Have ministers given up on providing pre-marital counseling that has real value?

Albert Einstein once offered a sliver of insight regarding marriage: “Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.”

For just about anyone who marries, what marriage actually turns out to be will almost always be different than they had imagined, at least to some degree. For a few, their dreams about marriage will be close to what they experience, but for most there will be aspects of being a husband or wife they had not fully considered.

Preparing for marriage is important for couples who take seriously their vows of “Til death do us part,” and preparing couples for marriage is a very important task of the Christian minister.

At least, it should be.

If you’re going to stand as a minister of the Gospel, and by the authority invested in you by God, perform the ceremony uniting a man and woman together in holy matrimony, then you should take seriously the responsibility of equipping couples for marriage.

But, let’s be honest, so much of what is called “pre-martial counseling” offered by ministers today is a joke. At least it would be, except it isn’t funny; instead, it is woefully lacking. Instead of ministers insisting that couples participate in a pre-marital counseling program that is comprehensive in equipping a couple for marriage, over the years ministers have downgraded what they require of couples to just a few (or, at the most, a handful of) pre-marital counseling sessions that are hardly any better than what a couple could gain by reading a few articles in a brides magazine.

The major reason ministers require so little is because couples increasingly demand less be required. Today, couples make a decision they WILL get married, and just want to recruit a minister to officiate at the ceremony. When the minister starts talking about required counseling, the push-back by couples have resulted in many ministers wilting on their requirements and watering down what couples must complete before they will marry them.

Since I’m both a minister and a clinical therapist, I have maintained requirements from my position as a therapist, which means any couple wanting to be prepared for marriage through my services must complete a comprehensive pre-marital counseling program that will take them several months to complete. The couples who are serious about preparing for marriage love the demanding nature of the program. But many couples have gone elsewhere because they’ve already decided that, no matter what, they’re getting married, and such a demanding program doesn’t meet their schedule for having a wedding. Sadly, there was always a minister willing to take these couples who wanted little to no preparation for marriage — and it hasn’t been uncommon for me to see several of these couples in marriage counseling because they had failed to adequately prepare for marriage!

That’s the problem – couples more interested in having a wedding aren’t interested in the serious work of making sure they should get married in the first place, and then preparing themselves for having a collaborative, joy-filled marriage that can last a lifetime. It is not uncommon to meet many couples who think they don’t need any kind of marriage preparation counseling, like the couple who were with some friends and the subject of marriage counseling came up. Mary said, “Oh, Tom and I will never need counseling. We have a great relationship. He was a communications major in college and I majored in drama. He communicates real well and I just act like I’m listening.”

Too many ministers have given in to just conducting pre-marital counseling even THEY know are inadequate to meet the needs of the couple; their argument is, “Well, if I don’t at least have them take a couple counseling sessions with me and then marry them, they’ll just go somewhere else and have someone else conduct a ceremony.”

If that’s true, then let them go!

If ministers want to be serious about what they’re doing in uniting couples together, it would be in the best interest of all couples that ministers establish a comprehensive pre-marital counseling program they require of every couple before being willing to officiate a wedding ceremony.

Ministers should be far more interested in making sure couples are as equipped as possible for living a God-centered, God-honoring, love-empowered, joy-filled, collaborative marriage that can last a lifetime than just meeting the demands of a couple to officiate a ceremony on a certain date. By establishing such requirements, ministers can directly contribute to an increase in Christian marriages that last a lifetime. Many ministers claim they don’t have time for comprehensive pre-marital counseling; if that’s true, then partner with a competent, highly skilled Christian counselor who has a well-developed pre-marital counseling program and insist couples complete that training before you will be willing to conduct their wedding. Additionally, the wise minister can supplement such a requirement by making sure there is ongoing teaching and training in the church regarding marriage so that preparation is being provided before a couple ever gets serious about a marriage proposal.

Ministers, what are you doing to make sure every couple whose wedding you officiate are as equipped as possible to take on the relationship commitment you’re helping them enter into?

Couples, are you wanting to rush into a wedding, or are you committed to first preparing to be a godly husband and wife who will build a marriage that honors God and lasts a lifetime?

Scotty