Mornings with Eric and BrigitteMonday on Mornings with Eric and Brigitte, Executive Director of Relate Well, Live Well, (formerly known as Live the Life South Florida) joins us to talk about their organization's mission, purpose, core values, statement of faith and leadership--all will remain the same, even though their name is changed. They pride themselves in providing education that intentionally focuses on repairing relationships proactively, rather than reactively through their educational programs, marriage workshops, and events. Lisa is asking that you join them in prayer. They're excited about this new journey and look forward to traveling together.
You're listening to mornings with Eric and Bridget right here on Moody Radio 89.3.
I think the popular phrase, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That kind of fits in with our conversation we're going to have right now, don't you think? Yeah.
But as people who listen know, I'm kind of not a fan of change. I have a hard time with change. So when you said the word update, I went, oh, I like that. Or even the word reset. You know, the reset kind of puts things back in alignment. Like they should have been all along. Right? The the update kind of, uh, gets you into a, you know, when you update your computer, you're getting things to the place where they need to be. Change can be hard. Maybe I like I think I'm going to start using the word update. I think that for me makes more it's more of a helpful term. Well, we're.
Going to find out the reason for the update, the reset, the change, but also how the mission remains the same with Executive Director Lisa may, formerly of Live the Lifestyle Florida. But Lisa, the new name is. I'll let you introduce it.
Relate well. Live well, well.
Good morning. Thanks for being here. So tell us the reason for the change.
Update update reset okay I like reset to um. Basically for years the Live the Life tagline name was based on a song from Michael W Smith and loved the song love Michael W Smith. But I have kids that are in their 30s and they've never heard of Michael W Smith. And so for years I have said this name needs to define more clearly what we do live. The life could have been a party bus. It could have been a cruise, you know, it could have been a lot of things. And so when the opportunity presented itself for a transition for the South Florida office, we really did some research and came up with relate well Live well, because typically if we relate well, we do live well, regardless of what your faith life is. And we also saw this as an opportunity for evangelism, and that when people saw that name, they would feel included.
Okay, so you just stepped on an elevator and someone says, well, what do you do? You said it more better. It better makes an understanding of who you are and what you are as a ministry. So what are you?
Well, basically we teach biblically based, healthy relationship skills. We start in middle school and we go all the way to senior adults.
And tell us the the obvious.
I think, by the way, we didn't even make it to the third floor in that elevator. That was a good answer. Very quick, very quick.
But there's so much more to it because the need for this type of education and encouragement, I know we're seeing it all around us. Talk to us about the need to to help marriages and families stay strong.
Well, there are a lot of reasons, but if you look at just the statistics and you look at what the sociologists are saying, what the government is telling us, I mean, everyone is talking about loneliness. You know, we have a large proportion of poverty in the South Florida community. Even though on the inside looking out, we don't always see it or definitely on the outside looking in, we don't. Because this is a luxury market, 45% on average are the live births to South Florida to single parents, you know, a single mom. So the church is really, I believe, are the bedrock. I mean, Jesus is the bedrock, but our families are the foundation for the church. And when you think about it, God did create marriage before he birthed his church, and he has birthed the church through marriages and families.
So then how do you address the issues that you're talking about, from birth rates to marriages to poverty? I mean, those are those are not small issues. We've actually dumped a lot of money into each one of those issues with not a lot of success in some times. What are what is your ministry doing to combat these things?
Well, you know, we do work with the public schools. We've been in 45 schools and in the last 11 years we've served 35,000 kids with really healthy relationship education. But in this past fall, I was standing in a classroom at a school that I had been in for years, and I have a deep love for the school, and I have a love for the administration and the kids. But I was looking around the classroom and I was thinking, what in the world are these kids going to do? Because we're doing everything from the bottom up. In other words, all these different social service organizations, so many of our faith based nonprofits, they're doing good work and work that God has called us to, but we're working bottom up and basically we can't keep pace with the needs. Like if you even look in the foster care, this community is known to be passionate and fervent about caring for kids and finding homes for them. But yet we could, at any given time, just in our one little area, have more than 500 kids waiting for placement. So I thought, okay, we're doing great work and I'm an advocate for all those other organizations. But I thought basically we've got to go top down and top down is the church. And so I went to my friend Eddie Copeland, who is the executive director of Church United, and I said, Eddie, I have such a burden for this. Who's going to bring all these kids to church if they don't have parents bringing them, if they're not going to the after school program? If I'm not really allowed to talk about Jesus in the classroom, how are we going to evangelize these kids? And I and I said, it's got to be through the church. The church has to stand up and speak up about marriages.
And what did he say?
Well, you know, he was great about it. In about 45 minutes, we had developed a plan that we wanted to be able to offer our our workshops to pastors and their spouses at no cost to them. We wanted to give and not take. We do realize that our churches are inundated with people that have really fabulous curriculums and great ideas, but you know, everybody only has 24 hours in a day. And many of our churches are bi vocational pastors and they don't have the budgets, you know, to bring in some of those things. So we thought, you know what, if we're going to go top down, let's not ask them for anything. Let's give them less. So we have a retreat for just pastors and their spouses. Anyone can attend as long as they're operating under the status or role of a pastor. In other words, this is not for the admin. There are other things, other opportunities for them, and any pastor can send his staff as long as he and his wife or they will commit that they will go at some point within a year. So we take them in for the weekend. We give them gift certificates for a very nice dinner. I mean, we're very generous with what we give them. We offer coaching and counseling sessions afterwards at no charge. If they feel like they need that or they want to send someone to that, we put them in a nice hotel right on the ocean. We feed them breakfast and lunch, and we work with them for about ten hours, teaching them what they then can go and teach in their church or if they want us to come in and do it, we're happy to do that.
