Met With Our Minister

loveislouder

Some of you Knotties may remember me saying that I've never been a religious person. I don't know how.

Well, we met with our Minister yesterday, and I'm not going to lie I was super nervous. What I said oh my god? What if I swore? Well this lady was AMAZING! She answered all my questions, and I totally swore and said oh my god and she didn't even flinch. She seemed a little shocked that we lived together but then told us that we we probably don't need premarital counselling because were already worked most of it out. She wants us to go a year in.

Anyway, anyone else pleasant surprised by something like this? ETA: I had paragraphs.

Sugargirl1019

The pastor who did our premarital counseling was just like this. He didn't mind that we lived together. He said my business is about helping you work out things so you have a long happy marriage together, not forcing you to change your living arrangements. It was really nice.

On the other hand, while we were trying to find someone to marry us, he greatly disapproved of us living together and refused to marry us if we didn't split.

loveislouder

@Sugargirl1019‌ Well doesn't he sound like a peach.

theartistformerlyknownas

Yeah ours was great. He was a rent-a-reverend we found online and was super cool with us living together, cracked jokes, etc. He sent us pages and pages of sample ceremony text and said we could add/change/remove whatever we wanted to make it more "us" and as many or few religious references as we wanted. Offered pre-marital counseling in person or to just send us a video. :-p

bethsmiles

That's great! The pastor at the church I went to growing up was really awesome like that. If we hadn't been to church in a couple weeks, he's show up with a six-pack of beer and just chat with my parents about what was going on in their lives, never lectured them about missing church or anything just genuinely wanted to make sure nothing was going wrong in our lives. I was so sad when he got called to a church in Hawaii. The next pastor we got was not like him at all and we ended up leaving that church after about a year.

novella1186

That is awesome! I had the opposite experience. My rabbi and I had some major disagreements and then we broke up. Now I'm having a secular ceremony. Oh well. Sooner or later God was totally gonna smite me anyway so.... 

ETF words 

emmaaa

I'm glad it went better than expected!

FI and I met wiht our pastor the other night. He is the pastor of the church we attend and are joining so we already knew him but had not had any one-on-one meetings. He basically said he knew the church didn't agree with with us living together (the church as in the United Methodist teachings, not the people at our specific church) but it was our business. We were pleasantly surprised because he didn't ask many personal questions like that but just gave advice and communication tools.

We went over the ceremony. We wanted a traditional United Methodist ceremony and he gave us two options that he can perform in the church.