The Need is Great

Recently, we were conducting a marriage seminar when a woman from the audience approached the stage during a break. She described how she was a pastor's wife and that they served in a low-income community. "I don't know if you know this," she said with a look of earnestness in her eyes, "but because there's been so much pain, confusion and dysfunction in families in our community the subject of marriage has been off limits to discuss. Today, you broke through that barrier. We desperately need to talk about marriage in our community. My husband and I need your help. Won't you please consider coming to our church to do this? Things have got to change."

Does Anyone Care About Low-Income Marriages?
Marriage conferences, marriage mentoring, and marriage materials are more available than ever before to the average church and family. Tens of thousands of couples each year attend quality marriage seminars, relationship workshops, and enrichment weekends. Most of them leave renewed and refreshed in their relational skills and in the commitment to their marriages.

Unfortunately, not everyone has these opportunities.

As one researcher wrote, “These kinds of programs currently do not exist in low-income communities.” The painful irony is that, “…[t]he evolving marriage movement is, for the most part, inadvertently ignoring the needs and circumstances of low-income couples, even though the poor are the population group most in need of help.”

The neediest groups in our society simply do not have access to the same marriage resources as so many others do. Unless something is done to address the disintegrating state of marriages among low-income Americans, the result will be an irreversible national tragedy.

Unless something is done to address the disintegrating state of marriages among low-income Americans, the result will be an irreversible national tragedy.

Researchers tell us that marriage is on the retreat in all sectors of our society: “The decline in marriage cuts across nations, class, religion and race; however it is most marked among the poor. Low-income individuals are at higher risk of out-of-wedlock childbearing, of cohabitation, are less likely to marry, and when they do marry are more likely to separate and divorce than middle or high-income couples.”

And who suffers? Children.

The impact of this decline is seen most clearly in its devastating effects on the most vulnerable members of our society, the kids in these failing marriages. The number of children living with only one parent has more than doubled since 1970. At the same time the number of children living in poverty has increased as well, “but virtually all this increase is associated with the growth of single-parent families.”

In some low-income groups, as many as 49% of all children live in homes with only one parent. Their future is anything but bright. Study after study shows that children raised in single-parent homes are at greater risk of poverty, dropping out of school, criminal involvement, teenage pregnancy, and divorce.

A Greater Threat than Divorce
For over a generation divorce seemed to pose the greatest threat to marriage. No-fault divorce laws enacted in the early 1970’s, coupled with societal attitudes favoring easy divorce, resulted in a massive break-up of families. There have been approximately 41 million divorces in the last 40 years.

As researchers tell us, “Most of the traditional economic, legal, social, and cultural constraints that used to keep marriages together (even unhappy ones) have fallen away.” Yet, as destructive as the culture of easy divorce has been, something even more threatening has arrived on the scene.

Co-habitation or living together before or outside of marriage is now the number-one threat to marriage in our time. Between 1970 and 1996 the number of couples living together increased seven-fold. The practice of skipping marriage altogether in favor of cohabitation is most common among low-income couples. In fact, among some groups “family formation nowadays often begins not with marriage, but with the (typically unplanned) birth of a child”.

For many women in low-income groups the prospect of ever getting married is fading away altogether. Only 75% of women in some ethnic groups are likely to marry during their lifetime, compared with 91% among other groups. Many single mothers have actually convinced themselves that getting married is a bad idea. They believe “that marriage will probably make their lives more difficult and do not, by and large, perceive any special stigma to remaining single.”

What easy divorce could not accomplish in destroying the foundations of marriage in our society, co-habitation as an accepted practice is well on the way toward finishing off.

Many single mothers have actually convinced themselves that getting married is a bad idea.

Nothing Will Change Until This Changes
Government agencies spent over a trillion dollars in the last generation trying to address the needs of the poor in our society. Yet, poverty has actually grown worse, not better, in the last 25 years.

There’s a reason behind this failure. It’s not the wrong political party being in office. It’s not poor government administration. It’s not official corruption or unworthy motives among government officials (though all these factors have been at work at times).

The real reason behind this colossal failure is this: They have only addressed the symptoms, not the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter is the need for building up the health of the family unit among low-income groups. (This is actually true for all income groups in our society). It begins with addressing the health of the marriage--the heart and soul of every family unit.

We have ignored what God says about marriage. He designed it to be a permanent, life-long, loving covenant between a man and a woman. Jesus reiterates this fundamental truth in Matthew 19:4-6, saying that “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh,” and “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

A myriad of complex forces and influences are at work among low-income communities, but the primary and underlying issue is that man has separated what God has joined together.

Marriages have been under attack, then separated, and ultimately destroyed in far too many cases. This battle is not primarily social or economic, but spiritual. The Apostle Paul points out in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

The Pattern Must Be Altered
Once marriages are destroyed, the children become the next target. After that, the other institutions in a community begin to crumble. Problems such as crime, drugs, and gangs can ultimately be traced to the breakdown of the family. (This same destructive pattern is now at work in rural and suburban communities as well, where families are also breaking down.)

Problems such as crime, drugs, and gangs can ultimately be traced to the breakdown of the family.

MarriageVine Ministries believes the generational and cyclical problems that plague low-income groups will not change until the pattern of family disruption and break-up is altered. That will happen when marriages are strengthened and relationships healed. This transformation is possible only by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth of God’s life-changing Word, and the caring involvement of committed believers.

What needs to happen is really quite simple:

• Young men and women need to be taught to wait for marriage to live together and bear children.
• Before and after they are married they need to be mentored by more mature married couples in how to live with one another in love and acceptance.
• When they face the inevitable difficult times they need the church and outside influences to encourage them to stay together and keep their vows for a lifetime.

Until this type of spiritual encouragement and mentoring takes place nothing will change the heart-breaking statistics that threaten the very existence of our society.

The Answer is Unchanged

What causes such separation and strife in our relationships? Sin and independence from our Creator.

We Believe There Is Hope
The answer to our problem is and always has been found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is what we need. He alone can fill the emptiness in our souls.

We long to see more and more come to know the grace and mercy of God for salvation. And we long to see God’s grace and truth lived out in their relationships – including their marriage