Certification to be a Trainer.
We do not have a formal certification process. We do offer these ideas as guidelines for "How to prepare to be a Trainer for my parish/diocese?" Ultimately your pastor or diocese decides you are qualified to train sponsor couples for your parish or diocese. If you are married, you and your spouse should have the experience of functioning as a Sponsor Couple ™ before you claim to be a Trainer.
1) Study For Better and For Ever and fill out all the questions and dialogue with your spouse on all the questions.
2) Study documents: Key Concepts-English [Spanish] .
3) Contact Rob Ruhnke at 210-557-3660 to take part in a ZOOM Training.
Some additional thoughts;
Point 1 - The content of training should be the text of For Better & For Ever ™. Any different/additional material should be approved by Rob because a prime reason for the creation of the 1998 edition was do away with the need for additional materials.
Point 2 - Exceptions to Point 1 are the materials recommended in the Resources section of the For Better & For Ever ™ book and the web site.
Additional resources for Trainers:
1) Family of Origin.
Study of Keeping the Love you Find, A Personal Guide by Harville Hendrix. Especially complete the Self-Knowledge Inventory and consider sharing this in dialogue with your spouse and/or spiritual director. The purpose of this study is to able to give personal witness of the value of all sponsor couples doing this kind of study and sharing about Imago theory.
2) Communication/Intimacy.
Ideally you should have the experience of a Marriage Encounter weekend and the practice of daily dialogue so that you have personal experience with the communication skills taught in For Better and For Ever. Also Hendrix's DVD Through Conflict to Connection. See Dialogue / Communication for more information.
The Five Love Languages by Chapman.
3) Meaning of sexuality/marriage. These are excellent:
A Daring Promise, A Spirituality of Christian Marriage by Richard Gaillardetz.
Sacred Marriage: What if God designed marriage to make us Holy more than to make us Happy? By Gary Thomas.
4) Couple Prayer and Family Prayer.
When Couples Pray Together by Stoops, Reminders of God by Grizzle and The Blessing Cup by Travnikar. Are good resources for learning and establishing habits of prayer (and couple prayer) in your marriage. This is essential if you are going to teach prospective sponsor couples the importance of couple prayer for themselves and the importance of having a goal of teaching engaged couples how to pray. See Prayer in marriage for more information.
5) Information for couples who are of different faith traditions. Interfaith / Interchurch Marriage.
6) Natural Family Planning. See Natural Family Planning for more information.
7) Annulments.
It is good to understand the annulment process of your diocese because Sponsor Couples ™ are more often asked to sponsor folks who have obtained an annulment. There is a lot of information on this web site > Go to Search and type in "annulment." You can also contact your local Diocesan Tribunal for assistance or send email to Rob.