Preparing for Marriage - Leaders Guide

Been using it for years ... for Christian and Non-Christian couples who want to get married in our Church.

I have used this course in preparing couples for marriage for the last four years and find it to be superb on so many different levels. The evangelistic nature of the biblical material helps unchurched couples to think about the gospel and their marriage in church. For Christians it is really good at helping apply the Bible into an area of our lives where so often it can be forgotten. And finally, the questions are really helpful for couples thinking about their future married life together. They really do raise the issues, uniquely for each couple, that they need to ...think further about so that their marriage can be the best the it can be. I would highly recommend this course to anyone.

This is a really helpful resource, and one that I use with all the couples I am going to marry.

The way that marriage is rooted in the story of Creation-Fall-Redemption is massively helpful for helping people to understand both marriage and the gospel. And the questions are very helpful in getting couples to talk about themselves.

However, I was in two minds about whether to give this three stars or four essentially because of the lack of balance in the course.

It seems odd to criticise something for having too much of a focus on the gospel, but when a couple have come for marriage prep, that need to be what we give them, rather than something that uses marriage to talk about something else. At points (mostly in the fourth session) this is in danger of starting to head in that direction.

There also could be more of a practical nature about how to relate within marriage - while there is some of this, that is mostly left for the couples to work out between themselves in the questions for discussion. This has the strength of not treating pragmatic advice as if it is on the same level as binding Biblical principles.

What I do now is use the first three sessions, incorporating some of the material from session four into session three, over three weeks. I will supplement some of that with practical matters (so, for example, in week2 - when we look at the problems of marriage - I will talk with them about how to handle arguments). Also, each week we will look at an aspect of the wedding (since that needs to planned!) with the couple discussing that between sessions. So Week1 we will talk about hymns and music and they will go away with suggestions and come back with decisions in Week 2, when we talk about readings, and inn Week3 we look at the promises made in the service (which fits with the material in the book).