How Can We Help?
Pre-married and Married SYMBIS Assessment
Our Team
Bruce and Leta Wilbanks, Founders
Bruce and Leta were high school sweethearts, marrying on August 20, 1976. They have two sons, Adam, married to Christina, and Brandon, married to Kendra, and one granddaughter, Kamrey. They live in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and attend First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, OK.
Bruce has been an executive recruiter and career and life coach for professional and executive men and women for the majority of his 40+ years business experience. Bruce and Leta also work with Eagle Family Ministries of Northwest Arkansas as conference speakers. Bruce received his Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2020. Bruce and Leta are certified in Prepare and Enrich and SYMBIS (Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts). Bruce and Leta are both members of NARME (National Alliance for Relationship and Marriage Education).
Bruce and Leta are experts in marriage enrichment and have led conferences, workshops and training events. They have been featured speakers at events, and on radio programs. All their current work is intentionally designed to help strengthen marriages and families.
After seeing some of their closest friends divorce, God placed a call on their lives to marriage ministry. Bruce and Leta founded Marriage and Family Initiative in 2017 in order to have a community wide impact on marriage enrichment . They have a heart toward working with couples to renew their love and commitment and change their family legacy.
Don and Gail Donell
Don and Gail were also high school sweethearts, and married August 14, 1976. They have four children, daughter Rachel, married to U.S. Army Captain Aaron Selph, son Ryan, married to Lydia, daughter Amy, married to Claudio Molina, and son Ian, serving in the U.S. Marines, along with seven beautiful grandchildren.
Don has spent most of the past 35 years in the pastoral ministry as a bi-vocational pastor in Oklahoma and South Carolina. Additionally, Don and Gail spent 12 years as missionary church-planters in Cordoba, Argentina and Asheville, North Carolina.
We are very fortunate to have Don and Gail working with MFI as program consultants and event speakers.
Bob and Robbie Lee
Bob and Robbie Lee have been married for 32 years. Between them they have four grown children. Bob brought two into the marriage and Robbie one. The fourth they adopted together. They now share 11 grandchildren and three, soon to be four great grandchildren.
They were both previously married to spouses who were unfaithful to them, so when they married, they were broken and hurt. By placing God at the center of their new marriage they have thrived. While working a full-time job Bob served as the leader of the Men’s Ministry at a large church in Tulsa for eight years. When they relocated to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, Bob resigned that position and they became involved in the Marriage Ministry at Foundation Church. They have jointly served as in the ministry for the last 10 years and have been the leaders for the last eight.
They believe in honesty, communication and transparency in their marriage and accessibility in their ministry. One of their tools is to utilize the Re|engage curriculum from Watermark Church in Dallas. With their team of six other couples serving as facilitators, they have served more than 100 couples during their leadership. Both are now retired and enjoy traveling in their RV. Since Robbie’s retirement five years ago they have been in 44 states and plan to visit the last four in the lower forty-eight this summer.
We are excited to have Bob and Robbie working alongside us as ministry partners in the Tulsa Marriage Initiative.
Our Beliefs
What We Believe
We believe:
We believe the Bible to be the inspired, only infallible, authoritative Word of God;
We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father and in His personal return in power and glory;
We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful humanity, regeneration by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely essential.
We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life;
We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, they who are saved unto the resurrection of life and they who are lost unto the resurrection of damnation;
We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Permanence of Marriage:
We believe that the institution of marriage is a sacred covenant designed by God to model the love of Christ for His people and to serve both the public and private good as the basic building block of human civilization.
Marriage is intended by God to be a thriving, lifelong relationship between a man and a woman enduring through trials, sickness, financial crises and emotional stresses.
Therefore, Christians are called to defend and protect God’s marriage design and to minister in Christ’s name to those who suffer the consequences of its brokenness.
“‘Haven’t you read,’ He replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.’” Matthew 19:4-6
Marriage is under attack in our country, and we truly believe that so many of the challenges facing our society like crime, poverty, violence and education can be addressed by strengthening families. Strong families begin with a healthy marriage. Join us in taking a stand for marriage!
