Marriage Services

Plan on getting married?

Marriage is a wonderful thing.  The marriage relationship is the deepest and most important relationship that we can have with another human being.  If you are considering getting married, I am delighted for you.  If you so desire, it would be my privilege to officiate your wedding.  As a pastor, I see this as a privilege, and thus wouldn’t even think of charging anything.  However, it won’t be entirely free in the sense that you must be willing to meet a few requirements.  They aren’t much or hard, and if you have any questions about them,

please feel free to ask!

- Pastor Dave

1.  You must being willing to meet with me no less than six times for premarital counseling.  There is a good chance my wife will also be part of the counseling.  It is your responsibility to call me and arrange the times for these sessions.  There will be some homework involved that must be completed.  You must meet a total of six times.  If you’ve only met five and it comes time for the wedding, then you must find somebody else to do it.  

  I take this counseling very seriously because I understand personally how incredibly beneficial it is to marriages.  In officiating your wedding, I am pronouncing my blessing on it, and I want to be free to do so unreservedly.

  If you can’t meet with me due to distance (i.e. you’re in college and too far away), I will still officiate your wedding as long as you complete premarital counseling with a Christian counselor or pastor.

2.  You must either be a Christian couple or a non-Christian couple.  No Christians will be married to unbelievers.

  For a Christian, the most important relationship they have is with their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  If you can’t share that relationship with your spouse, then either you will eventually leave Christ, or you both will live lives set on two different roads, heading in opposite directions.  In a marriage a husband and wife should be growing closer together, not further apart.

3.  If you are Christians and you are living together, you must separate and abstain from further sexual contact until the night of your wedding.  If you are unwilling to do so, I will not officiate your wedding.

  Sex is a wonderful aspect of any marriage relationship.  But sexual immorality prior to marriage has horrible ramifications on sex after marriage.  

One of Satan’s goals is to get couples to have sex before marriage and then keep them from having sex after marriage.  One naturally leads to the other.  Sexual immorality is also a sin that is detested by God, so much so that believers are told not to even eat with someone who is sexually immoral and yet willing to call himself or herself a Christian.  

If you are having sex with your partner outside of marriage, then what you are actually doing is training your partner and yourself to commit adultery (having sex with a person other than your spouse) after you become married.  

If you have made this mistake, please be willing to sit down and talk with me about it.  The Bible clearly shows the effects sexual immorality has on a marriage, and how we can be cleansed from them so that Satan’s goals aren’t realized in our lives.  Your marriage doesn’t have to be ruined because of this sin.

4.  Understand that the counseling you will be receiving is Biblical in nature (Not to be confused with what is considered “professional” counseling in our society).  Marriages are meant to last a lifetime, and it is the intent of this premarital counseling, with your cooperation and the help of God, to get your marriage off on the best foot possible.  I desire to see you thrive as a couple and experience the joys of marriage in all their fullness.  Don’t cheat yourself and settle for anything less than the best God has to offer in your marriage.

  This premarital counseling will cover many areas from finances and biblical roles in marriage to conflict resolution.  However, most marriages don’t end because of problems that develop in a marriage, but from problems that existed in the people’s lives before they even got married.  My primary goal will be to see if any problems do exist and to bring healing to your lives so that your freedom in Christ will enable Christ to be free to make your marriage relationship as enjoyable as possible.

  Understand that anything you reveal through the course of these sessions is strictly private.  We all struggle with a great many things and nothing you reveal will make you be thought any less of.  We are meant to help heal each other, not judge each other.  You are free to be as honest as you feel comfortable being.

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

 - 1st Corinthians 13:4-7