The Church’s Role in Building Marriages
Oct. 27, 2026
Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell
Guest: Ross Adelmann
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/27/26 To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, good afternoon, friends. I’m Jamie Mitchell, the director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. This past summer, I was working on a new book that will be out there at the end of this year on getting married. The research I did and found saddened me as I looked at statistics about the state of marriage and especially in regard to Christians. Let me give you a couple of things. 46% of adults in America are married. 59% of practicing evangelicals are married. 46% of those believe that marriage is excellent compared to 70% of evangelicals who think their marriage is excellent. 35 to 40% of first time marriages ended divorce. 60% of second time marriages, even higher failure rate for third. And there’s essentially no difference when it comes to evangelical Christians. 72% of those who married for 40 years had a religious ceremony when they got married in a church with a pastor, but only 30% of couples in the last decades have had any kind of religious officiating or marriage involved.
Matter of fact, 67% of them had a friend officiate compared to 29% 20 years ago. And today, one out of 10 use a local pastor to help with their marriage. 69 to 70% of the couples have no pre-marriage counseling and have a greater likelihood of divorce. Well, I could keep going. I think you get the idea. The state of marriage is not good, and that includes those in evangelical marriages. Churches want to keep turning the tide on marriage, but they’re not sure how to do it. And we believe, and we believe today, especially with the nature of marriage and family, we need to have some strategies to help us. And we got to make the landscape of marriage and family better. And I think, and we believe that the church can play a role. And today to help me, Ross Adelmann, who is the church advocate for a ministry named Communio.
Probably first time you’re hearing that, but I want you to learn about this ministry today. They have done extensive research on what families need and how to partner with churches to help grow godly homes. Ross, welcome to Stand in the Gap Today.
Ross Adelmann:
Jamie, it’s a pleasure being with you. It was fun meeting you a couple months ago at the GARB Conference and I’m pleased to be with you and your audience today.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, Ross, as we begin, I want you to share with our audience what Communio is and what that ministry is. Where did it come from? What research have you done? And what are you attempting to do through and for the church in regards to family and marriages?
Ross Adelmann:
The simplest way, Jamie, to talk about it is we are seeking to have the gospel and the church lead the way in solving a major, major issue towards gospel resistance. Our summary of research can come down to two points. 80% of people in the church pews today were raised in intact home, meaning both biological parents married while they were growing up. Even if they divorced after the kids left the home, those children raised in an intact home are far more likely to be in church and receptive to the gospel. So that’s a staggering statistic to sit with, isn’t it? But if we flip it around, that also means if you are raised in a broken home, that you are far more likely to use Jesus’ parable, hard soil, rocky soil, thorny soil. And so we today as a church have been casting seed, just to use the example, I grew up in small rural communities, so I love Jesus agrarian parables.
We’re casting the gospel seed on an acre of land that should produce 300 bushels and instead we’re getting three. And then even when we see a bunch of people come to faith, three to five years later, it’s down to one because of the rocky, thorny soil choking stuff out. And so our ministry is really about helping churches address the soil so that we can see greater evangelism, greater retention, and greater discipleship of people in healthy relationships. That’s simply the way it is. And the outcome for us is healthy marriage, but we also start with singles because singles are rather hopeless about marriage, getting married later, less often. And we know we need to focus on them if we’re going to actually solve the marriage issue as well.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, when I met you and I heard about your ministry, it really struck me because I know the truth of this and watching it over the years as the family goes, I’ve always said that the church is a family of families. And if the family represent within your church, if there’s some struggles there, some difficulties there, and even as young people grow up in those families, depending on how the state of that home is, there is a either resistance or a receptivity to the gospel, to Christ, to God’s word, to biblical authority. I mean, you can go right through the whole list. And that is what is so unique about this is that if we can address the marriage issues, especially in the church, it begins to open the door for gospel receptivity to children and others, especially those who are looking and watching Christian marriages as we have seen fail at the same rate as those in the world.
Isn’t that the case?
Ross Adelmann:
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. And it’s logical to all of us and it’s biblical to all of us. Jesus or God created the world and the first thing he established was the family. And the greatest need that people have in life is to be loved well and securely for a lifetime and few are experiencing that. So if they can’t even experience that in their family, how do they trust God to give that to them? It really comes down to that, right?
Jamie Mitchell:
Yeah.
Ross Adelmann:
And the other part of our… Yeah, go ahead.
