The glossy, coffee-table book was grandly titled The Greatest Weddings of All Time. It featured media stars like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda.

Sadly, most relationships like those didn't last very long -- which is probably why the book celebrates great weddings instead of great marriages. Many of these couples apparently had no idea what qualities to look for in a spouse, or how to keep a marriage together.

This is tragic -- not only for the people involved, but also because many of our young people idolize those they watch on television or in films. And they're imitating what they see -- one reason the divorce rate even among Christians is so high.

What is the Church doing about this? Not nearly enough. Too many churches have allowed their role to deteriorate to being little more than what author Mike McManus labels "wedding factories."

In his book Marriage Savers, McManus explains how many churches help couples prepare for elaborate wedding ceremonies but not for lasting marriages. This is a scandal. The Church needs to boldly proclaim the biblical teaching on marriage and offer practical help to engaged couples and to couples in strained marriages.

In Marriage Savers, McManus identifies a number of excellent resources churches can use. For engaged couples, there's a program called FOCUSS. A couple fills out a questionnaire that provides an objective snapshot of their relationship's weaknesses and strengths. Then, older couples, who have been married for many years, teach them concrete strategies for tackling the weak areas.

Churches can also train what McManus calls "back from the brink" couples -- those whose marriages nearly broke up. After their own relationships have been healed, these couples can mentor other couples in crisis.

For separated couples, there is a program called "Reconciling God's Way." A support partner meets for twelve weeks with the spouse trying to save the marriage. When a separated spouse takes part in this program, the chances are better than 50 percent that he or she will be able to restore the marriage. And churches can help stepfamilies by creating stepfamily support groups.

Has your church become little more than a "blessing machine"? Why not introduce your pastor to programs like FOCUSS? And if your own children are marrying, find them a church with rigorous premarital programs and support for couples after they marry.

I hope you'll continue reading the rest of this series as "BreakPoint" addresses marriage. Current trends notwithstanding, God intends for marriages to last a lifetime. It's up to God's people to begin teaching couples how to have a marriage that endures.

Here's a significant statistic every church leader should know about . . . Married couples are now a minority in the U.S. <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003305384_married15.html>For the first time ever, less than 50% of American households are made up of married couples. Here is the money quote:

The numbers by no means suggest marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.

Consider these figures regarding the number of households headed by married couples:

1930: 84%

1990: 56%

2006: 49.7%

Think about what this means for local church ministry:

1) Most churches focus their ministries on married couples with children and relegate everyone else to what they call "singles ministry." The day may come when churches will focus on singles routinely and then have something on the side they call "married ministry."

2) Churches will increasingly find their pews filled with people who don't fit the two-parent family pattern. As the article suggests, we will see more single parents in our pews and more children from single parent homes.

3) Young people will continue to delay marriage until their late twenties and beyond.

4) The number of divorced adults in our congregations will increase.

5) Churches must understand that there really is no such thing as "singles ministry" as a monolithic block. Off the top of my head, I can think of these different groups:

College students

Post-college twenty somethings

Under-35 divorced singles

Single parents

Multi-divorced singles

Post-40 never married singles

Post-60 widows and widowers

A "one size fits all" approach to singles is bound to fail.

6) We may eventually see children raised by homosexual couples visiting our churches and the couples themselves may visit as well. This poses new challenges at the intersection of biblical truth and compassionate ministry.

7) Pastors must find ways to include singles in their preaching, especially in their illustrations.

8) Churches will be challenged to uphold the importance of marriage as the normal goal for our young people while at the same time honoring singles who use their singleness as an opportunity to serve the Lord. I can feel the tension even as I write that sentence. Not an easy thing to do, is it?

9) We will see more singles at all levels of church leadership. This needs to be done intentionally and not haphazardly.

10) Mostly we must face the fact that we no longer live in an Ozzie and Harriet world. American culture is closer to Seinfeld than to Leave It to Beaver. As I visit different churches, it seems to me that we're still catering to the minority two-parent family, which makes sense because that's what we understand, but it's not the world we live in. If the church intends to speak to this generation, we might as well fact the fact that we're speaking more to singles than to married couples.

What will we say to them? And will they listen?