Key Takeaways

1. Pennsylvania recorded more than 26,700 divorces and annulments in 2025 — and the Pennsylvania Family Institute and Communio have launched a statewide initiative to equip churches to respond.

2. According to the 2026 Family Structure Index, just 53.4% of prime-aged Pennsylvania adults are married, and only 61.9% of teens are being raised in homes with married parents.

3. The initiative will be deployed through the Pennsylvania Family Institute’s Church Ambassador Network — a statewide network connecting pastors and positioning local churches as the primary solution to family breakdown.

4. Communio founder J.P. De Gance is clear: too often, couples don’t get help until the damage is already deep. The goal is to get churches involved earlier — before crisis, not after.

5. Hundreds of Pennsylvania churches are expected to participate by 2030, using a data-driven model that has already produced 24% average growth in Sunday attendance in partner churches nationwide.

The Story: A Number That Should Trouble Every Pennsylvania Pastor

More than 26,700 Pennsylvania families ended in divorce or annulment in 2025 alone.

That figure — reported this week by MyChesCo, a Chester County news outlet covering the statewide initiative — represents more than a statistic. It represents tens of thousands of children whose home lives changed overnight. Tens of thousands of individuals navigating grief, upheaval, and uncertainty. And tens of thousands of moments when the church either showed up — or didn’t.

In response, the Pennsylvania Family Institute and Communio have jointly launched a statewide initiative to equip churches across the Commonwealth to strengthen marriages, support families, and intervene before couples reach the point of no return. The effort will be deployed through Pennsylvania Family Institute’s Church Ambassador Network, a statewide infrastructure connecting pastors and positioning local congregations to lead measurable family renewal in their communities.

The urgency behind the initiative is grounded in data. According to the 2026 Family Structure Index, Pennsylvania ranks 34th in the nation for family stability. Just 53.4% of prime-aged adults in the state are married. Only 61.9% of teens are being raised in homes with married parents. These are not abstract trends playing out somewhere else. They are the lived reality of families sitting in Pennsylvania pews every Sunday.

The Core Finding: Couples Aren’t Getting Help Until It’s Too Late

The central insight driving this initiative is one that J.P. De Gance, founder and president of Communio, stated plainly in the MyChesCo report: too often, couples don’t get help until the damage is already deep.

This is the pattern Communio has observed across hundreds of church partnerships nationwide. The couples who show up for counseling are typically couples already in crisis — navigating separation, repeated conflict, or the quiet devastation of emotional distance that has built up over years. By the time they ask for help, the relational deficit is significant.

What’s missing in most churches isn’t care — it’s early intervention. A clear, proactive pathway that reaches couples not when they’re falling apart, but when they’re still standing. Skills-based marriage education. Community events that normalize investing in your relationship. A church culture where asking for support is seen as wisdom, not weakness.

Kurt Weaver, executive director of the Church Ambassador Network, captured the gap precisely: many churches want to help, but they need a clear pathway that is practical, proven, and sustainable. That’s exactly what this initiative is designed to provide.

Communio-supported churches nationwide have already demonstrated what’s possible. Churches partnering with Communio for 12 to 24 months average 24% growth in Sunday attendance. Among couples engaged in intensive programs, 74% report high or complete satisfaction in their marriages afterward. And tens of thousands of people attend Communio-supported outreach events each year — many of them coming from outside the church entirely.

The Counterintuitive Angle: Divorce Prevention Is Church Growth Strategy

Here’s the framing most pastors haven’t considered.

Strengthening marriages isn’t just compassionate ministry. It’s one of the most effective church growth strategies available — because the health of the families in a congregation directly determines almost everything else: attendance consistency, volunteer retention, children’s faith engagement, and the church’s reputation as a trusted anchor in its community.

When marriages are strong, families are stable. When families are stable, parents show up consistently. Children remain engaged. Households have the margin to serve, give, and invite others in. The internal culture of the church shifts from crisis management to flourishing.

Conversely, when marriages are breaking down — quietly, beneath the surface, in the homes of people sitting in the third row every Sunday — the downstream effects compound. Attendance becomes irregular. Families pull inward. The burden on pastoral staff grows. And the witness the church offers to the surrounding community weakens.

Divorce prevention, in this light, isn’t a social services program. It’s the upstream work of church health. And the Pennsylvania initiative is built on exactly that conviction: that when churches invest in marriages before they break, everything around those marriages gets stronger too.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, Pennsylvania represents a model that every pastor in every state should be paying attention to.

The data in Pennsylvania mirrors what we see across the country. In nearly every zip code, a significant portion of couples are navigating strain they haven’t named yet. Young adults are delaying marriage or avoiding it altogether. Families are under pressure that the church is uniquely positioned to address — but only if it has a strategy that goes beyond occasional programming and reactive care.

The Pennsylvania Family Institute’s Church Ambassador Network is showing what it looks like when a statewide infrastructure gets behind this work. But the model doesn’t require a statewide network to work. It works in a single congregation — with a pastor who decides that marriage and family ministry is going to be a strategic priority, not an afterthought.

Think about the couples in your church right now. The newlyweds still building their foundation. The mid-life couples drifting under the weight of children, work, and unspoken disappointment. The marriages that are one hard season away from a crisis no one saw coming. These families don’t need a sermon about commitment. They need a church that shows up with a pathway — before the damage is deep.

That is what Communio is built to help churches do. And Pennsylvania is proving it works.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches across Evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic contexts to build data-informed marriage and family ministry — proven to strengthen congregations and renew communities.

► Read the full MyChesCo article → mychesco.com

► Learn more about the Pennsylvania initiative → communio.org/pa-family-policy

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Timothy Alexander for MyChesCo, the 2026 Family Structure Index, and Communio’s nationwide church partnership data. Read the original MyChesCo article here.