Is Your Church Equipped to Provide Help for Marriages? Brad & Marilyn Rhoads

Grace is atmospheric. It settles the heart. It settles the marriage. It creates a different atmosphere.

So it is so cool. Our pastor last week, he said, thank you, thank you. I'm being nice to my wife.

I'm Senator Tex. We're doing things and she'll jump back. So you grace marriage and me again. You grace marriage and me again. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.

We got Brad and Marilyn Rhodes back on one more time. And not only are we going to talk about grace marriage, your book, I want to talk about grace marriage, your ministry, because what you're doing needs to be heard about because I don't know anybody else doing what you're doing in terms of helping churches help marriages. Well, to do that, let's go back to your story.

How long were you guys married? You're working on your marriage. God's really revealing to you what grace looks like.

Not only the grace that he's giving, but now you're applying it to your marriage, to your family. You're a successful businessman, Brad. He's an attorney.

An attorney. Did you have any idea that one day you're going to be in full-time ministry? Zero.

Never even hit my radar. So what happened? How did that come about? We had worked with youth for about 10 years at our church. We were just kind of the small group leaders going mission trips and pouring to youth. And then as the kids we worked with got older, they came to us and said, well, you do our premarital counseling instead of our pastors. And we're like, why? They said, we want what you have.

Show us how you do it. So they saw a grace-based marriage. So we said, sure.

And it went well. Then they sent us another couple. And I don't know why God had given us favor with marriages.

But so I said, let's start a group because at least we can reach like eight couples at a time as opposed to one. And I don't know why God had given us such favor, but a two-year waiting list to be in the group. And then I started getting more crisis pastoral counseling requests. I was ordained pastor of marriage at our church.

And this is when the light bulb went off. We're a pretty good sized church. And I saw our church does premarital counseling and crisis counseling. And that's our marriage ministry.

That's it. As one pastor said, the only thing our marriage ministry is missing is the marriage itself. Which is most of the marriages, which is most of the churches in the United States.

What's the number? What's the percentage? Communio Barna study said 72% of churches have no marriage ministry.

72%. And I've heard that 85% don't pay anybody for even the marriage ministry they do have is all volunteer led. There's nobody on staff laying in bed every night, sleeping, thinking, how are we helping marriages? How are we helping?

There's 85. You gotta attend churches. Where it is, it's buried in a job description. So they'll have their evangelism guy. Marriage will be like the seventh thing down. Their discipleship guy will be the fifth thing down. So marriage gets almost no attention.

And it's kind of the ministry of conscience. It's like, oh, we hadn't anything for marriage lately. Let's bring in a speaker and they'll do one thing.

And that's it. But it does not bring about growth. It's like, marriage should be held in honor among all, not to try to meet some minimally acceptable standard. It's one of the anchors of our civilization, marriage and family. It's like what we're founded on and we're not giving it any time or attention. I don't get it. I don't.

I don't understand. Because children's ministry, great, but it evolved in every church. Youth ministry is great. It's evolved in every church. Marriage ministry is absent. And we wonder why we have so much trouble getting any traction with our children and youth. It's because we're not building up the marriages in the family.

Because the family they grow up in and the marriage they grew up in is much more impactful to their spiritual development than the weekly program in the church provides. Before we had children, I counseled with children. And it wasn't the children. It was the parents that needed the help.

That was so frustrating and they were coming from such brokenness. You just saw the results of that. I was working with children that were first time offenders in the court system and there were truancy issues. And I was seeing that it's the families that need the help. It's not me working individually with this child.

It's the work with the families that needs help. And as a lawyer, I saw so much family breakdown. When I left the law, a family court judge from Lexington calls and I want you to come watch my courtroom for a day. Because I heard you're doing marriage ministry. I don't need to watch your courtroom.

I've done 22 years. He goes, no, I want you to come. And I sat there and just observed miserable person after miserable person. And the most miserable people were the kids that weren't even there. It was almost like God said, Brad, this is why I'm calling you out of the law. This can and should be stopped. And the church is not doing what it needs to do to stop it. Because you can't just do premarital and just say good luck with the world we live in. It doesn't model good marriage. It doesn't model good rhythms.

It doesn't model intentionality. It doesn't teach grace. And over time, invariably, two pretty good people end up hating each other and wanting out. And it's unnecessary. Because if we would shepherd and disciple and give them a discipleship strategy and a discipleship pathway, that they're growing in skills and marriage, that they're moving toward thriving and not drifting toward crisis, it could change everything.

