This workshop will get marriage mentors started by covering the four topics of Marriage Mentor Training 101 at pursueGOD.org.
Before the Event:
One month before the event, start promoting it at church and on social media with the promo video. Form a leadership team to help with the training, including one mentor “coaching” couple for every 2-3 training couples. For every couple who signs up, send a series of emails to start prepping them for this event, one immediately after sign up and a second just a day or two before the event (see samples below).
During the Event:
Here’s a basic agenda you can use for this event. Feel free to customize as needed:
- Check in: Have name tags prepared ahead of time and be sure to write group numbers on each tag if necessary.
- Welcome and opener: Welcome the attenders and give them a heads up on the workshop agenda. If possible, invite a couple of mentors to share about how mentoring has changed their lives, or consider showing a testimony video. Get people excited about the idea of mentoring, and pray to open the sessions.
- Training Topics: Show the first topic video to the entire group, and then break into small groups to talk about it. Encourage everyone to pull up the topics on their phones, since that’s how they’ll likely do it when they start mentoring. Spend about 15 minutes talking about each topic in groups, and then come together for Q&A with the whole group. Repeat this process until you’ve covered the four topics in the Marriage Mentor Training series.
- Closing: Wrap up the workshop with instructions on next steps. Remind attenders that they’ve received a lot of information so far, and it can be overwhelming at first. Not to worry! Follow up after the event will help them finish their training. They’ll meet with their coach (as a group or one-on-one) for follow up training. For coaches, the best place for further training is to choose some topics from the Marriage 101 series. For every couple who completes the training, be ready to add them to your official “mentor list” and connect them to another couple that needs a mentor.
After the Event:
Follow up is important for this workshop. Be sure to reach out to every attender with at least one more email that encourages them to continue to meet with their coach. If you have another training event on the schedule, this is a good time to plug it.
Coaches: it’s your job to schedule follow up conversations with trainees in your group. It’s up to you whether to do it one-on-one or as a group, but the key is to cover the topics (we suggest starting with the Marriage 101 series) and model mentoring as you do it. Ask lots of questions, and help the discover the value of mentoring. Invite them to lead some of the topics so they can practice mentoring. When you’re done with the training topics, let them pick a few more topics for practice. And then become their advocate at church, helping them get connected to someone so they can start making disciples.