Jamie Mitchell:
No, no. I was just going to ask you about Communio is how did this ministry start and what was the aha moment that said, “Hey, we need to do something to address this family and home issue?”
Ross Adelmann:
Yeah. It started because our founder, JP deGance, was involved in national issue advocacy, conservative Christian issue advocacy out of Washington DC. And he started wrestling with the idea that there’s no way we can politic our way out of this, issue our way out of this, policy our way out of this. That he was looking at the research going, nobody’s really addressing the root cause in his circumstance. Initially it was the root cause of social ills. So let me illustrate it this way. I’m based out of Ohio, so I know the statistics here better, but it’s probably very similar to every state in the nation. In Ohio, 88.5% of our money is spent on trying to address education, crime, addiction, and a bunch of the social ills beyond that as well. And yet we keep spending more and more and more and more and more money and we are getting worse in all those areas.
Jamie Mitchell:
Friends, one of the truths that the Bible says is we never should forget comes from Jeremiah 29. We’re told to get married, grow children, and if so, it will affect our community. That’s what Ross and Communio is talking about. And so when we come back, we want to talk a little bit more about their program, about what they’re doing. So stay with us. Today is Ross Adelmann and he serves with Communio, which is a ministry to help marriages and families get renewed and restored and to help churches efforts in doing that. Ross, as we ended the last segment, you were talking about the social ills in society could have been addressed by marriage and family and parenting issues being dealt with in the church. Communio has done some amazing research and I think it’d be helpful for you to take some time and paint a picture for us on how the family has changed in the past decade because probably our listeners are in churches and they see the family structure and marriage makeup has changed.
What specifically has been happening in the homes that we may not be fully aware of?
Ross Adelmann:
Well, Jamie, I think you did a good job of summarizing the high points of that in your intro in preparation for your book. There’s been a severe decline in the number of people getting married. Singles are getting married later and less often. And even though the studies show that if they live together, they raise the likelihood of divorce. If they get married later, they’re still so afraid of marriage that they’re still living together. And so there’s just this fear that is around marriage and the unhealthiness of it that is just growing because so many people have not experienced a healthy marriage. So rather than keeping on quoting stats, let me paint a picture.
I’ve worked with a lot of churches and some of the churches go, “Oh, if it’s marriage ministry, it’s really only for the young people.” But the reality is many of our older marriages that are in church have thankfully stayed together because of their faith and belief that divorce is not a good option as Jesus says it’s not, or they’ve stayed together also because they don’t want to hurt the families, their children. But many of them have settled into something that is not a thriving marriage. And many of the younger people are looking at them going, “I don’t know if I want that when I’m old.” They’re still together, but it’s not a thriving marriage. And I think one of the greatest testimonies to the younger generation would be for many of the older marriages in our congregations who are faithful showing up in the twos every Sunday to become thriving beautiful marriages again.
That’s not like the honeymoon phase or anything like that. We’re just talking really beautiful marriages instead of having settled and just silently living with each other in the same home. We already talked about how younger marriages are struggling as well. And one of the more interesting things that’s coming out in the research is that more people in marriage are actually feeling lonely and reporting feeling lonely. And there’s been national research, but let me drill down even a little bit more. My wife and I just recently helped with one of our partner churches. They did a marriage conference and out of about 120, 130 people, this is all marriage, 27 of them said they were highly lonely. Now the beautiful thing is after the marriage conference, that 27 went down to two. And that’s the kind of work we’re doing with churches to strengthen marriages within the church as well.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, you said something that really interests me and that is the whole issue of fear that I’ve seen that, especially in young people. They might have seen their parents go through a divorce. They saw the pain of it. They’ve experienced the pain from it and they just say, “Hey, I don’t want to go through that.” So they know deep down there’s something wrong, but they just have not figured out how do we then enter into a godly marriage. Ross, one of the big emphasis is that Communio is helping us see, and that is the connection between faith and family. Do they go hand in hand, family life connected to faith and the church’s vibrancy connected to family health? And I’m just talking in general with marriages and families. I think the statistics bear out that if you have any kind of faith dynamic in your marriage, it will make things better.
But what are you guys seeing that can actually put teeth to that kind of statement?
