Become a Mentor Couple

Accompany those preparing for marriage.

Passionate about marriage and want to help couples build vibrant marriages?

Eager to strengthen and enrich your own marriage?

Want to build a better world for your children and their future families?

MENTOR AN ENGAGED COUPLE!

If you are in a valid Catholic marriage and would like to support engaged couples, consider becoming a Mentor Couple!

Mentor couples are more than five years married (or a SL Engaged graduate of 3+ years) who accompany an engaged couple as they journey towards Catholic marriage.

As a SmartLoving Mentor Couple your role is to provide emotional support, encouragement and practical wisdom to an engaged couple. Meetings with your engaged couple take place after they have completed each lesson and you simply work your way through the discussion guide to spark dynamic conversation and share your experience of married life.

The Archdiocese of Washington requires all Mentor couples to attend a Mentor Orientation workshop, please contact: [email protected] to find out when the next orientation workshop will be held.

In the meantime, you can enroll as a participant in the Mentor course and make your way through the lessons. The Mentor course is a duplicate of the Engaged course modified specifically for you. Mentor resources and lesson-by-lesson tips are provided along with couple activities designed to enrich your relationship and give you first hand insight into what your engaged couple is discovering.

You can work collaboratively with the Office of family life team at the Archdiocese of Washington, as well as your local parish priest, deacon, parish marriage coordinators and other local Mentor Couples for practical support.

Got questions?

Watch the Orientation Webinar recording below.

You can also read our FAQs at the bottom of this page or email: [email protected] with any additional questions.

Mentor Orientation Webinar Recording

Upcoming Webinars

What Mentor Couples are Saying

“We’ve been running marriage preparation for years and we're reluctant to switch over. So glad we did. This is a brilliant course, and it’s really easy to get up to speed on the new content.”

Celine & Richard

“We loved our marriage seminar and got so much out of it. It was so good, we didn’t think it could be topped. Then we started mentoring engaged couples and we’ve been blown away by how much more we’ve got out of it. It’s brought us so much closer.”

Belinda & Mark

“We knew the theory of being a sacrament, but we didn’t really experience it until we became Mentors. Seeing how those young engaged couples respond, week after week, to our personal sharings allowed to experience our sacrament having a direct impact.”

Simon & Gabrielle

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All The Facts

Welcome!

So you’ve been asked to accompany an engaged couple through the SmartLoving course. Thank you for your generosity – you will make all the difference their experience. You also will get a great deal out of it yourselves and you can check out some of the testimonials from Mentor couples on the SL website.

You’ve probably got quite a few questions so let me explain how it works. Click any tab below.

How do I get access to the online course?

How do I log in?

Why go online for marriage prep?

SL Engaged was first developed as a face-to-face course designed to be delivered by a trained mentor couple to one engaged couple at a time. The curriculum can also be adapted for use with groups and many dioceses and parishes around the world have done this. Run over 6 sessions of 2-2.5 hours each, this course includes approx. 20 mins of DVD content in each session. Mentors are trained to present additional content not covered on the DVDs.

In 2016 we adapted the curriculum for a fully online delivery. We redistributed the content over nine lessons of approx. 1.5 hours each and incorporated the unit on fertility management (run as a take home activity in the face-to-face version). We used the same content and videos, and made additional videos and audio explanations to cover the material in the course that is usually presented by the mentor.

What is the online platform like?

From your ‘dashboard’ click 'Go' on the Mentor course to see an overview of the lessons.

Lesson 0 has introductory notes and a registration form. Please complete this so that we can keep in touch with updates to the course.
Lessons 1-9 are the course itself and this is exactly the same as the Engaged version of the course with some important differences:
- The engaged version has a progression lock so that couples are required to do the course in order,
- Time locks so that they are required to spend a minimum of 1 hour active in the platform before the lesson quiz activates.
- An 80% pass in the quiz is required to unlock the next lesson.
- And at the end of the course (Lesson 10) the couple has an online assessment which they both complete. This generates a PDF of their completion certificate and a report with their answers for their celebrant.
The Mentor course has no progression lock, no time locks, and no final assessment. We left the quizzes in place so that you could have some fun with them, but you don’t need to get an 80% pass to move on (phew!).
In addition, we've also added tips and tricks to support you as you progress. These include a summary of each lesson, the key learning objectives, as well as issues that sometimes come up in this topic and how to handle them.

What does the Mentor role involve?

