What's To Come

As you all go to work on the Challenge for February we thought you might also be interested to know that the March Challenge is almost done too. No, you won't see it until March, but we are working ahead on quite a few ideas.

We’re guessing that some you are curious about what shape the Marriage Initiative will take over the course of the year. There may end up being quite a few months that have somewhat the feel of the January and February Challenges--couple discussions and study projects. But there will be plenty that take a decidedly different approach as well. By the time Christmas rolls around again you will have seen a wide spectrum of ideas. 

I wanted to mention this because the point of what we are doing lies in the Marriage Initiative title, not the individual Challenges. Our real goal is to remind and inspire you to take the initiative to regularly invest in your marriage. If the ideas we throw your way on a given month are intriguing and helpful—wonderful. But if something comes along that doesn’t fit your situation it’s ok to skip it. There are a thousand other ways you can invest in each other as a couple and that’s the point. Just as long as you take the initiative.

~Pastor Bill

How Melanie Got involved

You might have noticed that in January, Gateway's Marriage Initiative was signed "from Gateway Church", but this month, it is signed "from Pastor Bill and Melanie". Why the change?

After Pastor Bob and Pastor Bill first talked about how they could encourage marriages at Gateway, Pastor Bill began working on ideas and a strategy that Gateway would begin to pursue in 2015. But then Pastor Bob's wife, Kristi (wisely) asked, "Is there a woman working on this?"

Pastor Bill and Melanie 30th Anniversary

Bill and I have always enjoyed working in ministry together. Throughout the first 10 of our almost 20 years at Gateway, we spent many hours meeting with engaged couples preparing them for marriage, teaching marriage classes and partnering together to help couples in crisis.

But in the last 10 years, due to my (Melanie) health situation, those have become more and more difficult. In the last several years, not only have I not been able to join Bill in these activities, I am rarely able to even come to church due to my illness.

This has been a very sad thing for both of us. I keep connected as best I can through Facebook and by listening to the sermons online each week. But working together in ministry is something we both miss very much.

As Pastor Bill was working on the January challenge, we spent an evening talking through his ideas. It's not an unusual thing for him to share with me what he's been doing and how things are going at Gateway, but this time, we began brainstorming together. By the end of the evening we had narrowed the focus and put together a great group of discussions for the first month of the Marriage Initiative.

Suddenly, we had a ministry we could work on together again! And Pastor Bill could reassure Pastor Bob who could reassure Kristi that a woman was working on it too!

Pastor Bill and I are passionate about not only helping people not have problems in marriage, but to have really great relationships. We know that's possible because we have an amazing friendship and marriage. But it hasn't just been "luck". It's taken a lot of hard work.

We're relying on 31 years of working on our own marriage as well as the experience we have in helping others to develop these monthly challenges. We have a clear purpose and plan for 2015 and we are both excited to have an opportunity to encourage all of you!

We are so glad you have decided to join in and we hope and pray that you and your spouse will experience great things in your relationship this year!

Joyfully and sincerely,
Melanie

The Beginning - January 2015

Late in 2014 Pastor Bob poked his head in my office. He looked concerned and even a bit discouraged. He opened with, “we’re going to have to talk some time soon.” Over the years we have worked together I have learned that this is Bob’s way of saying we have a problem—a problem to which there is no easy or obvious answer. He had just received news from someone struggling with their marriage and it was getting to be an all-too-often occurrence. “We have to do something to encourage Gateway’s married couples, he said.”

For both of us, the need to do so was obvious. The means of doing so was difficult to see. We have no one on staff who is responsible for such things. It’s hard to imagine taking someone away from what they are doing to take on something new. We have no budget and no measurable resources. This means that new programs, guest speakers, big events and all of the other obvious approaches to marriage enrichment were not an option.

I can’t speak for the reliability of the story, but I once read that the White House has a person who washes windows. And when he finishes navigating the outside of our president’s home he does a very surprising thing—he starts over. It reminds me that there is more than one way to approach a problem. One is to say, “hey, our windows are dirty, we need to figure out a way to get them all clean.” The other approach is to just go wash a window. To regularly wash a window. And to keep washing a window every day. So, when you can’t do something big, maybe you can do something little—over and over again. Once we realized this, it became obvious that such an approach is not only manageable, it’s also much more appropriate for relationships too. We live in relationships hour to hour, day to day, not in big week-long, seminar-like chunks. And so here we are with the 2015 Marriage Initiative.

You shouldn’t expect magic bullets and miracle cures. What we do hope is to provide you with a steady diet of diverse ideas—reminders that a good marriage is actually built out of small deposits and positive habits built over time. And when we have navigated around the core principles of healthy marriage relationship—we’re going to start over.
We hope you will join us. Take the initiative for the health of your marriage.

Pastor Bill
Associate Pastor
Gateway Church