Ross Adelmann:
So there’s a recent research project that we partnered with the Institute for Family Studies to do called Passing the Torch that we just had come out. And there’s a lot of data in there and all of it shows strong connection between not just married couples, but healthy married couples, reproduce people who are interested in the faith who have conversations. And a lot of that research project was actually focused on what are the simple habits that happen in good married homes that pass on faith. And it just comes down to how frequently do we actually have conversations about faith? And that’s not like having a big Bible study. It might even be like your kid coming home from school and saying, “I had a really rough day with my coach on my soccer team.” And just simply asking the question of them, “Well, how do you think God wants to be with you in that?
And how does God want to help you think about working through that difficult situation?” It can be something as simple as that. And our study was showing that when both dad and mom are involved in those kind of conversations on a daily basis, that there’s a 97% chance that their kids will grow up and have those same kind of faith conversations with their kids. And if the conversations are weekly, it’s a three times greater chance that the kids will grow up and have those conversations. If it’s daily, it’s an eight times greater chance that kids will grow up and have those same kind of conversations with their kids when they grow up and have their own kids. So there’s a very direct connection to that. And that even goes beyond just the 80% that I talked about earlier, that there’s a far more likelihood of even being open to the gospel and church if you were raised in an intact, healthy family.
Jamie Mitchell:
Wow. That emphasize there in Deuteronomy where it says as we’re with our kids when they’re standing up, when they’re sitting down, when they’re walking, when they’re with us, that we are talking about the Lord and that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, but it also breeds an openness. Ross, we got just a few minutes left here, but I want to just ask you, because you do these conferences, you’re looking at research and those kinds of things, it used to be the three big issues in a couple’s life that constantly showed itself as causing problems was intimacy, finances and communication. Are those still some of the great strains on marriages today?
Ross Adelmann:
They certainly are. And what we know from research is that if you address the communication, the other two tend to become better. And so Communio spends most of its time focusing on how do we create reproducible habits? See, in the church we talk about the fruit of the spirit being kind, but we don’t always give people reproducible habits to be kind when the pressure’s on. And we also teach people basic reproducible skills of how do you manage your emotions because we know that half the conflict and half the undermining of us living out through the spirit comes from our emotions coming out sideways because we don’t process them well. We’re angry at our boss, we take God on our wife and our kids, that kind of thing. And so we need to focus on those basic core skills and oftentimes the church doesn’t.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, one of the things that I have discussed with pastors as I interact with them, I’ll ask them things like this. So how often during the year do you ever discuss or talk or preach or have within the diet of your church equipping people in regards to marriage, parenting, relationships? And I’m often shocked on how little is done. What are you finding as you interact with churches on this subject?
Ross Adelmann:
Our studies show that 85% of churches spend zero dollars on healthy marriage ministry, zero. And the healthy marriage ministry is not just focused on marriage. It’s got to be focused on the singles as well, teaching them the healthy skills and healthy relationship skills that give them great friendships, help them make good choices in dating and give them the hope they can have a long lasting, thriving marriage.
Jamie Mitchell:
It’s interesting talk about this book I’ve written and it’s coming out and the publisher said to me, “Jamie, don’t worry about selling a book. You need to help start a movement.” And I thought that was really interesting what he said. And I followed up and I said, “Well, what do you mean by that?” He said, “By what I’ve read in your book and what I know what’s happening in the evangelical church, there needs to be a movement afoot within the evangelical church that we have a responsibility to help start and preserve healthy, godly marriages.” And when he said that to me, I was taken back because I hadn’t thought that way, but he had. And I guess you guys see that a lot more than most people. Friends, after accepting Christ as savior, selecting a mate and how you parent are some of the next major decisions in life and most times, we’re ill prepared to make those decisions.
Now when we return, I want Ross to explain a pilot program that Communio has done and talk about the lessons they have learned as they came alongside of a church and tried to help them develop a marriage building ministry within the context of their church. If you’re in a church who’s concerned about families, today is the day for you here at Stand in the Gap.
I’m so glad that you’re with us today. And if you’re just joining us, welcome. We’re talking about marriage and family and how the church needs to be kind of the point of the spear when it comes to impacting marriage and parenting. Ross, one of the things that I learned looking into Communio was that you have tested a lot of your ideas using professional researchers and in particular the Jacksonville pilot project. Can you tell us about that initial pilot and what happened in Jacksonville and really what did you learn?