Most of the cases I do in crisis pastoral counseling could have easily been stopped if the right rhythms had been put in five years ago. And we've bought into the lie that marriage should just be good without work. Exactly. And nothing else is in life.

Nothing else. We know we have to work at our talents. We know we have to work at parenting. We know we have to hone our skills and our jobs and everything else we do.

But if there's a problem with us, then our marriage must be broken. We must just not love each other. Imagine going into sport. You never work out. You never practice.

You never even learn the rules of the game. That's exactly what we do in marriage. And we think it'll be great. You're sorry? And in crisis Catholic, I'll ask him, I'll say, both of you share with me individually what you're specifically investing into your marriage, time and money and creative energy wise. Look at me like, what are you talking about?

I said, so you're putting nothing into it and it's bankrupt. And you're surprised. It's the church stepping forward and teaching people, let marriage be held in honor among all Christ and the church, you know, husband and wife, wedding, supper, lamb. This is a big deal theologically, and it's a big deal.

We're not going to make any traction in society until we make traction in marriage. I remember because we started this church 30 years ago that we were a part of and we kind of kept track because our son was born two months after our youngest son was born two months after we started the church. So we're watching all of these kids grow up who are all doing the same thing. They're all going to church.

A lot of them are in the same schools. Their parents are together and we're watching. And Dave and I are thinking, let's watch what happens as they become young adults spiritually of how they do. And we started keeping a little bit track, just the two of us, and think the ones that are really doing well spiritually, even though everybody's been in the same youth group, all the same things, the ones that are thriving now as adults are the ones that came from healthy marriages.

That's it. Like in their walks with Jesus, it's coming from healthy relationships and marriages. That was blowing me away because you're thinking, oh, how's the youth program?

How's the discipleship process? It's coming from the family. And that's exactly what you guys are seeing. It's exactly right. I have to ask Marilyn this.

Here you are. Your husband's an attorney. You've got five kids.

He comes home and I'm sure you guys have been talking about it, but when he says, I'm thinking of getting out of this. Thought practice. And becoming a full-time missionary, basically. It was so obvious that the Lord was taking us here before that day because it was growing so much and we saw the need. There are so few marriages out there that are worth emulating.

And that said, even in the church, you don't see magnetic marriages. And we saw just because God had shown us and helped us. And like Brad said, not because of us, but because of him, kids are inspired by what we have and asking us, will you show us?

So my encouragement to couples that have a beautiful marriage is the best thing you can do for marriage to be held in honor and to help the next generation and people around you. So our marriage ministry is growing at church and we've got the law practice and the five kids. And he went on a mission trip and I already knew the Lord was taking us this direction.

And he came home from this mission trip and he said, Marilyn, we've got to do this full-time. And I said, OK, I know this is what the Lord has for us. And I got scared.

I got scared. Well, I thought because you're a budgie guy. You got a budgie guy with five kids.

None of them have started college. And you're thinking, I'm just going to like start a brand new marriage ministry and just leave the law practice completely. You know, and I just start thinking, am I sacrificing the health of my family for what just I want to do?

Am I being selfless or selfish? So I started overthinking that. I remember I came to Marilyn and Marilyn's quote was, Brad, would you please quit looking back and wasting our energy? You know what God's called us to do. Go do it.

I don't feel like I've worked a day since. I mean, I love seeing marriages do better. I love seeing churches that have no marriage ministry all of a sudden have a DNA of healthy marriage in their church, which is kind of expected. You come here, marriage is a big deal.

You get so emotional about it. Oh, I can foresee a movement that marriage ministry that's effective as standard operating procedure in our church and the sleeping giant, the church and the marriage space comes alive and changes the way marriage is done. Because when people see marriage done differently, it changes the next generation. We have one daughter that's married. I asked her after six months, how's life, Madeline? She said, Dad, it's been the best six months of my entire life.

The opposite of how you guys started. Right. She's never seen anything but dating once a week.

So her and Zach date once every week. Our kids all do too. They do.

But they don't know what he did for this. When you get married, it's just what you do. Because you do what you see. And right now the church isn't stepping forward and showing this is what you do. So everybody's perpetuating a busy culture where marriage does not get anything but fatigue leftovers.

