Retread,
Our pastor was at least marginally familiar with the work of Dr Harley. He and I had been discussing starting a marriage ministry for some time and for some reason we could never get down to the nuts and bolts of how to do it.
Then early last fall we had a sudden surge in marriages in crisis. It became a priority for all of us in leadership and I suggested Dr Harley's materials. Rather than buy the DVD or CD series, I took on the task of figuring out how to teach through Fall In Love Stay In Love in the time we had available to us. I picked FILSIL because it is really the whole MB program in one book.
My intent was to teach MB to a group of folks who would then transfer that knowledge to others, and that seems to be something that is happening. We had such a great time in the first group that the people who attended the first class get together once per month for some sort of social event, usually at the home of one of the couples. We have some couples who now attend the church after becoming aware of us first through the class and at least two couples now attend together though the husbands did not attend before coming to the class.
One of the couples in the current class is attending for the second time and they are a great help in explaining the stuff to the others. I think they should do their own class next. They read here, so they can think about it...
When we got ready to do the class we bought books in bulk and made them available. We sold more books than we had couples attending the class. We promoted the class for a few weeks with announcements and short messages about the class. I also produced a 1 minute video commercial spot that we ran as part of the general announcements for three weeks in a row.
Another church may have me come do the whole class for some of their folks next and we're looking at a two weekend sort of seminar format version as a possibility. I'm thinking about 4 hours on two Saturday mornings, either two in a row or every other weekend. Not sure on this yet, but we're kicking it around.
Why not go to your pastor and ask to do a class based on FILSIL. It's really just guiding people through the book, filling out the ENQ, LBQ and PHQ at the appropriate time and asking questions to get them to think about what they have read.
Easy for me since I taught Sunday school for years, have done a bit of preaching in my time and have access to the pastor by virtue of being one of the Elders of our church.
If you want to do a class yourself for your church, I'll do whatever I can to help you out. Let me know what you need and I'll try to get it to you.
Mark
