Proclaimer Blog
Marriage enrichment
A few people have emailed to ask what exactly we taught on our marriage course and how we ran it, so here's the low down. We took two Saturday mornings and ran from 10.00am-2.00pm. The actual teaching only ran from 10.00am to 12.30pm including a break for coffee. That's because we wanted to encourage couples to take a lunchtime together without their kids, with us providing central childcare. In the event, that didn't work out exactly as we expected, but it was the plan. Our overall aim was to be biblical first and foremost. There are other courses around which provide lots of practical wisdom, but we wanted to encourage couples to think about big issues from biblical principles, and also learn to work things out for themselves.
Mrs R and I ran it jointly. We've done similar days before but this was the first on home turf. I did the teaching (apart from one section where we split in two and she taught women, I taught the men). She tended to introduce application questions or video clips (we had Mr Bean and Fawlty Towers among other clips). We sat the couples in…well, couples and told them that they would only have to discuss with their partner. There was no group discussion or asking for answers. We think this is pretty important to make this kind of day hit the right note.
So, four sessions:
- purpose and role
- words and communication
- sex and intimacy
- rows and in-laws
All pretty self-explanatory. We spent longest on number one. All the way through we emphasised the importance of strong marriages not just for their own sake but for the sake of the church too. I commend the idea. Well worth doing in your own setting. And we had a nice invite which I've shown above and below: