Could (and should) Marriage and Family Counseling become a Gen Ed?

By Marcus McCormic, Staff Writer

While various sources will differ upon the most important questions of a Christian’s life, almost universally agreed upon being in the top ten is the question of marriage. Because of the prominence of this question, Marriage and Family Counseling, a biblical counseling course at The Master’s University, has become a very popular class for students of all majors to take during their tenure at TMU.

For the spring semester of 2024, the total number of students taking the class reached an all-time high at 116. This dramatic increase in the students’ desire to take the class has prompted the discussion of whether or not the class should be turned into a general education course.

According to Dr. Greg Gifford, associate professor of biblical counseling and the current professor of the course, “This is one of those classes that is immediately applicable to friendships and dating relationships. Many students are looking at marriage in the next few years. If it’s not immediately within their own personal life, it is for those that are around them.”

This practical applicability of the class is one of the reasons why Gifford believes the course has so many students that choose to enroll in it each semester.

“No one beyond the biblical counseling majors has to be there, so I might have 95 people that are there just because they want to be there,” Gifford said.

The current course curriculum is based on overviews of various topics involved in marriage, including the purpose of marriage, the roles in marriage, problems within marriages, communication, financial unity and conflict resolution.

With the teachings being almost immediately practicable, it’s easy to understand why students want the class to be turned into a general education course. As Gifford sees it though, turning the course would do more harm to the quality of students that he would teach and could change the class drastically.

“I would prefer for it to stay as it is, and not be a requirement because you get a different type of student… There’s a different type of learning experience when everybody wants to be in the class and they feel privileged to have gotten a seat,” Gifford said.

In addition to Gifford’s viewpoint, there are reasons on the academic side why turning the class into a general education courses would be difficult. Most universities designate around half of the credits required to graduate to be general education courses.

The purpose of this category of classes is to fulfill the idea of “liberal arts,” arts that free the mind from oppression. The entire teaching faculty is responsible for the courses that get selected to be gen eds through a process where they all collectively agree upon which classes students need to take.

TMU Provost Mitch Hopewell, said that the basis for which they select gen eds comes from Genesis 1 and Colossians 1. The philosophy begins in that man was made to have dominion over God’s creation, and creation is designed to glorify Jesus Christ.

“We want to give you as much breadth of education across that spectrum as possible,” Hopewell said. The courses are carefully selected to mirror the university in what it desires for the students to know before they go out into the working world.

“We affirm that we want all of our students to have a biblical understanding of marriage and family 100%… so it’s a question of ‘do we want our students to know that or to have the opportunity to learn that?’” Hopewell said.

The decision to add it to the gen ed curriculum would make it so that no students has a say in whether or not this class is one that interests them specifically. In addition to taking away the choice, adding another gen ed to the curriculum would increase the time it would take for most students to graduate because they now have another class that they would need to take.

Despite the complications of adding this class to the required courses for all students, Hopewell also added that he can understand what the positive messaging would be of doing as much.

“I think that it would place additional importance on that topic for students,” Hopewell said. However, even in this positive messaging from the university, the discussion seemed to tie into another question that Christians often need to consider.

“Marriage and family would sit squarely within the role of the local church to teach those things and to do more than teach them, but to disciple students through them,” Hopewell said.

At the very basis of the question, the importance of understanding marriage and family, according to Hopewell and Gifford, cannot be overstated, but the responsibility to teach the subject falls to the church more than the higher learning institution.

“If we’re looking at some standard of the Department of Higher Education… they’re not going to say you need to teach your students a biblical worldview of marriage and family, but from a practical equipping theological discipleship standpoint, I think yes,” Gifford said.

In the end, the desire to learn more about marriage and the family is one that is best cared for under the supervision of the church through discipleship.

The institution is more than welcome to teach the subject. But the place where a Christian can best learn the way a God-honoring marriage and family functions is in the local church, which can disciple and shepherd the individual, something the university is not designed to do.