By Amy Morgan

Like many in ministry, Brett Hurst wears more than one hat. He’s served as the associate pastor responsible for all things pertaining to relationships at Memorial Drive ECO Presbyterian Church (MDPC) for the past 26 years. Men’s groups, women’s studies, weddings, parenting and marriage ministry fall under his purview. Sixteen years ago, he and his wife, Kellie, began thinking about how to broaden their reach to the community and not limit serving marriage and couples to their own congregation. In 2007 they founded Home Encouragement Ministries, which Kellie runs as Director. 

The ministry was created “to support healthy marriages and strong families in the Greater Houston area,” according to the website homeencouragment.org. They work toward that goal by providing “fun dating and premarital training, marriage enrichment opportunities, and marriage education.” The ministry offers “something for every married couple to learn from and be encouraged by from pre-marital to the grave,” Kellie said. 

The Hursts started with a simple idea – a date night called Dinner & a Marriage. They initiated the program at their favorite Italian restaurant in the Houston suburb of Katy – the traditional spot of their own date nights. The manager noticed them frequently meeting there with other couples and has now partnered with them for Dinner & a Marriage for the past 15 years. Originally, they offered the event monthly, but more recently have scaled back to six times a year. The Katy restaurant has been their consistent flagship location, but Home Encouragement has expanded Dinner & a Marriage to other spots around Houston including in the Heights and College Station. They’ll be launching a new group in Sugarland in the fall of 2023. Date nights usually involve approximately 12 couples. 

Often a couple or team of couples will take the lead and make arrangements to host a night at a restaurant closer to their home. The Hursts recruit leaders from those who have participated in at least one of Home Encouragement’s programs. “The ones who step up and lead more times than not have experienced benefit to their marriage and get drawn in that way,” Brett explained. “They are all in for whatever we do.” 

They boost recruiting efforts by normalizing brokenness. “We try to make that part of our cultural language with people. You don’t need to have spotless marriage, just be lifelong learners.” Brett said. The Hursts model lessons learned from their 16-year involvement in a married life group they created to be an intentional place to nurture their own marriage without the pressure of being the experts. Recognizing the benefit, Brett currently is working to form more marriage life groups at MDPC

The ministry makes leading Dinner & a Marriage easy. Home Encouragement provides the curriculum for volunteers including digital logos, video clips, articles, and a power point. Leaders are encouraged to make it as much their own style as they’d like, but it’s a plug-and-play presentation, Kellie said. 

The format is non-threatening and not “churchy,” Kellie said. The host team arranges for tables to be set for two in the designated restaurant’s event room. Couples click on a link at the ministry website to register for the date and pay. $50/ couple includes the meal and tip. They can pay separately if they’d like an adult beverage, but otherwise, everything is all done, and they don’t have to think of anything else, Kellie added. 

A few conversation starter questions play on the screen, but couples are meant to enjoy the first 45 minutes of the evening talking and dining together privately. There are no name tags or expectation of mingling with others. During the second half of the 90-minute event, the lead couple will teach a skill like communication, conflict resolution, romance or friendship.

“It’s a nice, simple, formula date night. They are in at 7, out by 8:30. The magic is they get that uninterrupted time that so few people take,” Kellie said. “It’s deceptively powerful,” Brett said. “Couples come in almost in fisticuffs and leave holding hands.” 

They consider Dinner & a Marriage a soft entryway, something to which a person can invite a co-worker or neighbor. Couples who attend on a regular basis might begin to go deeper with the Hursts, listening to their podcast or attending the marriage retreat they host at MDPC each fall. 

Home Encouragement ministries works hand in glove with MDPC to plan and run the church’s marriage events, including two marriage retreats and two focused marriage prep series a year. MDPC promotes the general rhythm of Home Encouragement’s ongoing calendar events, while the ministry serves as “the default answer for the church’s marriage ministry needs,” Brett added. The couple teaches much of the content for the church’s nine-week Marriage Matters class that’s been offered twice a year for the past eight years. Attendance averages 35-40 couples each time, Brett reported. 