Ross Adelmann:
Sure, Jamie. Yeah. Our founder, even before Communio was formed, raised 22 million because he wanted to figure out how the church could lead the way with the gospel in solving this issue. And we went into Jacksonville, which was the sixth worst divorce rate in the nation at the time, according to Men’s Health. We partnered with 93 churches and a marriage organization. And in three years we saw divorce metro wide drop 24%. The better news is that we saw evangelism go up 23% in those churches. They saw 23% growth and the vast majority of that was from evangelism, not transfer growth. We also saw church giving go up 28%. Here’s the interesting thing. Kia Family Institute, one of our partners in Pennsylvania did more research on that three year time period. And while we can’t directly tie these to it, we think we had probably some influence during that same three year time period.
Abortion decreased, poverty decreased, and the number of kids in foster care decreased.
Jamie Mitchell:
Wow. That is amazing. Now, Ross, when you say that you partnered with 93 churches, did you go into those churches and help them develop programs or did you give them curriculum? What did you do with some of those churches to help move the needle in regard to growing and strengthening the home?
Ross Adelmann:
Yeah. So here’s the unique thing about Communio. We’re not a typical marriage ministry in that we don’t produce any of our own curriculum. What we do is we coach churches how to evangelize around this greatest need that people have, which is they want secure, healthy relationships in their life. And that helps us evangelize more. And then we partner with and study the effects and results of marriage ministries that we recommend their material and then churches can use whatever material we recommend or they can use their own if they’re already using good material. But I will tell you this, the marriage material that we use in Jacksonville, if people come into it saying they’re ready to divorce or they’re not far behind that, we’re seeing a 72% decline in the rate of divorce among that population after they go through this material. But really what we’re doing is we’re trying to create evangelism, not just discipleship around healthy marriage.
We accomplish both.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, you say that people are looking for healthy relationships. I would just think that this would be just common sense when it comes to the church. Is the church not, I mean in general, the evangelical church, are we not talking about what godly biblical relationships look like or are we not modeling them? Why is there such this void that then trickles down and impacts marriages and families?
Ross Adelmann:
See, I don’t think we’re not talking about it necessarily. I don’t know that we always get practical enough. We talked really good theology around many issues, but we don’t help people develop practical skills. And I think Jamie, that’s the reason why the divorce rate in the church isn’t all that different than the divorce rate in the world. It’s because even though we’re talking about it, we’re not helping people put it in the practical application in their lives and therefore it doesn’t work. But if we can learn to do that, then we can reach more people. And here’s how we actually reach people. How many churches do you know, Jamie, that they do these big fall festivals or they do other things and they get the same number of people coming every time? And even if they are getting unchurched people, many of them don’t actually get into the church, right?
I’m running into this all the time. I got a church up in Pennsylvania I was working with. They’re getting three to 500 people showing up at an outreach event, young families, bounce houses, lots of fun. They’re sharing the gospel and at best they get one or two or three people a year from that three to 500 who might even visit the church. Here’s the problem. Our culture has become much more post-Christian. So what we do when people come to these outreach events is we invite them to church. That’s usually the next step, but they’re not interested in church. They’re coming for fun. And so if we can add to their reason for wanting to build relationship with us, we want to see you thrive in your marriages. That’s how we’re starting to get so many more people to actually want to build relationship and trust with us.
And we all know that relational evangelism is the most powerful. So we’re just helping churches answer the question, what are we doing to intentionally motivate people to want to build trust and relationship with us? As long as they’re coming for the fun and they come back six months later for the fun and we’re inviting them to the church, but they’re not interested in church yet, they’re not going to build trust and relationship with us. And if we don’t have trust and relationship, we can’t do relational evangelism.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, you said something a moment ago about we’re not teaching people practically how to live out relationships. Let’s go a little deeper with that. Can you illustrate how you do that or when you say you want to help people practically do it, what does that look like or what do you mean by that?
Ross Adelmann:
So one of the organizations that I like the most that actually drove our results in Jacksonville that we recommend is called Live the Life and they have a course called Navigating Us. And when you go through that course over the course of a weekend, you will learn what they call a daily check-in and it gives you prompts for how you create some healthy communication on a regular basis with your spouse. And they give you tips on how to do that in a way that respects and honors your spouse and you don’t get into unnecessary fights, right? But it’s super, super practical. In fact, when you walk out of that weekend, you will have two… I’m actually holding them in front of me right now. You will have two business card size things. One says the daily check-in, another one is called the us card and it helps a couple walk through a difficult conversation.
