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Healthy Marriage Initiative in the News

Members of the Healthy Marriage Initiative Steering Committee donated three Fireproof DVDs and a Love Dare book to the Fairfield County District library. The Fireproof movie has been very popular among library patrons since March, when there were over 200 people on the reservation list. The Healthy Marriage Initiative seeks to prepare, strengthen and restore marriages in and around Fairfield County.

For more info, call 740/654-3866, ext. 243 or see www.fairfieldcountymarriage.org.

Progress report on the Healthy Marriage Initiative

Fifty-two pastors, government officials and personnel from social service agencies representing 36 different churches and organizations showed their support of healthy marriages by signing of a proclamation to reduce the divorce rate and raise the marriage rate on March 13 at the Liberty Center in Lancaster. The Fairfield County Healthy Marriage Initiative was the 225th Community Marriage Policy created in America, and the 12th in Ohio.

“Healthy marriages create healthy families and healthy families create healthy communities.”

After the proclamation signing, Mike & Harriett McManus from Marriage Savers led 10 hours of training that covered pre-marital mentoring as well as marriage reconciliation, step-family support and marriage enrichment. The attendees included 94 couples and 16 individuals from agencies and Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, non-denominational, Nazarene, Mennonite and several other churches. It was the largest training ever conducted by Marriage Savers.

Since then, the training attendees have been working on what they plan to do with what they learned. Pastor Scott Kelso from Trinity Family Life Center in Pickerington said “We have two engaged couples taking the pre-marital inventory and being assigned a mentor couple. Things are going great.”

Pastor Dennis Coll from Covenant Christian Church said “We are planning to have date nights on Friday nights during the summer.” Phil Manson at Pickerington Church of the Nazarene said, “I have already matched one mentor couple to an engaged couple. More than likely I will be matching another mentor couple to a couple whose marriage is in trouble.” Pastor Manson and his wife are planning a gathering for their church’s six mentor couples to organize their marriage mentoring now that they have been through the training.

Pastor Joel Seymour from Lancaster Vineyard church is using the Prepare inventory currently to mentor a couple. He and his wife are planning a breakfast meeting and mini-training with their mentor couples. “I’ll have had a few weeks under my belt mentoring so I can tell them how it went.”

Fairfield Christian Church offers a pre-marital program for engaged couples and for couples who are talking about getting engaged. There are two parts to the program: an 8 week “Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts” class on Sundays at the church along with the Prepare pre-marital inventory and meetings with a mentor couple to go over the results. The report generated by the Prepare inventory brings up issues it may have never occurred to the engaged couple to discuss such as, who’s going to handle the checkbook? Where will holidays be spent? How many children, if any, do you want? How do you feel about debt?

A similar inventory called Enrich can be used for couples who are already married. This program helps couples strengthen communication skills, resolve conflict, explore family of origin issues, discuss financial planning and budgeting, understand and appreciate personality differences, discover how each persons beliefs about roles, sexuality, spiritual beliefs and more affect the relationship.

Pastor Timothy Teague from Victory Hill Church commented about the effect of the Healthy Marriage Initiative and the cooperation in it among the churches and agencies. “There has never been this strong of a collective effort on the part of the faith community to address such a problem. This extends itself to an issue beyond mere social and economic proportions. This speaks to the very heart and soul of family life in our communities. Healthy marriages create healthy families and healthy families create healthy communities.”

He said that the mentors who have volunteered from his congregation “have a “track record” of not being perfect but “healthy”. In other words, their marriages have weathered the domestic, social and economic challenges that normally challenge marriage.”

Teresa Sullivan, a steering committee member said, “Pre-marital mentoring will help couples to discover potential conflicts and give them tools to deal with those conflicts. Occasionally a couple will realize as they take the classes and discuss the homework that their basic values and their expectations about marriage are vastly different. In this case, they may decide to break off the engagement. This may be painful, but it helps that couple to avoid a difficult and disappointing marriage.”

While 75% of all marriages take place in houses of worship, not all churches require premarital training. Premarital preparation is not needed for couples to get married at the Hocking Hills wedding chapel or by a judge. The Fairfield County court office is currently scheduling cases to be heard for July and weddings are worked in around the court cases. They generally have a schedule that is booked two to three months in advance although occasionally if a case is canceled, a wedding service can be worked in around it.

Teresa commented about why she would advocate for couples giving the pre-marital program a chance: “We want engaged couples to have a wonderful wedding day, but we also want to give them skills and tools to have a successful marriage. The pre-marital process generally takes 4 to 6 months to complete and we hope that the couples use that time to build a foundation for a satisfying and long-lasting marriage.”

Rhonda Myers from the ADAMH Board is serving on the steering committee for the Healthy Marriage Initiative. She said that successful marriages have an impact on the community. “Skills learned to make a marriage successful are often the same skills that make for healthy relationships in general. For example, improving one’s communication skills and conflict resolution skills in marriage can positively impact other areas of a person’s life: workplace relationships, friendships, other family relationships, and so forth.”

Are you engaged or thinking about becoming engaged?

Or is your marriage is in rough spot right now and you’d like some assistance?

Are you are interested in training to become a marriage mentor couple?

Contact any one of the churches or agencies who signed the Healthy Marriage Initiative proclamation on March 13, 2009 or email Teresa Sullivan, Steering Committee Member for the Healthy Marriage Initiative at 740/654-3866, ext. 243 or send an e-mail to tsullivan@fairfieldcc.org

What areas does the Healthy Marriage Initiative Marriage cover?

• Marriage preparation that includes a premarital inventory and matching engaged couples with trained mentor couples who also teach skills of communication and conflict resolution
• Marriage Enrichment through events such as Date Nights and marriage conferences. Les & Leslie Parrott will be coming to Lancaster on November 7 to present a seminar for couples, Becoming Soul Mates.
• Healing hurting marriages by training couples whose own marriages once nearly failed, to mentor couples in current crisis.
• Reconciling separated couples who want to work toward restoration
• Helping stepfamily parents to be successful Statistics show that parents in stepfamilies normally divorce at a 70% rate.