Date
4-2020
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Education in Community Care and Counseling (EdD)
Chair
Daniel Marston
Keywords
Marriage, Marriage Education, Marriage Enrichment, re|engage, Religious Participation, Marital Satisfaction
Disciplines
Counseling | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Holmes, Erica P., "Evaluating the Effects of the re|engage Marriage Enrichment Program on the Use of Christian Spiritual Disciplines" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 2391.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/2391
Abstract
The purpose of this program evaluation is to evaluate the church-developed marriage small group intervention, re|engage, for its effects on the use of spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith to improve marital satisfaction of program participants. Utilizing quantitative archival data from the sole empirical study, Engaging with re|engage : A Study of Watermark Community Church’s 16-Session Marriage Intervention Program – re|engage (Boyd & Charlemagne, 2016), pre-test / post-test responses were evaluated to assess the effects of the re|engage marriage program on the use of Christian spiritual disciplines, including faith in God, prayer, and forgiveness, to improve the marital satisfaction of program participants. It was hypothesized that a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest implementation of spiritual disciplines would be present. Results indicate that change attributable to the re|engage program, specifically regarding forgiveness, faith as expressed through dependence upon God, and prayer, finds that 52% of participants reported improvement in the area of forgiving a spouse, 39.3% of participants reported increased faith or dependence on God, and 40.3% of participants reported that praying with a spouse increased.
