Strong Marriages | Former Home Contractors, Dr. Dewey & Lynne Wilson, Build Homes on the Foundation of God’s Word

Although the mustard plant has one of the tiniest seeds, its resulting foliage can spread up to 20 feet. So can the smallest happenstance, in God’s hand, bloom with far-reaching implications. The birth of marriage ministry, Strong Marriages, started from one step of faith. Just like many marriage champions, Dr. Dewey and Lynne Wilson were asked to mentor a couple from church on the brink of divorce. Although the Wilsons recognized their own marriage was not in the place it needed to be, they felt compelled to try.

“I knew if we were going to help them, we needed help ourselves,” Lynne said. They started leading the couple through God’s word and conflict resolution tools they learned from a minister friend. After five months, the crisis couple’s relationship was restored to the point they were able to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. As the Wilsons leaned into others, they learned how to resolve conflict to the benefit of their own marriage. Word spread, and within four months, the Wilsons were mentoring 11 divorce-minded couples at the same time.

They realized, “If God could use our story and us, surely there were others he could use,” Lynne said. They identified a few couples who would be willing to help them put together a marriage mentoring process with training they could scale. The mentoring program became Strong Marriages and has now involved tens of thousands of couples since it officially began 20 years ago. Dewey and Lynne write and meticulously review all the Strong Marriages curriculum, including a workbook titled Devoted full of biblical principles and practical marriage tools they use to train and disciple mentors. Devoted is available in Spanish as Complementidos.

God gave Dewey a vision of taking ministry resources online (which was truly visionary in 2003). The Wilsons providentially met a supporter at a fundraiser who not only became a generous financial donor but had expertise in computer programming and software design. This individual eventually built all the online training, administration and support systems that form the foundation of Strong Marriages at no cost. “Our ministry would not exist without him,” Dewey said.

The Wilsons were running a Dallas-area construction business while they expanded their marriage mentoring program on the side. In 2003 they felt the Lord call them to minister to marriages full time. Today, “the Wilsons are still in the home building business. Only now they are not using sticks and bricks. This time, they’re using the Word of God, their life experiences and the life experiences of thousands of other mentors in North America and Canada,” they write on their website. This April the ministry celebrated its 20th anniversary. During this time Dewey returned to school and obtained higher education degrees in Religion in 2011, a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family in 2013 and his Ph.D. in the Philosophy in General Psychology with an emphasis in Cognition and Instruction in 2019.

“People have the same basic needs to be loved unconditionally, accepted and not be abandoned,” Dewey said. “There’s no better place to receive that than sitting at a table being discipled by people who say, ‘You can do this!’ You just have to have a passion to help people start with what they have.”

Lynne and Dewey are inspired by the discipleship multiplication equation. “Every couple-with-couple mentoring relationship can influence 92 people for Christ,” Dewey added, “instead of what happens when Satan divides and wreaks havoc. We have no idea how many this ministry has touched. We just keep showing up and doing this until God says do something else.”

The Wilsons keep a shadow box that displays three $1 bills, gifted to them by a 13-year-old in gratitude for the difference their mentorship made in her parents’ marriage. They were told she said, “I want to give this, because I can see what you have done for my mom and dad.”

Since then, many more mentoring tools have been developed, including an unprecedented online mentor support system. The hallmark of the Strong Marriages Program is the way it seamlessly works with a church to identify, equip, and empower lay couples to disciple other married couples. Partnering pastors love the process because it equips their people for ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12), thus allowing them to do what they are called to do . . . pastor their congregation, the Wilsons write.

The Strong Marriages online training is extensive and includes videos for every segment of every chapter of Devoted. The system empowers mentor couples, many of whom are mentoring because of what God has done in their lives “They don’t have to re-invent the wheel,” Lynne said. “They find out about the process and the tools, and they love it.”

Strong Marriages partners directly with churches to help them seamlessly weave a marriage ministry into a church’s tapestry. “We ask church leadership to come to the training whether they mentor or not, at least they know it’s there,” Dewey said. While the program appeals to couples in crisis, the Wilsons hope to encourage churches to connect every young married couple with a mentor. They note, “This process consistently produces an overall enrichment or restoration success rate of over 85% of couples who remain in a mentoring relationship for 6 months or longer,” on their website.

