How is the Quality Your Church's Premarital Preparation?

Little boy and girl on wheelbarrow
Recommended Reading: 1,000 Questions for Couples

How mature and faithful is your church in preparing its couples for marriage?

Most pastors take some courses and require at least a little premarital counseling, but often a brief presentation or two or three is not sufficient to make sure the couple are sufficiently and responsibly prepared for marriage.

There is a common belief that if a church blesses a marriage, then it is legitimate and holy. But, is it?

  • Does your pastor know the people getting married?
  • Does your pastor know enough about the couple to refuse to perform adulterous marriages? Or does he just go with the flow?
  • Does your pastor have a set of questions to help the couple get to know each other better and prepare in advance for any typical conflicts in marriage that can cause severe problems? Or does he let them go into marriage blind with his blessing?
  • Has the pastor established that the couple knows what a marriage covenant is and why it is binding?
  • Does the couple truly understand the seriousness of this commitment and its affect on the family and future generations?
  • Is the couple financially prepared?
  • Has the couple demonstrated adequate relationship skills, faithfulness, integrity, and commitment?
  • Is the couple trained to handle typical conflicts and bring them to resolution in a healthy way? Do they have good conflict resolution skills?
  • Is there any kind of emotional, physical, or verbal abuse in the relationship?
  • Has the pastor sought to understand any previous family or relationship traumas or struggles that could set up codependencies leading into unhealthy relationships?
  • Is the couple truly equally yoked and not merely by religious label?
  • What part will the couple's families play in supporting or harming their marriage?
  • What do the couple expect from the marriage? What do they expect to give to the marriage? What do they expect regarding children, future career goals, calling, and such?

One thing that might help couples is to get legal advice before getting married. Before a couple is married, they should make sure they are very, very clear on the terms of their marriage agreement so that nobody can back out of it and claim, "I didn't know...".

Working through a prenuptial agreement is a good way to weed out marriages destined for failure. Prenuptial agreements should never be made selfishly to give oneself an easy way out of the marriage covenant while protecting oneself from loss. Prenuptial agreements should protect the children and the faithful spouse in the event of abuse, unfaithfulness, and such so that no loving spouse or child will be denied the right to stay together as a family and enjoy the shared family assets due to the other parent's bad choices.

A prenuptial agreement should declare a deep sincerity of love. It should bring comfort to the other spouse knowing that the promises are backed up by the covenant and that the love is sincere enough to provide protection and security that faithfulness will endure.

When the government panders to the unfaithful and thousands of children and faithful parents suffer robbery in the family courts, we in the church have a duty to God and society to protect faithfully the marriage covenant and those who enter into it to the very best of our ability.

When God asks us what we have done to protect marriages from destruction, what will we answer?