During the early years of my ministry, I spent hours and hours with engaged couples. The sessions were enjoyable. Yet when someone asked me, “Do you think this couple will make it?” I honestly had no idea. As a congregation, we at Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City, Missouri, felt called to do more than provide a pretty place for couples to say “I do.” We wanted to equip couples to build healthy, vibrant, loving families.

It’s easy to become cynical about how couples want to “use” the church for their special day and then never show up again. But what are churches doing to open the doorway to these couples at this critical life juncture? Do we offer them only a nice service, or do we serve them by offering a genuine ministry? A young bride recently told me she didn’t care much about the wedding flowers or the reception food, but the first time she walked into the chapel she wept. Is there a way to connect with those tears and tap into what really matters when a couple covenants to love forever?

When I began researching what our church might do to reach out to these couples, I discovered that the Christian materials on the market were too patriarchal and fundamentalist for me, and the secular programs were, well, too secular. But some of the tools held promise. I was a newlywed at the time, still sorting through the tensions of shared checkbooks and where to spend the holidays. I attended an introductory workshop on two marriage and early marriage psycho-educational tools: Prepare/Enrich and Couple Communication. I came home and said to my husband, “I finally get it!”

By personally engaging with these tools, my marriage took quantum leaps. “Instead of just fighting,” said my husband, “we began to honestly process our fights.”

Research indicates that couples need two things: awareness and skills. Couples need to know the family dynamics, personal strengths, and possible landmines that exist in their union. And they need to know how to talk, listen, and resolve conflict in ways that build up their relationship rather than destroy it.

A storybook marriage can fail early simply because the couple isn’t prepared. We spend more time and money preparing for the wedding than for the marriage. In addition to skills, couples need to know that their relationship matters — to the community of faith and to God. Recent studies suggest that participation in a faith community increases the likelihood a couple will remain married.

At the prompting of Don Browning and other scholars at the Religion, Culture, and Family Project at The University of Chicago, I began to wonder what resources our faith story might provide. And I discovered a rich, untapped wealth of resources. The great commandment to love God and to love neighbor as self could be applied to intimate partners as well as to distant strangers. The scriptures from Ephesians and Genesis that paint a portrait of mutuality could support modern marriages. The wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoffer — who in a wedding sermon written from prison said once you are married, “It is not your love that sustains the marriage from now on, but the marriage which sustains your love” — prodded me to ponder the mystical possibilities of marriage. And in reading a homily Gilbert Meilander wrote for his daughter’s wedding I discovered what I most wanted couples to discover: “Marriage exists not primarily to make us happy but to make us holy, though in the long run there can be no real happiness apart from holiness” (Christian Century, Oct. 2000).

But what if couples resist? Why should they bother jumping through our hoops or learning what theologians think of marriage? Our wedding secretary warned me that if we required classes before marriage, no one would want to get married at the church. In fact, the opposite occurred. Once we offered an early marriage program, couples began coming to our church asking for the program, even if they were getting married in another venue.

Here’s how our program, Great Start, works. Engaged couples take the Prepare Inventory, a series of 165 questions, soon after setting their wedding date. The inventory is then scored by computer, making it easy for the couple to review the strength and growth areas of their relationship. We do this in a group setting at our Wedding Workshop, but it can also be done in the pastor’s office or with a mentor couple.

Next, couples take a nine-hour class called Couple Communication I. On their one-year anniversary, they are invited back for a follow-up workshop, where they again assess their strength and growth areas and learn more in-depth communication skills. For this workshop, we use the Empowering Couples Workbook by David and Amy Olsen and the Couple Communication II materials called Thriving Together. All couples pay for Great Start as a part of the fee to get married at the church. This provides incentive for them to complete the entire program, which stretches over several years. And it provides couples with support and education during those critical early years of marriage.

I remember one groom who took the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City appeared bleary-eyed one Saturday morning at the Wedding Workshop, where engaged couples gather to get the results of their Prepare Inventory. At the end of the five-hour session, he was animated and lively. “We have learned so much about our relationship and each other. This has been great. Thanks.”

Another couple left the workshop early, the bride-to-be in tears. Not long after, they canceled their wedding.

Both of these are success stories.

One couple took the Couple Communication Class before they were even engaged, just so they could learn to explore their issues. The skills they learned included mutuality. They learned that in compromise someone always loses, but in collaboration, the relationship wins. A few months later, they set their wedding date. For several years now, they have been enthusiastic teachers of the Couple Communication Class.

“It’s one thing to love one another,” he said, “but its another thing altogether to know how to!”

After launching Great Start at Country Club Christian Church, then Senior Pastor Bob Cueni and I made the program available to other congregations through a series of workshops and seminars around the country. A generous grant from The Religion, Culture, and Family Project allowed us to write a practical theology and an instructor’s guidebook. Torrey Pines Christian Church in LaJolla, California, and Central Christian Church in Decatur, Illinois, have successfully implemented Great Start, as have many other congregations — including Methodists and Presbyterians.

In order to effectively lead Great Start, a pastor or church leader receives training in the tools of Great Start, which they can easily adapt for use with any size congregation. And they can use the tools to support couples at any stage of married life — even those married 50 years and facing the unique transitions of aging.

Sometimes ministers grow to resent weddings — especially requests from non-members who want to “rent the hall.” The idea of investing even more energy in these couples may seem daunting. But since we began Great Start, a significant number of participating couples have affiliated with the church either by joining or by reactivating their memberships. Our church is less gray than it once was.

North American culture bemoans the breakdown of the family. Most churches lament a lack of young people. Churches should seize the opportunity to effectively minister to couples who seek us out for help in beginning a lifelong partnership of love.

After all, as Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “the joy God offers us through human love is genuine salvation.”

www.greatstart.org

816-333-4917

www.lifeinnovations.com

1-800-331-1661

www.couplecommunication.com

1-800-328-5099