A Plan for Recruiting potential sponsor/mentor couples from your church community.

 [These are notes from the video/DVD "How to set up a marriage preparation program in your church."]

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RECRUITING SPONSOR/MENTOR COUPLES.

For Large and Small Churches.

This program is designed for church communities large and small. Whether it’s a congregation of 1000-plus members or a small community of less than 100, this program can be adapted to fit its needs.

In small communities that have only one or two weddings per year, the pastor can ask around or find a married couple to "journey" with those preparing for marriage, without spending a great deal of energy setting up an elaborate marriage preparation program. The For Better and For Ever workbooks and the accompanying videos will be their main resource.

Larger church communities that have many weddings per year will of course need more sponsor couples and a structure for matching sponsor couples to those who need sponsors.

How Many Sponsor Couples Do You Need?

The For Better and For Ever program relies on sponsor couples that are volunteers who come from your church congregation. You will need an adequate number of volunteers for your program to operate efficiently. If you do not have enough volunteers you will end up having too few sponsor couples seeing too many couples preparing for marriage. If you have too many volunteers there won’t be enough available couples. How do you decide how many sponsor couples you will need?

Here is the general rule that works for our program. Provide one sponsor couple for every two engaged couples that will be using this program. If your community is like most, you will be able to estimate the number of upcoming weddings based on previous history. Using this general rule covers several possibilities. If your numbers are accurate then each sponsor couple will be matched to two engaged couples during the year. This is a reasonable expectation. If you get more engaged couples than you expected, the sponsor couples are not overloaded, which means you can usually find some sponsors who will be willing to take on another couple. In short, you’ve provided some flexibility within your program. If you end up with fewer weddings than you had planned for, then most sponsor couples will have at least one opportunity to provide this ministry.

When you begin, the pastor will serve as the key promoter of your marriage preparation program, and will take an active role recruiting sponsor couples. After your program is well established, the pastor can delegate more responsibility for recruiting to experienced sponsor couples and other church staff.

Pulpit announcements by the pastor, and additional information printed each week in the church bulletin, are effective ways to inform the community that you need married couples to help with this new and important ministry to assist couples preparing for marriage. These public announcements, especially those made by the pastor, are critical for establishing the value and importance of the program. Some couples will respond to these general invitations and offer their services.

Most couples, however, are more likely to respond to a personal invitation, especially when the pastor does it. Here’s how it’s done:

In a small community where only a handful of sponsor couples are needed, the pastor can draw up a list of couples who would be good for this ministry. He can speak to them face to face after Sunday worship or talk with them on the phone.

If it is a larger community or the pastor is new to the community, here are some recommended guidelines:

1) Make a list. The pastor, pastoral staff and marriage preparation volunteers work together to draw up a list of couples to be recruited personally. This allows a number of people to suggest the names of couples to add to the list. Another benefit of having a written list is that it offers an opportunity to screen the prospects. For example, someone might recognize a name and suggest that a particular couple might not be a good choice, at least at this time, because they are totally involved with caring for a dying parent.

2) Who should be put on the list? A simple but useful thought to keep in mind is: "Which couples have the healthy marriages in the church community?" Other criteria include:

• Couples whose marriages are "valid" according to Church law.
• Couples who responded to the pulpit and bulletin invitations.
• Couples who usually participate in the worship services together (and with their children) and are also active in some other ministry of the church. (How they already function in a ministry can give insight into how they will relate to couples preparing for marriage.)
• Then think about couples who are not involved in the activities of the church; this may be the ministry they would be willing to do. Remember, since sponsor couples host the meetings in their homes it does not require them to leave their children or get baby sitters. Also, they can schedule the meetings to fit a very busy lifestyle (which might keep them out of other church activities). You may not know much about these couples, but you perhaps have observed how they treat one another in public. If they "appear" to have a good marriage, that could be a good indication that they’ll do well in this ministry.
• It is natural to think of established couples that have been married a number of years and have the experience of being parents. But couples that have been married only a few years may also prove to be effective sponsor couples. They have less marriage experience - they may not yet be parents - but they are closer to the experience of those who are preparing for marriage. Another reason to consider younger married couples is that they may benefit even more from the responsibility of sponsoring. Sharing their experience of marriage with a couple just starting out may be the best way to motivate these young married couples to deepen the commitment to their own marriage.
• Married couples of your church community that share different faith traditions probably have healthy experiences of dealing with this challenge (they are already doing this). They will be especially valuable for sponsoring partners who come from different faith traditions.

