Couples learn to dance their way to healthy marriages

Couples in the Aurora area had the opportunity to learn ballroom dancing and even get out on the dance floor themselves at a Valentine’s-related event held at the Bremer Center on a recent Friday night leading up to Valentine’s Day. 
At the same time, they learned how the leader/follower concept of dance relates to both covenant marriage and Christian faith. 
The event called “An Evening Out,” sponsored by Pleasant View Church, was led by former Aurora residents Chris and Michelle Small, who started a ministry called “Follow By Faith” just over a year ago from their home in Crete. 
“We share the biblical principles of marriage through the avenue of ballroom dancing,” Chris explained. “So the ideas of leading and following and hearing and being connected to something outside of yourself are all principles that we can express through ballroom dance and being connected to another person, being one together, working towards a common purpose. They’re all part and parcel of our ministry at every level.”
Michelle added that following their presentation on the commonalities between ballroom dance and marriage, they move on to what she called a collective experience of putting the principles they have learned into motion on the dance floor. 
“Of course, we’ll have the participants out on the dance floor, learning to move together, hear the beat of the music together, be connected, so that they can create an experience of being one in movement and then learning some actual dance steps,” she said.
“A big thrust of what we teach is God’s intention for lead and follow, God’s intention for headship and submission,” Michelle said. “And that it isn’t about being a doormat. It isn’t about being an unwilling participant, but that we are both actively called to be a combined unit.”
“There’s this mystery of a new creation,” Chris continued. “There’s the mystery of the two becoming one flesh. Christ speaks of that in Matthew 19:4-6 when he’s really quoting Genesis, and he said, ‘This is how it’s been from the beginning,’ and when we realize that the leader has to follow God and the follower has to follow God. The follower has their own responsibilities, and without those responsibilities, the leader has no real job to do.”
“Because if the follower doesn’t follow, the leader has no one to lead,” Michelle added. 
Michelle has been participating in ballroom dancing since 1987 but Chris admits he is a late-comer to the art. 
“I was the guy in high school who said dancing is the stupidest thing you could do in the world, and I didn’t go to any of my proms or dances because I just thought it was a waste of time,” he said. “And then God just laughed at me and said, ‘Well, I need you to know that’s what you’re doing for the rest of your life!’ So it’s quite funny.”
While the Smalls have been dancing together and teaching ballroom dancing for many years now, the idea of turning their skills and knowledge into a ministry for couples didn’t come to full fruition until January of 2025. 
‘We decided we had to do something when we grow up and this seemed to be what really struck both of us as the next chapter for us,” Chris said, noting the decision came after an extended season of helping their aging parents make life transitions. 
The Smalls moved to Aurora in 2016 when Chris, a native of Silver Creek, took a job at the post office. He later served for 16 months as executive director of the Chamber. Michelle worked at the former Heartland Jewelry, and having grown up in a metropolitan area of nearly 2 million people in Oregon, she said it wasn’t until moving to Aurora that she realized she is a small-town girl at heart.  
Leaving Aurora in 2021, the couple spent 10 months studying at the Chuck Colson Center’s Biblical Worldview Project, eventually becoming Colson Fellows. Following that experience they moved to New Mexico to care for Michelle’s father during his last 14 months of life. Returning to Nebraska in 2024, the Smalls helped Chris’s parents transition out of their home of 35 years in Grand Island. They later moved to Crete to be closer to the population centers of Lincoln and Omaha as a base for their new ministry. 
Friday’s event featured a plated dinner followed by the Smalls’ presentation and ballroom dancing for about 20 local couples. A short video of the dancing portion of the event can be seen on the ANR Facebook page.