Key Takeaways

• Michael Gear, President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, and Pastor Kurt Weaver of the Church Ambassador Network appeared on Morning Light, a statewide Christian cable program, to discuss the new partnership with Communio and what it means for Pennsylvania churches.

• Pennsylvania ranks 34th in the nation for family stability. Just 53.4% of prime-aged adults are married, the fertility rate sits at 1.55, well below replacement, and more than 26,000 marriages ended in divorce in 2025 alone.

• The Communio model works upstream — not just for marriages in crisis, but for every marriage, normalizing the idea that strengthening your relationship is something healthy families do consistently, not just when things fall apart.

• In Jacksonville, Florida, a multi-year Communio initiative involving approximately 90 churches produced a measurable decline in the divorce rate and a 20% increase in church attendance.

• The partnership will equip churches across Pennsylvania through the Church Ambassador Network, giving pastors practical tools to reach their communities, strengthen marriages, and reduce the downstream social costs of family breakdown.

The Story: A Statewide Platform for an Urgent Message

Morning Light is not a niche podcast or an online publication. It is a live morning program broadcast on a statewide Christian cable channel, reaching Pennsylvania viewers across the Commonwealth with news, conversation, and perspective from a faith-based lens.

When Michael Gear, President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, and Pastor Kurt Weaver of the Church Ambassador Network sat down with the Morning Light team, they brought with them a message that cut through: Pennsylvania families are in trouble, the data is clear, and the Church has both the opportunity and the responsibility to lead the response.

The segment, which aired as part of the show’s family stability coverage, gave the new Communio partnership its most visible statewide platform yet, putting the initiative in front of a television audience of Pennsylvania pastors, church leaders, and families at exactly the moment when awareness matters most.

The Core Finding: The Numbers Tell a Sobering Story

Michael Gear wasted no time getting to the data.

Pennsylvania ranks 34th in the nation for family stability, according to the 2026 Family Structure Index — a national report produced by the Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies. The statistics behind that ranking are striking. Just over 53% of prime-aged Pennsylvania adults are married today. In 1960, that figure was nearly 90%. The fertility rate sits at 1.55, well below the 2.1 needed to sustain a population. More than 26,000 marriages ended in divorce in Pennsylvania in 2025 alone.

Gear made the human stakes plain: “When you have family breakdown, when you have fatherlessness, you see social pathologies across the board.” These are not statistics generated in a think tank. They represent families in Pennsylvania congregations every Sunday, carrying pressure and pain that the church is uniquely positioned to address.

Pastor Weaver added the pastoral dimension: many of these marriages and families crumble not because people stop caring, but because they lack the wraparound care and practical tools to succeed. “A lot of these marriages and families crumble under that pressure,” he said. “And that’s where churches can play a huge role in their communities by saying, we can help.”

The Counterintuitive Angle: Marriage Ministry Is Not Just for Broken Marriages

Here is the reframe that Pastor Weaver introduced on Morning Light, and that every pastor in Pennsylvania needs to hear.

The instinct when building a marriage ministry is to aim it at couples in crisis. The intervention model, the counseling referral, the emergency session with a pastor, these responses are valuable. But they reach a fraction of the marriages that actually need support, and they reach them too late.

One Ohio pastor working with Communio told his congregation directly: “This is not just for broken marriages. Our marriage ministry is not just for broken marriages. It’s for all marriages. What we do is we’re constantly working on our marriages.”

That framing changes everything. When a church normalizes investing in marriage as an ongoing practice rather than a crisis response, the stigma disappears. Couples engage before the damage is deep. Patterns are built before they calcify. And the church becomes a place where healthy marriages are formed and strengthened, not just rescued.

This is the model Communio brings to Pennsylvania churches through the Church Ambassador Network. Not a triage center for failing marriages, but a culture of relational formation where every couple has access to the tools, community, and gospel foundation that makes marriage thrive.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Morning Light segment captures something we see confirmed in every state partnership we build: when trusted local leaders go public with the data and the solution, churches respond.

The Jacksonville, Florida precedent that both Michael and Kurt referenced on the program is worth underscoring. In that multi-year initiative involving approximately 90 churches, Communio’s model produced a measurable decline in the divorce rate and a 20% increase in church attendance. As Pastor Weaver put it on air: “If you think about all the social services, if you think about foster care, addiction issues, homelessness, fatherlessness, all these social areas could really be healed by strengthening marriage and family. And that is the church’s role.”

For Pennsylvania pastors, the Church Ambassador Network is already in your state, already connected to the Communio partnership, and already equipped to help you get started. The tools are available. The pathway is proven. And the data, now shared publicly on a statewide television platform, makes the case better than any internal report could.

The question is not whether your congregation needs this. The question is when you will begin.

Take the Next Step

To learn more about the Pennsylvania Family Institute and Communio partnership, and how your church can get involved, visit PA Family Institute directly.

► Watch the Morning Light segment → youtu.be

► Learn more about the PA Family Institute and Communio partnership → pafamily.org

Credit: This post draws on the Morning Light television segment featuring Michael Gear, President and CEO of Pennsylvania Family Institute, and Pastor Kurt Weaver of the Church Ambassador Network, aired on Lighthouse TV. Transcript sourced directly from the segment.