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[00:00:17] Dan: All right. Welcome back to mission life podcast. Today we have J. P.

[00:00:20] Dan: Degance on the show. J. P. is the founder and president of Communio, a ministry that partners with churches to revitalize faith throughout the world. Through the renewal of healthy marriages and families, jp, welcome to the show.

[00:00:32] Amanda: Welcome. Hey,

[00:00:33] Dan: Dan. Amanda, awesome to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Glad to have you.

[00:00:37] Dan: Hey, to start with give us a little bit of the history about Communio. What does it do and how did you come to found the organization?

[00:00:45] JP De Gance: Yeah, well, so Communio is a ministry that supports the local church, right? We are all about the local church. We, we exist to equip her to share the gospel through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriage, and the family, right?

[00:00:58] JP De Gance: So we work now, we've worked in 29 states nearly 300 churches across the country. And the mission came about through my old God's providence, really. And, and, and his blessing on our lives. Gosh, it was 16 years ago. My life changed in big ways. Professionally. I had been working in politics working in public policy.

[00:01:20] JP De Gance: And during that journey had a very close family member whose family failed and we had to take in my wife and I took in her four kids. And we experienced what happens when families fail in a, in a powerful way. It was an abusive marriage. And our little ones were three and under at the time.

[00:01:41] JP De Gance: And the four new ones were 10 two boys, two girls. And we saw what happens when when there's. Such trauma and and, and that plays out in wounds throughout someone's life. Right. And that put a big interest and, and really a conviction on my heart, my wife's heart that that, that we wanted to do something.

[00:02:04] JP De Gance: To help families who, and, and help marriages not experience that kind of trauma and, and my professional life working in in, like I said, in business and public policy also worked in the private sector. And started to realize that there's a lot of really amazing tools, technologies, and strategies that exist in other sectors and business and politics that can be baptized, sanctified, and brought into the service of the church to bring more effective ministry to the local church.

[00:02:33] JP De Gance: And so in 2013, we started with this hypothesis I went to go work at a place called the flampy round table. I was the chief operating officer there and began talking with. Business leaders and philanthropists about taking some things like effective marketing, market research with evidence based human skills, curricula and trying to bring it and, and, and work within scaling.

[00:03:02] JP De Gance: Those those ideas and those techniques knowing that life changes most powerfully through personal relationship And how do we scale the number of life changing relationships that exist? At the local level and we started to realize that the local church was the best way to scale those relationships and it it it bore fruit in a major pilot that we did in a place in jacksonville, florida where we worked with 93 churches and moved in serving those 93 churches to move 58, 912 people through relationship skills ministry over three years, and the divorce rate dropped 24 percent in those three years.

[00:03:43] JP De Gance: Countywide, Jacksonville had up until that point had been the sixth worst. City in America for marriage ranked by men's health with its historically high divorce rates It had never had a divorce rate lower than the average divorce rate of the state of florida It had been the highest divorce rate in the state of florida for 40 of the prior 44 years before we got started there So this was a huge Citywide shift and we realized there was something there that what we were doing and working and serving churches on was really working.

[00:04:16] JP De Gance: We had a phenomenal local partner there, my friend Richard Albertson and the guys over at Live the Life Ministries were collaborators with us on this and we said afterwards As a ministry, let's take this to scale because we started to see churches themselves were being blessed. They were growing in, in terms of average attendance and those churches that baselined and measured their work grew by 23%.

[00:04:39] JP De Gance: So so since then, in 2019, we've We began to scale our work working with with churches around the country. We work with Trinitarian church as a whole to a biblical worldview of what marriage is. And so we work ecumenically to bring that about

[00:04:56] Dan: being so intimately involved with, this ministry.

[00:05:00] Dan: You see a lot of numbers, you see a lot of statistics, and I'm not sure we all understand the gravity of. What's happening in American churches and in American marriages today. Can you share some of those statistics and just some of those, those trends that we're seeing in our country today?

