Why a pastor belongs in the room with every engaged couple – and what only he can bring
About half of first marriages in America end in divorce. That statistic has been steady long enough that most of us have stopped flinching at it. We should not have. Behind every percentage point is a household – sometimes a household full of children – that did not become what it was meant to become.
The church has not been silent in the face of this. Three quarters of weddings in this country still take place in a religious setting. The vast majority of engaged couples who receive any premarital counseling at all receive it from a pastor. The church remains the front door to marriage in America – not the courthouse, not the therapist’s office, not the wedding planner. The church.
But a front door is only useful if someone walks through it ready to lead the visitor to the right room. The question this short essay raises is whether pastors are still leading couples to the right room when they meet with them before a wedding – and what they ought to be doing if they are.
Pastors Are Commissioned to This Work
The apostle Peter writes to elders of the church with a clear command: “Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers” (1 Peter 5:2). It is not a suggestion. It is the charge by which the pastoral office exists.
Shepherding is not only chasing sheep when they wander. It is also leading them – “He leads me beside the still waters,” as Psalm 23 has it. The shepherd’s first job is to walk ahead and bring the sheep into good pasture before they ever stray. That is exactly what premarital counseling is. It is the shepherd leading the sheep into new pasture before the wedding ever happens.
Notice the two qualifiers Peter adds. The work is to be done “not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly.” That is, the pastor must want to do this work. He cannot do it grudgingly, as if the bride’s family imposed it. He cannot avoid it because his calendar is too full or because the conversations are awkward. Avoidance, in fact, is the very temptation Peter names.
The pastor’s qualification to do this work does not come from his counseling degree (he may not have one), his communication training (he may not have any), or his clinical credentials (he certainly does not). His qualification comes from the office he holds – and more fundamentally, from the Shepherd whose authority he represents.
Marriage Is More Than Two People
When a couple stands at the altar, they think they are joining their two lives. They are doing more than that. They are standing at the convergence of four institutions that God has ordained – what I have come to call the Four-Fold Blessing.
- The individual stands before God in conscience and worship. Each person comes to the altar with a heart accountable to the Lord.
- The family forms. A new household is being constituted, and its formation echoes forward into the next generation.
- The church witnesses and confirms. The body of Christ stands at this wedding as more than spectators; it stands as accountable witnesses.
- The civil government ratifies. The marriage license is real. The state recognizes what God has made.
Each of these institutions has authority under Christ. Each has a stake in what is happening at the wedding. No other event in human life brings all four together with the density that a marriage covenant does.
This is why a wedding cannot be reduced to a private psychological achievement between two consenting individuals. The marriage covenant is institutional ground over which Christ has spoken. As Abraham Kuyper put it more than a century ago: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!'” The marriage covenant is several such square inches at once.
What Only the Pastor Brings
A licensed marriage therapist may bring a great deal to a marriage. Communication skills. Conflict resolution. Insight into family-of-origin patterns. None of this is unimportant.
But the pastor brings two things no therapist can bring:
First, the Creator’s blueprint. The pastor does not consult the latest research to find a skill the couple needs. He opens the oldest tool in the Book – God’s design for marriage from Genesis 1 through Ephesians 5. A therapist may know a great deal about marriage. Only the pastor speaks for the One who instituted it.
Second, the authority to pronounce blessing – conditionally. The pastor stands in the priestly line that runs back to Aaron: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24-25). When the pastor pronounces blessing over a wedding, that blessing is not ceremonial decoration. It is the invocation of God’s promised favor upon a covenant that meets God’s stated conditions.
And here is the part most engaged couples have never been told: God’s blessing on a marriage is conditional, not automatic. God says of Abraham, “For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him” (Genesis 18:19). The chain is plain: household instruction ? obedience ? fulfillment of promised blessing.
This reframes premarital counseling entirely. The pastor’s work before the wedding is not “imparting marriage skills.” It is preparing a marriage to be blessable – bringing the covenant into alignment with God’s stated design so that the blessing pronounced over it on the wedding day is substantive rather than hollow.
A therapist may produce a marriage with superior communication skills. Only a pastor produces a marriage positioned to receive God’s blessing. These are not competing claims on the same axis. They are different categories of work, and only one of them belongs to the office Christ commissioned.
The Pastor’s Vested Interest
There is one more piece. The therapist’s interest in a marriage ends at the final session. The pastor’s interest does not.
The pastor who counsels a couple before their wedding will often see them through their first year of marriage, the birth of their first child, the years of their child-rearing, the empty-nest transition, the retirement years, and (if he is blessed) into their grandparenting years. The relationship is not based on a contract; it is based on a covenant – and the covenant runs through the whole life of the congregation.
That structural difference matters. Pastoral care is not a service provided once and discontinued. It is a watch maintained.
The Work Matters Because the Chief Shepherd Will Appear
Why does the pastor do this work? Not because of the statistics. Not because premarital counseling correlates with a 31% lower divorce rate (though it does). Not because couples who receive it are stronger.
The pastor does this work because of the verse that closes Peter’s charge: “And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away” (1 Peter 5:4).
The pastor serves an audience of One. He counsels couples not because they are perfect – they are not – but because the Chief Shepherd commanded the work, and the Chief Shepherd will return to ask whether it was done.
A Word to Engaged Couples
If you are engaged, find a pastor – not just an officiant. The man who pronounces your wedding vows should be the same man who has met with you before the wedding, knows what you believe, has examined the foundations on which your marriage will be built, and is ready to invoke God’s blessing on a covenant he has helped you align with God’s design. That is not a luxury. It is what the office of pastor was made for.
A Word to Pastors
The sheep are coming. They are walking through the front door of the church looking for what only this institution can give them. They may not know to call it the Four-Fold Blessing. They may not articulate that they are seeking a blessable covenant. But they are. The question is not whether the work is yours; the Chief Shepherd settled that already. The question is whether you will eagerly do what He commissioned you to do.
Shepherd the flock.
Pastor Michael T. Boyle serves as Senior Pastor at Memorial Baptist Church in Parkston, South Dakota. This essay distills a longer doctoral paper, “Under the Chief Shepherd: A Pastoral Rationale for Premarital Counseling,” written for Trinity Seminary’s BC 562/720 course on premarital counseling.