Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This January we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re joined by Nicky and Sila Lee of The Marriage Course // Alpha International, and are talking about how marriages will still be struggling.

Nearly half of all marriages in America are experiencing difficulties. There’s a huge opportunity for churches to step in and offer proactive, structured support to marriages in their communities. Tune in to learn how to use The Pre-Marriage Course and The Marriage Course to overcome the stigmas surrounding marriage enrichment and provide couples with practical tools and biblical principles for maintaining a healthy relationship.

• Create space for conversation. // The courses Nicky and Sila have developed have reached over 1.5 million couples worldwide, serving people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds, including non-churchgoers. Their goal is to provide couples with practical tools and biblical principles for maintaining a healthy relationship. However, the most important part of the course is not what Nicky and Sila teach, but rather the one-on-one time couples have talking through a structured topic. This aspect makes the course unique for every couple, regardless of their background and situation.
• Proactively offer support. // Churches must take proactive steps to support marriages in their communities. Rather than waiting for a crisis situation, we need to help people address struggles before they become serious problems. A once-a-year marriage weekend at our churches isn’t enough. Marriage health requires regular enrichment and support.
• It’s normal to need help. // Using these courses at our churches helps to remove the stigma that can be associated with marriage enrichment programs. It’s important for churches to normalize the conversation around marriage support, with pastors and church leaders leading the way. Demonstrate that seeking help is a sign of strength and make these conversations a regular part of how you care for the people in your community.
• Arrange a date night. // Part of The Marriage Course emphasizes the importance of creating a date night feel during the course sessions. By setting up a romantic evening for couples, it will alleviate the nervousness that many couples feel when attending marriage enrichment events. In addition, creating a welcoming environment will encourage them to enjoy their time together and return to each of the seven sessions.
• Privacy over group discussions. // The Marriage Course is unique because it avoids group discussions unlike many other marriage classes. Many couples may be good at talking to other people, but not with each other. So the course provides space to encourage that one-on-one communication. Giving couples their own table and space also allows them to explore their relationship privately without fear of judgment.
• Experience the course yourself. // Nicky recommends that leaders who are considering offering The Marriage Course in their church experience it within their own marriage first. Whether you run a small pilot course, or go through the course at home, the experience will help leader couples to understand the course’s impact before encouraging others to join.

Visit The Marriage Course on Alpha USA’s website or The Marriage Course to learn how to use it at your church and take a look below at the training video that Nicky talks about. Plus, don’t forget to download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You’ve caught us in the middle of our Unprediction episodes. These are seven episodes. We’re talking about things that were true last year, that’ll be true this year. And unfortunately with this one, we think it’ll be true next year. And we think that your church should be worrying about it, thinking about it.

Rich Birch — Today we’re talking about this idea that marriages will continue to struggle this year. Nearly half of all American marriages are facing challenges. Churches must bolster, do what they can to bolster their support for church or for for um marriages. And today we’ve got experts to really help us with this conversation.

Rich Birch — We’ve got Nicky and Sila Lee. They developed the marriage course and the pre-marriage course to offer practical support to couples in person and online. They’ve run the pre-marriage course, if I’m doing my math right, at Holy Trinity Brompton in London since 1985 and the marriage course since 1996. And many couples have found their marriages enriched through these courses. At last count that I see, 1.5 million couples have taken these courses. So we are in for a treat today. Nikki and Sila, welcome. So glad you’re here.

Nicky and Sila Lee — Thanks, Rich. So good to be with you.

Rich Birch — Oh, this is going to be great. what Why don’t we start, Sila, fill up the picture there from a, like a bio point of view. What did I miss? What’s the part of the story that I, that we got to make sure we tell.

Nicky and Sila Lee — OK, the main thing is that Nicky and I have been married for 48 years.

Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s amazing.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And um and actually, when we had um when we were developing these courses back in 1985, you were absolutely right about we started with pre-marriage. We’d been married for nine years then and had four young children. And um that was actually quite key because we had personally learnt a lot in the early years of our marriage.

Nicky and Sila Lee — We had met, fallen in love as teenagers and were not Christians. And then we had come to faith at a university mission and together, the same night, same night, same moment.

Rich Birch — Oh nice.

Nicky and Sila Lee — We won’t know till heaven who got there slightly before the other [inaudible] same moment. Anyway, that had profound impact on our relationship.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — We’d been doing it our own way up until that point. After that, really God came and showed us a whole different way of doing relationships. We then got married two and a half years later. And we had a lot of things to learn and we learned God’s ways of loving are good.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And we we hadn’t done any pre-marriage. There wasn’t, I don’t think there was a pre-marriage course running…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …when we got married back in 1976.

Rich Birch — Very cool.

Nicky and Sila Lee — But we got some advice from some older Christian married couples and oh my goodness that advice made a difference.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And I think from that moment onwards we both felt, do you know, we really want any couple preparing to get married to have these very practical tools and skills and the biblical principles. So really, you you say about why we started then with the pre-marriage in 1984.

Nicky and Sila Lee — We joined the staff I was ordained and we joined the staff at a church in central London called Holy Trinity Brompton, we’ll just call it HTB for short. And one of the things we were asked to do was to prepare the couples for marriage those who were getting married at our church. And we had five couples in our sitting room.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And we we the idea was we’d run this about three times each year, but these couples started talking to their friends who weren’t getting married at our church. And many of them weren’t churchgoers at all and saying, could they come? We said, sure, as long as they understand based on Christian principles.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And we got more and more couples coming. We had to move out of our home. We couldn’t fit them in. But people kept telling their friends about this course. And they just grew and grew. And over, I think, about 30 years, it grew from those five couples initially to 160 couples or so…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …every time we ran the course.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And of those couples, up to half of them were not churchgoers. Wouldn’t describe themselves necessarily as Christians.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Well, that, you know, and and this obviously is a part of kind of the I don’t know what you call it, the Alpha cinematic universe. It’s like a part of the, you know, the Alpha ministry. I know our church, we’re an Alpha church and we use this in the kind of. We try to use it to reach out to people who have who do not follow Jesus. And your resources, one of the things I love about your resources is they are somehow you’ve been able to strike this balance of they’re very gracious to people. If you don’t don’t follow Jesus, you’re you’re able to follow along. But then at the same time, they point back ah you know to principles, obviously, that are timeless, which I just think is amazing. That’s incredible. Well over 1.5 million couples. Oh, sorry, Sila, go ahead there.

Nicky and Sila Lee — No, I just wanted to say we why we then followed up with developing the marriage course, which is really key. And that was because of two reasons, really. When we got more and more of these engaged couples, you know, couples exploring marriage, in-love, engaged, they are infatuated, they’ve got those rose-tinted spectacles on. And we could see when we talked about resolving conflict and stuff, it would kind of like their eyes would glaze over and you could tell they were thinking, we’re not going to have any conflict.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nicky and Sila Lee — We are in love. And then we kind of kept thinking, oh, gosh, if only we could get these couples back…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …about two years in, when the rose tinted specs have come off, and they really start to hear some of this native experience, some of their differences and some conflict, etc. And that was really why we developed the marriage course with – the pre marriage is five sessions, the marriage course is seven. And and really we wanted to get them in those early years because all the all the evidence shows the early years are key.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — The other real real reason was because we were starting to get inundated with couples coming to us and saying we’re really struggling. And they’ve been married 10, 20, 25 more years. And we kept saying to ourselves oh gosh if only these couples had come in the early years…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …they wouldn’t be in such a mess now.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. I know as a pastor, one of the questions I’ll ask in those kind of pre-marriage situations, you know, not on the first time I’ve engaged with a couple that’s getting married, but further on, I’ll say, listen, you know, the stats are not good ah around marriage and like, so what do you think? Why do you think you’re the one that’s going to, you know, buck the trend? And, and my, what my one piece of advice kind of when it all boils down is I’m like, I would love to book something a year from now, two years from now. Like, let’s, let’s not, not wait, you know, look up over the horizon. Sure. Happy to do pre-marriage, but let’s look at something a couple of years down the road.

