Parish Resources
This page is designed to provide resources and materials for marriage formation and family life ministry that are of help to the parishes in the Diocese of Tyler. For more information on any of these items, please contact the Director of Family Life, Deanna Johnston.
Marriage Formation Documents
Witness To Love
What is Witness to Love?
Witness to Love is a renewal movement and an ethos centered around fostering community involvement in the marriage formation process that bears fruit for the entire parish community. It is a unique virtues-based system of marriage renewal and formation that prepares engaged couples for a sacramental marriage AND fosters their transition into a welcoming community of faith before and after they are married.
What makes Witness to Love different?
A unique differentiator of Witness to Love is that engaged couples are invited to choose their own mentors that they usually already know and trust (and which meet basic requirements). Both the engaged couple and the mentor couple are formed through this evangelization model. By allowing the engaged couple to choose their own mentor couple, a concrete connection and integration into the parish is developed.
Through the sharing of the mentor couples’ own marriage journey, the engaged couple inherits a “lifeline” of support in their commitment to Christ and the Church. The mentors are not tasked with teaching moral or sacramental theology but serve as powerful witnesses and guides, all the while growing in their own marriage through the development of virtue. Witness to Love enables the parish to build on this relationship to help rebuild trust between the engaged couple and the Church.
How to Get Started:
If you were unable to attend the live Diocesan Training for Witness to Love, here is how you begin implementing Witness to Love in your parish community.
- Visit the Witness to Love Website
- Order a Free Parish Review Pack (one per parish)
- Marriage Formation Coordinator/Team completes the Online Training (Contact the Family Life Office for our Diocesan discount code)
- Marriage Formation Coordinator or designated team member completes the training for the Prepare-Enrich Couple Assessment. This training can be completed online in English (see Family Life Office for our Diocesan Discount code) or live in English or Spanish.
- We also recommend that you contact the Family Life Office to schedule a marriage formation team meeting. Our Marriage Formation Specialist can work with the pastor and marriage formation team at your parish to make sure your team has everything they need to accompany couples through the marriage formation process.