It may be a desire to highlight the priority churches place on marriage, or simply a jump in interest, but Ministry Training & Development has just hosted its largest training day for the Prepare/Enrich marriage tool.

Anyone who’s been married in the Diocese over the past 20 years will be familiar with the questionnaire- based marriage preparation course, which aims to highlight areas of strength and possible conflict or difficulty for couples.

“The couple completes a questionnaire separately online and a report is generated for the minister and for the couple,” says the rector of Sylvania, the Rev Mark Charleston, who has been training users of the tool for a decade. “The couple get to own their report and the facilitator uses his or her reports to counsel, guide, direct and coach a premarital couple or a married couple seeking to enrich and grow their marriage.”

A qualified psychologist who worked for the military before entering the ministry, Mr Charleston and his wife Merryl trained representatives from 25 parishes across the Diocese at the seminar last month using role plays, videos and workbooks.

“It’s very timely that we’re doing this in the current climate and I hope the participants will go away and let their congregations know that they have done training in this area, because it speaks volumes about how the Diocese considers marriage,” Mr Charleston says.

“The Diocese has just established a domestic violence taskforce and one of the very powerful things about the questionnaire is that it gently explores the possibility of abuse in the background of couples and gives them the opportunity of disclosing that – and therefore an opportunity for the minister to be alert to it.

“The questionnaire also explores the possible misuse of alcohol and drugs and previous or current struggles with pornography, giving an opportunity for both the man and the woman to disclose what could be very difficult to disclose face to face.”

Church by the Bridge at Kirribilli is one of the parishes that uses the Prepare/Enrich tool and assistant minister the Rev Andy Pearce was at the training day.
“Although it’s not a ‘Christian’ tool with explicit gospel content it acts as a very helpful bridge,” Mr Pearce says.

“The assessment tool enables couples to see potential pressure points for their future marriage. Its genius as a gospel ministry tool is that it shows optimistic, loved-up couples that putting two sinners under one roof won’t always be a barrel of laughs. This then allows us to point people to the gospel and the hope for sinners found in Jesus.”

Photo: Mark Charleston (centre left) makes a point during a role play with Brendan Moar from St George North parish.