Rich Birch — So over 1.5 million couples have participated. This was just crazy. That’s a huge number – millions of people. What what makes these resources resonate across so many cultures, languages? This is obviously a huge issue. Nicky, why is that? Why why do you think that is?

Nicky and Sila Lee — And let me say, Rich, we had no concept that these courses were going to go anywhere outside our own local church. We thought we were just developing them for our situation…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …the need that we saw, a couple. So the fact that they’ve now gone around the world, they’re in over 120 countries, this is this is extraordinary. And we can only put it down to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Nicky and Sila Lee — But what we have seen is that some some very practical tools, which actually are biblical principles for relationships, for for making a marriage work, these apply universally. They apply in every country. And and we’ve seen that from all the different countries we visited [inaudible].

Nicky and Sila Lee — And I think the other thing we have seen that the most important part of these courses is not what Nicky and I say, but actually during every session there is a significant amount of time where couples have an opportunity to talk together in a conversation, just as a couple, and and completely just between them, and on a very structured sort of topic and so on. And that makes the marriage course and the pre-marriage course totally unique for every couple…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …it depending you know where they are, what their situation and so on and that kind of even in different cultures it enables them to talk in their own context uniquely for them in their marriage and we know those conversations, during every session, are probably the most important transformative parts of the marriage course.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And we’re going to get into some of the mechanics here in a minute, because I do think a part of the way you’ve structured this, I think is just I think it’s unique. And I think it is a part of why God God uses it. But, you know, many churches, they face this challenge of overwhelming couples, they have or either just or straight face the challenge of an overwhelming number of couples struggling in their their are marriages. How did you identify this gap? What did this you know this is obviously a an issue that is faced in lots of churches, lots of ministries, and what were some kind of early hurdles as you were piecing these these materials together that you were able to kind of overcome to launch them ultimately? What what what kind of what were the things that you had to do to get this thing rolling?

Nicky and Sila Lee — When you say about you know pastors being overwhelmed by the need of couples wanting help, we we were hearing that again and again. And I think, and this is true in the UK, in our own country, the churches tended to be reactive, reacting to crises in marriage and family life.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Nicky and Sila Lee — But to to make a difference, we’ve got to become proactive.

Nicky Lee — I remember one church leader saying to us, this is many years ago, he said, before we started using the marriage course, I felt I was only firefighting.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Nicky Lee — But once I started running the marriage course, then they were starting to invest in marriage, invest in the health of marriages.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Nicky Lee — And the courses are based on the principle that prevention is better than cure. Now, that’s not to say we don’t have lots of couples who are struggling, who need help, who come to look help. But ideally we want to help them put these things into place before they hit problems.

Sila Lee — And I think the other thing we realize in our own church, 100%, that churches have very busy calendars. There is a lot going on in churches.

Rich Birch — That’s true. Yep.

Sila Lee — And so easily, this sort of ah proactive marriage support can become a day a year for the couples who are married in the church. And we realize that is not enough. That’s not going to help.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Sila Lee — This create a very positive marriage culture where everybody is sees that this is something we all need to do to invest in our marriages. And you know, nothing is more important than marriage. I remember a sociologist back in the 19th century saying, we neglect marriage at our peril.

Nicky Lee — I think you meant 20.

Sila Lee — Oh, 20 – sorry.

Nicky Lee — You weren’t around in the 19th century.

Sila Lee — I did mean that. And that really resonated with us. We do neglect marriage at our peril. And the church, we need to have it in the forefront.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Sila Lee — This needs to be something that is absolutely front and center. And actually, that’s why we realized the need out there. There is a felt need, not only in the church, but in the community. And therefore, we saw more and more people coming, and we needed to run this on a regular basis so that it’s becoming a norm. This is what we do as a church.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. It’s I love that idea of it’s consistent. It’s ongoing. It’s not just a one-off, you know, it’s not a special day. It’s not a seminar. It’s not one weekend message. How do we stay on top of this?

Rich Birch — Okay. Let’s get real for a second here, Nicky. There is stigma that surrounds marriage enrichment programs. I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I can say as a guy, like I hear like, Oh, we’ve got a marriage thing coming up. And like, there’s something inside of me that just is like, Oh! It’s like, I know, I know that’s like, ah, that’s something I want to be a part of, but I’m, I’m resistant to it. How have you overcome this perception in, you know, in your church through the program, you know, how, how did, how have you overcome that?

