Imagine a large parish hall looking as pleasant as possible, with twenty small tables beautifully laid for two : attractive tablecloths, candles, the lot. The welcoming atmosphere is enhanced by soft lighting and background music. A glass of wine welcomes the guests as soon as they arrive and a good meal soon follows.

This may sound like the setting for a social event, celebration or party, but it’s not the case : the twenty couples attending the evening are going to work very hard to nurture and enhance their relationship with the help of the Marriage Course, published by Alpha International, Holy Trinity Brompton (H.T.B.) . Seeing the commitment and enjoyment of the attending couples, they are well on their way ...

The course was first started by Nicky and Sila Lee in 1996. They are on the staff of H.T.B., the church that started the Alpha course. The course consists of a series of video programmes. The presentation is very professional, the content very sound and very similar to a Marriage Care pre-marriage course. The main difference is that there is no group work, only couple work, a great variety of it.

The course is divided into eight sections, each focuses on a topic :

• Building Strong Foundations
• The Art of Communication
• Resolving Conflict
• The Power of Forgiveness
• Parents and in-Laws
• Good Sex
• Love in Action
• The eighth evening is a party, with invited guests, general socialising, testimonies and bringing the whole thing to a close.

So, how did all this happen in our Wimbledon Sacred Heart Parish ? It had struck me for a long time that sustaining married life was conspicuously absent from the impressive list of good things our parish does. So I went to see our parish priest who was very supportive and asked me to make practical suggestions. Mary and Peter Hayes became involved in the discussions, we had a brainstorming session with the whole parish team and the Hayes came up with the brilliant idea of offering the HTB course on which they had had a day’s training.

It seemed a huge endeavour but we felt up to it. We recruited volunteers

1. through Marriage Care and Teams of Our Llady, six couples to pilot the course and judge whether we needed to make any adjustments (we did not). Those six couples became the “helpers” on the course, welcoming, serving, taking care of the participants.
2. a co-ordinator to take care of all practical matters such as publicity, registrations, in fact all the paper work and administrative side of it.
3. Last but not least a catering team went into action, providing the meal, the wine, the coffee and tea which we, the helpers, served at table.

The course was undoubtedly a success. We knew it as it was going on, observing the body language of the participants, witnessing their enthusiasm, commitment and hard work. Now we have the evaluation sheets to prove it. The material was well received and appreciated, there are also many positive comments on the volunteers’ involvement which made me think again of Terry’s introductory talk in Coventry. The “blood donors” in this instance received many chocolate biscuits of the type: “ I really appreciated the amount of time and effort that the volunteers have given us, along with their support and solidarity”.

Finally, I should mention that all the material attached to the course is very detailed and professionally laid out, and all we had to do really was let ourselves be guided by the instructions.

So, a very worthwhile effort and achievement, which may well be repeated next year.

Mariette Ball
Chair of Marriage Care,Wimbledon Centre
April 2008

P.S. the course was indeed repeated in 2009, with equal success.