Healthy churches are built upon healthy families, and healthy families are strengthened through healthy marriages. Because God established marriage as a foundational relationship in human life, the church has both the opportunity and the responsibility to encourage, strengthen, and support couples at every stage of their journey together.

Marriage Ministry By Design is the first ministry-specific Legacy Volume in Ministry By Design: The Series, offering pastors and ministry leaders a comprehensive framework for developing intentional, biblically grounded marriage ministries within the local church.

Grounded in Scripture and shaped by practical ministry experience, this volume explores God's design for marriage, the biblical purposes of marriage, the various stages of married life, and the unique opportunities churches have to minister to engaged couples, newly married couples, established families, and those experiencing significant challenges within their relationships. Throughout the book, marriage ministry is presented not simply as another church program, but as an essential ministry that contributes to the spiritual health of both families and the congregation as a whole.

Readers are guided through planning, developing, implementing, organizing, and sustaining an effective marriage ministry. Practical principles are combined with biblical teaching to help churches establish ministries that strengthen marriages, encourage healthy relationships, prepare couples for lifelong commitment, and support families through every season of life.

One distinguishing feature of this Legacy Volume is its extensive appendix of practical ministry resources. It includes sample ministry policies, wedding policies, ceremonies, vows, educational curricula, position descriptions, statements on marriage, divorce, and remarriage, covenant marriage resources, and numerous planning tools to help churches establish and maintain effective marriage ministries.

Rather than prescribing a single model for every congregation, Marriage Ministry By Design encourages churches to develop marriage ministries that reflect their own unique mission, community, and ministry philosophy while remaining firmly rooted in biblical truth.

Whether your church is establishing its first marriage ministry or strengthening an existing one, this Legacy Volume provides a thoughtful, biblically grounded foundation for helping couples build marriages that honor Christ and strengthen the life of the local church.

Because healthy marriages strengthen healthy families, and healthy families strengthen healthy churches, Marriage Ministry By Design demonstrates how intentional investment in marriage becomes an essential ministry of the Church—By Design.