Marriage is a Dance

Candy and Barry dancing at Ashley’s wedding reception

I am having lots of fun teaching our current series called, “Let’s Dance” at GracePoint Church. It is a five-week marriage series that looks at 5 popular Ballroom dances that directly apply to marriage.

So far we’ve covered the Tango and the Waltz that communicated oneness and our God-given roles within marriage. It’s been fun and sometimes embarrassing to my teenage daughters whenever I’ve acted out dance steps to make my point. They will get over it… eventually.

Both Candy and I grew up in churches that frowned, big-time, on dancing. Moving your body to music was communicated as evil. Therefore, it was never a part of our lives. Then our first child entered the world. In short time, Ashley was moving and swaying to music we played in the house or car. She couldn’t help herself. We realized that God created music and bodies to move to music. This little one had no idea that she was teaching her parents a valuable lesson – dancing can be a good thing. She later grew up on the theater stage, acting and dancing to the glory of God. Now, are there inappropriate dances? Sure. Anything good from God is twisted by the evil one. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

In 2005, Candy and went on a cruise to the Bahamas. It was a parting gift from our church in California. We signed up for several Ballroom dance lessons on board. Although no one knew us or even cared, we both were a little nervous at our first dance lesson. (Old impressions are hard to escape from.) We ended up having a blast! A couple of years later, I surprised Candy with a Christmas present that included 7 weeks of Ballroom Dance lessons. Each and every week was a special date night for us. We learned, we laughed, and had so much fun!

One of my passions is to help marriages become healthy and happy. It’s what God has always desired for husbands and wives. Our culture has twisted marriage so far away from the original blueprints that marriage is not as valued or elevated as it once was. To many, marriage doesn’t work anymore. Maybe, just maybe, a Let’s Dance series might encourage couples to start dancing together again!

If you’d like to watch this series, you can click here and it will take you to our church Vimeo page.