Leading a group is easier than you may think. The Leaders Guide will help you prepare for and facilitate meetings. The Guide is packed with tips and supplementary information. You can click here to see sample pages of the Leaders Guide or click here to buy it online.

Feedback has told us that you’ll have fun, laugh a lot and learn a lot. It has been interesting to note that it is particularly the leaders who have benefited as they steer their groups through the sessions. We recommend that you work together with your partner as a ‘leader couple’ to:

• Invite other couples to join your group.
• Organise a time and place to meet.
• Start meetings (or end them) with an informal time, possibly sharing a meal together. If you don’t wish to provide this yourselves then others may want to help, either from within the group or from your church.
• Facilitate the meetings, which simply means asking the questions and encouraging participation. You will not need to teach because Together is designed so that couples teach themselves.
• Manage the time so you start promptly and finish on time.
  

You may decide to lead all the sessions yourself or to give other couples in your group a chance to lead. This can be very positive, giving people a sense of shared responsibility. If other couples aren’t ready to share the leadership from the start then consider encouraging them to lead a session later on, once the group has settled down. The Leader’s Guide is designed so it can be used as a personal workbook i.e. to fill in Couple Time preparation boxes and complete Couple Time action points. However, if you intend to rotate the leadership of the group then you may prefer to have your own copy of a Together workbook for your personal stuff and pass around the Leader’s Guide(s).

You will need to invite three or four couples to make up a group. Tell them a bit about Together and explain that the first meeting is an Introductory Session to give people some ideas of what Together is all about without any obligation to do the whole study. The Introductory Session is a ‘taster’ - it is less structured and there is no Bible discussion or Introductory Reading assignment. But it will help couples ‘dip their toe in the water’ as well as understand the format of future meetings. You can hand out invitations (which are available to download for free from the resources section) and point people to this website.

Couples need to feel comfortable about the whole idea of discussing marriage and meeting other couples from the potential group can help them decide if spending nine more evenings with the same people seems an appealing idea.

Some couples may be willing to commit to participating in a Together group before the Introductory Session and if this is the case you can order books for them. Other couples may not want to commit to buying the Together participants’ notebooks or participating for the duration of the study until they have attended the Introductory Session. In this case you can download the session material for participants from this website and hand out copies at your introductory meeting.

If couples are ready to commit at the end of the evening that’s great. You will be able to hand out participants workbooks if you have them, or take orders. We recommend that you also put a dates in the diary for future meetings. Click here for a meeting schedule to help you.

If people are NOT ready to commit, we suggest you put a preliminary date in the diary for the first session to show that you are committed. Ask the couples to discuss what they want to do privately and tell them that you will ring them in a few days to find out what they have decided. Follow up with a phone call within a week. You can arrange to hand out books individually before or at the first meeting (you can download the Introductory Reading for Session 1 from the website if you need it).

If the same couple are leaders throughout the course:-
Each participant will need a copy of the workbook and ideally each of the leaders would have a copy of the Leaders Guide. Having two copies of the Leaders Guide will help during parts of the course where the group splits into male and female small groups.

If the leadership of the course is split between all the participants:-
Each participant would need their own copy of the workbook and then one, or ideally two, Leaders Guides, should be used to pass from one couple to the next as they lead it.

Click here to see Frequently Asked Questions about the course >

Talk to couples face to face - people like to be invited personally.

You can give them an invitation for information so they can think and pray about it. Remember to write your contact details in the invite and DO follow up couples by phoning them to find out their decision. Invitations which you can print off and complete can be downloaded from this website (Either as an A5 or DL leaflet)

Suggest couples look at the website - pointing out the video clip

Invite couples to the Introductory Session (which includes a nice supper) after which they can decide if they want to continue. It is worthwhile mentioning that Together is designed to help couples who want to invest in their relationships and make a good marriage better.

It’s often better to talk to the women first because they are usually quite keen. Men can be very hesitant. It’s important to put to rest any fears they might have.

If appropriate make it clear what the group is not. A group isn’t:
- couples’ counselling
- group counselling
- teaching from the ‘front’
- telling people how to live their lives
- only food, fun and casual chat

Reassure them that they will NOT be required to talk about their own relationship in the group. The group will involve learning together … and it will be fun!

Ask the husbands if they would consider coming as a ‘gift’ to their wives.

Here are some common objections and suggested responses:

‘there’s nothing wrong with my marriage, so why should I do this?’ - Here’s how one couple replied to this question: ’A lot of friends asked - "what you doing a marriage course for, you got problems then?" to which our reply was "not yet, and hopefully with the groups help it will stay that way!" For us the course has given us time to talk about subjects we had skirted round over 16 years of marriage and ensure they didn't become an issue in the future.

‘Don’t try to fix what’s not broken!' - That is one way of looking at things. Another view might be that ‘our marriage is so important that we want to invest in and strengthen it.’

‘I’m too busy!’ - This can be a real issue or an excuse and you’ll need to handle this sensitively. It may be that investing quality time in the marriage is exactly what this couple needs!