Become the mentor another marriage has been waiting for
This workshop equips Christ-centred couples and church leaders with biblical grounding, relationship science, and practical mentoring tools — so you can walk alongside other marriages with wisdom, confidence, and healthy boundaries, no counselling degree required.
"My whole aim is to give you the tools that turn a willing heart into a trusted presence — so the couples in your church don't just survive, they flourish."— Leigh Baumann
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Build deep, trustworthy mentoring relationships with couples at any stage of marriage or family life
- Apply biblical principles and evidence-based relationship science — including attachment theory and neuroscience — in practical mentoring conversations
- Use active listening, empathetic questioning, and encouragement to support couples without slipping into the role of counsellor or therapist
- Recognise the unique challenges of diverse marriage seasons — from newly-weds and blended families to empty-nesters and restored marriages — and respond with tailored wisdom
- Identify situations that require referral to a pastor, professional counsellor, or specialist service, and make that handoff with care and confidence
- Design and sustain a marriage mentoring ministry within a local church, including accountability structures and personal self-care practices
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
8 modules · 24 lessons
Biblical Foundations of Marriage Mentoring
This opening module establishes the theological and ethical bedrock of the entire course. Participants explore God's design for marriage as covenant, community and calling, and discover how servant leadership, grace and truth set the tone for every mentoring relationship. Critically, this module also introduces the non-counselling boundary — making clear from day one what marriage mentoring is, and what it is not. Completing this module first ensures every subsequent skill is built on a shared Christ-centred foundation.
- 1.1God's Design for Marriage and CommunityIncluded
- 1.2Servant Leadership, Grace and TruthIncluded
- 1.3Confidentiality, Boundaries and Healthy Ministry EthicsIncluded
Understanding Relationships
Before mentors can support others, they need a working understanding of the invisible forces shaping every marriage — attachment history, family-of-origin patterns, personality, stress responses and the neuroscience of emotional safety. This module provides that knowledge base, giving mentors a compassionate lens for interpreting couple behaviour without diagnosing or treating. It is placed second so that all subsequent mentoring-skills modules are informed by this relational science.
- 2.1Attachment Theory and Relationship PatternsIncluded
- 2.2Family of Origin, Personality and StressIncluded
- 2.3Neuroscience, Emotional Safety and the Stress ResponseIncluded
Becoming a Safe Mentor
With a biblical foundation and relational-science knowledge in place, participants now develop the core interpersonal skills of effective peer mentoring: listening, questioning and encouragement. This module is the practical heart of the course — every skill is practised in real-time with peers. A fourth lesson on self-awareness and personal readiness is added here, because research consistently shows that mentor self-knowledge is the strongest predictor of mentoring safety and effectiveness.
- 3.1Active Listening and Empathic PresenceIncluded
- 3.2Asking Powerful QuestionsIncluded
- 3.3Encouraging Rather Than Fixing — and Knowing Your LaneIncluded
- 3.4Mentor Self-Awareness and Personal ReadinessIncluded
Walking Through Different Seasons
Every stage of marriage and family life carries its own joys, pressures and blind spots. This module equips mentors with tailored, season-specific wisdom so they can meet couples exactly where they are — rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. The three lessons span the full marriage lifecycle as defined in the course overview, with attention to blended families and diverse cultural contexts.
- 4.1Premarital, Newly Married and Young FamiliesIncluded
- 4.2Blended Families, Diverse Backgrounds and Mid-Life MarriagesIncluded
- 4.3Empty Nesters, Senior Couples, Widowed and Restored MarriagesIncluded
Communication, Conflict and Connection Skills
This module — moved before 'Navigating Crisis' to correct a sequencing gap in the draft — equips mentors to teach and model healthy communication and conflict-repair skills. Research-grounded tools from the Gottman Method, emotionally focused approaches and forgiveness science are introduced accessibly. Mentors do not become therapists; they learn to recognise and name healthy patterns, share practical tools and encourage couples to practise. Having this foundation in place before the crisis module means mentors enter crisis conversations with a richer toolkit.
- 5.1Teaching Healthy Communication as a MentorIncluded
- 5.2Conflict, Repair and ForgivenessIncluded
- 5.3Emotional Regulation and Healthy Relationship HabitsIncluded
Navigating Crisis and Referral
With communication and conflict skills now firmly in place, this module turns to the most demanding mentoring territory: couples in genuine crisis. Participants learn to recognise escalating risk, stabilise distressed couples, walk alongside those experiencing infidelity, addiction or betrayal, and navigate the complex intersections of grief, illness and financial collapse — all while maintaining clear referral pathways. The explicit focus on referral confidence addresses a key learning outcome that the draft partially fulfilled but needed strengthening.
