Visionary Marriage | Ministry Begins At Home for Rob and Amy Rienow

Pastor, speaker, author and consultant Rob Rienow, DMin, has a heart for the Gospel and a passion for marriages and families. He feels called to share the message that God created marriage and the home as the bedrock of culture and civilization. Rob has written more than a dozen books, including co-authoring Visionary Marriage: Capture a God-Sized Vision for Your Marriage with his wife, Amy, in 2011. The book has now been translated into 10 languages.

Rob shares the biblical message of family discipleship at national and international conferences for parents, couples, and church leaders as well as partners with churches, encouraging them to accelerate evangelism and discipleship through families. After 18 years of pastoring at churches, Rob has devoted the last 12 years full-time to Visionary Family Ministries (VFM), a non-profit he and Amy started to build the church by equipping families to follow Jesus. The Family Vision podcast began in 2020 to help families become lighthouses for Christ in their neighborhoods. Amy has a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and is a licensed clinical professional counselor. The couple are raising seven children ages 6 to 26.

The Rienows believe God created marriage for two main purposes. 1) To reflect God’s glory as a picture of the love between Christ and the church. 2) To raise godly children who will advance the kingdom of Christ to the next generation.

“A unified Christian marriage is where each recognizes his/her primary Christian ministry is the soul of the other spouse – a mission of spiritual transformation of the other,” Rob said. “As the husband loves and serves his wife, he will lead her to be more like Christ. And she helps him become a more godly man. Their next mission is to disciple the souls of the children in their care.”

Sadly, these concepts have lost traction in modern western culture. Couples delay or disdain marriage in favor of career, money or leisure activities. Having and raising children is not valued as honorable and worthwhile. Even within the church, the idea of mission and ministry have somehow become separated from the responsibility to first disciple those at home.

“That’s one of the disconnects of the 20th century,” Rob said. “People think of ‘ministry’ as in and through the church building or parachurch organization. We don’t think of the home as a place of ministry. If someone asked you, ‘What kind of ministry are you part of?’ Would the first thing that comes to mind be the souls of your wife and children? This is a foundational principle underneath everything we do at VFM.

“When we think of our ‘life mission,’ marriage and raising children are off to the side at best or ignored at worst. At the heart of God’s plan to fill the earth is the power of multi-generational faithfulness, marriage, family, and babies. Part of Satan’s strategy is to destroy those things,” he wrote in his book, Visionary Church.

“The more a local church commits to ‘making disciples’ the more that church should commit to elevating and nurturing marriage.

“Are you concerned about the crises facing the world such as poverty, hunger, and injustice? Do you know what we need more than anything else to address these problems? We need more people who love Jesus Christ and who are willing to lay down their lives for Him. By raising godly children, you can have a greater impact on the world than you can possibly imagine.

God not only grows churches by spiritual reproduction but through physical reproduction. We are called to make disciples spiritually and literally. Church growth —the old-fashioned way,” he wrote. Whether or not a Christian is called to marriage, he or she can impact the next generation in their neighborhood, extended family, and church family.

“God created two institutions to advance the Gospel that work together like the two pedals of a bike,” he said. “We are pedaling the church pedal but losing ground culturally. The church and home need to partner together — that is the missing ingredient. “Marriage and family are the first places people live out their faith and their ministry calling by making a difference in the lives of the people who live there. Family is the foundation established for all people,” Rob said. “Attacks on the family rob faith from the children.”

Rob did not always live out this belief. He was inspired to become a youth pastor after another significantly influenced his life when his parents divorced during his teen years. He attended Wheaton College, then obtained a master’s in theology from Wheaton’s graduate school, a MDiv from Trinity International Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry in Christian Leadership from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. For 10 years Rob led a robust youth ministry with the thought that the next generation would thrive in the future if they established their faith in high school, a theory that has been proven not to be held true. VFM’s own research in churches around the country reveals that two out of three of the empty-nest parents they surveyed have at least one child not walking with the Lord. Rob brings hope and help to parents in this situation in his book, Never Too Late.

In 2004 God brought him to a place of deep repentance over the fact that he was discipling the church’s youth, but not his own family. “I realized I was reading the Bible and praying with other people’s children and doing spiritual care for other families and marriages instead of my own,” he said. “I was putting my spiritual opportunities in front of my spiritual responsibilities, pouring all my energy into nurturing faith in other people’s children.” As God turned Rob’s heart to the ministry of his own children and wife, he realized he was a spiritual leader at church, but passive with his family.

“We had a pretty ‘normal’ Christian marriage and family,” he said. “Amy was having to bear the weight of the spiritual energy and leadership in the home. Because she was doing so much of that solo, and that’s not a weight she was meant to bear by herself, she became tired, discouraged, lonely, and at times even angry.” As the Lord was taking the scales off his eyes about his absence in his home spiritually, Rob began to realize he needed to significantly overhaul his marriage relationship, too.

“For the first 13 years of marriage, I didn’t have any sort of heart of passion or vision for being a spiritual encouragement to Amy. We loved each other, but we were operating as two independent people. We hadn’t become one spiritually, and the Lord had to do some significant foundation work in our marriage. The Lord convicted me that as spiritual leader of the family, my responsibility was to care for her. I started praying for her every night before we went to bed. I began simply — giving thanks for things and then praying for any areas of stress or concern I knew she was facing. I’d pray that she would have a great night’s sleep and wake refreshed. I’d ask God to give me wisdom for how I could shoulder a burden for her with prayer,” he said.

