Gary Thomas - Nine Essential Conversations before You Say I Do

The vast majority of couples considering marriage will walk into a pastors office rather than approach a licensed professional counselor. If youre like most pastors, youre already running a full schedule leading a church and preparing sermons, so you may feel uncertain about how youre going to find the time to fully engage in nine premarital conversations. Our objective is to reduce some of the pressure in your ministry and provide a ready-made guide you can run through in the extremely important process of preparing couples for marriage. This is out of the box ready: open it up, and youre ready to go.

Here are some initial thoughts to assist you:

1. Premarital counseling may be one of the most important responsibilities held by you and your staff. Wise marital choices leading to the creation of healthy families feeds a church; just a few dysfunctional families or ill-suited couples can overwhelm a churchs resources and time. In the end, a thoughtful premarital program will save you far more time than it will cost you.

2. We have worked with hundreds of struggling married couples over the years, and were convinced that a process like this before marriage would keep many of them out of our counseling offices and even more couples and families out of the divorce courts. Imagine thatyou, your pastoral staff, and lay leaders who help as marriage mentors could directly affect the divorce rate of your church and community.

3. Marriage mentoring doesnt have to rest on your shoulders alone. However, since you or one of your pastoral staff will actually sign the marriage certificate, you should be able to sign off on the couples readiness for marriage with complete confidence. In other words, it is up to the pastor to ensure that the couple has taken time to carefully go through all nine essential conversations with each other and a marriage mentor.

4. The position of marriage mentor could be assigned to an elder or other mature member of your church family. The mentor can be an individual or a married couple. The qualities you should look for in mentors are wisdom; confidentiality; a strong track record in their own marriage; good people skills; the ability to listen to others rather than preach at them; and the ability to discuss a couples personal issues forthrightly, maturely, with tact, and without embarrassment.

5. Some couples may choose to have someone outside of your church serve as a marriage mentor. That person doesnt need professional counseling qualifications because this conversation guide provides them with the tools they need for in-depth discussions with any couple considering marriage.

6. If a couple has issues the marriage mentor isnt equipped to handle, he or she should refer that couple to a professional counselor. If your church doesnt have a list of qualified, licensed counseling or mental-health providers in your area, now would be an excellent time to research those resources.

This conversation guide invites a pre-marriage couple into a deep and time-intensive process. Be forewarned: when a couple asks you if they can skip a conversation, thats likely the one session they need to spend the most time on. I (Gary) tell couples at the very start that this is an all or nothing exercise. If Im going to invest my time working through this book with them, they must commit to go through all nine conversations.

Some couples may tell you they dont need or want this, but keep in mind that a couple who hasnt been married (or is coming to you after a failed marriage) isnt the best authority on what they most need. This premarital process is not a chatits a conversation that will take time. In the long run, however, it will help couples avoid problems and improve satisfaction as their marriage progresses. So give this pre-marriage couple the gift of strongly encouraging them to embrace this conversation guide for their benefit now and in their future.