And then we all scratch our heads while it's not working. The decline of marriage makes all too much sense. You leave a space open, Satan will have a heyday with it.

Both definitionally and in every other way. And I think the hope is salt and light, the church stepping forward. Marriage is beautiful. It's amazing. I love being married to Marilyn.

And I think millions of people are missing out. And they step forward. Their fruitfulness in the ministry, their fruitfulness in their job, their life, their energy, their emotional health will all increase as the strength of their marriages increase. That's also fuel for loving when you don't feel like it. When I think about this is so much bigger than just our marriage.

For me to pursue Brad, for me to love Brad while he's still a sinner. It's so much bigger than us. Now what do you do when you come in and bring Grace Marriage to a church?

What's it look like? God's given us a wonderful, amazing team that's helped us put together seven full years of curriculum that changes consistently. So what we do is, if a church has won a marriage ministry, we give them everything they need. Promotional schedule, promotional materials, promotional videos. They can white label it from social media graphics to everything.

They don't have to create anything. We've created a forum. And then we have church support specialists that walk them alongside. And we realize that two of the barriers in marriage ministry are staff time and church budget. So it can be lay led and it's participant paid because we want people to invest in their marriage.

My marriage is worth a little bit of money and a little bit of time on a consistent basis. They give that, they see transformation. And churches start realizing that when we intercept couples at a point of stability, and we get them dating, enjoy one another physically, they see quick change.

But if you wait until they're at a point of crisis and pour a ton of money in them, most of them end up divorced. So we teach the church a strategy and we provide them everything they need. And there's multiple methodologies. So each church says marriage ministry is going to look a little different.

Some it's monthly, some it's six weeks in the spring, six weeks in the fall. Some it's a quarterly model, which I learned through business coaching and what our church does. But we just help every church create that atmosphere of healthy marriage in their church and have an ongoing platform. So it's not just a study and it's not just a conference, but it's an ongoing strategy where you keep people in your ministry. You would never do a youth ministry and say, hey, why don't you do youth ministry for six weeks? Why don't you do youth ministry for a year?

No, you're in the youth ministry. So now we're creating a culture where you're in the marriage ministry and you're on an ongoing growth track. And we've got a few rhythms that we do every time we get together, whether it's quarterly, monthly, we talk about gratitude. It's all about our perspective. So focusing on the good, the lovely, the praiseworthy, the admirable. And that's one of my favorite things that we do is we take time to stop and reflect on what's going well.

We just so naturally bend towards what's not going well. So to write all that down, to talk about it, to speak that out loud to each other is so life giving to the marriage. And we revisit grace over and over because we all need to be reminded of grace. Then we also have an intimacy igniter. We call it where you sit and you just talk and you just listen about the things that are on your heart.

We offer examples of questions if you don't know what to talk about. But if there's a pressing issue in your home, a crisis time or celebratory time, you can just share. We don't often take space to just sit and listen to each other.

And it's a neutral space. So if there's something hard to talk about, it's a good time to talk about it because it's not in the heat of the moment. So much better to address issues outside the heat of the moment. And then we have the 621 challenge where your treasure is your heart will be also. And OK, plan your next before you meet next time. How many times are you going to date?

Are you going to try and get away overnight like you're talking about? It's it's fun to have those things to look forward to. We have them block time off their calendar and commit to spending another marriage. So we we sell them on marriage, which it's not a hard sell because it's just true.

I feel like as a lawyer, God's given me a perfect case and nobody can argue with and said, present the rest of your stinking life. And that's what I do. So we have them schedule their time like you agree marriage is important.

Yes. OK, let's go ahead and put it on the schedule because now there's an implementation gap. They'll go to a good conference, they'll go hear good preaching, but they go home and just do like they've always done it. So what we do is have them write things down, commit, work together and then hold them accountable to not let life squeeze out marriage.

I'm just thinking of people listening right now whose hearts are burning. You know, like this makes sense. This is what we need. And I would add, if you're feeling that, that nudge, that's the Holy Spirit. Like you could take this as a volunteer into your church and family life is all about this. That's what we do.

Yeah. What if every listener brought this into their church? It would start changing not only a marriage, then it would start changing a family, start changing a community, start changing a region. And now we've got marriages that are on the Rock of Jesus.

Look out. Talk about this. You went from being an attorney and now you're both together in a ministry together. How has that affected your marriage? Because that's what we do and it's not always easy.