There’s another called the heart to heart, which helps them really understand and validate each other’s feelings and really get to the point of deep empathy with each other. And then they have a fun one called taking out the trash, which is, we talked earlier, half of our conflict in relationships is because we haven’t learned to grieve well. We haven’t learned to deal with loss or disappointment well. Our boss gets angry and we get angry and we take it out sideways. So they just give these super practical, reproducible habits that a couple can just say, “Hey, we need to have a daily check-in.” They pull out the card and it actually helps them have a really, really, really valuable conversation.
Jamie Mitchell:
I love that because I know in my case, my wife Chris will be kind of evaluating a day and she’ll say something like, “So how did you feel about this?” And I immediately start giving her all the facts of the day or the facts of the event or the facts of the encounter. And she’ll look at me and she’ll say, “No, how did you feel about it?” And she’s excellent in making me express what I was feeling. I just want to stick with the facts. And so many times with husband and wives, men, and women relationships, we don’t learn those distinctions in a marriage relationship. And it really is something very simple, Ross, but it could make a huge difference in the marriage relationships and you must be seeing stuff like this all the time.
Ross Adelmann:
We are seeing stuff like this all the time. I mean, even just the last marriage conference we did with Navigating Us where my wife and I table coached along with that, we saw 191% increase in the people present who said they have the knowledge and skills to communicate well just from that weekend experience because all of a sudden they had habits that could do that. And it’s not like Jamie, we used to traditionally say that men were the ones who struggled with emotions. There are many women who have been in really rough families or rough situations who they struggle to identify their emotions and our emotions are everything. I could be angry or I could just be disappointed and it makes the whole conversation different depending on what emotion I have. And it doesn’t mean we’re making all the men into touchy feely people, but we are emotional beings.
They are gifts from God. We need to understand them and treat them as gifts from God.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, one of the things that I appreciate as I’ve been looking at the ministry, and we just have a minute left, but you guys talk a lot about percentages, seeing in Increases, decreases, those kinds of things. And people can get kind of lost in those numbers. But one of the things I think is why we are in the condition that we are is we’ll evaluate things when it comes to the family like this. Oh, we’re doing good. Well, what does that mean? What is the measurement of that? Are we really doing good or are we seeing decline? And so one of the things is we can’t be deceived by thinking we’re doing good. Friends, can you imagine what a difference it would make if your church that preached the gospel and had concern for families, would attempt a strategy that would create the soil that much more fruit would be happening in families around you.
When we wrap up, I want Ross to tell how your church can be involved and access some of the insights that Communio has. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us.
Well, it’s been a great day here at Stand in the Gap as we have been discussing how we and the church can help families and marriages and to make marriage great again. And that’s what we are hoping and praying. Well, with that in mind, let me mention that I have a new book coming out December 1st entitled Shutting the Door on Failed Christian Marriages. The subtitle, Six Convictions That You Need Before You Get Married. Over the years of marrying couples, I found that when couples would commit to the six convictions, it would drive their decisions and shape their future marriage in such a way that they would have longevity and fruitfulness. I want you to know more about the book and you can place an advanced purchase by going to six, the number six, convictions.com and you can check out the information there. Enough of that shameless promotion.
Ross Adelman has been our guest and he serves with a ministry called Communio. Ross, probably some church members that have been listening and pastors are asking, “How do we get involved with Communio? How can you help us and our church develop a strategy for strengthening our marriages and families? How would they connect with you? And what are some steps for them to take advantage of your ministry?”
Ross Adelmann:
Yeah, Jamie, let me start with some of the steps and let me just compliment you as well in your initial statistics. One of the things that a church needs to do is we need to both be realistic about the level of dysfunction and unhealthiness of marriage, but we also need to not amp it higher. And what I appreciated about your statistics is at the end is we’ve often quoted this 50% of marriages fail in America today and the church is the same, but 50% of marriages failing doesn’t mean that every first time marriage fails. And I love the fact that you broke that out where first time marriages fail at a certain rate and then second, third, fourth, fifth fail at a much greater rate. And that’s how we get to that number. So we need to reduce the fear. We need to cast a high vision for marriage, biblical high vision for marriage and we need to give people the skills.
So here’s one of the things that I’ve run into both as a pastor who partnered with Communio before I joined them, but also with many pastors I’ve talked to. When pastors say, “How can I participate?” Almost everyone says, “I can’t do it because I don’t have the time. I don’t have the energy.” The thing I love the most about Communio is that we start with what churches are doing. So for many churches, you will not work harder with us. We will just help you work in a more effective way to bring more evangelism and greater relational health. And we also have multiple platforms. We have a full service model, which you get two coaches for, and we have a self-paced platform that if you do need to have less intense work load because you don’t have the capacity to do a ton right now, there’s a way for every single church to partner with us in a meaningful way and start chipping away at the hard soil that’s caused by the brokenness of marriage and family.
