Solid and Attractive Marriages and Families

Perhaps Satan doesn’t worry much about all of the movements, resources, and tools that help the church become strong and healthy.  One can imagine him saying, “I’ll let you do what you like with the church, as long as I can do what I like with the family.”  The family is clearly under attack. 

This helps us better understand why Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, emphasizes order in the family more than any other quality necessary for leadership in the church.  Most of these qualities he simply lists in 1 Timothy 3 using one or two words.  But in addition to saying that a church leader must be the “husband of but one wife,” Paul dedicates two entire verses to the issue of the family.  The wellbeing of the family is fundamental and strategic.  This is where we show that we can be faithful “in little” as a prerequisite for being faithful in larger circles such as in the church or society.

If the fate of the family predicts the fate of the church, the church is in trouble.  We can’t effectively talk about healthy churches, much less of healthy pastors, if we don’t give support to the family.  The culture of the Kingdom is expressed in its most profound and intimate forms within two contexts:  our families, and small groups where we are truly known and know other people, living out what Scripture teaches about committed and healthy relationships. 

Applying this reality to the pastor, it becomes clear that he will never be healthy all by himself.  He needs, on the one hand, a healthy family, and on the other, a healthy pastoral team.  He will not be able to fly without these two groups, like two wings of an airplane, lifting him up to model openly the culture of the Kingdom.

MAPI offers several resources and tools in this area:

1. An Advanced Retreat for Pastoral Couples – This three-day retreat gives pastoral couples the opportunity to experience the benefits of mentoring and a support group in a context of trust and transparency.  See more.
   
   
2. Training Seminar for Marriage Ministry – A weekend retreat that helps couples with a calling to marriage ministry experience a ministry model based on mentoring in small groups, transparency, and semester-long modules.  We suggest that these three characteristics can be foundational to marriage ministries.  See more.
   
   
3. A book written by David Kornfield, Casamentos que Crescem Através da Mentoria (Caminhando com Companheiros de Jugo), Ed. Vida, 2006.  Translating: Marriages that Grow through Mentoring (Journeying with Traveling Companions).  This is not available in English.  We suggest substituting Norman Wright’s Communication: Key to Your Marriage
   
   
4. Suggestions for Developing a Marriage Ministry – how to form a team, articulate vision and strategies, and put them into practice.  The role of a mentor or group facilitator is clarified, along with the role of a person giving support to multiple mentoring groups.  See more.
   
   
5. Other Tools – to help in counseling and ministry to couples.  See more. 

We have not yet developed resources for the leader’s family in the same way that we have for giving support to his marriage.  We intend to do this, but many valuable and practical resources already exist in English.  We recommend as a foundation the books on boundaries by Cloud and Townsend, published by Zondervan.

Note: We respect and are fully supportive of churches that have women pastors.  At the same time, for the sake of simplicity we will not repeatedly say "his or her," "he or she," or other similar differentiations. Please understand that when we use the masculine we are including the feminine.