[00:05:17] JP De Gance: Yeah, look when you go back to the year 2000, not ancient history.

[00:05:21] JP De Gance: Our country is having about a third less marriages every year than in the year Than that year and if you go back to 1970 We've had six we have 65 less marriages every year than in the year 1970, right? It's changing everything. We know about us. It's changing the number of adults and the nature of those adults right so you have Our birth rate is now down You To 1.

[00:05:50] JP De Gance: 62 births per woman, right? To put that in perspective, a country that goes through that for 50 years, we'll see their population cut in half. Okay. It's, it's 200 for every 200 people in the population, there'll be 162 deaths. In that very neck over that born over the next 20 years. So this is huge statistical shifts.

[00:06:12] JP De Gance: It has huge impact on the life of the church. Okay. When you sit in a church on Sunday and look left to right at the pews, 80 percent of everybody sitting in the pews on Sunday grew up in a home where mom and dad stayed continuously married. Okay. 80%. In fact, that holds regardless of age. So if you're a born and say, if you're a married man and you're born in 1964 and you're in church on Sunday or you're a single guy sitting in church on Sunday and you're born in 1999, right?

[00:06:49] JP De Gance: 81 percent of your peers in both groups. Who are in church, grew up in a home that's continuously married. Okay. What's changed since 1964 is the structure of the family, right? The normative family, right? And you know, a big point of emphasis that we make when we talk to, to churches is that we're going through a cultural revolution.

[00:07:10] JP De Gance: Whether we like it or not, the nature of the relationship between men and women between parent and child is being transformed around us and around the culture and disrupting the historic and the gospel. Structure, right? Of, of marriage itself and child rearing. And, and look marriage has existed since the garden, right?

[00:07:37] JP De Gance: Since the beginning and it's in, in every time and culture. So, so this is something that's this, that has huge import for those interested in evangelism. Right. And, and a huge impact if you, if you're concerned about human suffering and just a myriad of other social challenges.

[00:07:54] Dan: I mean, those numbers are staggering, right? And you yourselves experienced what you said was the trauma of another family breaking up what are so effects? Some of the diff projecting will continue

[00:08:14] Dan: Disaster that's left behind of all this.

[00:08:16] JP De Gance: Well, you can, you can walk through a lot of them that you're seeing it in the news Every day, right? Let's look at just for instance the epidemic of loneliness Okay, this is our surgeon general. I believed it was first time issued an advisory in 2006 that there was or 2008 there was a this epidemic of loneliness and it's grown.

[00:08:36] JP De Gance: There was a most recent advisory May of last year by the surgeon general and what, why that we should care about that is, is individuals who are considered lonely by the public health definition, right? That's usually there's a, there's an academic measure created by UCLA it's, it's called the lonely UCLA loneliness index is used by insurance providers to try to track health trends.

[00:09:02] JP De Gance: And if you fit into their definition of being lonely, your lifespan is very likely to be 15 years shorter than someone who does not. Okay. That's a huge difference. It's the difference between dying in your mid seventies and dying in your late fifties. Okay. That's basically, it's a huge, huge shift. Okay.

[00:09:21] JP De Gance: So that's one of Many issues you'd say it, it fuels the mental health crisis more broadly outside of just loneliness. Right? Individual children who grew up in a home where mom and dad stay continuously married are more likely to experience what are called ACEs adverse childhood experiences, okay?

[00:09:42] JP De Gance: Mm-Hmm. means you're more likely to experience these kind if, if you experience an ace. Okay you're more likely statistically speaking to suffer from public I'm sorry, mental health challenges as an, as an adult, more likely to struggle in school. You're more likely to not flourish by any number of indicators in your work, job and life.

[00:10:04] JP De Gance: It also makes you less likely to be able to form a healthy marriage and family of your own, right? So there's just so many things that. A lot of you, you go on and on, but. this, a different way of saying is this is, it's all bondage to sin, right? Like this is so much of that comes from the lack of health in the family is comes up in public health data psychological data, lots of things.

