Living Together by Jeff VanGoethem

Book Review by Rev. Austin Miles
October 31, 2006

(AgapePress) - Attention please! Attention please! Living together is a test. This is ONLY a test. Had this been an actual commitment, numerous world problems would have been eliminated. Stay tuned for further instructions from the Kregel handbook,
 
 Living Together -- A Guide to Counseling Unmarried Couples, by Jeff VanGoethem.

According to the author of this excellent and needed work, 50 to 60 percent of marriages now involve couples who have lived together and are living together when they seek a minister to marry them.
 
As a chaplain who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, I find the percentage even higher.
 
Many couples are pregnant or already have children when they make their wedding plans.

Over the past 25 years, "living together" has morphed into an alternative to marriage. Even though this arrangement is embraced by an increasingly secular world, it remains a thorny issue for parents, for counselors -- and especially for pastors.
 
Compounding the challenge has been the dearth of available resource material for guidance in dealing with cohabiting couples ... until now, that is.

more on this article at ........ http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/312006g.asp