It's a bit more challenging than we thought. When we started doing content videos together, I'm like real driven and focused. Marilyn's like bigger on kindness and gentleness. So it's like one of our team members is like, when y'all do videos, you're really not that nice to your wife.

I'm like, whoa, that's kind of bad. So then I came home to Marilyn Elaine said, you're not that nice. And she goes, we are not. Because I come in there, we're going to finish these eight content videos.

You guys are brothers. It gets to the point where it's so like short and snappy. I'm like, I don't really want to do this with you right now. I'm like, Marilyn, we did not come in the studio to talk about this.

We came in the studio to do this. We can talk about that, but we're here for a reason. I would say like, that's fine, but can you do it and say it in a nice way? It's been a challenge.

We're in a good spot now. I've had to be more graceful and just let things play out as they play out and not be as just goal oriented and driven. Like we're going to produce this in this amount of time and just kind of let her talk to the rest of our team and be nice to everybody and just finish whenever we finish. Do you find the same thing, Marilyn?

Yes. It's so funny. Early on, it was even harder. And we had, I mean, when we first started not realize how hard it was going to be and the guy that works with us on content. I mean, we were literally working on a communication video and fighting right before it started.

He was right there watching it all. And I'm going to add, because Marilyn and I talked about this as we walked over to the studio, the spiritual battle over marriages is so great. There's such an attack on our homes, on our kids, on our marriages.

I don't know why we're surprised, especially for ministry. But any marriage, when you start wanting it to be great and you start taking those steps, don't be surprised if attacks will happen, don't you think? Yeah. And we, you know, family life has always had a theme at our weekend to remember marriage conferences, that your spouse is not your enemy. We went to this conference as an engaged couple, never thinking we'd be here with family life years later.

Wow. But that was the first time we ever heard that concept. And then we got married two weeks later and immediately I thought she was my enemy. You know, it's like, I don't like you and you don't like me.

And I mean, literally our first year was a real struggle. We used our words as weapons. Yeah. And you forget there's an enemy and it's not your spouse. And in fact, that enemy would love you to think it's not him.

It's, it's your spouse. But if you're in a foxhole together and you're fighting each other, his battle's done. You know, it's like, turn together as a warriors together and say, there's the enemy.

Let's fight him together. But man, he wants to divide marriages. And I would add this because as many couples, maybe you guys thought this at the beginning when you struggled, we're disqualified. We could never do anything when you're in the midst of that struggle. God could never use us. I think so many couples listen to this or maybe they've been divorced, maybe they're blending and maybe that's really hard.

God still wants to use you. If your kids are gone, you're empty nesters. That would be the ones that would champion a marriage ministry in a church, right? Because now they have a little more time and maybe capacity to be able to bring that passion into pouring into other couples.

There's so many opportunities. And what we've seen is like we've put together a marriage leadership team of 11 couples. Nobody spends much time on it, but they love marriage and they love each other. So they all have small roles, but together we have about a hundred couples that do ongoing marriage investment of a church of 800. And one of my board members said, couples will never be more intentional with their marriages than churches are with their marriage ministries. And unless it's important enough for you to have a devoted ministry, don't expect your couples to prioritize it because a church is that important. And it is tough and it can be discouraging. My board always says, Brad, it's a hill worth dying on. He said, you lose marriage, you lose everything. It's a battle that everything else depends on. So I would just say if you're listening and your church doesn't have a devoted marriage ministry, please be the impetus to step forward and make sure it occurs.

And it doesn't have to be somebody on staff, but people that aren't on staff sure can influence those that are on staff. Yeah. You've probably heard some incredible stories. Your story is really encouraging and inspirational. Have you heard other stories of people that this has made a difference in their marriage? All the time. It's amazing the difference you make in a marriage when you get them at a point of stability. I mean, we get more testimonies primarily because we catch them at a point of stability than a point of crisis. Right.

And we get them all the time. I mean, a pastor last week, he said, thank you, thank you. I'm being nice to my wife. I'm sending her texts. We're doing things and she'll jump back and say, you grace marriage with me again. You grace marriage with me again. Another one said, I was always mad at my husband because he worked too late. And the first night after our session or one of the nights after the session, he was working late and I texted him. I said, can't wait to see you when you get home. He goes, sorry, I'm late. She put, grace, can't wait to see you, smiley face.