[00:10:33] JP De Gance: But as a Christian, you could just describe it in that way. It's, it's, you, you see, um, what, Might be suffering in and one generation is passed on through Is passed on in different ways. It makes it more likely for Suffering and bondage to to be passed to the next generation

[00:10:54] Amanda: Yeah, and even you know looking at it from a health care perspective You know, you think of people that have the loneliness factor, right people who have perhaps already gone through divorce someone who?

[00:11:07] Amanda: Does has no desire to be married because of things that they've seen. They haven't seen healthy marriages. They don't know what that looks like, but, you know, and being lonely, that there's almost like a higher propensity for, you know, things that you wouldn't, maybe wouldn't do with someone else, like sitting at, let's just say going from, you know, sitting out at a bar and just wrecking your body with alcohol or sitting at home, eating a tub of ice cream.

[00:11:34] Amanda: And then the diabetes rate goes up. There's all these factors that play in. to even help like physically and then mentally, you know, we, again, we're seeing the suicide rate go up as well as a very one of the number one causes of death, especially in younger people. In these days. So

[00:11:51] JP De Gance: yeah, Amanda, you're so, so you're hitting on so many is so right on, on these things.

[00:11:58] JP De Gance: Right. So it's I read somewhere that it's not good for man to be alone. Right. We've seen that from the beginning and you see, uh, from a Gosh my wife will tell me and she'll be good to note. Hey, maybe you shouldn't have that extra piece of cake or you know Maybe you're eating too much or you should get that that thing checked out or go to the doctor for what you know Our spouse could help us in so many different ways.

[00:12:24] JP De Gance: We help each other, right? So so, both Men and women who are married live longer. Okay. Actually just this one factor, just the number of, of, of we're now at a point in time where we're, we're either there right now, or we'll be extremely soon at a point where a majority of adults are not married.

[00:12:45] JP De Gance: Okay. And because single people. Live shorter lives and the longer you stay single, the more likely you'll be to engage in less than, than, than healthy lifestyle habits. Right? For instance cohabitation you know, sometimes it's thought of as a great alternative to marriage by many, right?

[00:13:02] JP De Gance: And it turns out, obviously that's not true, right? In fact for instance a cohabiting woman. Is more likely to be the victim of physical violence, not only to the man that she lives with, but to other men, right? And one of the reasons sociologists speculate that this may be the case is, is for instance, I'm, I'm going to be concerned that if my wife is going to go out by herself in a part of town that I don't think it's safe, right?

[00:13:30] JP De Gance: I'm going to be, I'm going to encourage her not to do that. It's maybe not a great idea for her to do that. And as a consequence cohabiting women are more likely than men to suffer violence to strangers than married men. So there's just so many different ways. That none of this gets into even just, these are all negative things.

[00:13:49] JP De Gance: There's also so many positive things from a happiness perspective, right? The happiest, the happiest people in America, you know, contrary to, you know to what we would have learned from, you know, Friends or Seinfeld or, you know, a lot of the narratives that we were fed and the, you know, nineties and early two thousands was that it was a single people live in the fun life and being happy and the reality is, is the happiest Americans.

[00:14:17] JP De Gance: Today are married parents with children. They're the happiest they should and they're the most likely to report Being fulfilled and and for anybody interested in diving more into the some of the data on this my friend Dr. Brad Wilcox has written just a definitive book on this called get married and He unpacks a lot of data from the federal survey called the the gss.

[00:14:42] JP De Gance: It's the general social survey It's a very old and venerable survey done every other year that collects a lot of data and he dove into it and and When you look at this federally funded survey data set, you start to see the people that are the happiest, that are most likely to have a healthy and fulfilled sex, sexual life those individuals who are have a Most likely to flourish economically they're the least likely to suffer from mental health challenges or depression.

