Engaged Encounter

I went to an Engaged Encounter meeting last night and it made me appreciate what a great community Pittsburgh has. Engaged Encounter is an international organization that helps couples preparing for marriage. Since a weekend has all the same basic components no matter where you attend, there has to be uniform guidelines. The problem I see is that the national arm seems to force unnecessary change, which creates an undue burden on those volunteering relative to any benefit the couples receive.

Each volunteer couple writes about seven 20 minutes talks, but once those talks are completed, they can be used on every weekend the volunteer couples attend. However, there's a sense of relief when all that writing is over that makes one not want to start over. Secondly, there's a sense that those 140 minutes that you spent sharing with couples had not been helping them if all of the talks need fixed. Without any guarantee that these whims won't change with each new administrative team, a lot of volunteers may be lost, which would be ashame.

Fortunately, Pittsburgh is rightfully confident in the value their weekends provide and have such strong support for each other, like a family, that we don't seem to be showing the signs of stress that other local communities are experiencing. We speculate some of the catch phrases like "God doesn't make junk" may be updated, but the content of the talks will remain basically the same. The spirit of marriage hasn't changed in the last seven years since we were married because we went through this program and feel it was/is successful for us and would be for any couple. We pray those at the national level would have recognized those benefits and not feel a need to change an already successful program without justifying the cause.