They have people that come in the door of churches that say, I'm lost, and they don't even know they're spiritually lost, but they are knowing that their lost, their relationships have fallen apart, whether it's their marriage or their kids are in trouble and they don't have answers to any of those. So what does what does the pastor say to that person that you're giving them training. What do they what kind of hope are they giving that person who really maybe not walk through that door of the church?
Well, the beautiful thing is, you can find love again even in the most broken of marriages. And God has given us permission to divorce. So I'm definitely not condemning anyone that has chosen that. But love can be rekindled. But the issue is we are no longer in homes where we've seen a healthy marriage mirrored. Half of us are in homes that are single parents. No one's married, um, or they're in broken homes, and now they're very Fragmented or fractured. So we can begin to teach the pastor, and then the pastor can have us come in, or he can send them to us, where we'll basically sit down and work through the biblical basis and the how to. And that's what I think we've missed. I'm a church girl. I've been raised in the church my whole life. Um, and I know what I'm supposed to do, but sometimes I don't know how to do it. Like, I know I'm supposed to forgive you, but how do I do that? You know, how do I get my heart to catch up with my head? So those are some of the things that we really dive in deep with.
Couples live the life, South Florida. And yeah, there are many opportunities. I know Adventures in Marriage is one as well. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, adventures in Marriage is really a premier program. It's a 10 to 12 hour workshop based on what the church is looking for, and we are teaching them communication skills. And that's something that typically is not taught anywhere. You know, people no longer really understand communication skills. How do I have a disagreement, a heated disagreement and still be respectful, express goodwill, empathy. Um, so those are the primary things we do with the Adventures in Marriage program. And then we have a premarital program. We also have a program called Refresh and Renew where you can come in and we take a deeper dive into some of the subject matters. And then we have some intensives for marriages that are really in the weeds. Some people will go to the marriage intensives just because they wanted an enrichment, a deep dive, enrichment into their marriage. Most people go to marriage intensives because they're troubled. And the great thing that I'm very excited about, that the change is enabling us to do, is we're really going to dive deep into the Spanish community. We're going to bring someone on staff that's well qualified, he and his wife, and they're really going to cater to that Spanish speaking community.
Relate well, live well, has a ten year plan. It's a large, big goal. There's three of them. How do you get there from where you are today?
We have to do it through the church. and that is why I have felt so passionately about we have to go top down because when we're in the schools, we're doing a good thing. We are doing a good thing. But they get so much outside of that classroom that we're never going to be able to compete with. You know, we have them for maybe 90 minutes, 55 minutes if we're in a middle school. And then when you think about what they go home with, what they're watching at home, their phones, their peer group, you know, they don't really most of the kids don't have a support system outside of the classroom and the schools. I mean, we've we've really expected our schools to do way beyond what they were created to do. We're asking our schools to educate them, babysit them, feed them, go find them. If they're not showing up to school, give them guidance, not just about where they want to go to college, but whether or not they need to see a professional counselor. So it's it's helpful, but it's not going to move the needle. If we're going to really make the big changes, it's up to our churches to do it.
And so senior pastors can find out about live the Life South Florida, go through some of your programs. You've already said complimentary because you really want to minister to the pastors and their spouses and then get their churches plugged in.
Exactly. And you know, I think, too, we hold our our pastors and their spouses at such a high level of expectation. You know, um, they're really broken and spilled out in so many ways. Um, because the demands are so high. And when I say they're broken and spilled out, I'm not talking about their marriages, but they're humans, just like you and I are humans. You know, they have struggles and obligations and, um, you know, I see it in my own life. You know, when you you've worked and you've worked and you've worked and it's 10:00 at night and the phone's ringing and it's a couple, and they're distressed. Of course you're going to pick it up, you know. So somebody does need to really pour into our pastors and their spouses. Church United has done a beautiful job of it. They have a program called Soul Care. And we're basically under that umbrella with what we offer to them.
Excellent. Well, we've got a link to relate well, live Well and this new, new name for this ministry that's continuing to build up families in our community.
You can find out more when you head to our website. Eric and bridgett.org and I just clicked into the website. You can actually join the mailing list and get some more information from them on a regular basis. And just some, some helps that they will be sending out that you send out regular emails. Correct?
We do. We try not to inundate you, but we do have something. Um, and you play it here and we're very grateful for it the Monday minute. Yeah. You know, we would love for people to sign up for that. I mean, I've started to get phone calls and emails from people about that. So thank you, Moody for that. But it's just a one little thing they can do during the week to better their relationships with their spouses, but also us with their family. It's less than a minute read, and I do want to encourage everybody to sign up for that. It's free.
You can find out more again when you go through their link, which is at our place, which is Eric Bridge. Org you can find more about relate well live well. Lisa, thank you for coming in today.
Thank you for having me.