[00:15:15] JP De Gance: It's, it's the married. Okay. And so there's not only are you more likely to avoid the heartache, you're going to more likely to reap the benefits. Right. And our message to pastors is that it's, it's actually the unwinding of marriage. Doesn't only. Create this create societal wide ills and so societal wide suffering it makes it makes people less likely to believe believe that in the divine love story, right that actually there's just none of the data should surprise the christian, right?

[00:15:49] JP De Gance: that the nuptial Meaning of salvation history is written into, into it's written into the, into the scriptures, right? The, the first book of the Bible begins with a marriage in the garden and ends in the eschatological wedding feast to the lamb that you see it in the eyes in the book of Psalms.

[00:16:08] JP De Gance: We see it in the major and minor prophets with, with Isaiah, Hosea throughout you see it. In the New Testament, right, with when Paul writes in, in Ephesians five, and he proposes this great mystery, right? And he, he ties it to that, that human marriage, right? That when a man loves his wife, right?

[00:16:31] JP De Gance: That is a living icon of Christ's love for the church, right? And so when, and, and, and God's designed marriage from the very beginning, right? And has done it. Intentionally to point people to himself. And so that when marriage is less common, what, what happens less people get the divine love story, right?

[00:16:55] JP De Gance: If they can't experience the human love story, they, the less of them get the divine love story. And then there's less men, boys and girls, men, and women who. We know when a dad's not married, he's, he's much less likely to be engaged in the life of his, of his children on a daily basis. So they're less likely to experience the love of an earthly father, which means that they're less likely to, to be reached by the divine love story of the heavenly father loving us and so loving us that he would send his only son to die for us and to redeem us.

[00:17:30] JP De Gance: Right? So, so this is profound. This is not just a lot of times. Pastors and missionaries think of this as, wow, this is the collapse of marriage is a huge crisis for health and human services or huge problems and don't connect it directly. To evangelism and one of our big messages to churches is actually it is the biggest threat to evangelism that that as it unwinds, it's so much more difficult for us to share the gospel message that is that God has written from the beginning of time in into our anthropology and into our and into our very identity.

[00:18:18] JP De Gance: Thank you

[00:18:18] Amanda: I remember a mentor friend told me several years ago. the family was actually created before the church and family was always intended to be the primary means of discipleship.

[00:18:32] JP De Gance: Yeah. It's the original small group. Right. And it's, it's the, you know, sometimes it's said that the church the, the, the, the family is the domestic church and you could easily flip it around and say the church is an ecclesiastical family, right.

[00:18:46] JP De Gance: That, that, that God is, The first institution is, is the family and Carl Zimmerman is long ago passed away Harvard sociologist. He wrote a book called family and civilization in the 1940s and he, it's a, it's original, it's original. The original book is 800 pages. It's a tome on the history of the family trans transiting all Eastern and Western civilization, really.

[00:19:16] JP De Gance: And he, he finds that there's these three structures of the family that exist throughout human history, whether it be in China, Russia you know, in Africa and Europe and the Americas. And it's this early on, it's the trustee family, the clan, right. And in the clan, Only the family is sacred and the individual has few rights and then it you still have mom and dad and child, but the obligations of the clan are prevailing on the, on the individual mom and dad and child.

[00:19:50] JP De Gance: And then you start to have real economic and social progress. Only after it transitions into that second piece, which is the domestic family and Zimmerman has this great Harvard historian and sociologist notes that this is what separates the Christian West in so many ways it was the, the early church that advanced this idea that a husband and wife.

[00:20:17] JP De Gance: leaves his father or I'm sorry, a husband leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, right? That, that, that the, the fam, the domestic family is, is sacred holds the individual begins to have rights, but also responsibilities to the extended family. So the clan still holds a role, but the domestic family, It's preeminent.

[00:20:39] JP De Gance: And then you start to transition into the atomistic family where only the individual matters and the family is, is, is not very relevant and should only exist insofar as the family exists to help the individual self actualize in life. And and he's writing the 1940s. And he's noting that, that the world has was descending in the forties into the atomized family that, that we're losing that any, any has a series of predictions that the world would, and every time that that family structure exists in history, in other places, at least to greater levels of violence.