Now praying together is one of the spiritual practices they teach couples at Visionary Marriage Conferences as well as the “Preparing for a Visionary Marriage” online Bible study for engaged couples.

Every couple at a conference is coming because they want a better, more unified marriage, he said. “So many couples mean well and are trying, but they are operating through their good intentions and will power. They think those are the only two ingredients. We need the supernatural power of God to change hearts, and we are not going to get that without basic spiritual practices. We get them started with a little bit of prayer, a little bit of scripture, cast a biblical vision. They’ll get a natural conviction and sense of upcall from the Holy Spirit. God has a fresh chapter for their marriage, and prayer is a foundational step.”

Rob uses a very simple and effective method to convince couples to begin praying together. He’ll ask, “How many of you think it’s important to pray together?” “How many think God wants you to?”  (Answers here are usually in the affirmative.) Next,  “How many think praying with your wife is easy to do?” (Most say no) Rob then shows them how easy it is to get started. He models a simple prayer, “God, Thank you for my family and marriage. Please bless us and help us, amen.” “God wants us to do it, and it’s easy to do, but that’s exactly what the demons don’t want us to do,” he elaborated.

A second step is for couples to consider praying together in the midst of conflict. “You have to lower the guard of your heart. Even if you just say, ‘Lord, help us,’ The Holy Spirit will supernaturally soften your hearts toward each other. If we go to the Lord for help, he will help us. If we just stay in our good intentions and will power, we get the same thing we have.”

A second crucial concept Rob addresses in his couples’ material is forgiveness — teaching husbands and wives how to navigate daily conflicts. Many marriage conflicts are rooted in the pain and hurt in a person’s past they have never processed. He rejects the notion that time heals all wounds and instead developed biblical tools to help couples forgive each other. He describes a person with unresolved pain as one whose emotional bucket is full of mud. Small things can trigger an emotional overflow because there’s no room left for another stressor. When someone chooses to forgive with the will, God provides a release valve to allow some of the muck to drain.

His three-part forgiveness process rejects pat answers and instead provides steps to act with intentionality.

The first two phases are between a person and the Lord.

1. Forgive with the will.

We are commanded by God to forgive, even when we don’t feel like forgiving, when the person hasn’t asked for forgiveness, when they may be still doing the same behaviors. These realities are painful but not relevant. In private, get out a piece of paper and write down, It hurt me when…. “And ask God to help bring to mind events and words that hurt you in the relationship. Then grit your teeth and specifically pray over these things. Let God know you may be doing this against your better judgement, but you are doing it because you are making a choice.

1. Forgive from the heart.

Heart change is the Holy Spirit’s territory. Pray daily for Him to do this work. You have chosen to forgive, but you cannot get rid of the bitterness and anger in your heart. Even if the person continues the behavior, ask the Lord to process your emotions.

1. Reconciliation and a healed relationship.

The key actor in this phase is the other person, who needs to seek forgiveness. This may not happen, but you have done your part if you’ve forgiven with the will and the heart.

In his book for church leaders, Rob encourages them to see ministering to marriages as a vital way to advance the Gospel and kingdom of God. “When we nurture marriages, we advance the gospel to the next generation. When we help couples move toward spiritual oneness, we advance the gospel to the next generation. When we help young people find godly spouses, we advance the gospel to the next generation.”

He recounts an experience serving on a church plant team and visiting a new couple. They had been part of a home church of only 25 people for 15 years, yet no one had gotten close enough to ask them how their marriage was going. Couples with struggling marriages are filling our churches, Rob said, and noted even church leadership teams are not immune. He’s found pastoral staff members are sometimes not even vulnerable with each other. Rob recommends a church desiring to start a marriage ministry start with connecting as a leadership team, opening up with their issues and praying for each other. “I challenge them to begin practicing family ministry with one another as the first step,” he said, and admits the truth resonates, but lists two common obstacles: the church wants to do something big and public because something small and private is not very zippy. Or the senior pastor and his wife do not feel confident enough to ask for help in their marriage, so they prevent the whole church from benefitting.

Rob encourages churches to look for areas where they can spread the Gospel by strengthening marriages. “Every marriage has conflict, struggles, and problems. God created our church family to help strengthen our marriages!” he wrote.

“Here are some common elements for churches who have a vision to strengthen marriages for the sake of the gospel. Which of these are present in your church right now? Which of these might the Lord be leading you to develop in the next year?

• Pre-marriage counseling or classes

• Marriage enrichment seminars/retreats

• Pastoral counseling for couples who are struggling

• Crisis care for marriages near divorce

• Care for those recovering from divorce

Because the gift of sexuality is intertwined with marriage your

church may also consider developing:

• Discipleship groups to help those struggling with sexual

identity

• Counseling and accountability opportunities for those

trapped in pornography addictions.”

Interested how you can partner with couples and families to help them develop discipleship programs that start at home? Find Rob and Amy Rienow at visionaryfam.com.