About Marriage Works

Owen & Pamela Blackburn were married in Auckland, New Zealand in 1968.

They have been members of LIFE since 1995 and were asked to head up the church's premarriage programme in 2000.

With a vision for the benefits such a programme could bring to couples all over New Zealand as they started married life together, they named the programme “Marriage Works” and set out to add to the material already available.

In the first 4 years, hundreds of couples in LIFE and throughout New Zealand used the programme to prepare for marriage.

With a vision to expand the programme beyond New Zealand shores, Owen & Pamela rewrote and enlarged the manual and now the material is available worldwide.

They believe that whether a couple is engaged, seriously dating, co-habiting or even recently married (without the benefit of any premarriage education), such relationships will all benefit from this material.

Owen and Pamela don't believe that anyone stands at the altar on their wedding day, not caring how long their marriage will last. “We believe that every couple wants their marriage to last a lifetime or they wouldn't waste time and money getting married.”

This is borne out by the feedback from of the couples that complete the Marriage Works programme.

Here is some of that feedback:

“Would we recommend this course to others? Yes, without a doubt! Everyone should do it!!”

“The mentor couple were absolutely wonderful. We felt continually blessed by their openness and preparation.”

“The communications session helped us the most.”

“The single most helpful aspect of this course was having an unbiased couple who were able to facilitate discussion.”

“The questionnaire prior to beginning the course made us think of and discuss things we hadn't thought of.”

“It got us talking about issues.”

”It showed we are very compatible.”

“The course brought up topics that needed discussion and provided us with teaching on those things.”

(Click here for more testimonials )