How To Help Marriages In Your Church

You Don’t Need a PhD to Help Marriages in Your Church

As believers, we know that healing belongs to the Lord. Yet often we focus on our part as his instruments, leading to feelings of inadequacy. God’s people have struggled with these feelings throughout recorded history, as we see in Exodus 3 and 4 when Moses protests that he isn’t the best man for the job God has commanded him to do.

This fear can lead us to shy away from helping the needy in our body, instead referring them to people we perceive as having more training and skill. Overemphasizing personal qualifications, or lack thereof, downplays the role God plays in bringing about his kingdom here on earth. As he told Moses, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

It is God’s Word—his Spirit and his truth—that heals. Not human counselors, even those with degrees. How did we get to the point where the church’s first response to challenging pastoral situations is often to outsource the problem?

Church-first care model

The precedent set by Scripture is for believers to carry each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2) through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Life change happens best in the context of church fellowship, where it inducts couples into a community of friends who will walk with them long-term.

Accordingly, the church used to be the first line of spiritual defense for marriages in trouble. Both pastors and laypeople walked alongside people experiencing marital distress or walking through the divorce process, giving comfort and counsel informed by God’s word. When done well, this allowed God’s people to serve as living, breathing reminders of his promises. When done poorly, however, it led to unwise counsel and flawed human judgments.

The shift

You don’t have to look far to find people who have been hurt by Christians counseling from their own hearts instead of from the Bible. These situations understandably erode trust in the church’s ability to care for its wounded. Well-meaning Christians who want to help but have not invested the time to really understand what the Bible teaches often use their own experiences or opinions to counsel. This can cause more harm than good.

With the rise of Christian counseling in the 1970s, it became possible to refer people to licensed therapists without endorsing secular wisdom. Christian counselors are a blessing and serve an important role. But even the most excellent Christian counselor was not meant to replace the church as a main source of encouragement and guidance—which, unfortunately, is what happened with increasing frequency. Somewhere along the way, the church decided that some situations were just too messy and needed to be outsourced.

Turning the tide

Like an atrophied muscle, the church has largely lost its ability to counsel couples through extreme difficulty. But muscles can be strengthened with use. When we rely deeply on God and make ourselves available to people in difficult marriages, that muscle becomes stronger.

Part of this will involve identifying, recruiting, and galvanizing marriage ministry lay leaders. Ministries like re|engage allow church members to directly serve others both within the body and without. Which couples in your congregation have walked through storms together and emerged stronger by throwing themselves on God’s grace? These couples may not be licensed therapists, but thanks to God’s divine power, they have everything they need to live out their calling (2 Peter 1:3).

A word of caution

By no means are we recommending believers avoid seeing professional counselors or psychiatrists. We’re blessed to live in a time of incredible medical advancement, and God’s provision often comes through doctors. To go a step further: we’re not even suggesting that you avoid referring couples to Christian marriage counselors. Identify some trusted professionals in your area who consistently walk with God, serving from his strength instead of their own, and keep their information handy.

Physiological issues influence different mental health struggles to varying degrees. Trained professionals are the appropriate resource for questions about medication.

Just fight the tendency to refer out as your first response. Include Christian counselors in the spiritual toolbox, but reverse the current polarity: go first to the church and then to a professional if something comes up that they are better equipped to handle. Attack on all fronts, and only call for reinforcement when it’s actually needed. It's God’s Spirit who saves; let’s eagerly make ourselves available to him.