Love is in the air, spring is almost here and along with it, the “ring by spring” season that is so popular here at Ouachita. With so many budding relationships, engagements and marriages right here on campus, the Ben and Betty Elrod Center for Family and Community wants to prepare students to make these relationships last with Healthy Relationships Week.
The Elrod Center will sponsor the annual Healthy Relationships Week March 4-10, which consists of various speakers, breakout sessions, dinners and more all geared towards equipping students currently in relationships and single students to maintain healthy relationships in their future.
Healthy Relationships Week first began over 20 years ago as “Marriage and Family Week” when a foundation chose to provide funding for a program to prepare college students for strong marriages in the future.
Interestingly, this foundation has always chosen to remain anonymous, although they have been funding Healthy Relationships Week through the Elrod Center since the beginning.
“Part of our mission at the Elrod Center is to strengthen families,” said Judy Duvall, assistant director of the Elrod Center. “We want to start early by equipping and teaching college students how to have healthy relationships. Good relationships don’t just happen. They take practice and skill and we want to do all we can to help our students know how to do this long before they are in a married relationship.”
To accomplish this, the Elrod Center brings in speakers who are in successful marriages and can pass on their wisdom. This year’s primary speaker, Michael Johnson, has been married to his wife Julie for over 20 years, and is a founder of an organization called Future Marriage University, a group that began as a small Bible study in Johnson’s home, and focuses on preparing young people for healthy marriages.
“My mom gave me a marriage book Christmas of my junior year of college, and at that time, I had no relationship and no ‘love chemicals’ flooding my brain, so I was able to grasp everything that book had to communicate,” Johnson said. “I remembered thinking, ‘Who would want to wait until they were stuck in a miserable marriage to learn this stuff?’ So after 10 years of marriage I felt like God wanted me to go back and create a class to trick other young people into doing what my mom tricked me into doing.”
Johnson hopes his talks during Healthy Relationships Week will go “beyond just sex and salvation” and the typical things young people are taught about marriage in church, and rather focus on the many truths about successful relationships that students have not already heard.
“We simply want to prepare OBU students for relational success when it counts: before you fall in love,” said Johnson. “We call it love education. It’s the essential missing link between the sex education you get in middle school and the premarital counseling you won’t get until you’re coupled up. It’s the wise individual who seeks it out, whether marriage is a deep desire or a vague curiosity.”
The Elrod Center also chooses to sponsor Healthy Relationships Week to engage students with volunteer opportunities that will allow them to participate actively in their community, including set up/break down of events, decorating, baking, and more.
Students who are interested in volunteering or want more information about Healthy Relationships Week can contact Duvall at duvallj@obu.edu.
Healthy Relationships Week Schedule:
Friday, March 1 — Saturday, March 2
Engaged and Married Couples Retreat (Jeff and Mary Sanders, Bethel Seminary) | Wingate Hotel, Little Rock
Monday, March 4
Noonday (Kevin and Erin Coleman) | Berry Chapel, noon
Tuesday, March 5
All Sessions: Essentials for Relational Success (Michael Johnson, Relationship Expert)
Chapel (Life Lessons: Contentment, Trust & Discernment) | JPAC, 10 a.m.
Lunch (Further Discussion and Q&A) | Alumni Room in Caf, 12:15 p.m.
Breakout Session (Life Disciplines: God’s Word, Community & Prayer) | Berry Chapel, 4 p.m.
Dinner for Engaged and Married Students | Honeycomb Restaurant, 6 p.m.
Breakout Session (Life Decisions: Making Peace with your Past & Giving your Future to God) | Berry Chapel, 9 p.m.
Wednesday, March 6
Noonday (Ray and Ardith Franklin) | Berry Chapel, noon
Breakout Session (Dan Jarboe, Relationships That Work) | Elrod Center, 4 p.m.
PJ’s and Pizza (Girls Only) (Tiffany Eurich, What to Do When Prince Charming is Taking His Own Sweet Time) | Elrod Center, 9 p.m.
Thursday, March 7
Refuge (Scott and Katie Haynes) | Second Baptist Church, 9 p.m.
Friday, March 8
Noonday (Lee and Deb Miller) | Berry Chapel, noon
