Marriage Mentor Training in a Group Setting

Marriage Mentor Training Manual for Wives
by Les Parrott III, Ph.D., Dr. Leslie Parrott

(Page 3 of 3)

If you are a part of a larger church or community that is launching or has already begun a marriage mentoring ministry, we recommend conducting your training in a group setting. Why? Because there is synergy in meeting together. You'll have common questions and concerns that a facilitator can address to all of you at once.

Most likely, your training facilitator will be a minister or a marriage mentor lead couple. Whether or not they have already completed the training themselves, they simply serve to structure the time, make sure the DVD equipment is ready to use, cover the logistics, and so on.

Choosing Your Schedule

There are three primary schedules for conducting group training. One is not better than the others. They are simply offered as a means to make this training fit your calendar and style.

• Option 1: Eight to Ten Weekly Sessions. This is a straightforward series of weekly sessions of about fifty to sixty minutes each, as illustrated in the table on page 15. Of course, even in this scenario you are free to condense the first two sessions and the last two sessions to make the series eight weeks instead of ten.

• Option 2: Five Weekly Sessions. In this scenario you would condense the training to five sessions of about ninety minutes each, covering two sessions each time you gather.

• Option 3: A Weekend Training Retreat. You may find it helpful to do all of the training in a single weekend gathering at your church or another getaway setting. On Friday evening you would cover the material from sessions 1 - 2 in about two and half hours of training (with time included for icebreaker activities). On Saturday you would cover the material from sessions 3 - 10 in another six hours of training.

Regardless of how you structure your training, we hope you will incorporate as much fun into it as you can. In a group setting you have the opportunity to interact not only as a couple but with other couples as well.

Note: If you are doing group training, you have now finished session 1 and are ready to consider the big picture of marriage mentoring. Please turn to page 21.

Marriage Mentor Training as an Individual Couple

Some years ago a Leadership Journal cartoon depicted a layman talking with the pastor of his small church and included this caption: "Pastor Marv, we can't revive our church by implementing small groups — we are a small group!"

If you can identify with this cartoon you probably have already realized that your marriage mentoring ministry won't occur on a large scale. In fact, the marriage mentoring "team" in your local church may consist of only you

and your husband. Not a problem. In fact, it speaks volumes about you and your passion to build better marriages in your community. You'll soon see that this program will work just fine in your setting.

Or maybe you are part of a larger church that has an ongoing marriage mentoring ministry and you are simply joining the program at a later point. There could be numerous reasons, besides being in a small church community, that you need to go through the training as an individual couple.

We want to assure you that your training as a marriage mentor couple will be every bit as successful as it would be if you were doing it in a group with other like-minded couples.

Setting Your Own Pace

Since your training is not determined by a larger schedule or program, you are free to proceed at your own pace. Take as much time as you like on any particular session. Complete one training session per week or do them all in a single weekend. That's up to you.

The only "must" is that the training needs to be done in tandem with your spouse. In other words, you will need to interact throughout your training. And while you can do a bit of reading and complete a few of the exercises on your own (without your partner present), you will eventually need to come together to process the material.

To help you set some structural guidelines at the outset, complete the following exercise:

What's Your Personal Approach to This Training? (5 - 10 minutes)

Select the item that best represents how you would complete these sentences:

I would rather . . .

• Go slowly without feeling pressured to complete the training by a certain date.

• Go quickly to get it done and get on with the practice of mentoring couples.

• Go at moderate rate with a scheduled pace and a specific completion date in mind.

I would rather . . .

• Complete multiple training sessions in a row for as long as we feel like it.

• Complete one of the ten training sessions each week to have the whole program completed ten weeks from now.

• Complete the training program in a weekend by having our own little mini marriage mentoring retreat.

I feel . . .

• Strongly about how we approach and schedule this training and I'm certain my way is best.

• Confident that my way will work but I'm open to how my spouse would like to approach this training as well.

• Very laid back about how we decide as a couple to do this training — I 'm flexible and can go with whatever my spouse might like to do.

Now take a moment to compare your answers with your spouse's and determine together how you will go about your personal training. If need be, get out your calendar(s) and reserve the times that you will dedicate to this training.

What You Will Need for Your Sessions

Here's a checklist of items you will need for your training sessions:

• The Complete Guide to Marriage Mentoring
• Marriage Mentor Training Manual for Husbands
• Marriage Mentor Training Manual for Wives
• Marriage Mentor Training and Recruiting DVD
• A DVD player and television
• A pen or pencil for each of you
• A comfortable space for interacting with each other (free from distractions)
• Typically fifty to sixty minutes of uninterrupted time for each session, although sessions 9 and 10 are planned for only forty minutes (You may choose to spend more time in any given session if you desire.)

That's it. We've covered the preliminaries. You have the essentials in hand and you're ready to begin. In the next session we will take a look at the big picture of marriage mentoring.

© 2006 Zondervan. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Dr. Les Parrott is a master communicator, having impacted people from all walks of life including executives, international government officials, professional athletes and college students. His charisma, humor and practical advice have placed him in high demand as a conference and seminar speaker. He has spoken internationally to a variety of groups including corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Price Waterhouse, the armed services, and associations of professional athletes. His breakneck schedule takes him across North America and around the world.

Dr. Leslie Parrott is a marriage and family therapist and codirector with her husband, Dr. Les Parrott, of the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of God Made You Nose to Toes, and coauthor with her husband of several bestselling books, including The Complete Guide to Marriage Mentoring, Relationships, Love Talk, and the Gold Medallion Award-winner, Saving Your Marriage before It Starts. Leslie is a columnist for Today's Christian Woman and has been featured on Oprah, CBS Morning, CNN, and The View, and in USA Today and he New York Times. The Parrotts' radio program, Love Talk, is carried by stations throughout North America. Leslie lives in Seattle with her husband and their two sons.