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| Q: | My daughter has know here fiance for three years and will be married next year. They have chosen to live together before marriage. She would love a church wedding, was raised in a WELS church, baptized, and confirmed. He is from a nondenominational Christian church. Can she get married in the church? She doesn't know our Pastor and fears discussing it with him. Her experience at our church has not been a good one. She attended school there and was the center of cruel attention and jokes. Her experiences there have deterred her from attending regularly. Is it a pastoral decision not to let her marry in the church? | ||||||
| A: | My advice is that your daughter be encouraged to recognize that she has much more important issues to deal with than being married in a particular church. What she really needs is to examine her relationship with the Lord Jesus and his Word, to face the issues of what appears to be a habitual neglect and despising of the means of grace, a lifestyle characterized by pre-marital sexual activity which is sexual immorality in the eyes of God, and an apparent willingness to excuse her bad behavior by citing bad things others did to her years ago. I strongly encourage you as her mother to serve her greatest needs and testify to her regarding the serious nature of her lifestyle. I also encourage your daughter to go to the pastor and seek his help in sorting a number of things out and allowing the word of God to be applied to her situation in a loving yet firm way. Yes, it is certainly a pastoral and local leadership decision to allow or not allow a wedding in the church. But pastors want to deal with far more important issues than the location of a wedding event that lasts an hour. They want to serve the spiritual needs of the people involved and set a foundation for a Christian marriage that will endure for a lifetime. I hope you and your daughter are willing to let him serve. | ||||||
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