Come to the Table

 Marriage SEMINAR
with

Calvin and Patience Sayler

Practical tools for couples who want to grow together

Authentic. Empowering. Applicable.

Rooted in Scripture and decades of counseling and lived experience.

Together, Calvin and Patience have in their retirement become Christian marriage speakers and couples’ retreat leaders.  Through their authentic approach, they communicate biblical truths of how to build your marriage on the foundation of God’s Word. Their careful application of Scripture, along with personal stories and practical tools, has been used by God to transform marriages and redirect families.

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN BOOKING a “Come to the Table” Marriage Event

When you fill out the contact form. Calvin will call you to talk through the details of your event. You and your team will be encouraged to look through the menu of sessions listed on this page. Please prayerfully consider which topics are most relevant to your organization’s needs. Calvin and Patience will help you with marketing ideas and resources for building excitement around the event you’re planning. Also, your event will be promoted through their growing social network. Just before your event, they will notify their Prayer Team to be praying for God’s blessing on the couples attending your marriage retreat or conference!

An elderly man and woman sitting at a wooden table with coffee mugs, smiling near a window in a cozy home setting.
Bring a Seminar to your Site

Calvin and Patience offer eight primary modules, with several specialized options.

Core Modules

An illustrated sign with a table and two chairs, each with a steaming cup of coffee. Text reads 'Come Back to the Table.'

Move from drift and distance toward conversation, partnership, and oneness.

An illustration of a road with two different paths, one dark and one light, leading to a sunrise between two trees, with the text "Two Histories, One Marriage" underneath.

  • How couples move from drift, distance, and discouragement toward partnership and oneness. Marriage is built one conversation at a time, and it is never too late for a couple to begin turning toward each other again.

    Key ideas:

    • The movement from isolation toward oneness

    • Marriage as a covenant life, not merely a feeling or status

    • Recognizing drift before it becomes distance

    • Creating a safe place for honest conversation

    • Hope for couples at every stage

Understand how two different histories shape one shared marriage.

  • Understanding how personality, family history, gender, expectations, and experience shape the way spouses see each other. It helps two good people understand why they can experience the same marriage so differently.

    Key ideas:

    • Family-of-origin patterns

    • Differences in communication and emotional processing

    • Expectations brought into marriage

    • How spouses misread each other

    • Replacing judgment with curiosity

    • Learning to understand before trying to correct

A square sign with rounded corners featuring a circular arrows diagram above the text 'Listen, Ask, Protect, Repair.'

Practice four essential skills for stronger conversations.

  • Four essential skills for building a stronger marriage one conversation at a time.

    • Listen to understand, not simply to respond

    • Ask clearly for what you need

    • Protect the friendship and emotional safety of the marriage

    • Repair the relationship when something has gone wrong

    This session is highly interactive. Couples will practice listening, asking a better question, making a clear request, and offering a repair.

Sign with two stylized mugs, one blue and one gold, with a heart shape between them, and the text 'Friends, Lovers, Lifelong Partners' underneath.

Protect the friendship, affection, enjoyment, and intimacy of marriage.

  • Why friendship is the emotional foundation of a lasting marriage—and how couples can rebuild it. This includes affection, enjoyment, emotional intimacy, romance, and intentional connection, its not just a session on date-night advice. But date-nights are good!

    Key ideas:

    • Knowing and continuing to discover your spouse

    • Turning toward instead of away

    • Protecting time and attention

    • Enjoying each other again

    • Affection, romance, and sexual connection

    • Rebuilding friendship after seasons of distance

    • Keeping lightness and humor in the marriage

Icon of a family with two adult figures and one child holding hands, along with the text 'Becoming Parents Without Losing the Marriage' and a small heart symbol.

Raise children while continuing to strengthen the partnership.

  • How couples can raise children, carry family responsibilities, and still protect their relationship.

    Key ideas:

    • How parenting squeezes the marriage

    • Exhaustion, resentment, and unequal burdens

    • Differing parenting styles

    • Presenting a united front

    • The emotional atmosphere of the home

    • The marriage as the trellis supporting the family

    • Strengthening “us” to stabilize the children

    • Parenting children without neglecting the partnership

    This could also be adapted for blended families or parents of teenagers.

A logo with two speech bubbles, one blue and one gold, forming a heart shape at the center. Below, text reads "Conflict Without Losing Us."

Tell the truth and disagree without damaging the relationship.

  • How to tell the truth, disagree honestly, and protect the marriage at the same time. Sometimes winning at your spouse’s expense is losing.

    Key ideas:

    • Recognizing destructive conflict patterns

    • Pursuing, withdrawing, yielding, controlling, and escalating

    • Emotional flooding and the need to pause

    • Criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling

    • Presenting a concern without attacking

    • Remaining on the same team while disagreeing

    • Repairing after conflict

Sign with an umbrella and two hands, with the text "Marriage Under Pressure" and a small heart.

Stay connected through change, stress, loss, illness, and crisis.

  • How couples stay connected through change, disappointment, stress, loss, and crisis.

    Key ideas:

    • How pressure exposes established patterns

    • Carrying burdens as partners

    • Responding differently to fear and stress

    • Staying emotionally connected during crisis

    • Supporting a spouse without trying to control them

    • Faith and fear existing together

    • Preparing the marriage before the crisis arrives

    • Living out “in sickness and in health”

Logo with a house outline, two interlocking rings, and a path leading to the house, with the text 'Building a Covenant Life' and a small heart beneath.

Create a shared life through decisions, sacrifice, faithfulness, and conversation.

  • How two people create a shared life through thousands of decisions, adjustments, and conversations.

    Key ideas:

    • Collaboration rather than competition

    • Negotiation as the way two lives become one life

    • Shared decisions, values, dreams, and direction

    • Spiritual oneness without requiring sameness

    • Character, humility, sacrifice, and faithfulness

    • Building a marriage that influences future generations

    • Choosing each other through every season of life

Marriage is not one decision made on a wedding day. It is a covenant life built through thousands of conversations.

  • Specialized or Optional Modules

    Forgiveness and Repair - How couples take responsibility, offer meaningful apologies, forgive without minimizing harm, and rebuild trust over time.

    Spiritual Oneness Without Sameness - How husbands and wives can encourage one another spiritually even when they pray, worship, process faith, or express spirituality differently.

    Intimacy Through the Seasons of Marriage - How emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy change through parenting, stress, health challenges, aging, and the empty-nest years.

    When One Spouse Finds Their Voice -  How silence, yielding, control, bluntness, and unequal influence affect a marriage—and how both spouses can become more fully present.

    The Home You Are Building -  How pace, technology, discipline, faith, emotional atmosphere, and soul care shape both the marriage and the family.

    The Second Half of Marriage -  How couples navigate the empty nest, retirement, aging parents, health changes, changing roles, and the opportunity to rediscover friendship and purpose.

  • Friday evening

    1. Come Back to the Table

    2. Two Histories, One Marriage

    Saturday morning

    1. Listen, Ask, Protect, Repair

    2. Conflict Without Losing Us

    1. Protect the Friendship

    Saturday afternoon

    1. Becoming Parents Without Losing the Marriage

    2. Marriage Under Pressure

    3. Building a Covenant Life

“We are not simply presenting marriage information. We are helping couples practice a different way of relating while they are in the room.”