALL marriages have some challenges on an ongoing basis and/or go through some challenging times. And that is saying nothing about the marriages you have helped in the counselling room because they are in grave danger of falling apart.
I am saying that to say this:- Jeanette and I are great believers in local churches running marriage enrichment events. We view these as ‘building a fence at the top of the cliff’ and a powerful aspect of pastoral ministry. Events like marriage enrichment dinners, marriage enrichment weekend retreats and marriage seminars. We loved convening these and speaking ourselves at them but you can invite a couple to speak, or buy or borrow a DVD series or mix it up or even provide some budget assistance to send a few couples to a Family Life ‘Weekend To Remember’. Actually you may even be interested in going on one yourself.
So you may be asking, what would you talk about? Here’s our list. It is not intended to be definitive.

1. God’s vision for your marriage. It’s fantastic!
2. Aligning your hopes, dreams and aspirations.
3. Roles, responsibilities and division of labour.
4. The 3 Golden Rules of a happy marriage:- Communicate, communicate, communicate
5. Fighting Fair (including catch the little foxes).
6. Good sex is more than technique(but technique helps). Sex when you are older.
7. Men really are from Mars and women……well……are they really from Venus?
8. Keeping love alive. Romance in and out of the bedroom including date nights, romantic get-aways etc.
9. Become a Proverbs 5 man. We talk about pornography here.
10. Don’t let the kids mess with your marriage!
11. Processing trauma and/or a major breakdown.
12. Friends Forever.

We found over the years that most all couples appreciated these events especially younger couples. We found that if you do this well, provide a no ‘put you on the spot environment’, include notes, a resource table and a romantic atmosphere couples will come AND they will often bring their not-yet Christian friends. They will happily find and pay for baby sitters. On occasion older teenagers in our church offered to baby sit. We always interjected serious moments with humour and some honest stories about our own marriage. Folks seemed to love that………I wonder why? These events were a supplement to our 3-4 week Sunday series on ‘The Family’, usually around September each year.

Finally, I am of the strong conviction that if we give our attention as Pastors to the health and happiness of all the marriages in our church (especially the younger and midlife marriages) then we will not only strengthen and bless these marriages but we will also help create happy, well-adjusted and functional kids as an almost automatic down stream effect. One of our catch phrases is, “the best gift you can give your kids is a happy marriage”.

Resources: We would recommend two books, one website and two marriage ministries.

• His Needs, Her Needs by Dr Willard F Harley. An older book but a good one.
• Intimacy Ignited by Dr Joseph and Linda Dillow and Dr Peter and Lorraine Pintus. This book is based on the Song of Songs and comes with a top class discussion and study guide.
• The Gottman Institute-A Research Based Approach to Relationships. Absolutely superb.
• Family Life
• Alpha Marriage
• Prepare/Enrich

I would love to know what you are currently doing or what you have done. Just ‘hit’ reply and send me a quick note.

Thank you.
Blessings
Alan