GOLDEN RULE WORLD PEACE AMBASSADORS RECEIVE UNITED WAY VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR NOMINATIONS

Harrisburg, PA, USA - In an award ceremony held on Thursday evening, April 20, 2017, Golden Rule World Peace Ambassadors  and Community Life Coaches, Chris and Carol Green, received one of United Way's 2017 Volunteer of the Year Nominations for their work and services in a local women's shelter.

“I have been blessed to bear witness to the selfless and tireless efforts Chris and Carol put into making a difference in the lives of people,“ said Denise Britton, Executive Director of the Shalom House Women's shelter, representing her organization which submitted the nomination to the United Way.

“Initially committing to helping share their life coaching expertise to expand the services for women and children at Shalom House, they quickly expanded their support to helping our staff expand their skills and ability to serve our residents. Thank you seems hardly enough to say for the appreciation we want to extend to both of them, for all that they do, for all of us.”

A little over one year ago, the Greens were merged into the shelter's monthly calendar to provide life coaching support for both the staff and residents of this special outreach, situated in one of the City of Harrisburg’s high-crime neighborhoods.

"We're honored to be named among so many great people," said the nominees following the event. "We learned of many others who are donating hundreds of hours per year to worthy causes in the community. It's humbling to be mentioned among them."

Chris and Carol Green became part of the Shalom House strategy to transition the residents out of the shelter and back into everyday life. Their coaching tools proved to be vital in enhancing the resident’s life coping skills; enabling them to take confident steps toward rebuilding their families and recapturing their lives.

The Greens are certified master life coaches, urban family advocates, marriage and family advisers, and community leadership consultants. This couple created and implemented a proven coaching model that empowers people to push past the temptations to give up, and instead, make intentional, thoughtful and positive responses in spite of the devastation and obstacles in life.

For their community service, they received a United Way 2017 Volunteer of the Year Nomination. They also received Urban Leadership Awards (2016) and Community Ambassador Awards (2015) from iChange Nations™ and were appointed Goodwill Ambassadors of World Peace, as part of an interfaith peace-building initiative to the United Nations, by Golden Rule International.

Chris Green is a social media expert and an award-winning producer of a local cable TV broadcast (1999).  Together, they are international columnists/ writers with the Global Journalism Award-winning team of Dr. Clyde Rivers and iChange Nations Social Media News™.  They are the authors of 14 inspirational and life-building books, creators and principal writers of several blogs and eNewsletters.  They are also accomplished songwriters, having penned and produced over 150 songs since 1992.

They are both licensed and ordained ministers with honorary doctorate degrees in Christian Leadership (Chris) and in Humanities (Carol), conferred in 2016 by UGCSI's College of Christian Education, to acknowledge their work, spanning more than a decade, of building and implementing a new urban church model that combined Participatory Teaching methods with evidence-based principles of Life Coaching, to produce an effective, quantifiably successful, and family-impacting ministry in south central Pennsylvania.  Additional certification, training and education has come from the American Association of Christian Counselors and the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

They are currently based in south central Pennsylvania where they established a community outreach that focuses on hearts and households, along with several life coaching and community spiritual care initiatives through their non-profit organization, Fruitful Life Network, Inc.

World Peace Ambassador, Dr. Clyde Rivers, calls them leading skilled experts, as well as innovators and pioneers in the empowering and equipping of today's leaders in hearts, homes and communities.

THE GOLDEN RULE IN MARRIAGE

Chris and Carol Green

We stood before a minister, taking those sacred wedding vows, but five months later we were beginning to feel like this was not going to work. Our marriage was in the first stages of disintegration. No matter how sincerely we were trying to communicate, we could not connect. Words, phrases and actions said one thing but it meant something totally different to the other person. We didn’t have the same language because we didn’t have the same words.  We didn’t even have the same alphabet.

We cannot recall the exact date and time, but following another one of those frustrating and futile moments of trying to communicate, we sat down together to try and reach some agreement. We had to find a way to stay connected with one another. So we made a PACT and it went something like this:

“I choose to believe that no matter how you say, what you say to me, you are not intentionally trying to hurt me, you meant it for my good.”

Our pact was simply the Golden Rule being applied to our relationship. When we made this pact, we had no idea how significant it was going to be. We just felt a new sense of peace. It was like we were finally, really married. We had slowly moved beyond the soaring emotional connections of love and advanced to a solid unconditional acceptance of one another. We had forged the Golden Rule into our marriage. We had each said, “I will treat you the way that I want to be treated. I will trust you the way that I want to be trusted.”

We had a new security. We had tapped into a secret place from which we could begin learning one another’s alphabet and thus begin to piece together words and sentences.  Simultaneously, we could build a stronger connection between us. It was like working on our health while working on an injury at the same time.

The Golden Rule has been a huge part of the foundation of our marriage for more than 35 years and we have also been teaching it as a healing prescription for the couples that we coach. Sometimes our family and friends comment on our present ability to communicate in a manner that seems almost telepathic. We can just say one word or give a brief glance across a room and we are able to conduct an entire conversation in a few seconds.

This new level of communication began when a couple that had only been married for six months, in a moment of desperation, made a Golden Rule choice for their relationship.
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This article was written by Chris and Carol Green

World Peace Ambassador, Dr. Clyde Rivers calls Chris and Carol Green the leading skilled experts in rebuilding, restoring and renewing hearts and homes. The Green are certified master life coaches who founded the Fruitful Life Network, Inc. an innovative community care and coaching outreach. They are international columnist/writers with the award winning team of Dr. Clyde Rivers and iChange Nations Social Media News™. They specialize in marriage coaching having written a book about marriage and relationships titled, We Made a PACT, and produced several online marriage enrichment and resiliency courses.