Nicky Lee — Well, one way is by just constantly promoting the course. And the absolute ideal to promote the course is when the church leader, the senior pastor, other pastors in the church, say, we did the course and we enjoyed it, it helped us, we benefited from it. And in promoting the course, we we want to make this very clear. This is, as Sila said earlier, this is normal. This is for every couple…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …whether you’ve got a great marriage or you’re struggling, whether you’ve been married a short time or a long time. And and because of the privacy of the conversations, nobody nobody else knows why a particular couple are there. And it’s sometimes only when a couple at the end of the course write to us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — And say, we were having huge issues, sometimes saying we were practically coming apart. And we had no idea.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky and Sila Lee — They just come together with all the other couples. Sometimes separated couples have come they meet at the church door they come in as a way of seeking to get back together and no one else knows they are there. So gradually and it took time no we didn’t do this overnight. It took time to break that stigma…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Nicky and Sila Lee — …to say this is a normal thing to do, as normal as…

Sila Lee — …wearing a seatbelt.

Nicky Lee — …well I was going to say going to the gym.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Yes.

Sila Lee — Yeah we go to the gym to keep in good shape and that is completely accepted in our society both in the US and the UK.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

Sila Lee — And it’s the same with marriage. We want to say marriage investment and particularly in the church is the norm if we want to keep our marriages in good shape – everybody does it.

Rich Birch — Okay, there’s a couple things about the kind of mechanics of the way that you’ve set up um these courses that I think are that are unique and I think you’re part of what God uses. One is you really emphasize the importance of creating like a date night feel in this. This isn’t like a um and this, you know, to me flows out of HTB, but at least as an outsider looking in. You have a hospitality culture, like it’s like, hey, this is a church that wants to serve and this is, is of natural outcome. It has this kind of date night feel. Sila, can you kind of elaborate on that? How important is that in this kind of role of setting an environment where they can kind of invest in that relationship?

Sila Lee — Well, you already nailed it, Rich, by saying as a man, when you have anything that says like a marriage evening or whatever, you’re like, ah, really?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Sila Lee — Do I want to go to that?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Sila Lee — And ah we realize that most people are nervous about coming on something like a marriage course.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Sila Lee — And so this creating of a special atmosphere, like a date, we try and make it as like going out to a restaurant as possible. So we have you know lots and lots of tables for two, low lighting and background music and and it all looks nice. We have you know nice fairy lights and we serve couples, take them to their table, serve them something to eat. And you know when couples come in, they’re nervous, but they look at the atmosphere, they see how nice it is and they go, whoa, this is nice.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Sila Lee — They’ve done this for us.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Sila Lee — And then they see there are quite a few other couples and and and that immediately relaxes them. And the other thing is that that actually is a very powerful way to communicate to couples. We care about you. We care about your marriage…

Rich Birch — Right.

Sila Lee — …enough to take this effort to create a lovely environment. And, you know, that is a sort of message we can say louder, than with any words, through the environment.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Sila Lee — And one of the other things in that we always serve, I mean, different churches do different things. We serve a meal, a simple meal, and some serve snacks, some do dessert, some do, you know, but we’re always serving them when they come in.

And all of our team serve. And that serving again sends a powerful message that in a marriage that’s at the heart of a marriage, we should be serving one another.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.

Sila Lee — And so you know the whole setup and environment is sending a powerful message.

Nicky Lee — And I think that’s why these these courses have grown because people have talked to their friends or their colleagues or their family members, whoever it is, about them and saying we had a great experience wasn’t just what we learned we enjoyed as well.

Sila Lee — And I remember one couple who were actually struggling in their marriage and the wife signed them up, didn’t tell the husband, and – I know.

Rich Birch — Gosh.

Sila Lee — And and they arrived and he really didn’t know what he was coming to and he walked in, and it happened to be it wasn’t in our church it was another church, and it happened to be amazingly well set up and he went whoa oh this isn’t a free date night. Amazing.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s great.

