Community Family Trusts, National Association of,
To those interested in creating a Community Marriage Policy (Regd trademark)
From Mike McManus of Marriage Savers
I've had many inquiries about Community Marriage Policies - their
purpose, impact and how to start one. What follows is a brief summary of how they work in the USA. For detail, read my book, Marriage Savers, especially p. 293-327.
What Is A Community Marriage Policy?
What is the basic idea? A Community Marriage Policy is a marriage preparation/enrichment document hammered out and signed by an ecumenical group of clergy. It communicates the conviction by pastors that What God has joined together the church should hold together. They help couples achieve six great goals:
- Avoid a bad marriage before it begins
- Obtain "marriage insurance" as engaged couples
- Strengthen existing marriages
- Save 90% of deeply troubled ones
- Spark reconciliation of the separated/divorced
- Push down a metropolitan area's divorce rate
How are these goals achieved?
In 16 years of writing "Ethics & Religion," a column syndicated by The New York Times Syndicate, I have seen scattered churches that are already achieving many of these results. The core idea, common to the best programs I call "Marriage Savers," is that in every church there are older couples whose marriages have worked for l5-50 years, who can be trained to be "mentor couples," helping other couples at various stages of the marital life cycle to succeed. A Community Marriage Policy jump-starts the reforms in many churches.
Examples
250,000 couples take a premarital inventory. One called FOCCUS and another called PREPARE can predict with 80% accuracy who will divorce. And a tenth who take it break engagements when they see the results. They are avoiding a bad marriage before it begins. Mentor couples can be trained to give FOCCUS or PREPARE and go over results with couples increasing their odds of success. Marriage Encounter helped two million couples refresh and strengthen existing marriages. In fact, 80% to 90% say they fell back in love. Retrouvaille is run by "back-from-the-brink" couples whose marriages nearly failed. They tell how they recovered from adultery, alcoholism, etc, and save 80% of troubled marriages; yet 40% in Fort Worth were separated and a third in Michigan had filed for divorce, but thought "If they can make it, we can too".
How successful are Community Marriage Policies?
America's divorces have remained virtually level over a 19 year period. They fell by only 1.3% (from 1,179,000 divorces in 1979 to 1,163,000 in 1997). By contrast, Kansas City, KS and suburbs fell from 1,530 to 1,001 in only two years -- a 35% drop -- the biggest decline in America. In a single year, Chattanooga dropped 14%, Evansville, IN plunged 15%, and Dalton, GA, plummeted 21%! In those cities, divorces have fallen 11-16 times as much as America's 1.3% decline in one-nineteenth of the time - a rate that is 209-304 times faster than the U.S. divorce decline! That is statistically significant.
Why does such a concept work?
- CMPs are based upon proven strategies that are successful. Any the reforms are initiated
by many churches at one time, giving hope to the whole community.
- If only one church improves its marriage preparation, demanding more of engaged couples, many will simply go on to other churches. This is not in the best interest of the couples, nor even of the church marrying them. But if churches ina city work together, church-hopping is cut down.
- Often the pastor stands alone in a fight to save marriages. At the heart of a CMP is an "unleashing to the laity." Mentor couples help some prepare for marriage, strengthen the marriages of others, save troubled ones, and help stepfamilies to be successful.
- Because of the "networking" that goes on, creative marriage saving ideas are passed on from church to church, and couples feel free to go to those churches with proven programs.
- Due to the publicity sparked by the pastors signing a CMP, couples in bad marriages work harder on them and seek help, rather than simply giving up.
To find out more about Marriage Savers and Community Marriage Policies in USA, visit the Marriage Savers website
For more information on similar activities in the UK click on "How to Contact" at the top right of this page.
