We're Joseph and Crystal Gruber. We're not marriage counselors, or therapists, or any other such thing. We enjoyed life on teams as Catholic missionaries in FOCUS, and learned to enjoy life as teammates sometime after we got married. Team dynamics are a lot of what this membership is about, applied to the Catholic sacrament of matrimony, as well as unpacking the richness of the sacrament of matrimony in day-to-day living.

We're going to be sharing what we'll be doing in our town to build up marriages, as an example and possible blueprint for what other couples could do. 

But it's good to flip this question a bit, too: you'll be able to give so much more from this membership when the two of you work more and more like a team! Any virtual workshop we offer, we also distribute leader guides after the fact, so you can lead similar groups in your community!

We're heavily influenced by Pat Lencioni's work, specifically his book, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, as well as the Catholic Church's teachings on matrimony (Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, Pope John Paul II, and Diedrich von Hildebrand, especially).

That's pretty much up to you two. We think that many/most of the problems facing married couples can and should be solved by the married couples, so we want to give some principles to help you to do it, but honestly, the application is pretty well out of our hands.

If you're going through serious issues, we may not be able to help with those, or it may take much longer to experience what you would call 'success'. We're not licensed counselors, we're just practitioners of principles that have been handy for us and everyone we've taught so far...

I sure hope so. I (Joseph) wrote it all, and it's based on everything I've learned as a team director in FOCUS, during my master's degree education at the Augustine Institute, and walking with men for 15ish years, as well as my 12 years of marriage to my beautiful bride.

A lot of marriage material seems to be directed to help women, which is great; this is good for husbands and wives, hopefully about equally. One husband we taught mentioned how freeing it was to lead his wife and family this way, and another husband mentioned he couldn't imagine his marriage without what he learned from us.

It usually takes six months or so to get the hang of the basics, and we expect most couples would want to be part of the community for at least a year or so while they start accomplishing goals and working more closely together. We have a year's worth of content in monthly workshops, currently, and you'll likely want to stick around for it all.

We think the community will be exciting enough that you may want to stay much longer, but you're welcome to stay as long as it helps, and if and when you outgrow us, we'll be happy to point you to other helpful resources!

We are Catholics in good standing, and we're designing this for couples wanting to live more fully the sacrament of matrimony.

As right now, we don't have any official stamp of approval from our diocese, but we're new enough that that shouldn't be a surprise. Since 2009, Joseph has taken the oath of fidelity to the Magisterium every year either for his role in FOCUS or his role in founding/being on the board for a Chesterton Academy.