The six-week leader's guide (PDF)
Free, and yours to print and copy. No email required.
This is Appendix B of CLEAVE, set for printing and free to copy for a group. It is the same guide that is in the book, so a leader working from the PDF and a participant working from their own copy are never on different pages.
Print it, mark it up, hand it round. There is nothing to buy here and nothing to sign up for.
One note before you run it from your own copy. The download carries the corrections made in the latest printing, so a few lines read differently from the Appendix B in earlier copies. They all run one way, toward protecting people in the room: Week Two’s exercise now says what to do if comparing temperaments with your spouse would not be safe, Week Four no longer describes a betrayed spouse’s unfinished forgiveness as something withheld, Week Two’s second question cites the right chapter, and the crisis lines at the back have gained two numbers. Where the download and your copy differ, use the download.
What the Six Weeks Cover
The study runs six sessions of about ninety minutes. Participants read a Part of the book before the session that discusses it, so the meeting is a conversation about reading already done rather than a lecture delivered cold.
Week One takes up Part One and the architecture of a covenant. Week Two covers the four temperaments, and pairs with the self-inventory in Appendix A. Week Three takes up the body in the covenant. Week Four is betrayal and repair, and is the heaviest session in the study. Week Five turns to what carries a marriage across decades, and Week Six closes on the Conclusion.
Each session follows one shape: a gathering question, a focus drawn from the week’s Part, a passage to read together, discussion questions, a private exercise for couples during the coming week, and a closing prayer. Week Four is the deliberate exception and opens without a gathering question, for reasons the guide explains in place.
Read the Leader Notes First
Four of them matter more than the session plans do, and one matters more than all the rest.
The group agrees, aloud and in the first session, that what is said in the room stays in the room. Marriage is the most intimate subject most people will ever discuss in a group setting, and no one speaks honestly without that assurance.
No one is required to disclose anything. A good marriage study does not press couples to confess private things in front of others, and several sessions carry a private exercise precisely so the most important conversations can happen between two people instead of twelve.
Not everyone in the room is married. The guide is written for couples, but a room may hold the single, the engaged, the widowed, the divorced, and the separated, and the guide says in each case how to adjust rather than leaving it to the leader to improvise.
And where there is danger, the group is not the venue. If a leader becomes aware that a participant is being abused or is in physical danger, that belongs in a private, immediate conversation directed toward pastoral help and, where needed, professional and legal protection. If a child may be at risk, the leader follows the law on reporting, which in many states binds clergy and church volunteers.
Have the Crisis Lines Before Week One
The last page of the guide is the crisis and help lines, printed there rather than buried in an appendix so a leader can find them without hunting.
Print that page separately and keep it with your own notes. I spent years on an identity and access service desk, and the one thing that never changed was that nobody opens with the real problem. They open with the thing that is easy to say, and the real problem arrives at minute nine, usually as an aside, usually while they are apologizing for taking up your time. A small group is the same room. The leader who has to go looking for a phone number at minute nine has already broken the moment.
For Churches and Counselors
Copy the guide for your group. Put it on a church drive. Print it for a couples’ retreat. No permission is needed for ordinary group use, and there is no licence to read. If you want to reproduce it somewhere public, or adapt it for a curriculum, write to permissions@calianapress.com and say what you have in mind.
The book itself carries more than this guide draws on: a temperament self-inventory for couples, guidance on when to seek a counselor, and pastoral letters written for the hardest hours of a marriage.