Sila Lee — He had no idea that it was seven nights. And and when he discovered he said, well great – it’s seven free date nights.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.

Sila Lee — So you know it really does have an impact.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I know on those those right at the beginning, I get like emotional, particularly, you know, trying to read guys’ eyes and stuff, particularly, you know, where I’m thinking, man, I know that there are, and again, maybe it’s just a stereotype, but I know there are husbands that have been brought to this, then they’re like, okay, fine. I’ll give it one shot. Like, Hey, we’ll show up. And I love that impression of, Hey, this is going to be a date night. It’s fun.

Rich Birch — How do you translate that online? What have you found to kind of the churches that have been doing this? How do how do you continue to make this kind of a positive thing in the online environment as well?

Nicky Lee — Well, we never intended for the courses to be run online.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — We only ran physical courses until the COVID pandemic hit.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nicky Lee — And then that was the only way we could run them.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — And of course, it was also at a time when many couples particularly needed something like the marriage course, and they had the time and the space to do it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — So we put them online and suddenly, you know, hundreds of thousands of couples were doing it. But what we always said to them, ah make this a special environment for yourselves. Be alone together in a room, like candles. You might you know create have some background music yourself. Make it like a date night at home. If you’ve got young children, do it after they’re in bed, and so on.

Sila Lee — And put away phones.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Sila Lee — Phones are the biggest issue if people are, you know…

Rich Birch — Right.

Sila Lee — …are doing it online and we say definitely put those aside don’t answer them, set aside this time to focus just on you.

Nicky Lee — And then we heard again and again from couples who’ve done the course online things like I don’t know if we’d still be together if we hadn’t done it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow. Yep.

Nicky Lee — And we thought gosh this really works it works in person – that’s still the best. That’s still the gold standard.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Nicky Lee — But it also works when couples do it in their own homes online.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I know for our church, when we do it online to kind of carry that through, just as an idea for folks that are listening in, we actually make our team makes up like these gift bags for every family and actually delivers them to their home.

Sila Lee — Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — And it includes like, some sparkling grape juice and like, you know at some candles and a few you know ah little things to try to hint towards this date night feel. Like hey we want you to set this aside we don’t want this to just be like you’re not having dinner and this is just like playing on the end of the table kind of thing. We want you to set it aside that’s…

Sila Lee — Oh, your church is a model church. That’s brilliant.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. So one of the things, uh, you know, your courses of do, which may be a surprise for people are listening in is they actually avoid group discussion, which is I, when I first heard this, that surprised me. I was like, well, wait a second. Aren’t we all going to sit around and like talk about how great our marriages are, but we all know things aren’t actually that great. So what led to that decision, Nicky, and how has it impacted engagement particularly?

Nicky Lee — We did this right from the start. And I think it was principally because we knew couples have to learn to talk together as a couple.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — And we we recognize that some people are very good at sharing in a group discussion, but not so good at listening to their to their husband or wife.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Nicky Lee — So we wanted to ah to help them to both learn about good communication, resolving conflict, but also to create habits that they would then continue um on their own at at home. And we also know most couples, probably, I don’t know, 90% of the couples who come on these courses wouldn’t come if there was any group discussion.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — And in a sense, they’re right not to, because they they don’t want to be required to air dirty laundry to other people. And they certainly don’t want their spouse to have the opportunity to wear dirty laundry to other people.

Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.

Nicky Lee — We keep talking about the privacy. This helps people to come and it helps people to get the most out of the course.

Sila Lee — And the other thing, it gives us as the the leaders in a church, the confidence that we can say to any couple, you know, again and again and again, um there is no group discussion. This is totally about you and and in a nice environment. And you know we have people who come where one or other or both of them have had affairs. And we have absolute confidence to say to them if you want to try to work your marriage ah out, then you can come, nobody will know. You will just come in with everybody else and and but you will have those discussions privately.

