How Churches are Failing Marriages
In the last article, Why is marriage like the church?, I wrote that the purpose of the church is wrapped up in the message behind marriages.
If the primary purpose of the church body is to represent and declare the Gospel, then Gospel-reflecting marriages (amongst those for whom marriage is meant for -- and some people have a gift of singleness) should be a close second.
Why, then, are churches failing marriages?
While the data is unclear, the divorce rate amongst Christian married couples likely is not significantly lower than that amongst secular couples.
While the success rate of marriages can't be placed entirely at the foot of the Church, the converse is also true: the Church can't be released of all responsibility.
It's like a business: the operators of the business can't foresee and mitigate all the difficulties that they may encounter -- economic shocks, technology shifts, new competitors, for example -- it is fair to say that if a business, year after year, is losing money, losing customers, losing market presence that something is wrong.
There are, in fact, businesses that thrive despite challenges -- fires, floods, competitors, theft, illness -- because they do approach things with the right mind and take the right actions.
So we can't let the church abdicate some role in advancing perhaps the most foundational institution.
Churches have a home-field advantage: most people get married in a church -- even many who are unchurched and unbelievers end up in a church to get married.
Many married couples make decisions to join a church when they have kids. Even if the underlying reason is not necessarily an expression of faith, it still happens.
In a world of fallen humans, a world which applies to churches and their leaders, what is the correlation between failure and success that appears universal? In other words, when something consistently fails, what is often missing?
There are several.
One of those is caring about the problem or person.
When the business really cares about the business outcome, effort follows. Not all effort may be good or right, which we'll get to, but very rarely will a business succeed if people don't care.
When an individual really cares about their health and fitness, they tend to be fit; similarly, they may take longer, they may not be reaching the goals they have defined for themselves, but they are unlikely to trend to the opposite of being healthy.
When a hospital really cares about the recovery rate of their patients, it shows in the attention to detail, speed of service, quality of the doctors and nurses. When they don't, patients increase in their rate of infections or death.
There are rare instances where someone really cares and the outcomes are the same as if someone doesn't care. Those instances might be in the case where someone is ignorant or knows the wrong things, which I will talk about.
But the first question is, regardless of the outcome, does the church --- does your church -- really care about marriage....about your marriage?
What is one outcome of the degree of care?
It's the degree of effort?
Jesus cares -- he cares more than any human is capability of caring for humanity -- because of the degree of effort -- dying at the cross such that we may have true life.
If your job matters to you -- maybe not because you love it, you may hate it, but you care about what you are able to do for your family as a result of it -- you put in effort.
What is the level of effort your church devotes to marriage?
How would you measure this?
Well, I would look at the primary outputs of a church and ask, "How much of this is dedicated towards creating healthy foundations to marriage?"
What are those outputs?
- A weekly sermon -- 1-2 hours long. How many total hours are on the topic?
- Small group content -- How many hours are on the topic?
- Ministry and evangelism -- How many people are devoted to this as a part of evangelism and ministry?
- Leaders training -- How much training have the elders received so that they are able to augment marriage counseling?
- Budgets -- How much of the budget is allocated to marriage-related activities?
I mentioned earlier that there is at least one