You will need to invite three or four couples to make up a group. Tell them a bit about Together and explain that the first meeting is an Introductory Session to give people some ideas of what Together is all about without any obligation to do the whole study. The Introductory Session is a ‘taster’ – it is less structured and there is no Bible discussion or Introductory Reading assignment. But it will help couples ‘dip their toe in the water’ as well as understand the format of future meetings. You can hand out invitations (which are available to download for free from the resources section) and point people to this website.
Couples need to feel comfortable about the whole idea of discussing marriage and meeting other couples from the potential group can help them decide if spending nine more evenings with the same people seems an appealing idea.
Some couples may be willing to commit to participating in a Together group before the Introductory Session and if this is the case you can order books for them. Other couples may not want to commit to buying the Together participants’ notebooks or participating for the duration of the study until they have attended the Introductory Session. In this case you can download the session material for participants from this website and hand out copies at your introductory meeting.
If couples are ready to commit at the end of the evening that’s great. You will be able to hand out participants workbooks if you have them, or take orders. We recommend that you also put a dates in the diary for future meetings. Download a meeting schedule to help you.
If people are NOT ready to commit, we suggest you put a preliminary date in the diary for the first session to show that you are committed. Ask the couples to discuss what they want to do privately and tell them that you will ring them in a few days to find out what they have decided. Follow up with a phone call within a week. You can arrange to hand out books individually before or at the first meeting (you can download the Introductory Reading for Session 1 from the website if you need it).
