HSC544 - Introduction to Assessment Project: Marriage Ministry

This project is an assessment of marriage counselling within the Disciples Church in Springfield, Australia, highlighting the importance of healthy marriages for both families and the church's overall well-being. The paper discusses the current state of family ministries, issues in couple counselling, and strategies to improve the system. It emphasizes the need for a dedicated marriage ministry, addressing the lack of full-time marriage pastors, and the high divorce rates. The project proposes empowering lay couples, strengthening pre-marital programs, launching marriage enrichment activities, and providing support to couples in crisis. The goal is to establish a stable and effective marriage counselling program, offering stability, reliability, strength, and comfort to couples within the church community. The project concludes that the Disciples Church can benefit greatly from the establishment of an effective and instrumental marriage relations ministry, even if it is within the umbrella category of family ministry, to address the specific issues of couples with time and cooperation, the program can be made to reach its full potential.

Running head: HSC544
HSC544: Introduction to Assessment Project
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction.
Healthy marriages are crucial for the development and sustenance of healthy families. At
the same time, they are also vital for providing a solid foundational base for effective, impactful
and vibrant churches. The functioning of a church ministry is crucial for establishing how
effectively a family will function. Therefore, the functioning of a church is also closely, divinely
and purposefully juxtaposed with the functioning of a family. Studies show that a young couple
in their first marriage in the current context, run a lifetime divorce risk of 40 to 50 % (Stanley,
2015). An average of about 40% of pastors in churches report that they have witnessed at least
one coupe separating in their church in the past one year (Williams, 2014). The most fearful
aspect of this statistic is the realization that the core foundation of these churches are structured
by these same families. Therefore, any kind of weakness in the families is significantly
detrimental for the wellbeing of the church and vice versa. This counselling plan is intended to
provide stability, reliability, strength and comfort to the couples in marriage, with respect to the
specific case of the Disciples Church, Springfield, Australia. Considering the case of the
mentioned church, the paper will discuss the existing ministries of the church with respect to
family relationships, the current issues in couple counselling that the church is facing and the
means to bring order and efficiency to the system.

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Issues in context.
The objective behind opting for this particular development program is because it
happens to be one of the central sources of stability for the church, as identified above (Halford
& Simons, 2005). However, if neglected, this aspect can turn counter – productive for the
church. Hence giving the issues of married couples vital thought should be one of the priorities
of the church (Olliver & Smalley, 2015). The Australian Institute of Family Studies highlight
that the average divorce statistics sit currently at the Crude Divorce Rate of 2.0 ("Divorce rates in
Australia", 2019). This means that 2 in every 1000 couples are likely to get divorced in either the
earlier (late twenties) stage, or the later (late 40s) stage. It is a significantly considerable number.
To ensure the feasibility of marriage and longevity of relationships, a healthy counselling support
is required. The Disciples Church in Springfield Australia has a few primary dedicated ministries
in function – The Missional Community groups, Children’s Ministries, Youth Ministries and
Biblical Counselling. What it is lacking is a strong marriage counselling ministry.
Like most churches, the consideration of a Family Ministry entails specific children and
youth care. The Disciples church is one of those few churches which has a comprehensive pre –
marital programme that the couples must fulfill prior to being married in the church. However,
despite having full time children and youth pastors, the church lacks even one full time marriage
pastor. This general lacking has proven to be significantly detrimental, not only for certain
aspects of the church but also for the families that have been a vital member of the church. In
fact some of the current pastors in the church, names undisclosed, have also reported that their
own marriages have had crucial ups and downs, points of mismatch and have also found the
absence of a full time marriage counselling expert within the church jurisdiction, quite
troublesome.

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Developing and effective marriage ministry.
And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads
it.” (Habakkuk 2:2, ESV)
There are two significant aspects to developing an effective marriage counselling
programme for the Disciples Church. Firstly, taking significant steps to counter current issues,
establish sources and points of love, harmony care and respect for each other and rationally
explore the conundrums within the couples addressing them urgently and providing significant
valuable insightful feedback. Secondly, establishing a systematic timely assessment routine for
the church to understand how effectively the implemented programme is functioning, what its
strengths and weaknesses are and how they can be overcome.
The following steps can ensure the development and functioning of the married couples
plan for the church.
1. Empowering a Lay Couple: As Proverbs 27:17 goes, ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one
person sharpens another’, it is evident that the best measure is to lead by example. Identifying
one or two couples with intense passion for marriage and depicting them as the Lay Couple can
ensure two specific benefits. Firstly, they can be a guiding example for other couples in how to
address issues effectively via the primary means of communication (Halford & Simons, 2005).
Secondly, they can be a valuable resource of wisdom and insight for the church itself.
2. Instrumental pre-marital programme for engaged couples: Building up on the existing
pre-marital programme of the church in order to provide a more thorough preparation to the
engaged couples would ensure the effectiveness of this step (Halford & Simons, 2005). This

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would mean that the existing programme be increased to an overall duration of 8 – 10 hours of
effective education from a mentor couple. Topics to be covered should include purpose of
marriage, spiritual relationship, communication in an intra personal and interpersonal basis, in-
laws, physical intimacy, finances and couple health, both physical and mental (Stahmann, 2000).
This aspect should not only be limited to couples but should also extend to the staff.
3. Launching marriage enrichment activities: There are several activates and perks that
the couples can utilise to make their marriage healthier. The church can help the couples by
easing their attainment of these enrichment activities.
4. Provide meaningful help to couples in crisis: Couples in crisis can get help from the
church if the church commits to being a prayer warrior to them. The pastors in service can also
be transparent about their own marriages and allow the couples to ease through the process
without too much cognitive strain (Franklin & Fong, 2011).
Conclusion.
In conclusion, it can be stated that the Disciples church, which does not have an effective
marriage counselling programme, can benefit greatly from the establishment of an effective and
instrumental marriage relations ministry, even if it is within the umbrella category of family
ministry. Addressing the certain specific issues of couples can sometimes be worrisome but with
time and cooperation, the programme can be made to reach its full potential.

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References.
Divorce rates in Australia. (2019). Retrieved 19 December 2019, from https://aifs.gov.au/facts-
and-figures/divorce-rates-australia
Franklin, C., & Fong, R. (Eds.). (2011). The church leader's counseling resource book: A guide
to mental health and social problems. Oxford University Press.
Halford, W. K., & Simons, M. (2005). Couple relationship education in Australia. Family
Process, 44(2), 147-159.
Olliver, G., & Smalley, G. (2015). Building a Thriving Church Marriage Ministry (2nd ed., pp.
3-16). Colorado: Focus on the Family.
Stahmann, R. F. (2000). Premarital counselling: a focus for family therapy. Journal of family
therapy, 22(1), 104-116.
Stanley, S. (2015). What is the divorce rate, anyway? Around 42 percent, one scholar
believes. Family Studies.
Williams, L. (2014). Communication training, marriage enrichment, and premarital counseling.
In An introduction to marriage and family therapy (pp. 421-450). Routledge.