4 Challenges Facing Church Leaders
As Church Leaders – How do We Help Marriages to Improve?
I want to help couples that are struggling. I want to equip the church. I think the church has a huge mission field. I think that the demand is great and the mentors are few. (My poor paraphrase of Luke 10:2.)
How do we equip people? I ask myself this all the time. I wrestle with this every day. What do we call this inside the church that will actually make this work?
I was recently talking about this with Luke Nelson. Luke is Market Development Director at PREPARE/ENRICH. He has been in the marriage “space” for a number of years, training and equipping mentors and pastors. I have to say that I love PREPARE/ENRICH and I love what they are doing.
He and I were talking about what is the best thing to call mentors. Marriage Mentors? Marriage Coaches? Marriage Champions? Marriage Educators? Something else?
Luke told me, “One time we trained 20 mentors at a church and then the church promoted it. Not many couples responded. Mentor seems to denote some type of perfect couple that knows everything. This is fairly common.”
I’ve seen that at our church. My wife and I teach a class at our church aimed at couples in distress. We regularly see 50-60 couples sign up for our class, but they don’t sign up for mentoring.
I scratch my head over that one. Why is that?
What are some of the challenges that we face as mentors and church leaders in helping couples?
These are the challenges that I’ve identified. I’d love to get your feedback.
Challenge 1: Mentors Don’t Feel Qualified
Potential mentor couples ask, “Can we really do this?”
Like Luke indicated, many people feel they need to have the perfect marriage to be a mentor. A big question is, “What are the qualifications to be a mentor?”
Does the word “mentor” denote some special extra wisdom? Perhaps.
If that is true, then I can understand why some couples wouldn’t want to mentor. Who has a perfect marriage?
From the mentee side, who would want to go to a perfect couple when you have problems? I would rather go to a couple that is honest about their struggles and how they handled it.
I have found the best mentors for distressed couples to be people that have had their own marriage struggles and got out the other side.
Just hearing their stories helps people to feel better about themselves. Hearing about other couple’s struggles and how they changed gives hope. If you can do it, maybe I can too!
That wisdom is incredibly valuable.
How can we convey that to mentors that we aren’t looking for perfect marriages? There are no perfect mentors here.
Challenge 2: Mentees Not Seeking Help
There have been studies done of help seeking behavior. Couples don’t seek help, often until they are in desperate condition.
There are a number of couples that are struggling and few ask for help. (See my report “Does My Church Have a Hidden Problem?”)
What can we do to make it easier for couples to seek help? I think we need to lower the stigma for couples seeking help.
Challenge 3: Stigma of Having a “Bad” Marriage
Couples are often reluctant to raise up their hand and say, “We have a bad marriage.”
I was talking to another pastor about this. His thought was it was better to refer to it more as marriage enrichment. Their church has had better success just saying this is a class to improve your marriage, without saying that it is focused on repair.
He has found this to work. There is no stigma to being in a “bad” marriage. Rather, saying, “We are looking for people that want to improve their marriage. We are willing to give you resources to help.”
This could work, even if it’s a private class.
Challenge 4: Fear of the Time Commitment
I suspect that an open ended “mentoring” is a little unnerving for people. People have a limited amount of time and they want to careful where they invest it.
Our church is finding more success in having a limited number of sessions, like a class. We promote it as x number of sessions, then we are done. It seems like we have a better turnout when we set an expectation of the limited number of sessions.
My Conclusion
Right now, I’m of the opinion that calling this marriage education works the best. You say that you have a limited number of sessions.
I would love to have more feedback on this. I’m curious what you’ve experienced? What has worked for you?
How do we, as marriage mentors and church leaders, reach marriages and help them to improve?
Personally, the second challenge, “Mentors Not Seeking Help” reminds me of someone heading for an addiction, someone who abuses anything, whether alcohol, tobacco, food, whatever. From my observations most often these individuals won’t seek help until they hit “rock bottom”. “Rock bottom” would be different for different couples, depending on each spouses’ upbringing and personality. For some it might be Divorce Court, for others a hospital stay from spouse’s abuse, whatever wakes them up to realize they need and are willing to ask for and receive help.
