At our Time for Marriage conference in March we were excited to launch ‘Project 50’, so what’s it all about…?
Firstly some background…
Over the last seven years since we became the Executive Directors of TfM, the Leadership have worked hard to hear clearly God’s calling on TfM and to discern what our core ministry offering was. It became evident that our residential weekends and the message of ‘redeemed marriage’ were our ‘USP’ (Unique Selling Points). There is a unique dynamic to our weekends away; we offer an ‘experience’ rather than a course as couples are taken on a journey of discovering God’s plan for marriage and exploring how to live that out in their own relationship. By coming on a TfM weekend couples are saying to their spouse that they care enough about them and their marriage, to carve out time from busy lives and make a financial investment in their future together. Time and time again we’ve seen God honouring that commitment by releasing His blessing.
With the weekends as our core, we wanted to make them the very best they could be, so that couples would have the best experience possible, so we sought to invest in a number of areas. Firstly we rebranded as ‘Time for Marriage’ and launched with a strong new logo and consistent corporate image. We then worked hard to carefully select venues across the UK for our weekends where we can create the right environment—offering couples a warm welcome along with an intimate, safe and romantic atmosphere. We also focused on the material and resources that we present to couples on our weekends and looked the whole experience of couples from the moment they are welcomed to the moment we say goodbye. We also introduced a whole new training programme for the ‘Facilitator Couples’ who lead our weekends, ensuring that our couples are trained to a ‘professional’ standard.
Now to the present…
With the vast majority of couples now rating our weekends as ‘excellent’ and most of our weekends fully booked (even some with waiting lists) the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit is clear, through the testimony of so many couples who have their marriages strengthened and even miraculously turned around from the brink by their experience of coming on a weekend. So with a renewed confidence in God’s anointing on this ministry we feel we’ve reached a ‘tipping point’ and God’s calling upon us to ‘be courageous’ (Joshua 1 v.7) and ‘expand our tent’ (Isaiah 54 v.2). Out of this calling comes ‘Project 50’. This is basically a desire to see us running 50 TfM weekends a year in five years time, effectively to have a TfM weekend taking place somewhere each week! In practical terms this will mean a quadrupling of the number of weekends that we currently run and a similar multiplication in terms of the number of facilitator couples that we currently have.
We feel that the fields are ripe for harvest, as over recent years various marriage organisations have helped to change the culture of marriage ministry, whereby it’s increasingly seen as acceptable, even sensible, to invest in your marriage by participating some sort of marriage enrichment event or course. Many couples have now experienced great skills based teaching through various means but many Christian couples are now asking “what’s next?” as they desire to explore further the spiritual aspect to their marriage and seek have their faith as the foundation to their relationship, as they put God in the centre. A TfM weekend away would seem to be the obvious next step!
This is a BIG, BOLD vision and certainly something that we will fail to realise if we rely on our own human strength; to see this vision become a reality we will need to rely on God’s blessing and the leading of the Hold Spirit in all that we do. We will also need YOUR support, so will you stand with us and take up the call to reach more couples with this fantastic message of hope for their future married lives together?
Can you pray for this growth; can you become trained as a facilitator couple; can you support us financially; can you spread the word about TfM to your church leadership, your friends and to your wider Christian contact network?
A big thank you for all you do to encourage and support us, we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions.