You and your engaged couple simply do the course in parallel in your own time and in your own homes, meeting up to discuss what you have learned using the discussion guides provided for each lesson.

We recommend you pace the course at one or two lessons per month so that the course can be completed within 4-8 months allowing for a few skipped weeks with illness or travel.

As the course has practice tools to do between lessons, it is not practical for couples to do more than one or two a month without compromising the learning experience. Where necessity requires a compressed time frame, we rely on local Mentors to make a sensible judgement about how to best support the engaged so that they can approach their marriage vows properly formed.

Mentor Course vs Engaged Course

What’s the difference?

The two courses are identical in content and structure. The Mentor course however has no time locks or progression locks and no assessment at the end of the course. Nor do Mentors need to gain 80% to pass the lesson quizzes – phew!

As there is NO completion certificate for the Mentor course, it is not suitable for engaged couples and may not be used as a substitute for the Engaged course.

In addition, the Mentor course includes exclusive insider tips to support you in your role.

Do we need workbooks?

When do we meet the engaged couple?

The ideal is to meet up after every lesson, in the Mentors' home with just the two couples. However, you can also meet less frequently covering two lessons at once if required.

You can also meet in a different location such as at the parish, in a park or café.

For couples who live remotely or are travelling, these meetings can also be done over video conference if necessary.

And some parishes prefer to meet in groups with several engaged couples at once, perhaps with the priest also in attendance, for some or all the meetings.

The point is, the meetings are completely flexible in terms of your scheduling and format.

What do we do in the meetings?

Make sure that the engaged couple has completed the lesson before getting together. If they haven’t, we recommend you reschedule as they won’t be prepared for the discussion.

When you get together, after the usual catch up and sharing in hospitality, say the prayer together from the Lesson. Then simply use the ‘Discussion Questions’ at the end of the Lesson to stimulate conversation. Be prepared to share meaningfully of your own life and experience and encourage both fiancé’s to share their thoughts and discoveries. Allow about an hour for this discussion, more if you are covering more than one lesson.

A detailed guide to the meetings is listed in the Mentor course. You’ll also get an email from us each time you complete a lesson with tips and insights for you to use in your discussions.

What if they ask a question we don't know how to answer?

This happens to us all at some stage and it’s perfectly ok to simply say that you don’t know.

For technical problems with the platform, get them to use the ‘Help Centre’ on the course platform and our team will help get it sorted out.

For questions that relate to the content of the course, they can also use the comment box or send us a question from the Help Centre. You can also do some research and come back to them with a response or refer them to your parish priest.

What happens if a serious issue comes up?

If serious issues surface it’s important to remember that it is not your role to be a counselor to this couple. Even if you have counselling qualifications, we recommend that you be clear that you are not in a professional counselling capacity.

If you are not sure how to handle a situation, there are a couple of things you can do. Please refer to the Pastoral Care guidelines in the Mentor course and if appropriate, confidentially consult your parish priest, or contact us via [email protected] for advice or the Archdiocese of Washington Office of Family Life at [email protected]

What happens at the end of the course?

At the conclusion of the course, your couple will complete their final assessment which generates a certificate and report with their answers. This is emailed as a PDF to them and to their celebrant. The celebrant may want to meet with all four of you, or with just the engaged couple.

Although it is not required, we recommend that you follow up with your engaged couple after the wedding to make sure that they know they have someone they can turn to if they experience difficulties.

What's next?

For now, you’re done. But if you’ve enjoyed the journey, there’s nothing to stop you from sponsoring another engaged couple. Or you may be interested in other online courses on the SL platform such as The Marriage Kit, Newlywed, BreakThrough or Fertility. Many of our courses come with Leader notes designed support group experiences in a parish or other setting.

In addition, many parishes use SL to build a parish marriage ministry using the Mentor course to renew the marriages of parish couples and build a support network for the newlyweds and indeed for all couples. SmartLoving has additional resources to support parish groups who want to meet regularly to support each other and grow even more in their relationship.

Haven't found the answer you're looking for?

Become a Mentor Couple

Accompany those preparing for marriage.

MENTOR AN ENGAGED COUPLE!

If you are in a valid Catholic marriage and would like to support engaged couples, consider becoming a Mentor Couple!

Mentor couples are more than five years married (or a SL Engaged graduate of 3+ years) who accompany an engaged couple as they journey towards Catholic marriage.

Mentor Orientation Webinar Recording

What Mentor Couples are Saying

Ready to Start?

Become a Mentor Couple

Create your SmartLoving Account

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