to train Mentor Couples to help other couples at every stage of the marital life cycle to achieve five great goals:
1. Give "marriage insurance" to the engaged -- a 95% guarantee that their marriage will go the distance.
Three elements are involved.
First, couples are given a premarital inventory to give couples an objective view of their relational strengths and areas for growth. A tenth of couples who take an inventory decide not to marry.
Second, couples in healthy marriages are trained to administer the inventory and discuss the unique issues it surfaces with each couple.
Third, trained Mentor Couples teach skills of how to resolve conflict. This combination raises the percentage of those who break up short of marriage to a fifth. Studies indicate that those who break an engagement have the same scores as those who marry and later divorce. They have avoided a bad marriage before it begins. For example, in the church of Mike & Harriet McManus, of 288 couples who prepared for marriage from 1992-2000, 21 dropped out of the course, mostly to break up. Another 34 couples completed the process, and decided not to marry. That’s 55 couples who decided NOT to marry -- is a high 19% dropout rate. However, of those couples who did marry, there have been only seven divorces, a 97% success rate over a decade. That's marriage insurance.
2. Enrich all existing marriages by conducting an annual week-end event at the church, using a marital inventory, speakers, or videos.
For example, a DVD series called “10 Great Dates” has been used to strengthen 100,000 marriages. If couples offer free babysitting, scores of couples will come to the church on a Friday or Saturday night, drop their kids off and then watch a 20 minute DVD excerpt on such topics as “Resolving Honest Conflict,” “Becoming an Encourager” or “Building a Creative Love Life.” Couples then go on a 90 minute date for dessert and coffee where they fill out a brief questionnaire on that week’s theme from a paperback book, and talk. Ten such Great Dates are scheduled every week for 10 weeks, or every other week. Total cost to the couple, the $12 for the paperback.
3. Restore four out of five troubled marriages by training "back-from-the-brink couples"
Restore four out of five troubled marriages by training "back-from-the-brink couples" (whose own marriages once nearly failed) to mentor couples currently in crisis. A couple nearly driven apart by adultery who survived has something to say to a couple in a crisis over adultery. Marriage Savers offers a “Restoration Marriage Ministry” training over a Friday night-Saturday training.
4. Reconcile the separated using a self-guided workbook course, "Marriage 911"
Separation is usually a prelude for divorce. However, separation can be used to spark personal, professional and spiritual growth that attracts back the errant spouse. The person trying to save his/her marriage takes this course with a friend of same gender, who gets a Support Partner Handbook to serve as an accountability partner, meeting weekly for 12 weeks. "Marriage 911" heals more than half the marriages of the separated. Cost: Only $28 plus shipping.
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