This is something I have mixed feels on… On the one hand, yes, it seems totally legalistic and outright demanding of a pastor to require every couple to go some sort of pre-marital counseling before marrying them. But, on the other hand, I’m not completely unsupporitve of the idea either..

Pre-marriage counseling makes the most sense to me if the couple getting married is already under the spiritual care of the pastor that’s going to marry them, just because it makes sense to have the church being supportive of helping the couple make their marriage work.

I don’t think it makes much sense if the folks getting married are just some random couple from of the street… From what I’ve observed, most folks don’t really take the opinions of people they don’t know well all that seriously (people have to earn their right, so to speak) so I think if it’s just a random couple of the street, it’s kind of a waste of time. I think it might be a good idea to offer pre-marriage counseling to whoever wants it, but pastors shouldn’t force the issue…. and if they’re uncomfortable marrying people they don’t know they just shouldn’t marry people that are outside of their congregation. (But hey, that’s just me…)

Please…
That is a total judgment on pastors. That is not the motive at all for one and two why do you judge their motives.

The reasoning behind marriage counseling is that marriage is a covenant and therefore people need to understand what marriage is all about as a covenant before they get married.

In today’s battle over marriage getting the definition of a Christian marriage takes a little discussion. Christian marriage (marriage as God sees it) is a covenant that cannot be broken except in the most extreme conditions (unrepentant adultery). If you have to counsel people who made bad marriage decisions and marry for all the wrong reasons, you know the wisdom of requiring counseling before marriage.

Marriage is a huge decision. It is a far bigger decision than were you live or what job you take or what career to embark on, yet we do not criticize those who counsel college students and young people in these decisions. Why criticize those who counsel people on whether or not and the ramifications of such an important decision?

I am very passionate for healthy marriages. I talk about it constantly in my preachin, and I cannot disagree with you more on this topic.

brad

The Catholic church has been doing this for years - protestant churches must be picking it up.

It’s not a bad thing if some couples who are clearly not suited for each other come to see this during counseling and decide to put off their marriage. However, by the time the date is set, you’re already emotionally heading down the runway, picking up speed, and very unlikely to call it quits.

I’ve known at least two very unhappily married christian couples who went through counseling first. Didn’t help them…

I have to disagree with you on this one. Pastors are getting more and more alarmed at the high divorce rate among Christians–it is now 1/3 of all Christian marriages end in divorce (according to G. Barna).

Too many couples do not think certain things through but want to rush into marriage. I’m not saying counseling is a sure-proof method of assuring a marriage will work.
But it is helpful for at least thinking through things like finances, sex, children, when feelings for each other wane, and so forth.
Churches also are acting responsibly in requiring couples to have at least a 6-month engagement period instead of rushing into marriage.
The one thing about this pastoral counseling that has come into vogue today that I really disagree with is the compatibility profile test. God puts lots of opposites together that may “flunk” these man-made tests.

“I was looking at a cohabitation thread at a Christian forum and some people there who were ministers discussed how they require the people that they will marry to attend marriage counseling consisting of 90 minute sessions for anywhere from 6-12 weeks and upon successful completion, then make the couple “eligible” to be married by them or be married in their church.”

“Q: Where is marriage counseling and/or the requirement to go to marriage counseling before getting married in the Bible?”

“A: It’s not there in the Scriptures.”

Christians need to get to the more foundational issues by asking questions such as: Where is it taught in the Scriptures that one must get approval from a pastor in order to get married? Where is it taught in the Scriptures that a wedding must be “officiated” by a pastor or any type of religious or civil authority? Where is it taught in the Scriptures that pastors are to be mediators between the congregants and God? Where is it taught in the Scriptures that a pastor is one man in each congregation who has supreme authority over the congregation? Where is it taught in the Scriptures that there is to be a “clergy” class who rules over the “laity” class?

Christians need to conform their concepts of church officers, and the functions of those officers, to the Scriptures, and get rid of the Protestant priesthood. Trying to correct the perversions of the modern ministry without addressing the underlying causes, is like applying a coat of paint to a house that is infested with termites.

