Pastors, Lay-Leaders Invited to Learn Effective Premarital Preparation at March 4 Workshop

•  How confident do you feel when doing premarital counseling?
•  Do you have a tool to effectively assess a couple in their strengths and needs before marriage?
•  Do you have comprehensive materials to prepare a couple to marry?
•  Would you like to learn how lay leaders can prepare couples for marriage?

Marriage Network Oklahoma is again presenting a training workshop for church and marriage ministry leaders —Preparing Couples for Marriage - "The Foundation of Marriage Ministry"

Workshop will include training for premarital education classes, premarital counseling, resources, and effectiveness

Thursday, March 4, 2010, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Location: 301 NW 63rd St. (just W of Broadway Ext.), Suite 110, Oklahoma City

Cost: $50 person (spouse comes free), MNO partner churches: no charge (partner churches email to register), includes lunch

Deadline for registration: February 26

To register: go to the http://www.marriagenetworkok.net/ , or call Donna Edwards, 405.792.2586, or email donna@marriagenetworkok.net

How Did the Early Christians of Rome Defeat Pagan Sexuality?

That's the interesting topic to be addressed during a free Family Policy Lecture at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. next Thursday, Feb. 25 at 10 a.m. CST. Thankfully, the lecture will be webcast worldwide by FRC, so you can listen in on the Web if you preregister here.

The speaker will be Dr. Peter Jones., the foremost evangelical scholar on neo-paganism. Dr. Jones, who has advanced degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and Princeton Theological Seminary, wrote a fascinating book in 2006, The God of Sex: How Worldview Determines Sexuality. The book, which is available here (type Peter Jones in Amazon box), was an exploration of how God's view of sex (after all, He invented it) has been corrupted by today's cultural gatekeepers, who are influenced not by Christian truth, but by Playboy philosophy and neo-pagan spirituality.

Jones, in the book, made a fascinating assertion. He believes the primary goal, related to sexuality, of popular culture, Hollywood, music, new age spirituality, etc., is to convince young people to buy into the idea -- not that they are homosexual or heterosexual -- but that they are personally bisexual. That's why we are seeing things like the infamous on-stage kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna, the emergence of Lady Gaga, etc. Kids are being taught today by popular culture and peers that they can go back and forth like a revolving door between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

It light of this background, it will be wonderful to hear Dr. Jones discuss, How Did the Early Christians of Rome Defeat Pagan Sexuality? Preregister for the Webcast here.

‘Mount Vernon Statement’ Reaffirms Key Foundational Principles

Today, more than 100 leaders of the Conservative movement in the U.S. signed the Mount Vernon Statement, a new recitation of core foundational principles to guide our nation forward in the 21st Century.

What's significant about the Mount Vernon Statement is that it is grounded in fidelity to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, two defining organic legal documents of the United States of America, which were both adopted by our nation's Founders in the late 18th Century.

Click here to read the Mount Vernon Statement, courtesy of the Family Research Council. If you wish, you can add your name to the document as an expression of your support. Please give this important Statement widespread distribution via email and social media. Thank you.

Do a Good Deed and Help Strengthen Oklahoma's Marriages, Too!!

Will you help us?

This may be one of those good works for you established since before the foundations of the world -- or it may just be a simple good deed. Regardless, you can help strengthen marriages in the Sooner State by taking an extra minute to click on the following link: http://www.elementfusion.com/2010-giveaway-one-finalists

Marriage Network Oklahoma, with whom OFPC partners for marriage ministry, is a finalist (yeah!) in the offer by OKC Website Design company Element Fusion to generously donate a free Web-site design to one of three finalists. The general public votes, beginning today through Feb. 27, to determine what nonprofit organization gets the new Web-site. The winner will be announced on March 1.

As you may know, Marriage Network Oklahoma's vision is to work with Oklahoma's thousands of churches to help them to develop comprehensive marriage ministries within their congregations. In Oklahoma, 76% of couples get married in a church, but after the wedding, many churches do little or nothing to help married couples actually foster and and grow the marriage to which they've committed. MNO is working to change that one church at a time.

