Workshops and Resources Encourage Couples | Trey and Lea Morgan’s Stronger Marriage Ministry Offers Challenges, Posts, Robust Social Media Presence

These high school sweethearts always knew they were called to ministry. Early in their marriage Trey and Lea Morgan began working together, first with youth, and then families. In 2003, Trey became the preaching minister for the Childress Church of Christ while Lea concentrated on children’s ministry, a natural fit as they raised four sons in their small community in the Panhandle of Texas. Now 34 years later, the Morgans have been inspiring and equipping couples for decades. They’ve written three books in the past four years – The Daily Marriage Challenge: 60 Short Challenges for Busy Couples, Wisdom for your Marriage, and 10 Ways to A Stronger Marriage, the latter developed out of the content of their Stronger Marriage Workshop.

Trey recalls being surprised when a Dallas church asked him to speak at a couples retreat in 2011. That event led to a follow-up invitation, then another. Soon the couple realized God was calling them to intentionally prepare and expand marriage material.

“After the first time speaking, I thought, ‘That was really fun, I think we could turn this into a workshop we could do for churches,’” Trey said. “Soon we had all these churches asking us to speak. We don’t know what we did. God opened all those doors!”

Fast-forward to 2023 – the Morgans have led more than 120 Stronger Marriage Workshops, approximately 15 a year, have taken more than 100 couples on two Stronger Marriage cruises, and are booked through 2025. “We are constantly updating,” Trey said, While online content can make information accessible to a broader audience, the Morgans believe an in-person workshop experience provides great value.

“You have to drop everything in your life, find a place for the kids, often stay at a hotel. This says, ‘We want to go, our marriage matters.’ It is very healthy for your marriage,” Trey said.

The Stronger Marriage workshop is broken into several sessions. The content of the first (mirrored in the first chapter of the book) introduces 15 ways to bless your marriage – things like friendship, communication, pursuit — practices couples often did at the beginning of their courtship but have put on the back burner when their lives became busier caring for children and with increasing work responsibilities.

“They still need to do these things,” Trey said. “We encourage couples to identify what’s going well then circle three things they’d like each other to work on. They find the exercise uplifting, encouraging, and challenging.”

The second session explains Gary Chapman’s love languages and love bank concepts. The third: six marriage killers, including the need for spouses to be open and honest (what they call naked) with each other.

“There should be no secrets, no hidden passwords or conversations,” Trey said. “We have a friend who is a District Attorney who sees the messy divorce cases. We ask him, ‘What do we need to talk about?’ He’s told us cell phones and social media. One or both of the parties (in the divorce cases he sees) is doing something on the phone they shouldn’t. Or they are texting someone they shouldn’t. We hate to say this, but if your spouse has changed the phone passcode and won’t let you see it, they are doing something they don’t want you to find out about,” he added. “Emotional affairs are a real thing today, and it is a form of cheating. If I am connecting with someone else who is not my spouse and hiding it, that’s wrong. People need boundaries with friendships with members of the opposite sex.”

Trey tells a cautionary tale of a couple that was planning a trip in a few months to celebrate their 12th anniversary. The wife started texting a man she met at church, and in just a few months had shifted her affections. She filed for divorce a month before their planned trip. The Morgans counsel couples not to think, “it will never happen to them” and let down their guard.

They also address time spent on devices and how social media can be detrimental to a marriage if it’s not used correctly. As the culture has shifted, these issues have become even more prevalent, Trey said. “But when you do marriage right, it can be so good, and so healthy and so much fun.”

Speaking of fun, the Morgans close the workshop with a session on the importance of sexual intimacy in marriage, a topic Trey said engenders the most questions. Couples leave with a homework challenge of five fun things to do together in the next days to keep the momentum going from the workshop’s jumpstart.

Trey believes God intended to make churches the vehicle and the beacon of marriage support to the community.

“Churches should constantly be providing the Bible class, the Bible study, a seminar,” he said.

“People in the world are looking at how we do marriage, how we do family, how we do parenting,” he said. (But if they are not looking at the truth in God’s word) “They’ve been looking in the wrong places. They are finding bad answers, not what God designed. Their mentality is like in junior high – just get a new one. Marriages weren’t made to be upgraded like we do with our phones. They were made to be fixed. Let’s provide some answers in the church. Churches that do provide answers, attract people from the community and have healthier families in their congregation.”

As a pastor, Trey encourages churches to step up to be the conduit to funnel marriage resources to the hurting world. “It’s very doable, even the smallest churches can do some sort of healthy thing for marriages to catch families upstream before their marriage gets to the waterfall.” He describes their 10 Ways to A Stronger Marriage book as an available, affordable resource churches can use as a catalyst for a study appealing to couples.

As with the Morgans’ workshops, their impact on marriage through social media also has increased exponentially. They post consistently on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, where they now have more than 300,000 followers.

“God opened the doors in the social media world for us,” Trey said. “While we speak to thousands of couples every year in person at workshops, we get to talk to millions through social media. It requires a very small output of resources to reach a large audience.” Many of those who connect with them are not church people or even Christians, and Trey said they find Stronger Marriage’s biblically based message fresh and revolutionary.

“The way God designed marriages is 2000 years old,” he added. “When you do marriage that way, it works!” They’ve been surprised by the popularity of their posts. In December 47 million people viewed one of their Instagram posts and half a million people liked two of them (according to Instagram). Many of their followers on social media include “blue check” notables like college and NFL football players and coaches, actors and actresses, NBA players, WWE wrestlers Brandy Roads and her husband, John Cena, and the lead singer for the rock band, Three Doors Down.

“This means the message about healthy marriages is going out and spreading,” Trey enthused. The eye-catching messages included one about dating your spouse that advocated a 2/2/2 plan.

“We encourage couples, especially parents with small children, to go on a date every two weeks, get away overnight two times a year, and spend at least a few days away on vacation every two years,” he said. “They need to go somewhere where they can just be husband and wife, not mom and dad. This will bless their marriage, bless the kids, and bless them, and they’ll still know each other when the kids leave home.”

The other post that engendered great attention, including more than a quarter-million likes, was a list of 12 Rules For A Happy Marriage, which Trey said was not originally created by them, but worth repeating. Rule number two accurately captures their humorous, yet timely tone, “Never yell at one another unless the house is on fire.” The list culminates with “Be your spouse’s biggest fan.”

Unlike 10 Day to a Stronger Marriage, the Morgans’ two more recent books don’t present a program. Rather, their format is designed to jumpstart a couple’s communication and spiritual intimacy. Wisdom for Your Marriage, published in 2020, is a devotional based on the book of Proverbs. Trey mentioned he and Lea have long enjoyed praying through God’s word in the Bible together. Connecting spiritually has been shown to dramatically reduce a couple’s risk of divorce.

In 2022 they released the Daily Marriage Challenge – a simple book “made for people like me who don’t have time to read something long,” Trey said. Each page includes a scripture, a short prayer the couple can use together or separately and a challenge for the day or week. An example of a daily challenge – refrain from using “that tone” with one’s spouse. A weekly challenge: step up the flirting or plan the weekly date night.

Stronger Marriage offers many ways couples can take small steps that add up to make a big difference in their marriages. Encourage those you influence to take a daily challenge or connect with the Morgans on social media.