Strong Marriages provides everything a church partner needs to start and run a program. Materials include the Devoted workbook, Mentor Journal and Connected, an online individual relationship survey and personality assessment Dewey created to offer a snapshot of a couple’s relational health. This valuable tool helps mentors and couples understand personality characteristics, how to connect with others and discern areas of need. While couples take the Connect Assessment at the beginning of their mentee journey as part of the Strong Marriages curriculum, individuals can complete it on their own for a small fee and still benefit from its extensive 15-page report.

Strong Marriages mentoring program hopes to get couples to a place where they can value each other’s strengths instead of judge differences, Dewey explained. The exercises are simple, it doesn’t take a counselor to unpack them, yet they pack a punch. They give crisis or divorce-minded couples an opportunity to talk about themselves to their spouse and empower mentor couples with a tool that’s naturally going to take a couple back to a less defensive place as they grow and learn God’s word in discipleship together.

“We tell our mentors, ‘People don’t grasp truth in the middle of the crisis. Help them get the dust to settle, and they’ll be more willing and open to listen to someone.’ Connect, earn trust, build relationships,” Dewey said. “Our whole perspective is that marriage is a by-product of their relationship with Christ. We’ve seen a lot of people recommit their lives or accept Christ. If we can get the crisis on the right side of salvation, now they have the tools to work it out.”

Churches especially appreciate Strong Marriages’ robust Marriage Mentors Support System – an innovative online management framework that allows partnering organizations to manage their mentoring ministry. Mentors have full access to a complete library of videos, exercises and resources for successfully mentoring others, as well as calendaring software to coordinate schedules for mentor sessions and follow up.

“There’s an entire dashboard on the training portal to support the ministry coordinator, so they can see who is involved in their marriage ministry, in what role, where they are in the process, and how everything is going. It’s set up to relieve the pastors who spent all this time meeting with couples,” Lynne enthused.

“The system is very user friendly,” Dewey added. “Lynne spends a lot of time helping our church partners. We have support for mentors, couples, leadership round tables, instructional videos.” “We have met some of the most incredible people,” Lynne added. “They climb right in there and roll up their sleeves and do the work. Some people will overcome any obstacle to get it done, and now they have a tool to help them.”

“We’ve been the best kept secret for so many years,” she said. Right now, marriage champions can access the Strong Marriages mentoring system under the umbrella of a church that will organize the program (or allow them to.) If a champion couple wants to get started as a Strong Marriages mentor, they need to ask for the blessing of their church leadership if they are willing to take on the administrative tasks themselves, Lynne said.

Assessments aren’t just for individuals. Strong Marriages provides assessments to help churches gain perspective on marriages throughout their entire church body.

I Promise

Just as couples in crisis need mentors, so too do those just starting on their marital journey. The Wilsons released I Promise in 2015, which has been their most popular product nationwide they report. The I Promise system also is accessible online and starts with an assessment. Pre-married couples will learn relationship skills based on biblical truth. Couples in Texas who complete I Promise can receive $60 off their marriage license through the Together in Texas program.

Dewey also is a contributing author for Focus on the Family in Jim Daly’s book entitled, The Best Advice I Ever Got On Marriage. When asked how they answered Focus on the Family’s question, Dewey replied: Stop, Drop and Roll. First stop, recognize there is an issue and identify the problem. Then drop – extend blessings to each other. Be in God’s word (optimally every day) and pray individually and together. Lastly Roll – make these actions a way of life until they become a habit. It takes 90 days to solidify a habit before it gets woven into the fabric of your marriage, he said.

Lynne added, “You don’t have to apologize for the things you don’t say. Stop and think before you say something you might regret.”

The Wilsons continue to expand Strong Marriages’ offerings. They are working to produce Spanish translations of their online materials and videos. Dewey is developing a Marriage and Family doctoral cohort at Dallas Theological Seminary with Dr. Ryan Rush and Dr. John Trent, with whom he wrote The Relationally Intelligent Child. The Wilsons are committed to supporting and providing resources for marriage mentors for as long as God continues their call.

“We are a good living example that God will use you in incredible ways if you just make yourself available,” Dewey said.