Rationale for Marriage Preparation
Why do marriage preparation?
(Using information taken from the Henley Report, March 2007. With acknowledgements also to a leaflet by Churches Together for Families 2001.)
Recent years have seen significant changes in social trends and in attitudes to marriage. There is an increasing emphasis on individualism and having ones own needs met. As a result people are likely to have several sexual partners during their lifetime. (The average number of partners for women rose from 3.7 to 6.5 over the ten years from 1990 to 2000 and the average number for men rose from 8.6 to 12.7 over this period.) At the same time fewer couples are marrying, and many tend to marry later in life, usually after having lived together for some time, and often already with children. Meanwhile the incidence of family breakdown and divorce is high.
For some useful statistics look at the 2-in-2-1 website.
http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/images/factsheet.pdf
Nevertheless, many people are still attracted to the idea of marriage, and are looking for the security and companionship that long term relationships can provide. (86% of married people and 64% of unmarried people still see marriage as important for society and it is clear that marriage is taken seriously. Indeed, 85% of married people and 59% of unmarried people see it as "the most serious decision in your life.") Although many couples are in committed long term cohabiting relationships, marriage is seen as a significant further step in their commitment.
However, there seems to be "a growing disconnect between the wedding and the marriage itself." Recent years have seen major changes in weddings. They have been spotted as a major commercial opportunity, spawning magazines, wedding fairs and all sorts of imaginative and integrated packages. They can take place in a wide variety of exotic locations. All this has had a major impact on the expectations of couples planning marriage. The wedding is often seen as an end in itself, and often as "her day", with no real understanding of the long term implications of a marriage commitment.
Thus weddings give the church a real opportunity to help couples to understand their new commitment and to learn some of the relationship skills that will enable this commitment to flourish. 35% of all weddings are still celebrated in churches and afford us with unique opportunites to work with couples. Yet the response of churches to enquiries for wedding bookings is sometimes ambivalent, even judgmental; while marriage preparation in many churches is perfunctory and routine.
All this encourages a reappraisal of the Church’s role in enabling and supporting healthy marriages. The challenge to us is to reassert the place of the Church in marriages and to see the preparation of couples as a privilege rather than as a duty. Indeed, "a significant portion of the population" are in favour of the Church supporting couples as they prepare for marriage and also later in their married life, and there seems to be "at least some appetite for marriage preparation from couples, which the Church could capitalise on."
For a couple, marriage preparation can:
- Help them to focus on the marriage, not just the wedding
- Provide space to talk about important things together
- Help them get to know more about each other and their hopes for the future
- Help them find their marriage service more meaningful
- Help them set out on married life better prepared
- Show the church takes them and their relationship seriously
For the church it can:
- Involve us with people at a serious moment in their lives
- Demonstrate the church as a supportive community
- Emphasise the value and importance of marriage
- Show our commitment to people’s marriages
- Provide a base for wider support for family life
So, we need marriage preparation that:
- Is relevant and sensitive to the experience and needs of couples
- Is non-judgmental
- Deals with relationship skills, not just wedding preparation
- Is well delivered and interactive
- Helps bridge the gap between ideal and reality
- Couples enjoy – and tell others about
A parish could:
- Involve the church leadership in deciding what their ministry to couples can realistically be.
- Share with other parishes or denominations in arranging one marriage preparation day or a week-night course for all couples who are to be married in their area. Each officiating minister could then add on personal interviews with individual couples.
- Develop a team of married couples to befriend and mentor engaged couples.
- Train these couples as mentors. (For more information contact: ruth@flamefamilychichester.co.uk)
- Draw in lay people to help with some marriage preparation.
- Invite the couples back later in the year for a meal and to share their wedding photos and memories.
Programmes could be tailored to suit local needs:
- A programme over a number of evenings
- A Marriage Preparation Day once or twice a year, or more often as required. Such a day could be a Saturday or a Sunday, perhaps after Family Service, including lunch and perhaps ending with wedding cake.
- A course should always be held somewhere comfortable and be led by a small team, ideally of both clergy and one or more lay couples.
A good book on ministry to wedding couples is Making the Most of Weddings by Andrew Body (Church House Publishing £6.99)
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