3) Keep working on your recruiting list until you have more names than are needed, because some couples are likely to decline the invitation. Here is a useful rule to follow: If you want 15 sponsor couples to serve 30 engaged couples, then make a recruiting list of at least 30 or more married couples. If all 30 of them say, "Yes, they’ll participate," you will easily be able to manage this wonderful "problem," since they will each sponsor only one couple that year.

4) If you have a difficult time getting enough names on the recruiting list (perhaps because your church has a large number of weddings each year), the pastor and those involved in marriage preparation need to agree to a most important policy: Our church will provide sponsor couples for some, but not all, of the couples who are preparing for marriage. This is important because sponsor couples must be promised during their training for this ministry that they will NOT be required to sponsor more than two couples per year. The only exception to this promise is when a sponsor couple volunteers to sponsor an additional couple.

What happens to those preparing for marriage who do not get paired up with a sponsor couple? The pastor and church staff will need to look to other marriage preparation programs [1]. The key point is that you can begin the sponsor couple program with a limited number of mentor couples as long as you keep your promise that you will not overuse them. Once you have the program up and running, you may find it easier to recruit more married couples because the word will get around that this ministry is easy to do, it is beneficial to the sponsor couples, and no one will be overworked because the church leaders keep their promise about not overusing sponsor couples.

5) Here’s what to do when the recruiting list is ready:

A - Set a date for a Training Session. Choose a date that is judged best for most folks. A Saturday session is ideal…you can plan a 3 - 4 hour training. A weeknight is less desirable because it limits you to much less time.

B – Assign each name on the list to a person who will personally invite a couple to the training session. The more personal the invitation, the better. Face to face, a personal letter, phone call, and email are all good possibilities.

Over the years we have approached many couples. Here are some of the responses we have received:

• "We are surprised you approached us. Do you think we would be good at this?" Affirm them as a couple.
• "I’m not sure our marriage is good enough for this" Let them know what is expected and reassure them that a perfect marriage is not what we are looking for.
• "Yes we might be interested. We’ve thought about doing this ministry." Give them some material and write down their name and phone number so you can do a follow up call.
• "Let us go away and talk about it and we’ll get back to you." Make sure you follow up with them. If you don’t, they may think you changed your mind about wanting their help.
• "No we are not interested. We are too busy with other commitments." Ask them if you can approach them in the future when they might be less busy.

Here’s one important point to consider when approaching potential sponsor couples. Couples are grateful when approached. It conveys a message that you recognize they have something to offer as a couple. It makes them feel important, respected and wanted.

Another point when approaching couples. You will want to stress the flexibility of the program and that it is easy to learn what they need to do, yet you do not want to down play their needed commitment. They need to know that they will be expected to meet with each engaged couple for a series of 5 or 6 evenings.

6) Once you begin the recruiting process, someone (perhaps the church secretary) needs to keep track of the responses. Some couples will say yes to being sponsors and that they will also attend the training. Some couples will say yes, but will not be able to attend the training. Keep track of them for a future session. Some couples may say, "We cannot do this now for whatever reason, but contact us again next year (or whenever)." Some couples may exclaim, "No…and please don’t ask us again." It is important for the pastor and marriage preparation leaders to file all of this information because they will need it for future efforts in recruiting and training more sponsor couples. The information can be categorized as follows:

• i) active sponsor couples
• ii) those who have agreed to be sponsor couples but have not yet been trained
• iii) those who have declined the invitation temporarily or permanently

You will also want to keep track of the active sponsor couples that move away or cease to be active for some reason. This information will be important for maintenance of the program in the future.

7) If you are fortunate, the list of couples that said "yes" is enough to begin the sponsor couple program. Perhaps not all the couples preparing for marriage will have the benefit of meeting with a sponsor couple the first year, but at least the program is underway.

[1] Remember the point about other marriage preparation programs.  If you have more engaged couples than you can tend to with sponsor/mentor couples.  Another option is to train one or more of the pastoral staff to lead groups of engaged couples through For Better and For Ever.  Like all group programs this is never as effective as the couple to couple approach because it is harder to deal with the needs of individual couples, but it is an option to consider while you are continuing to recruit and train more sponsor couples. 

THE NEXT STEP IS TO TRAIN THE COUPLES YOU HAVE RECRUITED!

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Last modified: June 01, 2008