[00:21:22] JP De Gance: Greater levels of human suffering. And we're seeing that in so many ways play out.

[00:21:28] Dan: Wow.

[00:21:29] JP De Gance: So

[00:21:30] Dan: enter communio coming in and bringing God's wisdom to the situation. How do you begin to work with churches? I'm a, I'm a church here. I'm interested in helping. I see the problem. But I don't necessarily know the solution help us.

[00:21:46] Dan: Yeah.

[00:21:47] JP De Gance: Yes. So we propose a holistic process, not a program. Okay. So what this, we didn't get to where we are because the evil one hit the easy button and it had like a 499 kit to destroy the family that he ran for like a six week series once, you know, once a year, we're not going to get out of it with our own kit or six week you know, solution.

[00:22:13] JP De Gance: Okay. So we, we, what we saw in Jacksonville and what we brought to churches is what we call the data informed full circle relationship ministry. Right. And it's using data to analyze and understand what's going on in your own church and in your own surrounding community. And then we walk with a church.

[00:22:32] JP De Gance: through a series of consultative steps to interpret the data, establish and write a plan. Okay. And that plan is informed is sets out to achieve two goals, which is to grow the church, right? Grow the church body from X to Y over a three year period. And then we want to see. It become normalized in the church that adults practice the human and spiritual skills of forming healthy relationships.

[00:22:59] JP De Gance: So the idea is that it's a full church ministry for singles, and we have to help singles meet in real life to form godly relationships that lead to marriage. That's part of it. But then also helping married people live marriage. Well, right. And we're all a work in progress. We all need to grow in holiness.

[00:23:18] JP De Gance: And so the local church should help everybody do that. And, and if you've got a great marriage, great, then the ministry is for you. Right. And then we walk with the church. On implementing the ministry, right? And so we curate the very best resources from the very best evidence based publishers in the country to help the church figure out what will work and then how to make it normative, right?

[00:23:41] JP De Gance: It's easy. There's huge stigmas associated with marriage and relationship ministry. There's huge you know, we no longer have picket fences, but we do have Instagram. So a lot of people suffer. In bad marriages and or struggle in their marriage and don't want to let anyone know about it. They want to project smiling and thriving when it's not happening behind closed doors.

[00:24:01] JP De Gance: And then last is we work with the church to review what's working, what's not working. And, and, and then we help the church make adjustments along the way. And so we say we're data informed and not data driven, right? The Holy spirit is driving the bus. But, but data has a seat at the table to help you understand.

[00:24:18] JP De Gance: You know, we we believe. That the threat is so significant. We need to love the Lord, our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And that, that means it needs to be brought to bear in ministry in this, in this culturally revolutionary moment. So so that, that's, you know to, to hit on it, you know, on a very high level, I can unpack it a bit, but, but that's a, a very brief summer where a mix of ministry con consultancy as a nonprofit ministry.

[00:24:44] JP De Gance: And then we have a suite of software that is proprietary software that we've built out for the local church to equip the local church to reach those who they could never otherwise reach, draw people into the church and produce transformation in the church and around that the surrounding community.

[00:25:01] Amanda: But do you you know, as you know, you worked with 93 churches, you said in the Jacksonville area. Is there a, any story that you could share that just really struck you? Of course, you know, maintaining confidentiality, et cetera. You know, that would just really help our listeners to get a clear view of how this truly impacts like day to day life and really dropping that divorce rate down by 24%.

[00:25:25] JP De Gance: Yeah, I'll share a story of Chris and Lucretia. They're just a beautiful couple who. Had been married they came from broken homes themselves and didn't want to repeat that in their own lives and they were they were they were married had had kids and the everyday work he was Frequently working hours where he wasn't always home.