Sila Lee — And honestly, we have over all of these years had great confidence that even where there are quite extreme situations, if a couple come and are willing to commit to those seven evenings, that is a big step.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Sila Lee — And actually, yes, sometimes they we need to suggest they go on and get more counseling, and that’s great.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Sila Lee — But for many, many couples, these conversations in this setting actually is is the catalyst for them to start to connect properly again.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I think you’ve done a masterful job creating um resources that do push to some significant issues like in there. And um’ it’s always and intriguing to when you hear feedback from people who have been through it to kind of talk about like, oh, there was a week. This week really was profound for us. This, and this conversation, not so profound. It was interesting, but you know, not so profound. And you’ve modeled that with your courses to be able to like, Hey, let’s have this conversation, give you some time. But the fact that it’s time bound is nice too. It’s like, okay, we’re going to take 10 minutes, 20 minutes, long discussion, short discussion. I think it’s just, I think it’s masterful. It’s great stuff.

Nicky Lee — Rich, can I just jump in and say, I think as well because the conversations are a limited time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, of course.

Sila Lee — Yes, like you just mentioned.

Nicky Lee — People have more more courage to address sensitive issues that otherwise they might avoid if it was just open-ended.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nicky Lee — Or might not know how to start those conversations. They know they need to talk about it, but they don’t have a ah forum. They don’t have a setting for it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Cause it’s like, you know, do I want to open up this can of worms? It’s going to take us five hours to unpack. Uh, but you know, the reality of it is you might have to open up one of those things. Let’s talk about it for 20 minutes. But if we can get that going now, man, imagine the impact.

Rich Birch — So when you look kind of up over the horizon, Sila, how do you envision these courses continuing to serve the global church? Maybe especially in regions where marriage dynamics are a little bit different than you know that than the Western norms. Obviously, things are different than in Kensington, you know. There there you know the world not the whole world is Kensington, you know

Sila Lee — Well, no, but you don’t know what Kensington is like. I mean, we felt, oh, Kensington was quite challenging because we, British, are pretty reserved.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Nicky Lee — We’re way behind you, North Americans.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Nicky Lee — Way behind you. We don’t talk nearly as easily as you do.

Rich Birch — Yes, love it.

Sila Lee — Yeah, I mean, you talk about emotions and feelings and everything that we British tend to be a bit more reserved about that. um So actually, that is why the privacy is so key. But you know, there are some other countries around the world where they’re even behind us, which is rather amazing. And actually, but what we have seen is that this format um is a very um sort of safe, structured environment in which people, there’s a sort of expectation, this is what you do. And yes, sometimes we’ve been to some countries where for the first ah session or on ah on a session we’re doing, um you will see couples just sitting, not even communicating.

Nicky Lee — In some cultures where husbands and wives really don’t talk to each other.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Sila Lee — But that’s the norm.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Sila Lee — But this the the the the structure that that the marriage course is in itself creates a bringing together.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Sila Lee — And and that in itself you know, bringing together of a husband and wife, especially perhaps in some cultures where, where sort of men are sort of seen as the leaders and women are sort of inferior. This brings them together equally into the same place to facilitate conversations.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Sila Lee — And we’ve heard remarkable stories, um even, you know, even in arranged marriages where there’s been some quite big issues.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Sila Lee — But bringing them together into this place where they both can contribute. One has to listen, one has to speak, et cetera. And it it sometimes takes quite a bit of, you know, encouraging um them to do that. But…

Nicky Lee — And it’s and it’s all about building emotional connection between couples.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Sila Lee — And ultimately, a strong marriage is built on that emotional connection, that understanding and going on understanding.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Sila Lee — As we change, as we realize our partner changes, are we still understanding where they’re at, what their needs are and so on?

Rich Birch — This is like total inside baseball thing I’m going to say here. But I remember the first time I watched the, uh, the, the marriage course materials and there is one of the couples that you interview or is interviewed that is in a, in an arranged marriage. And they mentioned that just in passing. And I was like, what? Like back up. I want to hear more about that. Like they, it’s a great little throwaway kind of like, uh, thing, which is, is amazing.

Rich Birch — So, it’s a fun fun deal.

