Too many in church getting divorced 22 Feb 2006 - Source: By John McNeil in Challenge Weekly New Zealand The founder of a worldwide marriage-enhancing organisation says the high failure rate of Christian marriages shows that the church needs to do more to prepare people for marriage. David Olson, founder of Prepare/Enrich, has been touring New Zealand to train ministers, counsellors and educators in the Empowering Couples programme which has just been released here. Dr. Olson said it was of concern that rate of marriage failure among Christians was about the same as in the secular world. "You'd think religion would be a glue that would hold a marriage together, but evidence is that it does not. Christian couples seem to be as frustrated as the rest of the world and not as committed as you would hope. "Whereas they might believe marriage is important, they have the same faults that all couples have. They have unrealistic expectations about how easy it's going to be to have a relationship; they don't have good skills to resolve issues, which keep accumulating. They have a high level of commitment, but commitment is not enough." Dr. Olson said the Church had too easily encouraged couples to get married without adequate preparation. "A good preparation programme should start about a year before the marriage, and one of the reasons for that is so they can use that time to develop the relationship and deal with some of their issues in a constructive way." But he is concerned that there is no longer the expectation in the church that married couples will stay together. "That's part of reality now. When young people look around, they see divorced parents or relatives divorced. Some of their married friends have divorced. Every place they look, they see divorce more prominently, and that changes their expectations. "The churches would do service to themselves and to their congregations if they invested more time in developing strong marriages, not just in preparation, but in ongoing programmes for married couples. "Being married is much more stressful, much more difficult, these days. That puts more emphasis on the importance of marriage, because we find that if you have a strong marriage, you have a much greater potential for a strong family. "There are a lot of benefits to a good marriage. A lot of studies have shown that if you have a good marriage, your children do better in school, they're happier, you end up having a better sex life, you end up better financially, you tend to be a happier individual, you tend to achieve more." Prepare/Enrich began in the United States in 1980 and about two million couples have been through the various programmes, including half a million in 12 countries outside the US. The programmes are not just for Christians. "We have many programmes with the military in the United States. Around the world, our goal is to reach couples regardless of their spiritual beliefs. "One of our new offices is going to be in Malaysia, where we will work with Muslims. We already have offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where we work with Buddhist couples. It's a non-religious based programme but it does have a spiritual component for those who want that." Dr. Olson said the organisation continually researched the effectiveness of programmes. "For example, several studies of the Prepare programme have been published that demonstrate that if you go through this, it will significantly reduce your chances of divorce. "In a study of the Empowering Couples programme, the men improved on 15 of the 17 individual scales we looked at, and the women improved significantly on all 17, whereas a control group went down over the six-month study." Dr. Olson and his wife, Karen, have been married 25 years, and have three children and five grandchildren. When asked whether there were ever times he was tempted to walk out, he replied: "No, but at times we have had issues come up that we have had to sit down and deal with. "I think the times that are most challenging are when you have adolescents in the home, particularly when they are rebelling. It puts stress on the marriage, but thankfully we are through that. "Our kids are happy, and in fact my daughter is just finishing her masters degree in marriage and family therapy and she wrote the book Empowering Couples with me." 22 Feb 2006
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