- 6.1Crisis Recognition, Stabilisation and Referral PathwaysIncluded
- 6.2Walking Through Infidelity, Addiction and BetrayalIncluded
- 6.3Financial Pressure, Illness, Grief and Cumulative StressIncluded
Discipleship Through Marriage
Having equipped mentors with relational science and crisis skills, this module returns to the spiritual core of the ministry: marriage as a discipleship journey. Participants explore how to help couples cultivate spiritual intimacy, shared purpose, biblical decision-making and healthy family rhythms — not as a performance standard but as the natural overflow of a Christ-centred relationship. Placed here, after skills development, mentors can now integrate spiritual direction into mentoring practice rather than treating it as a separate track.
- 7.1Spiritual Intimacy, Prayer and Shared PurposeIncluded
- 7.2Biblical Decision-Making, Family Rhythms and Healthy HabitsIncluded
Building a Marriage Mentoring Ministry
The final module equips participants not just to mentor individuals but to build and sustain a marriage mentoring culture within their local church. This includes designing intake and matching systems, creating accountability structures, establishing peer supervision and — critically — caring for themselves so they can serve over the long haul. The module also returns to the course's big picture: mentoring as a form of faithful, communal discipleship.
- 8.1Designing a Mentoring Pathway in Your ChurchIncluded
- 8.2Accountability, Supervision and Ongoing GrowthIncluded
- 8.3Caring for Yourself While Serving OthersIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
The Small-Group Leader
Already facilitating couples' groups at church, they want the relational tools and biblical grounding to go deeper when someone shares a real struggle.
The Seasoned Married Couple
Decades of marriage wisdom between them, they feel called to give back and need a structured framework to mentor intentionally rather than informally.
The Pastoral Leader
A pastor or elder stretched too thin for one-on-one marriage care who wants to train trusted lay people to carry that ministry confidently and safely.
The Newly Called Volunteer
Eager to serve in marriage ministry but unsure where to start, they need foundational training in listening, boundaries, and biblical mentoring ethics.
The Women's Ministry Leader
Supporting women in difficult marriages and wanting to respond with more than sympathy — she needs crisis recognition skills and clear referral pathways.
The Church Planter or Ministry Builder
Building a new congregation from the ground up, they want to embed a sustainable, accountable marriage mentoring ministry from the very beginning.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Leigh Baumann
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you've already been that person for someone — the couple who called late at night, the friends who asked if you'd 'just grab coffee' and then poured out their hearts over a struggling marriage. You showed up. You listened. You prayed. And somewhere on the drive home, you wondered: Was that helpful? Did I say the right thing? What if it gets harder than this?
That tension — between a genuine calling to support other marriages and a very real uncertainty about whether you're equipped to do it well — is exactly where this workshop begins.
I created the Couples Mentorship Workshop because the need in our churches is urgent and the gap in training is real. Professional counsellors are stretched thin. Pastors are overwhelmed. And yet there are gifted, spiritually grounded people in almost every congregation — people with stable marriages, pastoral hearts, and hard-won wisdom — who are sitting on the sidelines because nobody ever handed them a framework. This workshop is that framework. It brings together what the Bible has always said about community, accountability, and bearing one another's burdens, and marries it (if you'll pardon the expression) with what relationship science has taught us about attachment, emotional safety, conflict repair, and how the brain works under stress. Neither strand is optional. Scripture without insight can be blunt. Insight without Scripture can be rootless. Together, they make you genuinely useful.
What I want most for you by the end of this workshop is a quiet confidence — not arrogance, not the illusion that you have all the answers, but the settled assurance that you know how to show up, how to listen, how to ask a question that opens a door rather than closes one, how to encourage without fixing, and how to hand off with grace when a situation calls for it. I want you to know what to do when a couple discloses something frightening. I want you to know how to serve a blended family differently from a couple married forty years. And I want you to know how to take care of yourself so that this ministry gives you life rather than draining it.
This isn't a course that will turn you into a counsellor — and it's not trying to. It's training that will turn a willing, faithful person into a trusted, equipped, Christ-centred mentor. If that's who you want to be, I'd be honoured to walk this road with you.
— Leigh Baumann
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- 8 modules, 24 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed