Weddings

Ligon Duncan

Um, God’s relationship to the church is not an illustration of marriage. Marriage is an illustration of God’s relationship with the church. So it makes it, it then makes it, oh, wow. So that’s why Christians really care about marriage a lot, yeah, because the Bible starts with a marriage, Genesis, two, it ends with a marriage. And Christians have made a big deal about marriage because it’s a big deal in the Bible.

Matt Smethurst

Welcome friends to this episode of the everyday pastor, a podcast from the gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. My name is Matt Smethurst, and I’m Luke Duncan, and we are going to be talking about weddings a responsibility and privilege of pastors, but not always something that is easy to figure out. There’s all kinds of moving parts and relational dynamics, and they can be tricky things. Leg was officiating weddings, something you enjoyed as a pastor. I

Ligon Duncan

absolutely loved it, and there are different ways of going about it. I was because of the size of the congregation I was serving and because of the social sort of expectations in that congregation. Weddings were big deals, and I had a lot of them, so I probably averaged 25 to 30 weddings a year over the course you officiated that I did, so almost every other weekend I was doing a wedding. So my wife and my social life really actually revolved around weddings in the church, and there was an a desire, if not expectation, that I, as the senior pastor, would do the weddings if, unless otherwise requested, or if, you know, if I was somewhere else or providentially hindered. So they there was a desire that I do the weddings, and I liked it be we found, especially at rehearsal dinners that you found out a lot, not only about the couple, but about the families. And I tell you one thing that I would constantly find out. I got to the point where I knew family relations in the congregation pretty well. Okay, you’re so and so’s Sister, you’re so and so’s brother, you’re so and so’s cousin. I liked it because I got to know the congregation really well. I also, you know, obviously, in our day and age where we feel like when marriage is under assault and a Christian view of marriage is facing sort of cultural headwinds, it’s just such a wonderful way to celebrate that in the congregation, celebrate it in the life of a of a young couple, and then teach about it. And so I enjoyed weddings, and I always tried to ask the couple, is there a scripture passage that’s really important to you, is there a theme that you’d like me to carry out? And I tried to do something that was personalized to them, and I used it as an opportunity to teach the people that were present about what we as Christians believe that the Bible teaches about marriage. I was

Matt Smethurst

going to ask, you know, even if you’re working from different passages, what were some of the things that you were always sure to say in a wedding sermon?

Ligon Duncan

Well, one is, is that Christian marriage, and then the wedding ceremony itself is the number one illustration that God makes of his relationship to the church. And so it’s means that that’s super important. God’s relationship to the church is not an illustration of marriage. Marriage is an illustration of God’s relationship with the church. So it makes it, it then makes it, oh, wow. So that’s why Christians really care about marriage a lot. Yeah, because from Genesis to Revelation, it is the number one. You know, the Bible starts with a marriage. Genesis two, it ends with a marriage. And Christians have made a big deal about marriage because it’s a big deal in the Bible. So I get to remind people of that. And you can go to so many different it’s not just Ephesians five. There are all sorts of passages all over the Bible that you can go to emphasize those things. I do try to emphasize responsibilities, but I also try to emphasize blessings. And it’s, you know, I’m not trying to get up there and wag my finger at everybody. I’m trying to encourage I want people not to think cynically about marriage, because what what happens is a lot of time, even in Christian settings, you can be cynical about marriage, because there’s, there’s a lot of hard stuff in life and and life together can be hard, and people can get cynical about that. They’ll sort of protect themselves emotionally by, you know, being jokey about marriage, and I always didn’t I wanted to be celebratory. I wanted to be realistic, but I wanted to be celebratory about it. And I love watching Happy married couples together. It’s one of my pastimes. I just love, I love watching a man that is out of his mind in love with his wife after. 40 years. That’s, this gives me joy, sadly, very kind of, not, yeah, it’s not common. So I that’s, that was my approach, and I got to know people well, and then you get to be involved with people. I mean, it’s like the number one important decision that you make in life. So as a pastor, for them to invite you into their lives. That’s a real privilege and a joy. It’s it’s a time when they’re excited. It’s a time where most of us have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into. And so it allows you to come alongside as a person with maybe a little more life experience, and say, let me give you some encouragements that you’re going to need along the way. Well, let’s

Matt Smethurst

start there with the process leading up to marriage. I doubt you were doing, you know, 26 sessions of premarital counseling per year. But was premarital counseling something that you require

Ligon Duncan

was that we did require it, Matt, and you know, that’s one of those we talked before about regrets. You know that you have looking back on on life. Yes, one of them is, I wish, Lord, I wish I had prayed more. I needed to have prayed more. One of them is, I wish I could have done more. In premarital counseling, I was just limited by the sheer pace of marriages in our congregation of doing a lot of that. So my fellow pastors, I would always do at least one, and usually at least two meetings with the couples, but then my fellow pastors would pick up the other premarital sessions, and oftentimes the couples were close to those other pastors, and I wanted them to have those kinds and a lot of, a lot of the other pastors were younger and closer to their ages, and there are all sorts of good reasons for them to get involved. But we, we required, I think, six premarital counseling sessions of everybody. I just couldn’t do them all. But we, we tried to really make sure that people were prepared for the top three or four or five things that they were going to run into in marriage. Wayne Mack wrote a book called strengthening your marriage. It sounds like a book for married couples. It is, but I used it for premarital counseling, and he he just hits on the the main stuff that you’re going to run into in marriage, stuff with in laws, stuff with finances, stuff with sex, stuff with children adjusting to different normals. And so I utilized his stuff to help me sort of build a premarital questionnaire that I gave to folks as a way of getting me up to speed on them quicker. And again, I loved that. I love being able to be a part of people’s lives at that level and find out what, what you know, how did you meet one another? How did you how did you decide that you two wanted to to get married? What? What was the process here? What are your aspirations for life. Do you have a mutual aspiration for what your life is going to be like? And then just, you know, especially as I got older, Matt and saw certain things, realizing, oh yeah, I really need to prepare that person for this. Like, if you, if you saw a guy who was coming out of a really tight knit family system with a very strong matriarchal grandmother or mother, I knew that there were some things that I needed to prepare him and her for. Or if you had a young woman whose dad was a doctor or a lawyer or a stockbroker and she was marrying a guy in real estate, and I realized, okay, you are about to have a totally different financial experience than you’ve ever had in your life, because one year he’s going to be killing it, and the next year he’s going to make no money. You’re not going on summer vacation. Yeah, you know, and you’ve never had that with your dad. Have you thought that through with him? So but I and

Matt Smethurst

not to mention an experience, you know, where you have one person coming from a stable, healthy Christian family and the other coming from a broken family?

Ligon Duncan

Yeah, exactly, yeah, a bride who has a great dad, and she’s marrying a really fine young man whose dad left him, you know, when he was a little boy and and, and he’s, he sought out godly men in his life, but there’s stuff that he’s got to work through in relating to her. So I loved being able to help people. Part of my my, one of my big goals, Matt, was just when, when you get, you know, you get cold cocked by something in your life. Don’t be surprised about that. Expect it to come and have this attitude. Okay, Lord, this is why you made me a Christian. This is why I’m supposed to trust you. I knew that it was coming, and here’s how I’m going to respond to this. So just trying to help people not be completely hit out of the blue with stuff. Stuff that just happens in life. Again, my goal was never, ever to promote cynicism, because there’s enough stuff out there that promotes cynicism in us, but to promote hope and joy, but also a readiness to work. You know, we’re you, this is something kind of a sober excitement. Yeah, you’re gonna have this is something you’re gonna have to in the best of marriages. There are gonna be things you have to work through. Yeah, and just be prepared for that. And

Matt Smethurst

I think that culture begins as we disciple our teenagers and college students and and 20 somethings of the purpose of dating, which, of course, is kind of an artificial category biblically, but we ought to date with the attention of marriage or of finding out of is this the person for me or not? With the most important question being, is this someone who doesn’t merely check the box of being Christian, but is actually gonna point me to Jesus? I’m running toward Jesus at a certain pace. And as I look to my left and right, who else do I see running in the same direction at the same pace, or even faster than me? Why not do this together? And then when you get into, you know, after engagement, we’re into that premarital counseling process, that requirement that you had at first pres Jackson for premarital counseling that was also a gift to the couple. Because what I find is that in light of our modern wedding industrial complex, it’s so easy for even well intentioned godly couples to spend all of their time and energy preparing for a wedding rather than preparing for a marriage, correct? And you’re helping them to slow down, to lift their eyes, to take the long view, and to think about decades of faithfulness on the other side of a covenant. And so that’s a real gift. Okay, so let’s, let’s now talk about the wedding weekend. So they’ve done the premarital counseling, families flying in. You, I assume things for you typically would begin with the rehearsal. Do you have any little tips or tricks for pastors when it comes to

Ligon Duncan

leading the rehearsal? I think I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating. Have a wedding policy. Have a wedding policy about what you do and what you don’t do in a wedding, you will regret it if you do not have it. That ought to be one of the first things that you do when you become the pastor of the church. The elders really need to agree we’re going to do these things. We’re not going to do these things, because you are going to be asked to do some crazy things in weddings, such as well. Sometimes look, it can be very tricky. Relationally, Uncle Joe is a pastor. He’s a pastor in a liberal congregation. He doesn’t believe in the gospel, but Uncle Joe means so much to our family, we want him to give the wedding homily. No, this is a Christian church. We believe the Bible, we believe the gospel. But if you don’t have a wedding policy that says something, like, our ministers do the weddings, or if the ministers know the weddings, who does the weddings is determined by the elders of the church, then it’s all on the pastor. You don’t want to be the one saying to a mother or to her daughter, I have decided that you can’t do X, right? It’s expectations, right? Sometimes it’s music. Sometimes people want secular music. That’s that’s going to be part and we just said, No, we’re not going to do that. It’s all going to be the music is going to be Christian. It’s going to be scriptural, well,

Matt Smethurst

and the reason is, and we need to just make this very clear. It’s a service of worship, right? It’s an opportunity to come before the living God. Yes, it’s the bride special day for which she’s been, you know, she’s been dreaming about it and preparing about it, perhaps, for decades. But it’s a day, ultimately, about God, right? And what’s on display about his gospel. And so I think making it very clear up front, this is a service of worship, and we’re going to act accordingly, is counter cultural, but it’s also a striking witness to the world and even to Christians who have been caught up in that industrial company.

Ligon Duncan

And so the wedding policy really helped me. And the other two things that helped me, it was our Minister of music and worship. He was the person that most often interfaced with the couples about what the music was going to be like at the service, and gently guiding them into making good decisions as opposed to bad decisions. And then I’ve testified to her before Ruth Smith, my wedding coordinator. Oh, that woman saved my bacon so many times I just cannot tell you she she was in charge of all of the logistics for the weddings, and she understood her Bible. She understood our wedding policy. She wanted the service to be beautiful and meaningful. She wanted the mother and the bride to be happy with everything, but she knew how to do things. I did not have to get into those negotiations or discussions at all. Ruth just handled them. And I got to the point where I did not want to do a wedding without Ruth there, because I knew that Ruth would handle it. And what they have now is they have a team of women in the congregation that work with Ruth as wedding directors. So a lot of you know, a lot of couples end up hiring a wedding director. We said, Fine, you can do that if you want to, but we have a person who’s part of a team that’s in charge of the ceremony. Your Wedding director will not be in charge of the ceremony. They will be in charge of those logistical things. Perfectly fine to have your wedding director come alongside of them, but understand Ruth or her assistants are in charge. That just helped me some I could concentrate on just leading the service well being relational with the families, because you’re meeting all sorts of people that you’ve never met before, that are bridesmaids or groomsmen or cousins or believing family, unbelieving family. I wanted to be able to concentrate on them, befriending them, talking to them, getting to know them. You learn stuff, you know, even at the rehearsal dinner. So you talk about the weekend, yeah, for me, it started rehearsal dinner. Were

Matt Smethurst

there any lessons learned over the years in terms of officiating a wedding? I mean,

Ligon Duncan

one very simple thing was this, we Ruth and I decided together, hey, we’re going to start asking for people to give us the marriage license ahead of time, because we had couples that failed to get a marriage license. So I had a really super sharp young woman who was a lawyer in my congregation. And I remember the night of the rehearsal, she walks in, I said, Hey, do you or your fiance have the marriage license? And she looks at me and she says, I need a marriage license. And I’m going, I’m talking to an attorney for this marriage, you know, so Ruth and I just decided, hey, we’re going to start asking for that earlier. And again,

Matt Smethurst

that was that’s probably listed in the policy so people just see,

Ligon Duncan

get your marriage license. Yeah, would you permit

Matt Smethurst

people to write their own vows? We

Ligon Duncan

did not. Now, look, I’ve seen that done and done beautifully, but we, we just decided, okay, we’re going to have these vows. Number one, it helped me in leading the ceremony to know the flow and the structure and then make sure that we weren’t leaving out certain things that were important in the traditional marriage vows, there are things that are really good for the couple, like the first thing that traditionally happens in a wedding service if you’re a Protestant, is what’s called a declaration of intent. The husband says to the wife, I want to marry you, and the wife says the husband, I want to marry you. That is a unique Protestant invention in marriages, and it was because Protestants were concerned that people were being forced to marry who did not want to marry. And Protestants knew that is not good if you do not want to marry some somebody, it’s not going to go well in the and so Protestants wanted a public declaration of consent by both members of the wedding party where she gets to say, Yeah, I actually want to marry this guy. And he says, I want to marry her, that’s the first part. If you do, we’re going to write our own vows. That kind of thing might be left out. And so I want to make sure that all of those components that have been built up in Christian history and in Protestant history, from the time of Thomas Cranmer, who rewrote the wedding vows for the Church of England, everybody knew when they came to a service, you’re gonna hear these things in the service, and it’s gonna be good for me to explain those things.

Matt Smethurst

Did you have a moment where people could object to the marriage? It’s, you know, I think of the climactic scene in one of the greatest movies of all time. What About Bob everyday pastors out there, if you’ve not seen one about Bob, and if you can’t quote it fluently, then you need to repent. But yeah, did you have that moment? And even if not, what, what was kind of the original intent of

Ligon Duncan

that that I’ll tell you, I’ve got a pretty neat story about that in in the Church of England, that was actually required to be done two weeks before the wedding in the parish, it had to be read aloud in the parish that so and so was going to marry so and so two weeks ahead of time, and to give people an opportunity to object and back in those days, part of It was you didn’t have accurate marriage records, so are you sure that both of these people are unmarried, that you’re getting ready to to marry? So that, that was how it functioned, and then that eventually got included in a lot of Protestant worship services. But I was, I was actually at St Helens Bishop gate in London, where we. William Taylor is the wonderful pastor there, and before the Sunday morning service, one of the pastors got up and read this wedding announcement that so and so we’re going to be married here. And if there is anyone who has objection or knows some reason why they should not be joined in marriage, please let an officer of the church no and it was read two weeks before the wedding was performed. And so that’s where that came from. I did not have that in in our service, partly because it created a lot of significant anxiety for some people in awkward personal situations that may be involved in the life of either the husband or the wife, the bride or the groom, and partly because we could check ahead of time, because of the premarital counseling, because of knowing exactly the couples, because of their church membership, we knew whether there was a reason why they should not be united in marriage, and so we didn’t do that. But there’s a reason why that was done, and the reason is a good reason, and we ought to make sure that there’s something in our process that that assures that we’re marrying people that can and should be married,

Matt Smethurst

right? And then talk about the evangelistic component and opportunity of a wedding. Yeah, it’s

Ligon Duncan

there’s no better place to be able to share the gospel, and it doesn’t, perhaps, with the exception of a funeral. The funeral, that’s true, the funeral, I love preaching a funeral sermon, but at the wedding, because it’s marriage, because it’s a picture of union with Christ, it’s so easy to share the gospel in that context, and you’re going to have as many or more unbelievers at a wedding, as you would have at a funeral or at your Easter or your Christmas services. So you need to be dialed in. I’m speak. I’m going to get the privilege of speaking to a lot of people who don’t know Jesus. And it doesn’t have to be the same thing every time, but there ought to be a presentation of the gospel in the in the course of the service,

Matt Smethurst

any other final tips or tricks, words of wisdom you’d commend to pastors? Well,

Ligon Duncan

again, just see that as something that is going to be a blessing to you. In getting to know your congregation, see that some is something that’s going to be a blessing to you, and you’re fostering a culture of marriage in your congregation. You You want a congregation that is excited about seeing people get married and supportive of them and ready to be with them, and I’m thankful I might the congregations that I’ve served, they’ve all loved marriages. They’ve they’ve loved watching young people fall in love and and make commitments to one another in the congregation, they’ve been really good about supporting them in the early days of their marriage, and we want to foster that it marriage needs to be celebrated, because there’s so much pressure on on young couples today, and so I love to be a part of that. Yeah,

Matt Smethurst

that’s great. Let’s end with the reminder that it’s not like God had marriage, and then thought, what can I create to remind people of this? What can I create to show people this? Oh, I’ll create the gospel. Yeah. No, it’s it. He had the gospel, and he gave us the gift of marriage to reflect its glory and beauty. We hope this episode of the everyday pastor has been an encouragement to you. We would appreciate it if you took time to just leave a review that’ll help us get traction and get this podcast in the hands of more pastors so that they can find fresh joy in the work of ministry.