The senior pastor of MDPC encourages the Hursts endeavors wholeheartedly and has invited them to preach together on multiple occasions. Even though Kellie is not an ordained minister, he appreciates their dynamic as a couple and her female perspective. “Our church does not give up the pulpit easily,” Brett said. “This is validation of our work and an overt endorsement.” 

MDPC staff regularly recommends Home Encouragement to couples in crisis or for specific premarital and marriage training. “We enjoy a mutually supportive relationship with the church,” Brett added. Home Encouragement is a ministry partner, and the church reviews them every year for a funding gift of support.  

In his pastoral role, Brett selects material for the church’s marriage programs. The Hursts keep their finger on the pulse of latest research-based resources that they distill into ordinary language to make tangible and relatable, often adding their own stories to create original presentations. 

Married Life Prep Class

Twice a year MDPC hosts a premarital training program the Hursts run through Home Encouragement. The church subsidizes the cost of the eight-hour class to make it free for participants. The class fulfills MDPC’s requirement for couples wishing to be married there and is certified by Together in Texas, which will waive the cost of a marriage license for those who have completed approved classes. Brett and Kellie have fine-tuned the curriculum for the Married Life Prep Class, gleaning from research by the Gottman Institute and bringing in other information like hot buttons, Love Languages and things they’ve learned from experience. 

Marriage to the Max podcast

Houstonians spend a lot of time in their cars, as the city is a vast, sprawling metropolis. Realizing the average commute lasts at least 22 minutes, the Hursts began recording original podcasts in 2011 to deliver marriage-building wisdom during that otherwise wasted time. 

“We realized we were having similar conversations with many couples and decided we should record those answers as an education bank others could access,” Kellie said. In the early days, their 20-minute Marriage to the Max program had less competition, as fewer than 200,000 podcasts existed worldwide. Now their 145 episodes vie for attention among five million others. 

One couple in Chicago was so impacted by the podcast they made a special trip to Houston for a personal marriage tune-up meeting with Kellie and Brett. “It was such a sweet gesture,” Kellie said. “They had just become empty nesters, and they wanted to plan for how to do the next season of marriage. You never know how something is going to impact someone.” The podcast can be found at Marriagetothemax.org. 

Their Marriage Tune-up is for couples who want to dive deeper into a relationship issue. The participants are asked to complete a questionnaire prior to the 90-minute session to reveal their history, back story and issues of concern. This allows the Hursts to customize the conversations for their benefit. 

Brett and Kellie also are available on the front lines for those experiencing deeper problems. “People have access to a trained, seasoned couple in ministry ready to talk to them,” Kellie said.   

“They can call anytime, and we’ll respond with triage to get them secure enough for the next step.” Home Encouragement maintains an ongoing relationship with the professional counseling community in Houston, including a mutual referral highway shared among a short list of counseling organizations. “We refer to them; they recommend our events and options,” Brett said. “Long-term therapy is not our specialization, so it is very important that we know and trust the counseling organizations that we would recommend.”  

Brett advises church staff interested in starting a marriage ministry to get the ear of the senior pastor or key members of the pastoral staff and present pragmatic statistics of how the church, the local community, and greater society enjoy the benefits of healthy relationships. “I think the first step is to secure the emotional support and trust of the leadership for the launch and hosting of various pro-marriage events. Not everyone is called to marriage, but everyone benefits at least indirectly from healthier marriages and families,” he said. 

Obviously, the Hursts are passionate about marriage and hope to point couples to one who designed the institution. They are determined to provide helpful tools, information and encouragement for any couple, regardless of their faith status, but realize “once we delve into the depths of a couple’s narrative, it’s not too big of a jump to get to why we all have the tendency to ‘act like selfish pigs.’ Our framing of healthy relationships always involves discussion about the creator of all healthy structures. We have seen countless couples grow incrementally in their faith in Christ as a result of having honest conversations with us about how to do marriage in a more loving and giving manner,” Brett said. “All glory to God!”