At 70 and 68 years old and with 48 years of marriage under their belts, Ron and June Travis are not yet ready to put a halt on the ministry God has given them.
“So I wrote a book,” said Ron Travis, a member of Liberty Park Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, who, along with his wife, has been teaching newlyweds how to establish and maintain healthy marriages since the late 1960s. To date, they have discipled nearly 100 couples.
“But we didn’t write this book to be a No. 1 best seller all over the world,” he added. Rather, the book — “The Synergistic Life Style: How to Set Goals and Live a Balanced and Abundant Life” — is designed for the Travises’ teachings to help new couples through 6–8 month Bible studies in local churches.
And according to Rick Ellison, “They are a couple that’s had a wonderful impact on younger people (and) could help any church looking to do that type of ministry.”
Ellison is an associate in the office of Sunday School for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions who helped the Travises establish a newlywed class at Valleydale Baptist Church, Birmingham.
“I don’t think we have the strength to teach more classes,” Ron Travis said. So designing a set of material — into a 254-page book — that someone else can teach was the best way to “get a lot more classes started” with the goal being to teach young couples about the importance of living a well-balanced life in the areas of spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, marital, parental, support, financial and work.
These are characteristics the Travises can speak to personally, said Scott Guffin, pastor of Liberty Park Baptist.
“They’re not just writing a book, but they’ve lived this out,” he said, noting he also had the Travises as Sunday School teachers during his high school years. “What you have is a couple that is committed, principled and very open with their faith.
“For them to say we’ve reached this place where we’re close to 70 and we can pass this on, you can’t over value that,” Guffin added. “You can’t place too high of a value on that kind of life experience being passed along.”
And that is just what the Travises are seeking to do — to share their own experiences about successes and failures and to walk through life with couples across the state.
“What we’ll do is share where we are and from where we’ve come. … We’re not trying to say we have all the answers, but we’ll tell you the mistakes we’ve made and these are the truths we’ve decided to commit our lives to,” Ron Travis said.
For more information about getting a class started in your church, e-mail Ron at ronaldotravis@bellsouth.net.
Share with others: