2 Pastors? Premarital Counseling

stangbarnes · May 2014

Hello Everyone,

My fiance and I have come to that time to pick a minister. I would imagine, normally, people choose their current church's pastor to do their premarital counseling and to marry them. But I am not comfortable talking about my relationship with my current pastor. Would it be rude to have a pastor from another church do our counseling but ask our current pastor to marry us?

anm2n · May 2014

Normally, the pastor who does counseling does the premarital counseling, especially if he/she is attached to the church. Is there a reason you don't feel comfortable talking about your relationships with your current pastor?

Simky906 · May 2014

First I think you need to talk to your current pastor about this and see if they are ok with it. Some pastors may require you to do pre-marital counseling with them as a condition of marrying you. May I ask why you are uncomfortable taking about your relationship with your pastor but are comfortable having them marry you?

In my case, FI and I are having my minister grandfather and a rabbi co-officiate our wedding. The rabbi is doing our pre-marital counseling because FI might have a tough time taking about our relationship to my family. So if it's something like that I completely understand.

Hysilvinialithibel · May 2014

I don't think either one has to know about the other, just politely decline if one offers to do the other.

photokitty · May 2014

stangbarnes said:

Hello Everyone,

My fiance and I have come to that time to pick a minister. I would imagine, normally, people choose their current church's pastor to do their premarital counseling and to marry them. But I am not comfortable talking about my relationship with my current pastor. Would it be rude to have a pastor from another church do our counseling but ask our current pastor to marry us?

If you a re not comfortable talking about your relationship with your pastor, why are you comfortable having him/her marry you?

I think if they require premarital counseling for you to get married, then yes it is rude to want them to preform the ceremony but you are unwilling to talk to them about your relationship.

Is your pastor your dad and you don't want to admit you're having pre-martial sex? That's the only reason I can come up with you not wanting to talk about your relationship with your pastor.

melbelleup · May 2014

We had two different priests, but because we're OOT. We did the premarital counseling with the priest in NC but we're getting married in PA with a different priest.

HisGirlFriday13 · May 2014

I agree with PPs -- most ministers will require you to do PMC with them, because they take their spiritual obligation in marrying people very seriously.

Our parish priest, who did DH's RCIA, also did our PMC, and also married us. He straight-up told us he wouldn't marry us unless he did the PMC, which we were fine with. (We both go to Confession to him, anyway, so it's not like he didn't know we were living together.)

The only time I've known ministers to forego doing the PMC themselves is if they're related to either the B or G. A pastor friend of mine has performed the marriage ceremony for three of his six sons, but they've all done their church-mandated PMC with other ministers in the church, not the FOG.

CMGragain · May 2014

You say to your current pastor, "I am uncomfortable discussing intimate things with you. Is there someone else that we could do our pre-marriage counseling with?" Believe me, ministers have heard it all!

pinkshorts27 · May 2014

Our pastor is my uncle. We talked to him and he gave us the option of him or another pastor, but we chose to do it with him because we felt comfortable after an initial nervous post.

I think if you are not comfortable talking to your current Pastor, why would you want him to marry you? The person I wanted to marry us would be someone we feel comfortable with and trust.

futuremrsog15 · May 2014

Our church is big enough to have a premarital counseling department. We want our pastor to marry us because it's important to us to have him along side in the future as well. The premarital counseling will actually take place with an experienced married couple within the church. Does your church have something like this? I'm sure you will end up doing some kind of meetings with the pastor marrying you leading up to wedding, but those won't be the premarital.

Inkdancer · May 2014

I would think intensely about why you are uncomfortable talking with your pastor about your relationship. Is it that you're doing something that makes you feel guilty?

If you're just nervous about talking about your sex life with your pastor, don't be. They don't tend to push too hard. I was really terrified of that but my pastor has not brought it up even once except to ask if we felt we needed to talk about it. When we both said an enthusiastic no, he moved right along.

stangbarnes · May 2014

I love my current pastor. It's not that he makes me uncomfortable, its that Im an extremely private person and I view him as a good friend. I dont want to discuss issues in relationships, sex, or roles of husbands and wives with him. I would be more comfortable talking about these things with someone I never met and the extent of our relationship is strictly counseling. However, I dont want someone I barely know to marry us, I want the pastor I know and love to do it. Its the same feeling as if he WAS family. It's just too personal to me. Im not Catholic so speaking blatantly with my pastor is not something Im used to. I dont do confession. I dont want to talk about my communication issues or "not depriving each other" or argue my stance on women in the household to someone I see on a regular basis. Hysilvinialithabel I think I may just do that.

blabla89 · May 2014

A pastor of the church I used to attend is (hopefully) going to marry us. I like him and value his wisdom, but I understand how you feel about not wanting to talk about those things. Take a deep breath and remind yourself that each of these conversations will last for no more than an hour or two, and after that you'll all go about your business. I'm sure your pastor is used to people feeling awkward about these topics. I would suggest talking with him and/or another couple who did PMC with him, as they could probably ease your mind and give you a better idea of what to expect.

Some churches have an older married couple (lay people) lead PMC, and others will provide referrals to an outside counseling service that uses their preferred curriculum (although this option is more costly) so I would ask the pastor what your options are.

Also, it concerns me a little bit that you don't want to talk about your communication issues. I don't know what the issues are but communication is the foundation of marriage, and I think it is extremely important to address that before getting married.

mysticl · May 2014

Hysilvinialithibel said:

I don't think either one has to know about the other, just politely decline if one offers to do the other.

It doesn't really work that way. Pre-marital counseling may be a requirement for the Pastor to marry them. They can't just say "no thank you" to the offer of counseling if that's who they want to perform the ceremony.

OP I'm not sure what religion you are but our premarital counseling did not include anything intimate. There was no talk of sex, family planning, or male/female roles within the marriage. All we talked about was conflict resolution and communication. Once the minister realized I was a social worker who used to teach crisis intervention he waived the rest of our sessions. The only time children came up was when he asked us if he should include a line in the service about God blessing the marriage with children. He leaves it out if the couple doesn't want kids.

LadyMillil · May 2014

mysticl said:

Hysilvinialithibel said:

I don't think either one has to know about the other, just politely decline if one offers to do the other.

It doesn't really work that way. Pre-marital counseling may be a requirement for the Pastor to marry them. They can't just say "no thank you" to the offer of counseling if that's who they want to perform the ceremony.

OP I'm not sure what religion you are but our premarital counseling did not include anything intimate. There was no talk of sex, family planning, or male/female roles within the marriage. All we talked about was conflict resolution and communication. Once the minister realized I was a social worker who used to teach crisis intervention he waived the rest of our sessions. The only time children came up was when he asked us if he should include a line in the service about God blessing the marriage with children. He leaves it out if the couple doesn't want kids.

During our PMC the only intimate thing we were asked was if we were able to communicate about and respect each others preferences (not sure how to word this, but basically were we able to talk about intimate issues with each other). The rest of the PMC was asking about "big" issues to make sure we were on the same page about kids, how the household is run (we could define our own roles, not traditional gender roles), what we see for our future, why we want to get married, why we want to marry each other, what we argue about, how we argue/communicate when angry. I'm not a very open person so it was hard for me to talk about these things, but it was very important to me to have my childhood minister marry us, so I did it.

Inkdancer · June 2014

stangbarnes said:

I love my current pastor. It's not that he makes me uncomfortable, its that Im an extremely private person and I view him as a good friend. I dont want to discuss issues in relationships, sex, or roles of husbands and wives with him. I would be more comfortable talking about these things with someone I never met and the extent of our relationship is strictly counseling. However, I dont want someone I barely know to marry us, I want the pastor I know and love to do it. Its the same feeling as if he WAS family. It's just too personal to me. Im not Catholic so speaking blatantly with my pastor is not something Im used to. I dont do confession. I dont want to talk about my communication issues or "not depriving each other" or argue my stance on women in the household to someone I see on a regular basis. Hysilvinialithabel I think I may just do that.

It sounds like you think you'll disagree with your pastor on these things. These are really important issues. If you honestly disagree deeply with your pastor on these issues, why do you attend this church?

I promise I'm not trying to be snarky. If you really think that your church teaches wrongly about women's issues, that's something to think carefully about. I would be out in a second from any church that told me I was supposed to be a submissive housewife whose job was to wait hand and foot on my husband and bear him dozens of fat children.

l9i · June 2014

I was very nervous starting PMC because the Pastor we choose works with one of my mother and my relationship there has been shaky previously. I'd come to terms with the relationship and it was water under the bridge, but was nervous because I didn't want to discuss it with the Pastor wondering if it would affect his viewing of their working relationship. When that subject came up he asked if I felt I needed to talk about it, I said no, and we moved on. Most of it was about conflict resolution and communication between each other. The subjects of sex and children were also not mentioned. His goal was to equip us to handle future challenges and the key to that is communication.

2 Pastors? Premarital Counseling

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