[00:25:53] JP De Gance: And so and when they were home he they might be exhausted from work not investing in the relationship And so she as they share their story, we're feeling more and more distant from each other. And as Chris shared that that he felt, you know, he believed that he was doing the right by their marriage by pro by helping as a provider.

[00:26:17] JP De Gance: And Lucretia has this beautiful line where she said, you know you, she, she would have been fine if they were in the dark, not meaning not having the money to pay their bills. But if he was there and misled to infidelity and the marriage and they had begun attending one of our church.

[00:26:38] JP De Gance: Partners that had been having a team trained up on a phenomenal life changing marriage skills program. They brought, they, they began to attend that program and really gets at this when we say evidence based skills. Okay. It's. We use frequently use the term coaching frequently. People need to have good coaching where they learn the, the skills to solve their own problems in a safe place.

[00:27:10] JP De Gance: That's what happened. They began to connect on, on what they were missing and they didn't want their marriage. They had an interest in not having that marriage and, but they didn't know how to do it. And, and This couple ended up through that local church receiving the, the tools to uncover their, you know, to set.

[00:27:37] JP De Gance: Really good shared expectations to resolve past hurt. Okay. And, and, and to, to begin to build empathy and build their the closeness in their relationship again. And they had a transformation that they became themselves teachers of the, of the program and involved in, in helping to run the ministry at the church.

[00:28:01] JP De Gance: So here's a. An example where a couple did not weren't only going to be, their marriage was going to be lost, it would have collateral impact on their children, right? And that has ripples, ripple impact on their own friendships and their own community, but instead you have restoration and healing.

[00:28:18] JP De Gance: Which, and now they're turning and giving that blessing to so many others. So it's, it's the sort of thing that we see, um, increasingly around the countries and around the country and churches that we work with today.

[00:28:31] Dan: It's kind of like the snowball effect, right? It can go bad and quickly and get bigger really fast in one direction. It also can really have a snowball effect going in a positive direction as well. And so, can you speak to some of that?

[00:28:44] JP De Gance: Well, I'll share a couple of examples. We had a, a church partner with us in Northern Virginia who had 168 married people go to their their marriage ministry that they built out.

[00:28:55] JP De Gance: Now this is a church that's embraced our full overall model. They brought 2500 people to their fall festival. Of which, gosh, 65 percent 70 percent were from outside of the church. It's all being integrated into their ongoing ministry. Okay, this, this church, like I said, 168 people went to their a spring marriage retreat.

[00:29:20] JP De Gance: 16 of those people reported that they were very likely to get divorced afterwards. Only one said that they were likely to get divorced. It's in that one church. It actually inspired a whole bunch of folks to join the ministry, to get trained, to be able to run these retreats. And in both weekend segments and multi week segments, they're running their, their their, their next big retreat in November, their plan is to have it every quarter where they're opening this up to, to couples in the church and in the, in, in the community.

[00:29:55] JP De Gance: So there's a, there's a viral element when people see the, the transformation people understanding, understanding. Wow. Even good marriages when they start connecting in ways they've never connected before it, it became, it becomes contagious. That's a huge part of what we're seeing and then churches are growing.

[00:30:16] JP De Gance: Okay. Our church partners, those who work with us, Dan and 12 over 12 to 23 months they, they grow by 22 percent in their Sunday attendance on average. And so when you, I love your work in Belize and a big part of what you're doing is, is working to teach life skills and human skills that huge connection with what we do right in, You know, in in the United States, you don't have the kind of the same kind of poverty, right.

[00:30:47] JP De Gance: That you have in Belize in certain communities. But what we have is a poverty of human relationships. People don't know how to form healthy relationships and don't have the skills with these, you know, smartphones, you know people. A lot of people struggle with having the human skills to have relationship because we're so glued to our device.

[00:31:08] JP De Gance: And I say this myself as somebody who looks a little bit too frequently at, you know, catching up with emails and catching up with the latest news online, not being present always as I should be. Right. And so here's a great opportunity for the local church to, to help people at every stage of life, right everywhere along the faith, full faith continuum, the full faith journey to have the skills we all, whether we're single.

