When society’s families are intact, its churches fill, too

A featured speaker at the 2022 Summit East, Jan. 27-29 in Amelia Island, FL is president and CEO of Communio, J. P. De Gance – who will show how the family is key to rebuilding society and the Church through healthy marriage, and healthy perception of God.

Communio (www.communio.org) is a learning and marketing-support service for Catholic and Protestant churches across the country, based in Alexandria, VA. It equips churches at the grassroots level to bring more souls to Christ by evangelizing and discipling relationships and marriages. At the Summit, De Gance will speak on “Rebuilding a Culture of Marriage.” He’s been a popular presenter on the topic at Legatus events nationwide.
A graduate of the University of Florida, De Gance initially worked in Washington, D.C. to “save the world.” He was at The Leadership Institute, which trains conservative political activists – for Koch Industries and its Americans for Prosperity, and for the Philanthropy Roundtable and its Culture of Freedom Initiative. Perceiving the restoration and strengthening of the traditional family to be key to improving society, he founded Communio in 2018.

A co-author of Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America, De Gance is Catholic and he and his wife, Christina, have eight children. His brother is a Catholic priest.

What led you to shift from politics to the restoration of marriage and family?

In a story I relate in Endgame, my sister Danielle was in an abusive marriage which failed. She and her four children became homeless and moved in with my family. It was a huge moment for me. I saw what happens when kids lose a mom and a dad. I saw this in other failed marriages as well. It’s a mistake to think we can save the country by politics alone; we need stronger marriages and churches.

The collapse of marriage is a widespread problem. Fewer people are getting married, and more children are growing up outside intact family homes. In fact, 54 percent of children will reach age 17 without married parents, due to either birth out of wedlock or divorce. This is an existential threat to the Church and society as a whole.

While the government can do a lot of things to make marriage worse, the government can’t solve the problem. The solution has to come through the Church.

How does Communio help?

When we contract with a church, we survey its membership and its church registry to get an idea of the state of relationships among its attendees. On average, we find that 24 percent of married people tell us their marriages are struggling. We then work with the church leadership to unpack the data we’ve accumulated and to develop a strategy to reach goals the church wants to see — such as more couples preparing for marriage, or more young people attending church. We supply a calendar that serves as a game plan for the church to implement, with outreach events and ongoing enrichment activities, and then support the church with follow-up consulting. We currently work with 100 churches across the country, and we have achieved many successes.

Do you believe stronger marriages lead to improved church participation?

The single biggest factor driving the collapse of faith in our country is the collapse of marriage. Whereas we know millennials and Gen Zs are the most secular and least likely to attend church, when they have grown up in a home with parents who stay married, they are just as likely to attend church as baby boomers.

Today, the family structure has collapsed, and the collapse of faith has followed. The only way we can reverse this trend is by fixing the family, which is our focus at Communio.