wfn.org | Marriage Encounter believes in happily ever after

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Aug. 8, 2002 News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert7(615) 742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.   10-71BP{353}

NOTE: Photographs and a sidebar, UMNS story #354, are available with this
report.

A UMNS Feature
By Kathy L. Gilbert*

Gary and Lisa Morris had been married for six years when they turned to each
other and asked, "Is this all there is?"

"We knew we loved each other, but we were starting to feel disillusioned
about marriage," Lisa says. That is when she noticed an article in the
newspaper about a program called Marriage Encounter.

"We really needed to see other people who loved each other," she says. After
that first weekend, they were a changed couple. They have become involved as
volunteers to host Worldwide Marriage Encounter United Methodist weekends in
Tennessee and have been happily married for 31 years. 

Worldwide Marriage Encounter United Methodist is part of an organization
that includes 12 denominations. The weekends are held all over the world,
with more than 1,500 events each year. The Roman Catholic Church started the
program in 1965. More than 7,500 United Methodist couples have participated
since 1976, when the United Methodist portion of the program began.

Marriage Encounter is a program for healthy marriages, emphasizes Mary Jane
Pierce Norton, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Discipleship.
Worldwide Marriage/Engaged Encounter United Methodist is affiliated with the
agency, which is based in Nashville, Tenn. Engaged Encounter is for couples
considering marriage.

"It is not a workshop on marriage; it is much more personal," says Jo
Victor. She and her husband, Tim, are the national executive lay couple for
the United Methodist Church. Eunice and the Rev. Earl Higgins are the
national United Methodist clergy couple.

A weekend away

A Marriage Encounter weekend starts on Friday afternoon and ends on Sunday.
Three lay couples and one clergy couple present the program to couples at a
retreat or hotel. The presenting couples talk about personal experiences and
give those attending time to reflect on their marriage in the privacy of
their rooms. All the presenting couples are United Methodist, but the
weekends are open to anyone.

"Many people worry that when they attend a weekend that they will have to
share openly and bare their souls to others. This is not true on a Marriage
Encounter weekend," say Ken and Dee Worthy, in an e-mail message for this
story. The Worthys are a volunteer couple who host Marriage Encounter
weekends in North and South Carolina.

Presenting couples talk about feelings, setting priorities in marriage and
managing anger, among other topics.

"We talk about everything from finances to sex to death," says Tim Victor. 

Lisa Morris says the weekend is all about leaving the world behind and
concentrating on the marriage. Couples are urged to reflect on themselves as
individuals, as a couple, as a couple and their relationship with God, and
finally as a couple with God and the world.

"To sit and listen to people talk about their relationships and then reflect
on your own may sound kind of boring but is a wonderful experience," she
says.

"For Eunice and me, it was the best thing that ever happened to us as a
couple," says the Rev. Earl Higgins. "I am a clergyperson, and most of my
life centered on church and other things rather than family and home. It
helped us realize how important our marriage was." 

Each couple will have a different experience, the Worthys write. "We usually
tell people to go in faith that their marriage will undergo a marvelous
transformation." 

Marriage Encounter also helps build a bond with the United Methodist Church,
Jo Victor says. "I see couples that go on these weekends not just coming
back renewed in their marriage but on fire for the United Methodist Church."

Staying married

Worldwide Marriage Encounter United Methodist is one of many national
programs designed to strengthen and affirm marriage. 

The subject of marriage has been in the national spotlight recently because
of President George Bush's proposal to spend as much as $300 million to keep
couples together. His plan calls for $200 million of the $16.6 billion
annual welfare budget to be set aside for marriage enrichment programs. He
wants another $100 million to come from state funds.

The White House points to research showing that children raised in
two-parent homes do better than children raised in other households.
Sixty-two percent of poor children live with one parent, according to the
2000 Census. Supporters of this plan argue that the breakdown of the
two-parent family is the root cause of welfare dependence and that millions
of American families will be trapped in poverty unless a culture of marriage
is fostered. 

Bush's plan is getting mixed reviews from the religious as well as the
secular public.

"As a pastor, I certainly support people getting married," says Eliezer
Valentin-Castanon, an executive with the churchwide Board of Church and
Society. "But there is no evidence to support the idea that if you are
married it will save you from poverty."

There are many programs the government could address - such as raising the
minimum wage and providing more funds for child care - that would greatly
help single parents, he adds. The bottom line is "marriage is not the
solution to poverty."

Norton agrees that government mixing in marriage may not be such a good
idea. 

"We are in a very interesting place right now. From the church perspective,
marriage is a faith commitment, from government's perspective it is a legal
contract. Our role (as the church) is to help that faith commitment deepen
and continue through the years."

Marriage Savers is one faith-based national association that likes the plan.
Founder Michael J. McManus supports Bush's proposal on his Web site
www.marriagesavers.com.

"Why is $300 million needed? Only 1 percent of America's 300,000
congregations have marriage mentors today. A massive training effort is
needed to train a million mentor couples," McManus says.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, says the
marriage initiative is "thinly disguised social engineering." "The best way
to defend marriage, and other intensely personal decisions, is to keep
government out of them," she writes in a Feb. 27 opinion piece in USA Today.

Since welfare was revamped in 1996, a handful of states have used money from
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to develop efforts aimed
at keeping couples together. 

A few states such as Louisiana, for example, have adopted a covenant
marriage law, an alternative to the traditional marriage law. Couples
choosing this alternative can get divorced only for specific reasons, such
as abuse or adultery.

Volunteers on a mission

The debate over government funding doesn't affect programs like Marriage
Encounter, which is funded by neither the church nor the government.

"Marriage Encounter is a volunteer group of people who have felt led,
usually as a result of their experience on a weekend, to see that this
ministry continues," say the Worthys.

Couples are invited to make a donation at the end of the weekend retreat,
but no one is turned away because of lack of funds.

"We would support anything that is really designed to enhance and strengthen
marriage," says the Rev. Higgins. "We tell couples the wedding is just one
day, marriage is for a lifetime." 

# # #

*Gilbert is a news writer in United Methodist News Service's Nashville,
Tenn., office.

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United Methodist News Service
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