By Tracy Gordon

After 27 years Anglican Marriage Encounter will be holding its last marriage enrichment weekend next month. Introduced to Australia in 1977, the program was designed to build up marriages and churches and was the pioneer marriage enrichment program in Australia.
But as the pace of life has hastened for the average family, Anglican Marriage Encounter has felt the effects in terms of dwindling numbers of attendees and fewer clergy and lay couples who can help with the preparation and running of the weekends.
“It used to be easy to get couples to volunteer, but now people’s jobs are demanding much more from them – they are working harder and longer,” say national administrators Brian and Enid Copeland.
The busy lives of clergy have also had an impact, with no clergy couples being recruited in the past ten years. The Copelands have also observed a shift in the attitude of society to marriage over the past decade – with people marrying and having children later in life, and more couples not marrying at all.
While it is with a degree of sadness that the program is finishing, the Copelands feel that it is just the end of a season, and say Christians can play a vital role in ministering to the married. “We would like to see churches emphasising the ‘holiness’ of matrimony”, said Brian, “and helping to establish realistic expectations of marriage.”