H2H Institute

Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute - Mission Statement

To reduce the rising divorce and family breakdown rates through training and equipping Christian believers to strengthen, restore, prepare for and enrich marriages within the Christian community and beyond.

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Rationale

An extensive study entitled "Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences" by Dr. Anne-Marie Ambert, York University, 2005, published on the Vanier Institute of the Family website's Virtual Library (http://www.vifamily.ca/library/cft/divorce_05.html#True) shows that the rate of divorce has been steadily rising in Canada. Despite being commonly quoted as 50%, the actual divorce rate in Canada is 38%, and that rate rises to 60% for remarriages and for those who cohabit before marriage.

Most Christians would agree that marriage is a cornerstone for a healthy church and a healthy society. Marriage is God's plan and His word gives us the pattern and clear directions to follow for the establishing and maintaining of our marriage relationships. So why then is the divorce rate in the church 38%, the same as it is in the rest of society? And why, in any given congregation, are 40% of the married couples affected by infidelity? There is an ongoing battle between secular culture and Christian marriage. Society seeks to dilute, redefine and delude our understanding of God's plan for marriage. In many cases, Christian couples are the casualties of this war.

It seems couples today go into marriage with a clear Plan B in place – divorce if it doesn't work out. Even Christian couples do this. Their faith doesn't seem to be a deterrent to this kind of thinking. While statistics can show us the divorce rate in Canada, both in the church and outside its walls, what the statistics don't reveal is why even Christian couples divorce. Lack of communication and finances seem to top the list of reasons for divorce, and of course there are reasons such as infidelity and abuse. The combined threats of lack of religious adherence and liberalization of divorce laws have taken their toll as well. But if there is no infidelity and no abuse, and a couple reports having a strong faith in Christ, why don't they work out their problems and stay together? Or, some ask, does it even matter if they divorce? After all, shouldn't they be allowed to find someone else who can make them happy? Statistics show that people who have been married before will very likely repeat the same mistakes in their subsequent marriage(s) unless they get counselling to help them deal with the problems from the first marriage.

Divorce is an insidious enemy; its effects are devastating to families, to society and to the church. Consider the following:

• Couples report 3 to 1 that the purpose of marriage is not for raising children, but for personal happiness. Marriage has become an individual choice based on individual happiness rather than two people entering into a covenant before God ("Hot Monogamy, The Truth About Love", Dr. Pat Love, Smart Marriages Conference keynote, July 2009)
• Divorce significantly raises the likelihood that children will experience development problems (Private Choices, Public Costs, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, June 2009)
• Negative effects of divorce are felt across several generations within a family
• The divorce rate in remarriages is about 60% - considerably higher than for first marriages
• Divorce and family breakdown costs Canadian taxpayers $7 billion every year and this only takes into account directly attributable costs (Private Choices, Public Costs, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, June 2009)
• Pastors of smaller to medium churches can easily spend anywhere from 4 – 12 hours weekly (approximately 200 – 600 hours yearly) counselling couples
• When couples divorce, their giving to their church drops to almost nothing…almost 100% of the time

Divorce hurts the couple involved, certainly, but it has far reaching effects as well. Extended families suffer when someone in their family divorces; friends may feel they need to choose between one spouse and the other and so may pull away out of an inability to make that choice. However children are the most common victims and while they are hurt the most by divorce, they have no power to change or stop the process. Children of divorce are twice as likely to have failed marriages themselves when compared with children of parents who stay together. Children of divorce are also at much higher risk for emotional and psychological disturbance than those of stable marriages.

Couples in distress need to know that there is hope and help. They don't have to stay in an unhappy and unfulfilling marriage. It can be better; in fact, couples can be taught to use their difficulties to strengthen and improve their marriages rather than destroying them.

So what can be done? What if there were ways to help establish, strengthen, improve and repair marriages? What if there was a hidden army of people sitting in Canadian churches every Sunday morning that could rise up and fight back against the enemy of our marriages?

Well, there is. Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute has a variety of programmes, ideas and resources all designed to utilize that hidden army in order to establish, strengthen, improve and repair marriages.

Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute offers marriage preparation and enrichment seminars, a complete PREPARE/ENRICH© programme, marriage mentor training, online resources through our website such as books, a mentor network, access to Christian counsellors, and a church affiliation strategy that trains and equips couples within churches, regardless of size or resources, to implement and sustain a fully functioning, viable, effective in-house marriage enrichment programme.

Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will provide churches with a variety of services and resources for churches as they put into place a full marriage enrichment programme. These services and resources are:

• Marriage mentor training
• Support for lead couple(s)
• PREPARE/ENRICH© training and facilitation
• Access to and inclusion in mentor network
• Access to network of Christian counsellors
• Marriage preparation and enrichment seminars
• Books, articles, resources and ideas relevant to marriage

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Church Affiliation Strategy Overview

Most churches today already have many programmes and pastors report feeling stretched to the limits of their abilities. The idea of another programme is not welcome news. However, a church that invests in marriages will reap great rewards. Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute's church affiliation strategy is the opposite of a programme; it is essentially mentoring and support for couples in a church to set up, run and sustain their own marriage enrichment strategy that includes marriage preparation and enrichment, a trained group of marriage mentors, ideas, support and resources for marriage-related events and activities. A fully implemented marriage enrichment programme under the church affiliation strategy would not add to a pastor's "to do list" but would in fact relieve him/her of duties such as pre-marital preparation, counselling couples who are struggling with common everyday problems and issues of married and family life, finding suitable people to facilitate and organize marriage enrichment seminars and retreats.

Here is how the church affiliation strategy works:

• A lead couple or couples are chosen by the pastor. This should be a couple who have demonstrated a heart for marriage, and have a solid successful marriage themselves. It is recommended that there be 1 lead couple for every 200 – 250 people in the congregation
• The lead couple(s), in consultation with the pastor, will select other couples to become trained marriage mentors, and co-workers with the lead couple(s) in the on-going marriage ministry
• Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will administer the online version of the ENRICH© inventory to the lead couple(s) and the mentor trainees, and conduct an ENRICH© feedback session for these participants
• Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will conduct mentor training for the lead couple(s) and those selected to be mentors
• ENRICH© feedback sessions and mentor training are conducted over a weekend, culminating with a Sunday service focussing on marriage during which the lead couple(s) and mentors are introduced to the congregation and commissioned to begin their mentoring ministry
• Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will provide ongoing support, ideas and resources for the core marriage ministry group (lead couple(s), and their trained mentors)
• Shortly after the completion of onsite training, the lead couple(s) will attend an offsite training session to become certified to administer PREPARE/ENRICH©. Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will notify the lead couple(s) when and where this training will occur
• Once the lead couple(s) are trained in the use of PREPARE/ENRICH© and mentor training modules, they can administer PREPARE/ENRICH© inventories, provide feedback and train and equip their own mentor couples in the future
• A church would be asked to provide financial support for Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute commensurate with the size of the congregation

• Community marriage policies
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Large marriage/relationship event planning
• Weekly television programme

You may be familiar with Heart to Heart Family Ministries. It was founded in the early 1990s by Rev. Lorne Shepherd at Crossroads Christian Communications in Toronto. Today, Heart to Heart Family Ministries has become Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute and is building on the established history of Biblically based, quality marriage and family enrichment seminars as well as scripturally sound Christian counselling under the direction of David and Wende Butcher. This new era for Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute will include the same quality marriage and family enrichment seminars and counselling services. However, we have expanded to encompass a variety of new initiatives, including marriage mentor training, a church affiliation programme and online resources such as support material and a bookstore through our website at www.h2hinstitute.com just to name a few.

Details about these initiatives, programmes and resources can be found on our website or by calling us at (905) 693-1129. It would be our privilege to discuss the possibilities of what Heart to Heart Marriage and Family Institute can offer your church in the area of marriage preparation and enrichment and how we can establish and maintain a vibrant, ongoing and effective marriage ministry for your congregation.

Georgetown

• Georgetown Christian Fellowship
  13619 Hwy 7 West, Georgetown
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• Georgetown Christian Reform Church
  11611 Trafalgar Rd, Georgetown
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Brampton

• The Meeting House Brampton
  SilverCity Brampton, 50 Great Lakes Drive, Brampton
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