[00:31:34] JP De Gance: Married, divorced, widowed, single in any life element of, of, of life. How do we, how do we form friendships where we can know and be known? How can we form the kind of relationships where we can love and be loved? That's a universal need, right? And the local church can be a school of love where, where we teach those skills, tell people, live them out.

[00:31:58] JP De Gance: Our vision as a ministry is to see that become normative so that we can bring a renewal of faith in Jesus Christ and a great revival in our country because it just so happens that that marriage is at the heart of, of, of being able to renew to renew faith in the gospel message.

[00:32:16] Dan: You're so right. I mean, it's, it's not just a domestic issue there in the U S it's a, it's a issue all around the world. We see that here in release in Central America. There's a lot of women and a lot of children in the church, but there are not a lot of men. And so you see the brokenness in society.

[00:32:32] Dan: You see the different cycles that recycle through generations so we want to be respectful of your time here, but for the listener who's listening And hearing all this, who's in a hard time in their marriage. What words of hope would you speak into their marriage or into

[00:32:49] JP De Gance: their life right now? The vast majority of marriages that are struggling can get themselves out of it. Okay. Well, obviously by when I say get themselves out of it, I mean, obviously with God's grace and help.

[00:32:59] JP De Gance: Right. And we have agency here. Okay. There are steps that we can positively take, right? There's both. It's not a great mystery. There are actually five interpersonal skills and five intrapersonal skills that exist that if you know them and practice them, you can be happy and thrilled in your marriage and those who report being in a, in a desperate place within their marriage.

[00:33:25] JP De Gance: Okay. Five years later, most through recommitting to their marriage, actually find that they're, they're happy or very happy. Okay. But, but there's ways that you can accelerate that. There's steps that you can take. Okay. So, so seek out good skills ministry. So examples I'll a good marriage intensive is a great thing to go on.

[00:33:45] JP De Gance: I think of my friends at live the life ministries, they offer hope weekend, which is a phenomenal weekend intensive that helps people who are struggling. They have a greater than 80 percent of those couples who go, who say that they're going to get divorced recommit to their marriage and are healthy and happy in their marriage.

[00:34:00] JP De Gance: We've seen it. In friends, we've seen it at communio when we recommend and refer couples out to that. So, so there is steps that you can take and, and certainly prayer is part of that, but then there's you know, St. Augustine said, all truth is God's truth. And there's a lot that that has been developed in the field of marriage and relationship education that the church can bring in bring in to practical ministry.

[00:34:25] Dan: For our listeners, how can they find out more about Communio and get connected with your organization for the churches that are interested in implementing the program? Tell us how they can get connected with you.

[00:34:36] JP De Gance: Yeah, so you should go to our website communio. org. And so we have free ministry updates and tips.

[00:34:44] JP De Gance: You can, a really good entry point is a lot of the data that I've shared with you is in our nationwide study on faith and relationships. And I encourage you, you can download the study for free. And go to communion. org slash study, or you can link it's linked to our main page, communion. org and I'll spell that C O M M U N I O dot org slash study.

[00:35:13] JP De Gance: And you can log or download it. Read it. Share it with your pastor, share it with your small group. And then it starts to give there's 10 takeaways at the end of it. You reach out to our team email me email us questions at communio. org. And we will be able to connect you with a, a, a church engagement officer to help explore how we can support and serve your church.

[00:35:45] Dan: What an honor to spend some time with you. Thank you for the ministry that you have stepping in and intervening and helping. Really recalibrate and save marriages that in in the United States. And, and I'm sure beyond the, those borders soon too. So thank you. We speak blessing over everything that you guys are doing and putting your hand to, and may you continue to have a huge impact.

[00:36:06] JP De Gance: It's been a joy to be with you, Dan and Amanda. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:36:09] Dan: Amen.

[00:36:10] Amanda: Thank you.