Family Mentoring

Welcome to the Journey! Mentoring is a journey not just another church program. With a program you follow a pre-formatted plan that only teaches concepts. This is because programs teach ideas and doctrines not actions. But we use the mentoring journey to learn how to live them. This curriculum will guide you through the steps. Click on the links for each skill section. But remember, with mentoring, the difference is that it is not the destination that is important . . . it is the journey.

Marriage mentoring is a highly successful current trend in church based education and counseling. It has become increasingly popular with couples who are in search of wisdom about navigating marital difficulties. Since the mentoring is done by volunteers, it can provide counseling for those who can't afford a couples therapist. Many like it because the process seems more relaxed. During the mentoring process a client can meet with a trained volunteer couple at least six times to talk about everything from family to finances.

A Description of the Family 2 Family mentoring curriculum. We combine two couples or families. Every member of each family, who is able, should be included as long as there are no more than eight to ten people in a mentoring team. Try making a team that includes families that are structured differently; single individuals, married couples with or without children, divorcees, mature couples with grown children, and elderly adults. When we allow the influence of broader diversity the more we are able to discover new unique life experiences. We see perspectives would not have seen from like minded perspectives as our own.

Mentoring goals according to Marriage Savers Inc. is to:

• Avoid bad marriages before they begin
• Give “marriage insurance” to the engaged
• Strengthen existing marriages
• Restore troubled marriages
• Reconcile separated couples
• Help stepfamilies be successful
• Bring down the divorce rate

Objectives:

Click on the Team Formation to get started and learn about the curriculum objectives.

Skill Section One:

Click on the Unconditional Love link to begin the Family 2 Family Curriculum. And uncover the misconceptions concerning unconditional love. The objective of this skill is to teach students to understand and practice God's unconditional love demonstrated in the context of personal faith, family relationships and within the body of Christ.
 
 

Skill Section Two:

Click on the Listening link to follow the curriculum for the section on listening. The objective of this skill is to carry out listening skills toward family members, toward God, and listening to the Holy Spirit regarding their religious practice based on the principles of listening to God through his word.

Click on the Communication link to follow the curriculum for the section on Communication. The objective of this skill is to apply interpersonal communication skills to the home, to the personal spiritual life and in witnessing our beliefs to others founded on the skills of communicating with God through prayer.
 
 
Click on the Time link to follow the curriculum for the section on Time. The objective of this skill is to develop a long-term sustainable schedule for spending undivided individual time with significant members of the family as well as personal time with God and also regular fellowship with like believers. Creating schedules based on the principle of building regularly devotional habits.
Click on the Money link to follow the curriculum for the section on Money. The objective of this skill is to participate in skills of household and personal budgeting as well as spiritual money management including practicing the principle of giving tithe and offerings.
 
 
Click on the Responsibilities link to follow the curriculum for the section on Responsibilities. The objective of this skill is to partake in sharing family resources (time, material, and information) as well as sharing spiritual resources through family worships and church ministries.

Instructions

View Group Formation Helps

 

The ideal use for this Family2Family curriculum is to be utilized within a mentoring relationship between two couples. If you are not in a mentoring relationship with another couple speak to your local family life director in your church congregation to see if they can help unite you in a mentoring program.

There are many excellent marriage mentoring programs available that your church can incorporate. One such course from Smart Marriages inc. by Michael McManus, is the Marriage Savers Program. Marriage Savers helps a church recruit, train, and commission mentor couples in local churches. Marriage Savers purpose is to help couples who either need help preparing for marriage, or are aiming to strengthen a marriage, or need help to restore a troubled marriage. Some churches use the Marriage Mentoring Program by Les Parrott. Parrott's Mentoring program also has training and recruiting for mentors and the program is designed to help strengthen marriages. Another resource for church based Family life education is Family Foundations International from Pastor Craig Hill.

Start a Mariage mentoring Program. If your Church is not able to start a marriage mentoring program, just find a couple in your church to mentor you. Look for a spiritual couple that has been married for more than 5 years and currently has a very strong relationship.

This Family2Family curriculum can be used in connection with already established marriage mentoring programs like any of the ones mentioned above or it can be used as a stand alone marriage mentoring curriculum.

The Family2Family curriculum uses a WebQuest format with a problem based learning approach. There are 6 skill sections. Each skill section should be followed in numerical order. Within each skill section there are 4 case studies. Each case study follows the growth of one of four different couples.
Choose one couple and learn their family history, staying with that same couple through each of the 6 skill sections until you have completed all 6 sections. In this way you have a variety of four different scenarios for each skill section. Then this curriculum can be used four different times without repetition.

Follow the Steps. When a mentoring team meets, only attempt to do one skill section at a time. For example, if your mentoring team meets once a week then only do one section a week. Doing more than one lesson at a time will minimize the effectiveness of each lesson.

Each Skill Section follows the same WebQuest process that will take you through six learning steps.

Each skill has case studies that build on one another and are best done when followed in chronological order.

Step 1 - Learn about the family history of your family of choice.

Step 2 - Read the case study on the same family you chose in Step 1, being sure to answer the reflection questions at the end of each case study.

Step 3 - As a team produce a Problem Statement related to the issues you have learned about the family and what you know about this topic. Use the Discussion/Communication box to share what you have produced and read what others have produced as well.

Step 4 - Use the Links to go on a WebQuest to research on the web the problem and potential solutions to the problem.

Step 5 - As a team produce a Hypothesis that describes a solution that "what should we do" to help resolve some of the family issues you have researched. Use the Discussion/Communication box to share what you have produced and read what others have produced as well.

Step 6 - Use the Discussion/Communication box to reflect and share what you have learned from the WebQuest. As well as to dialog with other teams on their ideas and conclusions.

After you have finished each skill section take the self-evaluation test to grade yourself on how well you accomplished your tasks.

After you complete all six skill sections, take part in the curriculum Survey designed to improve the use of this curriculum by the suggestions of the users.

The Family2Family Online Curriculum was written and  designed by Dannie Storie. Web design by Dannie Storie with PHP and MySQL programing by Rob Durkin.

Do you have suggestions or comments about this Curriculum? Then contact Dan at storie@andrews.edu