Imagine what could happen to this state (and for the cause of Christ) if many thousands of Oklahoma's marriages were strong, healthy, happy, and holy pictures of the love Christ has for His bride, the Church? No divorces isn't our goal -- thriving marriages for the benefit of husbands, wives, and children is MNO's goal. But, it's not going to happen unless Oklahoma's churches are a part of the solution. And actively helping churches to realize this goal is what Marriage Network Oklahoma is all about.

MNO really needs a great, new Web-site to tell our story, and YOU can be a crucial link in helping us to meet this need. Please click on the link and vote for Marriage Network Oklahoma.

Click on the following link: http://www.elementfusion.com/2010-giveaway-one-finalists

Also, forward the above link with a short note to all your friends and colleagues, too. Many thanks for voting for Marriage Network Oklahoma!

Coffee Seeks to Expand Charter Schools in Oklahoma

Several years ago, Sen. Penny Williams (D-Tulsa) authored the first bill to legalize charter schools in Oklahoma. As you know, charter schools are publicly financed government schools, which by law are freed from some of the mandates, bureaucracy, and collective bargining that are a part of what's normal at most other public schools. Charter schools, unlike other public schools, also have the freedom to define for themselves and their students a more targeted curriculum. They can, for example, focus their teaching on math and science ... or music ... or history ... or core knowledge ... or college preparatory ... or performing arts ... or helping at-risk students, etc. — whatever their educational charter authorizes.

Today, numerous charter schools exist statewide, although Oklahoma's charter school law has never been as as favorable to the growth of these cutting-edge, publicly popular schools as were the laws in, e.g., the states of Arizona or Arkansas. That may be changing.

Sen. Glenn Coffee (R-Oklahoma City), the Senate's president Pro Tempore, has announced that he will introduce legislation in 2010 to expand the state's charter school law and to make it legally possible for mayors in the state's two largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, to authorize new charter schools, as well. Currently, elected school boards must approve a new school's charter before a charter school can begin its operations. Coffee's bill would open up the process a bit by vesting mayors with this authority, too.

OFPC generally believes that charter schools are good for education, good for the children and parents they serve, and we commend Sen. Coffee for his willingness to help Oklahoma's children have more educational choices available to them through an expansion of current statutory law regarding charter schools in Oklahoma.

Interesting Lottery Article

Keith Hazelton penned an interesting article about the Oklahoma Lottery for the Oklahoma Gazette this week.

Hazelton, who is associated with the Meinders School of Business at Oklahoma City University, sounds some of the same themes Oklahoma Family Policy Council did when the state lottery was first being proposed by Gov. Brad Henry and later considered by the state's voters in 2004 (see our 2004 Oklahoma Voters' Guide).

Gambling may or may not be fun entertainment -- may or may not be moral, may or may not be a legitimate tool of economic development -- but it NEVER solves funding problems for public education; that's the experience of the other states that have approved lotteries, and it's becoming Oklahoma's experience, as well.

Click here to read Hazelton's piece in the Oklahoma Gazette.

Pro-Marriage Bills Highlighted at State Capitol

As noted in a previous blog post, OFPC Executive Director Mike Jestes, state legislators, and representatives of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative  participated in a state Capitol news conference on Tuesday afternoon.

The attendees discussed several pro-marriage bills, which are now working their way through the legislative process. The bills include HB 2279, by Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City); HB 2634, by Rep. Mark McCullough (R-Sapulpa); and HB 2543, by Rep. John Wright (R-Broken Arrow).

Kern's bill would end most instances of easy, no-fault divorce in Oklahoma based on incompatibility (if minor children are affected and spousal abuse is not an issue). McCullough's bill would require engaged couples to obtain at least eight hours of premarital counseling prior to being married. Rep. Wright's bill, which passed out of the House Judiciary Committee late Monday afternoon, would require estranged married couples to obtain one hour of counseling before they could file a petition for divorce.

All these bills -- rather than being meddlesome -- are intended to strengthen marriages in Oklahoma and help to lessen the incidence of family fragmentation, both prior to and after the marital union is established, and particularly when minor children will be negatively affected.

Patrick B. McGuigan with CapitolBeatOK.com features an account of the Tuesday news conference, which can be read by clicking here.