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What your church can do to help make marriages work

One call always gets the attention of church leaders: "Our marriage is falling apart. Can you help us?" As someone who has spent many years in marriage ministry, that one always gets me. Never do I feel more burdened to fix it!

Most church leaders try to help or at least point crisis couples in the right direction. But for many marriages, by the time couples reach out to someone at church, it’s too late. Either one or both spouses have already made up their minds the marriage is over. In fact, sometimes I feel like I am no more than the last thing on their list to make it “OK” to get a divorce: “We tried everything. We even talked to a guy at church, and we just couldn’t make it work.”

Here’s the question I've been thinking about lately as I work with churches: What are we in the local church doing to help couples before they get into crisis mode? Google around a bit and you’ll find that for most churches, the answer is—not much. Every church is spending time and resources on helping marriages, but for most churches, that time is reactive. I've found that most churches spend 90 percent on couples in crisis, 5 percent on weddings and 5 percent on everyone else.

What would happen if we considered all the time, energy and resources we spend helping couples in crisis and poured those efforts into crisis prevention? What if we no longer thought of marriage ministry as counseling for troubled couples, but instead purposed to treat marriage ministry like any other ongoing ministry in our church?

Below are five steps and questions I've found very helpful when working with church leaders to change the “marriage ministry” paradigm.

Begin With the End in Mind

The purpose of your strategy and the purpose of marriage should be one in the same: to reflect the relationship between Christ and your church.

Question: What are the marriages in your church saying about Christ’s relationship with your church?

Empower and Train Leaders

Our capacity to care for couples is directly related to our ability to find and train leaders. I've found that it's important to 1) focus on making the experience great for leaders; 2) continue to ask leaders to find leaders; and 3) target empty nesters.

Question: Which couples have the passion, time and resources to help you lead a marriage ministry?

Refine the Message

In marriage ministry, it seems we are “content fat” and “application poor.” But to quote North Point Community Church Senior Pastor Andy Stanley: “When we teach less, people learn more.” (For example at MarriedPeople, we call these four truths The Core 4 Habits of a Great Marriage: Love God First; Have Serious Fun; Respect and Love; Practice Your Promise.)

Question: What are the core truths about marriage you want couples to know and embrace?

Choose Your Target Audience

Never is it more important to know your target audience than when it comes to helping marriages. So many church leaders spend huge amounts of time meeting with couples in crisis that they may or may not be equipped to help. Most churches are much better at discipling than counseling.

Question: Which couples can you address in-house and which ones should you outsource to give them better counsel and resources?

Identify and Develop a Long-Term Strategy

Leverage large groups. Large group settings, such as worship services, one night events and retreats are prime opportunities to show people your church is bent on strengthening marriages before crisis hits—and for people to experience marriage ministry as proactive, guy-friendly, a lot of fun, and a great place to invite their unchurched friends and family.

Incorporate small groups. Small groups are crucial to sustained life change. Make your content cohesive from large group to small group settings.

Partner with individual couples. Give couples tools to help them connect, communicate and date on their own. Facilitate date nights by providing child care. 

Question: What one to three engaging, relevant and memorable experiences do you want to address and with what audience?

Most churches are doing something to help marriages. But to make a real difference in the lives of married couples and to come alongside them before crisis hits, you need an intentional strategy.

Ted Lowe serves as director of MarriedPeople, an Orange division, which creates and provides resources such as downloadable events (MarriedPeople Big Night Out) and small group materials (MarriedPeople Small Groups) to help churches help marriages. From 2001 to 2010, Lowe worked as the director of MarriedLife at North Point Community Church.

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