It was a startling statement that the news commentator made. He said, "Last year in New York City there were more marriages than divorces." It makes one think, what have we come to? Have we reached the state that is comparable to that in which the world was just prior to the Flood, when men were marrying and giving in marriage and knew not until the Flood came? Are the people of our generation, professing themselves to be wise, becoming as fools? Can, it be that we are like the people of Israel when Hosea stood before them and said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge"? A better translation for "destroyed" says, "My people are destroying themselves for lack of knowledge." "Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee."
What we see in the world, in broken homes and foster children, is all too often seen in God's church today. And yet it need not be, for God has blessed this people above every people of the earth, placing in their hands the gems of truth, not only in the Holy Scriptures but broadening and enlightening the understanding through the wonderful pages of the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy. How can we get our people to read and study them more?
A man who had suffered a broken home and divorced his wife for Biblical reasons but now was happily remarried, said as he held up a copy of The Adventist Home, "If I had read this book and followed its teachings I wouldn't have had any of the problems I had."
It is wonderful to know and realize that our great Commander, Jesus Christ, knows the end from the beginning; and as leaders of God's flock today, we should follow closely our Commander, who knows where He is going.
In one of our staff meetings here at Sligo church we gave consideration to the value of the study of God's Word and the Spirit of Prophecy and our great need of it. We were cognizant of the fact that many of the family problems, the breakdown between husband and wife, could be traced to the breakdown of communication, where one could no longer hear what the other one was saying, even though their tones were audible and they were within range of each other's voice. So we sought, perhaps not to save so many homes that were already broken and try to reunite them but to prevent others from following this sad example, to save them before it was too late. We decided to have group discussions, centering these around the textual material found in The Adventist Home. We had questions prepared on the whole book, somewhat after the pattern of The Great Controversy course. The idea of having questions at all was to help the people get interested in the book and to read it discerningly so that they might catch some of the gems that lie hidden there.
Later we changed most of these questions as we met in training sessions, for many of the leaders that were chosen felt that the answers were too obvious. So we gathered material for further questions from the leaders themselves, each one being assigned a special chapter each week. When we met we discussed the questionS that were brought in, sometimes using them, sometimes discarding them, and at other times rewriting them.
Our next problem was the selection of la) leaders to head up our discussion groups. We felt that rather than have all the people gather in the sanctuary for a lecture series it would be far more valuable to meet together and have prayer and a short devotional and then divide into small discussion groups, numbering from eight to fifteen, each of these groups to be led by a layman rather than a minister or one of our paid workers. If one of the latter led out, an authoritarian answer to the problems would be expected, while on the other hand, if the problems were discussed with one of their own members, a layman, and all shared their experiences, they would be more likely to come to the obvious answer and be more willing to accept it.
It was not an easy matter, even in our large church, to select nineteen laymen to lead these groups. We scrutinized our membership list very carefully and finally came up with a number of men and women whom we felt would qualify. These lay members felt very humble as they realized the responsibility being placed upon them. We suggested two books that would serve as a background of knowledge for them. The one was The Art of Group Conversation, by Rachel Davis Dubois and Mew-Soong Li, published by the Associate Press in New York. The other was The Miracle of Dialogue, by Rue! L. Howe. This was published by the Leebury Press, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1963.
Following some of the guiding suggestions in these books, we were to meet on Sunday mornings, discuss the material assigned for that week from The Adventist Home, and then we would go off into role playing. Sometimes it would be a problem of teen-age children asking for permission for dates and bringing into the role playing the children who asked and the parents or any other closely related person who was answering. For seven weeks we met before we opened the classes to the public. When I say the public I do not mean just members of our own church. We invited people of the community to come in and join with us in what we called "Conversations on Family Life."
During the past few years we have conducted an adult education program in our church and so we sought to make these classes a part of this program. We charged a small registration fee of $2.00 for an adult and $1.00 for a college or an academy student. In the little brochure that we passed out on Sabbath morning to our congregation we included a registration blank. We purposely made this the size of 4-by-6inch card so that without any recopying we could have a permanent file on those who participated. The registration cost helped to pay for mimeographed material we gave on the subject. We also provided a baby-sitter in the nursery to care for the children while the parents were in class.
In making up the classes, we sought to put some of the older people, some of the middle-aged, some of the young married, and some of the teen-agers in each group, thus giving them a good cross section of problems and solutions that had been found with experience.
We decided to run the course for fifteen weeks and to make our assignments cover sections of the books instead of chapters. We felt it was better not to be regulated by requirement to cover just certain chapters each week, for some might have more importance for one particular group than the ones taken in sequence. We felt that it would be well to spend a little time in reorganizing the balance of the material in the book The Adventist Home and assign not only sections but a cross reference to related chapters that appear later on.
The classes are finished and we do not yet know all the results, but it is our deep conviction that this is one of the most valuable services we have ever offered to our church as well as to the community. A number of people who were not members of the church attended the meetings and took an active part. Under the blessing of God it is our hope that many of the problems that evolve from marriage will be averted as a result of "Conversations on Family Life" held at the Sligo church.