So the best way to actually move forward is to just schedule an online meeting with me or one of our people at Communio to just walk you through exactly what we do, what it looks like and what that might entail for you as a church. And we’re going to help you figure out whether full service is the best option or the self-paced platform is the best option because we don’t want to burn you out and we want you to succeed. We want you to be effective. But the reality is, Jamie, we’ve worked with churches all the way from church plants to multi-site mega churches very effectively. Our longest term partner here where I’m at in Ohio was a large nine or 10 campus church, tens of thousands of people. And we’ve also seen church plants benefit tremendously. So there’s different options for the cost as well.
I want to speak specifically to your audience in Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In those states, the Christian Family Policy Councils have sponsored us so we get to offer our services up to 80% off the normal costs for full service, which makes it affordable for everyone. So I just want to encourage anybody who’s going, “I’m not sure, I’m really interested in this, but I’m not sure I can handle it. I’m not sure it’s right for my church.” At least have the conversation because I think you will discover that there is a way that we can partner in a way that you can afford in a way that you have the time for that will help move the ball forward in addressing creating soft soil for the gospel and eliminating social ills, which we all care about.
Jamie Mitchell:
And your website is Communio and it’s not communion, it’s communio.org and you can go on there and click. And Ross, one of the things that as a pastor for a number of years, I always took advantage of and I found great value in, and that is that in the midst of my church, I have a certain idea of how things are and what things look like. And I do have kind of blinders where I don’t see certain things. Having somebody like yourself or Communio come in in regards to marriage, and I used to have people come in and help me with missions and music and teaching, all kinds of children’s ministry. But when it comes to marriage and family, I never really found anybody who was quote unquote a consultant to come in and take a fresh look. And that really is the value of an organization like Communio, isn’t it?
Ross Adelmann:
Yeah. I mean, one of the first things we do with churches we work with is do a detailed assessment of the state of the health of relationships in general and marriage in particular in the church. And it’s interesting to me how many pastors are surprised by the level of need in their church because honestly, Jamie, we still struggle as pastors trying to help people be authentic enough to be honest about their issues. And that’s one of the reasons why divorce in the church is still mirroring the level of the culture. It’s because people hide, they want to look good. And so one of the things we do is actually we help churches figure out how do we deepen that level of authenticity around our need and also set a bar of motivation that we invest in healthy relationships every year. If my marriage is doing great this year, I’m still going to invest because I may have free crisis come up in the next three months and all of a sudden everything’s going sideways.
And so we want to create a really deep discipleship atmosphere while we also see greater evangelism.
Jamie Mitchell:
Ross, we got a minute left. How important is it for the pastor to be engaged and involved in this renewal project within the church and their families?
Ross Adelmann:
Here’s the interesting thing, Jamie. They need to carry the vision. But one of the things we do with churches is we come in and develop usually an all volunteer relationship culture team is what we call it, who runs this entire process. That’s one of the reasons it’s not necessarily going to be a whole lot more work on the pastor, but the pastor has to buy off on the fact that this is central to it. Jamie, when I ask pastors, what are a couple scriptures that define the outcome of discipleship? Inevitably one of the top three is the fruit of the spirit. I can define the fruit of the spirit in two words, healthy relationship, healthy marriage, healthy family, right? This is central to our mission. It’s not peripheral. This is central to our mission. And so the pastors need to own that centrality, but they don’t necessarily need to own running the entire process because we’ll help train a team to do that within their church.
Jamie Mitchell:
Oh, that is so good. And I hope pastors hear that. It’s not laying more of a burden on them, but certainly to support them. Ross, thank you for being with us. What a blessing to hear about Communio friends. Never forget that as the family goes, so goes the church. And as the church goes and family goes, so goes a community and a city and a state and a nation. And so getting families and marriages right, you could say it’s a national security issue as we’ve heard today. Ross and Communio is doing the work of helping churches build up marriages. Check them out at communio.org. As always, live and lead with courage and let’s start growing marriages and families that can live out in courage in the world today until tomorrow. God bless you. See you tomorrow at Stand in the Gap today.
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