Emotional Caffeine: Portland, OR
Pastor Charlie Goessler is a wealth of information and excitement. Whether he is discussing his vision of an elegant fund-raising evening or the psychology of how people learn, he is moved by a deep desire to see marriage and families succeed.
As the Executive Director of Marriage and Family Connections, Pastor Goessler’s passion is having an obvious impact in his community of Portland, Oregon, and is encouraging the city leaders to engage. There is a growing awareness of the importance of marriage and a resulting increase in demand for marriage material and mentor couples. On March 9th, a mentor couple training seminar will take place to begin the accomplishment of a goal set by Marriage and Family Connections to have 30 churches in the Portland area participating and providing mentor couples. Pastor Goessler has outlined a step-by-step format to use in churches to help train couples to be mentors while enriching and strengthening their own marriages.
Since the Love and Respect program has been tremendously popular and helpful for churches in Portland, he plans to continue using it to draw couples in initially. After couples go through this program, they are then invited to a couples retreat. This weekend would be an “encounter retreat” with up to 40 people where true fellowship and deep discussion are encouraged. After the retreat, any willing couples would go on to the marriage mentor training program to help other couples through the same process.
Pastor Goessler has been working with Families Northwest and is now excited about the support that the Marriage CoMission is bringing. He and other city leaders are moving forward with their healthy marriage initiative. More information about Marriage and Family Connections as well as a newsletter is available at: www.marriagefamily.org.
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