Mark is married to Jo and is a 23 year old youth and schools worker based in South Cave (near Hull). Mark spent 4 years as a youth worker in Peterborough whilst studying for a degree in youth work & ministry with Oasis.
This morning I appeared on BBC Radio Norfolk alongside a lady from relationship counselling charity relate. I was invited onto the show yesterday after Dave passed my name on as both a youth worker and young person who is engaged so we spent 45 minutes with the host discussing ‘young people and marriage’.
Other than my radio slot for Slum Survivor which lasted about 5 minutes it’s the only radio I’ve done and it was good fun (although I felt a little like Alan Partridge!). It was an interesting discussion which they’d picked after reading a Daily Mail (eugh!) piece on a Christian charity doing relationship lessons in school and also several articles suggesting that marriage is back ‘in fashion’.
It was a good opportunity to think back to my marriage blog from a while ago and also think on the things which influence young people’s views of marriage such as broken homes and constant bad press with various celebrity marriages ending, often in a very messy way.
It was also good to re-explore the subject now I am in the position to be getting married rather than thinking about it in a hypothetical sense and I’m sure this blog will have lots more marriage things in the next year (hopefully later this week markandjoanna.co.uk will launch too!), the interview made me reflect on the positive view of marriage the church promotes to young people too and I hope God uses that message which I tried to get across this morning
If you would like to listen to the discussion listen to the last hour of this programme – link
Finally Italy posts will appear over the next week, I’m going to schedule them so I don’t post too much at once!
We listened intently to the interview.
Should have talked more about the earthquake I recon :p