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Preaching At Weddings

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PREACHING AT WEDDINGS

Try to avoid:

  • giving advice or admonition to the couple, or to the family and friends who have gathered to wish the newly married well;
  • praising the glories of married love or bewailing the divorce rate in our culture
  • drawing a heavy-handed theological connection between marriage and the church, since it has bee affirmed already in the liturgy and, when badly handled, can be painful to those in the church who are not married;
  • telling personal stories about this or other couples unless it is absolutely clear that they illuminate a dimension of grace in the scripture of the day.

Try to include:

  • conveying a sense of the uniqueness of the individuals who are entering this particular marriage;
  • celebrating the grace of God in the joys and strains of marriage
  • assuring the couple, without targeting them, of the real but nonintrusive support of those present, and of the church;
  • exploring ways in which this marriage bears a particular witness to the grace of God.

---David J. Schlafer, "What Makes This Day Different: Preaching Grace on Special Occasions,"

(Boston: Cowley Publications, 1998.) Page 44. ISBN 1-56101-156-8

Quotable Archive

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"And Blessings on your preaching."

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