CREATING YOUR NEW LIFE TOGETHER
Greg Schutte, our Senior Director of Marriage Works! Ohio, has shared “that unless we are willing to do what is challenging or uncomfortable in life, we will always limit what God can do through us. He can make us so much more than we could ever imagine through love, yet it is when we hide away in our comfort zones and don’t seek to stretch ourselves, that God is limited in working through us because of our resistance. Our marriage calls for us to seek to create a life together that takes the best of who we are and magnify it; that takes the worst of who we are and, with help from our spouse and God, reshape it into something that is life-giving and of value to our family, or maybe even to get that pattern out of our life altogether.” Supporting couples as they learn to grow and create their new life together is a big part of our mission at Marriage Works! Ohio. We seek to empower couples to see the necessity of fighting for their marriages daily and striving toward unity with each other in all circumstances. Just this year, we served over 185 clients through mentorship and therapy. We continue to receive a steady stream of referrals from former and current couples. We are also continuing to expand our class offerings, with 102 unique clients being served through our
Lasting Intimacy, Building Healthy Relationships, and Discovering our Deepest Desire classes. We also recognize that comfort zones can be an obstacle to not only individuals and families, but also to organizations, which is why we continue striving to stretch our own organization to reach even more couples in Dayton, but also across the nation, and around the globe. We want to disseminate our curriculums more broadly, but this massive undertaking is beyond the bounds of our current staff. To meet this need, we created and filled a new position: Program Development and Marketing Specialist. Blake Hansher is now respon- sible for all marketing activities for Marriage Works Ohio!, including all marriage enrichment programs and all youth programs, as well as developing any new products that may meet emerging needs in the community. For example, he just finished his certification as a Darkness to Light Authorized Facilitator, offering in-service and at-will trainings in preventing child sexual abuse. He is also identifying new leads among both national and international dioceses for our Build- ing a Eucharistic Marriage program, and in the future will reimagine our protestant curriculum, Rekindling the Heart.
Our director, Greg Schutte, MSW, LISW-S, continues to receive re- quests to be a keynote speaker at various national forums. Recently he was a speaker at the Catholic Engaged Encounter, where he dis- cussed the parallel dangers of a crisis of family and a crisis of faith. He emphasized Christ’s covenantal love of the Church and how that is the very source of the marriage covenant. In August, he will speak at Catholic Familyland, teaching about Building a Eucharistic Marriage, and how the theology of marriage must include a practical application component He also has upcoming speaking events scheduled in Detroit and San Diego. We are continuing to develop our relationships across the nation, and around the globe, with new dioce- san sponsors in California and South Dakota, and internationally, in Aus- tralia! We hope to continue to work with our domestic and international partners as close as Dayton and Cincinnati, or as far as Guam, Canada, and Trinidad & Tobago. We are excited to continue our work empowering couples to protect their families and marriages and look forward to what God is going to do through our programs.
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