And he said, I couldn't wait to get home. Grace is atmospheric. It settles the heart. It settles the marriage.

It creates a different atmosphere. So it's, it is so cool. Our pastor once said, no longer am I taken away from my ministry and my marriage. I'm remaining qualified for it. Having a blast with my wife. Thank you. Thank you.

Please tell everybody. Cause his entire experience in ministry changed when he went from a busy, tired pastor with a tired wife to an amazing marriage and leading out of that as Pete Cazero says. That makes it worth it, doesn't it? It sure does. Oh, it's, I mean, I can't tell you how much I love what God allows me to do. Yeah. And it is amazing. I mean, we, we found this, uh, really from year one when we were struggling, we said this many times here, but as we get to Nebraska to begin our ministry as chaplain for the sports teams there, the first football player I meet says, it's so ironic.

We are really not doing well at all. Of course, nobody knows that. It's a secret at this point. And he says to me, Hey, a lot of us are married. Could you and Anne lead a marriage Bible study on the football team?

Like, I'm thinking you got the wrong couple. He told me and I'm like, we don't even like each other. But what did we say? We said, sure, we'd love to. Cause that's what you say in your ministry. And we learned the words of Jesus. We didn't know it at that time.

But when he says, if you want to find your life, lose it. Amen. And we lost it. We gave our life away. Our marriage, we literally took the manual from family life that the conference we went to that we really didn't listen to because we didn't think we needed it. And we taught it, not even knowing really what's in it. Now we've been teaching it for almost 40 years, but we taught it and we learned a critical lesson about marriage. If you want to save your marriage, bless others, give your marriage away, help others, because it's, it's so easy. We look inward, we look at each other and I'm not saying that's not important.

That's part of it. You've got to fix what's broken in your own life. But it's so crazy to think you really want to save your marriage.

Look up, Jesus, look out and see the needs and start meeting them and God will meet your marriage. I don't even know if he helped those other couples. He saved our marriage. Isn't that what you found?

Absolutely. And we had the same experience. We went to a premarital conference two days, paid $300. We left after 30 minutes and we laughed and said, isn't it good they have this for people?

And we didn't, we didn't literally, we thought, I mean, they don't know how special we are. Well, here's what I'm wondering if you're a listener and you've been tracking with us, what's God doing in your heart like right now? What would grace look like in your marriage right now? Put your husband or your wife in mind, maybe the things that are bothering you or the things that have just, oh, they just keep cycling back.

What would grace look like? Maybe you text them, maybe you write a note to them. Maybe when they come in the door, you apologize. That's where you started, Marilyn. I'm really sorry for the way I've been treating.

Move toward them, not away. That's right. And what did you say? What were your words that you said to Brad? Well, he says it a little stronger, but I did say, I don't need you to have joy.

Yeah. And I'm sorry I've put you in the place of God. I said basically those same words today. I felt like God convicted me the night on our 10-year anniversary where he said, you've been trying to find life through your husband.

He was never made or qualified or meant to meet all of your needs. That's my job. That's right. And so maybe besides that grace, we go to the Father first, our Father who loves us and we say, God, I need your grace. It's already poured out, but I need to receive that and remember that you forgive me. I've been failing at this and you are the one that can meet all of my needs. You're the one.

That's the start of a great marriage. Amen. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Brad. It's been so fun to be with you.

Really fun. I love this conversation over the last three days with Brad and Marilyn. Such strong gospel truth combined with practical ways to strengthen your marriage.

I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Brad and Marilyn Rhodes on Family Life Today. Brad and Marilyn have written a book called The Grace Marriage, how the gospel and intentionality transform your relationship. You heard a lot about that today and you can get your copy of their book to learn more by going online to familylifetoday.com or clicking on the link in the show notes. Or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy.

Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Right now is your last chance to save 50% off on all weekend to remember registrations for the fall. Don't miss out on our biggest sale of the season. The weekend to remember registrations right now are half price until September 16th.

So whether your marriage needs a boost or you just want to grow closer as a couple, now's the time to act. So you can visit familylifetoday.com and click on the Weekend to Remember banner right there on the page to learn more. Again, you can head over to familylifetoday.com. Now coming up next week, Brittany and Recab Grey are here to talk about their journey of parenting children with sickle cell disease and coping with loss while finding faith. That's coming up next week. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.