Nicky Lee — Yeah we we call them our sofa couples.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nicky Lee — Because we interview loads of couples and we intersperse them through the but marriage course films. They’re easily the best part of the film. We love them too.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so cool, it’s so cool. Well, friends, I I’m not you know impartial on this thing. I really do think that you should be thinking about um implementing the marriage course, the pre-marriage course in your church. Like i’m not on the you know I’m not impartial on this. I really do think you should do this. First for listeners that are are leaning in this, let’s say I’m a church leader. You know I’m I’ve I’ve been kind of intrigued today. How what would be my first steps I should take, Nicky, to kind of explore this, to understand how you know, how could, where would we start if we were interested in in getting you know this ball rolling or exploring this for our church?

Nicky Lee — I would say to any leader if you’re married, do the marriage course yourselves first. And you may be able to there may be a local church you can join. I think you know any couple will benefit from it. There’ll be things that you talk about perhaps you haven’t talked about for years or perhaps never talked about. You will yeah there are there are always areas in our marriage to grow. And I say that when when a leader couple do the marriage course, pastor couples do it. They understand it at first hand, and then they’re able to talk to others.

Nicky Lee — Some couples have done what we call a little pilot course, they get two or three other couples together, they might do it in a home or they might rotate around their homes.

Sila Lee — And ah but do the do the recipe. So everything, you you know, you might have a meal together, and then you watch the film, but you do the private conversations and all of that.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.

Nicky Lee — And add in in that way, couples, then they’re in the position to start promoting the cause to others if they feel they want to do that, and that would be helpful to them.

Nicky Lee — And we’ve done a there’s a resource which is…

Rich Birch — Yeah. The video you’ve provided. Yeah, that’s wonderful.

Nicky Lee — And that actually is the first of our online leaders training videos.

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Nicky Lee — And and this is people who are thinking about running the course. But it’ll give people a very good idea of the sort of nature of the course, what it looks like and opportunity to hear from church leaders, including the person who was our senior pastor, Nicky Gumbel, talking about the benefits to him and Pips of doing the course and why they encourage every couple in the church to do the pre-marriage course or the marriage course as a group.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, friends, I is there a place online we want to send send people like a website? Where would be the best place for us to so to to link to? We’ll link to that video. We’ll put that video in the notes so they can see that here.

Rich Birch — But where else do we want to send them online?

Sila Lee — Yeah, the the um Alpha USA um ah website…

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Sila Lee — …and then you just put in the marriage course.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Nicky Lee — And there’s also one that is just themarriagecourse.org.

Sila Lee — Which is the global site.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Nicky Lee — That’s the global one.

Rich Birch — Right.

Sila Lee — And then the the specific to North America would be the Alpha USA and then marriage course.

Rich Birch — Perfect. Yeah, that’s just great. Well, I want to just thank you for for what you’ve done with these resources. And, um you know, friends, like I said, I cannot highly, I can’t recommend these anymore. These are is incredible resources. You really should ah lean in and get a chance to to know that. I also just want to honor you guys for your ah work in this area. The fact that you’ve spent so much time, effort, and energy on this, the fact you come on this podcast is is humbling to me.

Rich Birch — You know, there is something about, particularly leaders who are listening in, we need to learn from churches like HTB who are serving in pre-Christian, post-Christian environments around how to engage on these issues. And um you know HTB has obviously been a leader in this and in many ways. This is one of the ways. And so and and every time I interact with somebody from HTB, I’m always struck by your humility. And so You know, I know if I had a resource that one and a half million couples had done, I would be making a much bigger deal of it than you guys are.

Rich Birch — It just seems like, well, we just did this thing in our church and lots of people use it. But I think that’s a part of what God uses. And and I I think that about about Nicky and Pippa as well. Like I’m like, the humility is is is disarming in a beautiful way. So I just want to honor you for that.

Nicky and Sila Lee — Thank you very much.

Rich Birch — So again, give us that website address. Give us that website address again, and then we’ll wrap up today’s episode.

Nicky and Sila Lee — Themarriagecourse (all one word) dot org

Rich Birch — Perfect. That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate you helping us with these Unprediction episodes.

Nicky and Sila Lee — Oh, thank you. Goodbye.

Rich Birch — Thanks. Thanks so much.