Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Marriage Encounter Weekends

MAKING OUR MARRIAGES BETTER!

What a wonderful relationship marriage is, especially when things are going right.  Learn and experience how to make it even better through a Lutheran Marriage Encounter Weekend. This weekend offers couples an opportunity to learn how to better communicate their thoughts and feelings within the context of a Christ-centered marriage. This weekend away from daily pressures and responsibilities provides couples with private time to discover, rediscover, deepen, and enrich their marriage connection and make it even more like what God intends it to be. Couples return home renewed, refreshed, and strengthened in their love for one another. They also come home with new communication tools to use so that their marriage relationship can continue to grow in their everyday lives.

Few, if any, of us have received formal training in how to maintain and nurture our marriage relationship. We sort of learn how to live in our marriage relationship by the seat of our pants (or the school of hard knocks), just as we learn about child rearing by trial and error. Sure, there are some good books, videos, and other tools on what makes a good marriage that are available to us if we would only take the time and make the effort to find them. But, alas, we are so busy with our jobs, kids, and other activities that, as a practical matter, we just don’t connect with these tools that can help us make our marriages better and more like what God wants them to be. Our marriages are like our cars – they need periodic checkups and tune-ups to perform better. We view our cars as being vital to our way of life, but our marriages are even more so!

A Lutheran Marriage Encounter weekend is a special experience, usually in a motel setting, which starts at 7:30 pm Friday and ends at 5:00 pm Sunday afternoon. It is designed for couples with good marriages who have been married for at least three years (so they have experienced some of the ups and downs of marriage). It is not intended for couples with troubled marriages who are seeking or in counseling. The focus of the weekend is on the discovery and communication of each other’s thoughts and feelings.  During the weekend, a Lutheran pastor and his or her spouse, together with three lay couples, present a series of talks on various aspects of marriage to a group of 15 to 20 married couples. There is no group discussion.  Instead, each talk is followed by a question on which the couples write down their thoughts and feelings. Then, in the privacy of their own room, husband and wife share with each other what they have written, including their feelings. This process repeats itself many times during the weekend, fosters a better understanding of what’s going on in the couple’s inner selves, and helps each couple build new patterns of loving communication.

For a couple to attend an upcoming Lutheran Marriage Encounter weekend, a nonrefundable registration fee of $45 is requested to ensure a reservation. Near the end of the weekend, the per-couple cost of presenting the weekend (currently $350 per couple) will be stated, and each couple will be given the opportunity to make an anonymous contribution. What a couple contributes is up to them. Lutheran Marriage Encounter does not charge a couple to go on a weekend and no one has ever been refused the chance to attend a weekend because of lack of funds. Lutheran Marriage Encounter is a tax-exempt charitable organization with a volunteer staff. Those who present the weekend do so as their part in a family life ministry and in the spirit of “loving one another.”

Many Good Shepherd couples have already attended a weekend, and have better marriages because of it. If you haven’t been on a Lutheran Marriage Encounter weekend, please check this year's schedule and consider attending. For your convenience, a registration form is included below.

For further information or any questions you may have, please contact Alan & Arline Fraser (301) 869-2329.