His, Hers, Ours…Craig and Gina Morgan Support Subsequent Marriages | Help Blended Families Thrive

Jul 28

The subject has been addressed before, but it bears repeating. Divorced and/or remarried people fill our churches. Children from broken or blended homes attend our Sunday school classes. We hope their teens attend our youth programs. In fact, 113 million adults have at least one stepfamily relationship, according to Craig Morgan, who, along with his wife Gina, founded Blended Together Forever, a ministry created to offer hope, encouragement and support to members of blended families.

How does your church serve the needs of these families? Does your programming offer anything to help include these people whose heart’s desire is to overcome brokenness and successfully build a new family? If your church is like most, the idea of addressing blended families has been largely ignored, Craig said. Perhaps there’s a reluctance to seem as if the pulpit is condoning divorce, or a lingering prejudice from times past… whatever the case, blended families can feel a bit like pariahs in the place where they most need to feel accepted, loved and cared for.

That was the case for Craig and Gina Morgan when they married in 1996, blending his two children aged three and five with her four boys ranging in age from two to ten, and subsequently adding a biological son to the mix.

“You feel guilty regardless of what happened that the kids had to go through this process,” Craig said. “There’s shame that we deal with. Not every church is kind. We felt like we had the Big ‘D’ for Divorced on our foreheads – almost like modern day lepers. This is an attitude the church needs to get over. There’s no ‘second-class Christian.’ We’re all first-class sinners. Jesus didn’t leave the broken pieces on the floor. He picked them up.”

In 1998 the Morgans were asked to share the testimony of their blended family, which nudged their hearts to be more intentional about encouraging others.

“There’s a huge need, basically unaddressed, in the local church, that quite frankly we walked in. When we were called, we couldn’t find anybody, anywhere, any church trying to help blended families,” Craig said. “There’s a higher divorce rate the second time. We can’t assume they can just figure it out.”

The Morgans continued to feel the Lord impress upon them to share lessons they learned through trial and error with the hope that others would benefit from their experiences. Craig took his expertise and passion for recruiting and leadership training (a business in which he still is involved) and applied it to ministry. Gina and Craig founded Blended Together Forever in 2011 to stabilize blended families and help prevent re-divorce. The couple began teaching and speaking at churches around the Dallas/Fort Worth area where they make their home.

They wrote Building Blocks to Making the Family WHOLE Again, which was awarded a “People’s Choice Award” by the Christian Literary Association in 2019. Craig was greatly encouraged when the head of the organization told him, “We love your book.” They have since translated the content into a 16-week series that includes a leader’s guide, workbooks and video introduction called Sixteen Weeks to Building Blocks to Making the Family WHOLE Again. The book and video series can be used as an outreach by churches to support blended families in the community – and ultimately introduce them to Jesus. “We have even seen people find the Lord through our ministry. The program can appeal to those who wouldn’t walk into church cold,” Craig added.

The Morgans schedule their speaking engagements through Blended Together Forever, which also publishes a blog and podcast and maintains a database of events and churches that specifically foster communities in which blended families can find support and fellowship.

“There’s a huge need, basically unaddressed, in the local church, that quite frankly we walked in. When we were called, we couldn’t find anybody, anywhere, any church trying to help blended families.”

— Craig Morgan

“We saw the need and wanted to put together something to help other blended families not make the same mistakes we did,” Craig said. “We were blind. We felt like we were the pioneers who got the arrows in our backs. We knew we were called, but it was painful.” Gina compared some of the initial work of going back into their story to the pain of ripping a Band-Aid off a wound.

From the beginning, Gina and Craig realized blended families experience obstacles first marriages never even consider.

“Craig and I both married thinking our marriages would last a lifetime. We know it’s tough,” Gina said. “We empathetically get it because we have walked it and lived it. There’s a real, deep emotional connection.”

Have you ever watched the movie, Yours, Mine & Ours, with Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo? Remember how each spouse identified with their own children and parenting styles, causing confusion and dissention, if not outright mutiny!

While they didn’t have to wrangle 18, the Morgans realized their own share of disconnect when their kids came together under the same roof. Loyalty was a quagmire. Each spouse tended to side with their biological children during conflict.

“The relationships triangulate, with one always asking the question, ‘Are you going to be loyal to me?’ And the other parent is caught in the middle, always,” Craig said. “Until we all get on the same page and the same team, it’s easy to divide and conquer over the blood lines every time there’s stress or conflict.”

And you can imagine, with seven children in the house together, there certainly were places to rub… One day Gina tearfully explained the pain her kids had experienced. “Craig always had had his dad. How would he feel if he were my kids, whose father was not intentional in their lives?” “There are some things that really needed to be unpacked and understood, and it takes time.” Craig said.

Blended families navigate different roads to make their family whole again. In the nuclear family, the spouse comes first, Craig said. In blended families, the children have come first. For example, as a divorced dad, Craig’s kids competed to see who got to ride “shotgun” in the front seat in the car. That worked well until he and Gina married, and the kids still wanted to ride in the front seat. “They’ve already been through some pain and change and have gotten comfortable with the new normal. Now they have to change again,” he said. Spouses need to be on the same page about a realignment to elevate the spouse. The marriage can’t take a backseat – it has to be in the front seat.

Another unexpected issue – birth order. Craig realized when the kids all came together that his older child, who was used to being the firstborn, now had stepsiblings older, supplanting that position. He needed to be sensitive to his son’s feelings as they transitioned.

Navigating ex-spouses poses another stumbling block. The traditional marriage piece of the puzzle with the ex-spouse has ended, Craig said, but not the parenting piece. The Morgans address the influence of the ex and the “different” rules at their houses. They use the term “cooperative colleagues” to emphasize that both parents should stay focused on the best interests of the kids. Even the Morgans’ “bio” child was affected by his step siblings’ arrangements. From his perspective, he got “jipped” because he “only” had one set of parents while the other brothers and sisters had two, Craig relayed.

Blended Together Forever suggests blended families cast a new vision for the new family. “Too many people get mired in the minutia and don’t know where they are going,” Craig said. “It is important for the couple to feel like they are going someplace new, someplace that’s good, where they celebrate new traditions and new victories.”

Holidays especially can be highly emotional and remind family members of loss. “When Gina and I got together, I hated Christmas,” Craig said. “We needed to do creative, different, unique things that were especially about us that we didn’t do in a previous life.”

As the Morgans’ seven children are mainly grown and starting families of their own, including six grandchildren, the family has created their own special holiday to celebrate together – Thanksmas.

Here’s a story of James and Monica Shaw who found support through Blended Together Forever.

We have been truly blessed by Craig and Gina. In the first year of our marriage, we were going through very tough times. We met Craig and Gina at a couples’ conference. Shortly after that conference we attended their retreat. It was there we were able to get step-by-step guidance on how to handle situations that only blended families face. Understanding biblically how God has orchestrated our marriage was an eye-opener for us. We were able to walk away with an understanding of how our marriage needed to be realigned, how to handle co-parenting issues and be Godly stepparents. We see Craig and Gina as our mentors and have used the resources from Blended Together Forever to navigate the past 10 years of our marriage. We know that their support has helped us battle some tough times in our marriage, and we are thankful for their love for marriages and always being there for us.

Like the motto for Blended Together Forever, the Morgans themselves create a new path for their family - one of relentless love and overflowing grace; a marriage worth repeating for generations to come.