| dc.description.abstract | God instituted the marriage institution immediately at the end of the creation
week (Gen 2:24). This institution was set as a model that human beings should follow
in order to fulfill God’s requirements for generations to come. God’s purpose in
marriage is that a woman and a man united together in covenant relationship will live
together as long as they both shall live provided they follow the guidelines given to
them by their maker.
The marriage vows would bind them together in sacred bond that no man
should separate. However, in the Saints Adventist Church in Seychelles, many
couples are continuously contemplating divorce, young girls are having children
before getting married and church members are getting married with non-SDAs.
The Saints Church in Seychelles have experienced significant challenges in
terms of marital relationships whereby many active members at some time were lead
into practices which have not brought glory and honor to God. God’s Church worldwide including the Saints Adventist Church in the Seychelles Mission in the
Indian Ocean has a high moral responsibility in defending the biblical principles in
family life with the advantage of having principles from the Bible and inspired
commentary from the writings of Ellen G. White.
The context of this small state country with a population of not more than
100,000 favors strong external influences within the community. Many members
now, especially the young ones who accepted the faith and come into the new
community of believers were faced with the pressure of past unbiblical cultural
relationship practices. Hence the urge of proper education to young adults and
adolescents seemed crucial and timely.
This project examined the situation of the Saints SDA Church so as to find
lifelong solutions towards the existing unfavorable trend.
The researcher asked the church clerk at the Saint’s SDA Church to distribute
100 questionnaires to 100 members. Among the members who received the
questionnaires care was taken to make sure that all the members were baptized
members from the Saint’s SDA church only. There were young people, middle age
and elderly, married spouses, singles, divorcees, widows and widowers, spouses with
or without children, and young people contemplating marriage. Gender sensitivity
was also taken care of during the selection process.
Only 55 copies of the questionnaire distributed came back from the members.
This represented 55% of the total distributed. Furthermore, among the 55 collected
only 37 (67.3%) were filled as they should.
Besides filling of the questionnaires there were 25 spouses who were selected
for interview. The following were considered in the selection: young men and women
contemplating marriage, recently married spouses with and without children; spouses remarried after divorce, and divorced spouses with children. The interview was
carried out following appointments with the selected spouses in the list after sending a
letter of appointment.
Results showed that failures in marital issues in families in Seychelles were
due to weak foundations in the family relationships and thus required immediate
remedial approaches to change the direction of the trend. | en_US |
