Marriage Mentoring

Marriage Mentoring

Wisdom and money can get you almost anything, but only wisdom can save your life.

Ecclesiastes 7:12

Years ago we began using the term “Marriage Mentors” in relationship to a program we developed called Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Through a seminar we launched in Seattle, we were beginning to help hundreds of newlyweds get started on the right foot. But soon we began to wonder whether the information we were teaching was actually sticking. We began to wonder how we could build in some accountability for these couples who went through our program, how we could help ensure they were actually putting the information into practice.

There were too many newlyweds for us to follow up on personally, so we began recruiting older, more experienced couples to meet with these newlyweds. At first we asked these mentors to simply check in with their assigned couple every so often to see how things were going. It didn’t take long for us to realize that something exciting was happening because of this fledgling program. We were beginning to hear remarkable stories convincing us that even without much training, the time-honored concept of a mentor is more than apt as applied to marriages in all stages.

We have a dream that one day a massive network of a million marriage mentors will undergird marriages across North America and around the world. Serving as a relational safety net, these mentors would lift up and support couples at crucial crossroads—those just starting out, about to have a baby, in crisis, blending a family, raising teenagers, and so on. Just as mentoring in general can be beneficial at various times during a person’s life, marriage mentoring applies to every stage and phase of married life.

A mentor is simply someone who will walk alongside you, offering the wisdom of his or her own experience and helping you live through yours. Couples are crying out for this kind of relationship. In a recent survey, 62 percent of respondents said they would like to find a mentor couple in their church, and 92 percent said they would especially like to have a mentor to help them through tough times.

So what about the two of you? Could you benefit from finding a marriage mentor couple who would walk alongside you? Or maybe you’re in a place to mentor another couple? Either way, consider the possibility of getting involved in marriage mentoring.

People are not very good at taking orders, but they are great at imitating.

—Wayman Mitchell