O.K. I see where you’re coming from on the “legalistic” way that some churches are requiring pre-marital counseling. Being a therapist on staff at a large church, however, I think that the motivation is less about legalism or CYA than it is about trying to do something about marriages. For myself, I’ve struggled at times KNOWING that the people I’m working with are never going to last in marriage. Do I still do the ceremony? Sure…I think our job is to bless and not curse. But I want each couple that I marry to have the strongest possible footing that they can have going in on the front end. I’ve told couples in pre-marital to run, don’t walk, away from each other. They go find someone else to marry them.

So I think there has to be balance…we need to bless the couples that come to us with wisdom and skills to survive the marriage crucible. But we can’t put more burdens on people than Jesus would. So if we have too many hoops for our couples to jump through then we will drive many of them to the JP and no counseling at all will go on. I think we need to offer each couple that comes to our churches 6 weeks of “free” counseling. Sell it to them as a blessing and a good thing instead of a requirement. I think that would change the feel a little.

Six month waiting period???? Aye, that is giving the church far too much authority over one’s personal life, IMO. I understand why they’re doing it, but I don’t agree with it at all, not one iota.

God doesn’t mandate a six month waiting period for us to contemplate every decision we make. That is called free will… Maybe we should all stop trying to protect each other from making mistakes and preach Christ and Him crucified instead…? Just a thought.

I agree with a lot of what Chris said. I counsel at a large church and see the pain and devastation from divorce all of the time. So I ask myself what can we do to help folks to survive the difficult times in marriage? I don’t care about CYA. I don’t know what happens to most of the people I marry down the line. My feeling is that it is like any other class in that if a couple does the homework and invests they’ll get a lot out of it but if they come in going yeah yeah let’s get this hoop over with then they won’t.
From my own near brush with divorce I have learned that it is generally better to learn to work through the conflict with one’s spouse than to chuck it and find another and we seek to pass that on.
We have an eleven week class going through a myriad of topics. My wife and I lead it and personalize it. We include clips from A Story of Us–including cussing, ohmygosh–Family Man, When a Man Loves a Woman, Lion King, Andy Griffith and others to try to connect through story and not just teaching. We share lots of our own mistakes along the way and generally have good discussion once people settle in. The main idea is to learn how to be curious about one another, for one another and how to do conflict without tearing down the good in the relationship.
Each couple also has three sessions with a counselor in pastoral care to review The Prepare Inventory. This isn’t a personality matching device. It helps start conversations in the area of money, kids, faith, conflict resolution etc.
To be married at our church you do have to go through the class although we make alternative arrangements for scheduling problems etc. However, anybody can take the class. To open up another can of worms we ask couples that are living together to develop a plan to live separately and implement it before the wedding to be married by a pastor here. I wrestle with that from time to time. Our heart is good in that stats show that folks who live together have a greater chance of divorce but are we needlessly withholding here.
In Colorado any adult in the state can perform the ceremony.
The mood of your comment was that people on staff try to think up ways to piss people off and make things more difficult for them. In the long run my hope is that we make things easier for them by giving them skills, offering a freedom to express their feeling without attacking others, and that we whet their appetite for a deeper relationship with God in the midst of the pain and confusion of everyday living including marriage.
Often a question that isn’t asked is why would you go to a church where you don’t respect the opinion of those in leadership. Not to be a ‘yes’ man or woman but to ask, “Have these people journeyed down certain paths before me and can I learn something from them?”
There are ways I can learn from every person in every class. God has blessed each of us uniquely in gifting and experience.

I like the quote from Norman Bales in “Planning a Wedding” He says, “What really concerns me about all this, is the flippant regard for marriage preparation. On the same day the young man called me, I negotiated for the purchase of a new car. I have been gathering information about cars and car prices for weeks. It was not a decision that I made lightly. I don’t trade cars every time the wind changes, but I probably won’t drive this car more than five or six years. I thought a long time about the kind car I wanted, it’s performance, comfort, drivability, the cost of maintenance, and insurance requirements. That doesn’t even take into consideration how I’m going to pay for the pile of new steel now garaged at my house. I don’t make decisions like that without thoughtful consideration, but I have the impression that some people enter marriage with much less consideration.”
(from http://www.cohabiting.org on a counseling page)

That’s been my experience too as a pastor. I want to help couples make good choices, to realize the importance of and have a good appreciation for marriage. My goal is to be the their “coach,” not their “judge” and help them have life-long success in their marriage.