I’ve always believed that prevention is the best medicine. Thus, I believe all couples planning to get married should be required to go through premarital counseling. I also like the approach to helping couples that was shared by the pastor under the third challenge, “Stigma of having a ‘bad’ marriage”. Reminds me of the stigma against mental illness and getting counseling. A lot of people won’t seek counseling or psychotherapy because of these stigmas. Yet since life coaching has grown in popularity, I’ve observed people seem more comfortable seeking help under the name “coaching”, rather than “counseling”. Coaching, which makes me think of growth and winning, doesn’t have the negative stigma that counseling has.
I too think marriage education, or marriage enrichment are good ways to approach and market courses designed to help couples in trouble. As I mentioned previously, prevention is the best medicine. Thus, I believe couples getting married should go through premarital classes to thwart the development of problems later in the marriage.
I have to confess, when my wife and I were struggling I didn’t want to seek any help. I’ve long pondered why. I’ve read some studies on help seeking behavior, but it isn’t an area that seems to be studied heavily, at least for marriage.
I also think that prevention is the best cure. If the average couple waits six years to seek help (quoting from Gottman), then how do we reach the couples at year 4 or 5?
I sometimes get frustrated as I see the divorce, and remarriage statistics. People need mentoring, coaching or whatever you will call it at many different times. Good, bad or middle of the road marriages all need help. Why won’t we go after it? I myself was at divorces door on two different occasions, always trying to fix things myself until I hit bottom and realized I could do it. That is when got a hold of my heart and things started to change. It took 2.5 years to repair what was broke. My wife and I are now mentors through NAME National Assn. Of Marriage Enhancement. It is under the banner of the national Assembly of God churches. We have helped many couples, but sadly some do not want help. We have heard ” it’s my marriage, Ill fix it, it a private matter, we even heard one lady say to us that she would rather divorce than have anyone of her friends at church know she was having marital trouble. Like with sin these at their basic are heart problems that these people face. I have had to come to the realization the God must draw them. At our church my wife and I are in charge of the marriage ministry. We have a class weekly that we use to strengthen marriages. We teach on series or singular topics. Once or twice a year we take requests from people on what they would like taught. We have a good group. But I still find the prevailing thinking that people would rather go to a good old fashion bible class on Sunday morning than learn how their marriage can be better. I have learned these things. One God is at work and we are making a difference in those who want help. Two, some think they are beyond help. Three, some don’t want help. Whatever happens in the future I am committed to God, and to making marriages better. Whatever we call ourselves or our classes, I don’t believe we will remove the stigmas because in my opinion there aren’t any. It’s just the same story from the beginning of time. Sin is sin and it blinds people to the truth. Until that changes we will always have this problem. In the meantime my wife and I will help those we can. Thanks for letting me ramble a bit.
You sound like you are very transparent. I appreciate that.
Your story about the woman that would rather divorce than have her friends know she was having marital problems gets to me. That sense of shame or embarrassment is very real for people. What are the best ways we can remove some of that stigma? I suspect that your transparency helps. What do you think? Does your honesty help others to see that they too can be honest?
I suspect that your willingness to talk about your own struggles is very healing for couples.
My wife and I have found it to be a double edged sword. Many people come to our Sunday school class because we are not afraid to share our struggles. We have come back from alcohol issues, an affair, isolation, anxiety and a whole lot of anger. God did all this. We hold nothing back. Most people appreciate the honesty. We don’t go into great detail, it is just to illustrate that God can fix anything if we will let him. On the other side of this we have had some couples who say we are too intense, too much information and it has put some off. We prayed about it and feel that if we can’t be direct then the message God wants out there will not have the same effect. As it stands we have not altered our approach and our class is growing. Not always in size, but in education. As far as our mentoring goes this approach has led to my wife and I extending to couples outside of our church as well as speaking at various groups such as mops (mothers of preschoolers). I don’t know for sure if we can reach all through our being honest. But we are reaching people. As far as the embarrassment or standoffish behavior goes, we just take it one couple at a time and let God worry about the rest. Thanks.
I sounds like your honesty is helping people to heal. Perhaps there are some that are put off by it, but most are receiving help.