Preparing Couples for Marriage
A Guide For Pastors For Premarital Counseling
Les C. Wicker

Here's a comprehensive sourcebook for busy pastors with information on all aspects of wedding preparation -- from premarital counseling sessions to the nuts and bolts of planning the marriage service itself. Les Wicker combines the experience of performing hundreds of weddings with extensive training in marriage and family to provide a complete package of practical, flexible material. Several sessions explore all the important issues for this most significant step in people's lives. Topics covered include family profiles, self-evaluation, resolving conflict and settling differences, financial and legal matters, and faith in the context of marriage. There's also special supplemental material for interfaith, interracial, and second marriages. Each chapter comes with reproducible handouts that allow couples to review material not covered at counseling sessions and reflect on their responses together. Handy checklists for organizing the myriad details of the wedding service round out this encyclopedic compendium that helps ministers provide the very best premarital preparation.

This book is an excellent resource for clergy who are engaged in marriage preparation and counseling work in their ministry. It will also be a good resource to use with seminary students in teaching them how to understand the way to proceed in bringing a couple from beginning discussions through the wedding itself. I commend the work highly!
Wilson Yates
President
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

Preparing Couples For Marriage is extremely comprehensive, well organized, easily accessible, and theologically sound. The format of the material makes it a flexible tool, allowing the pastor to choose which resources are most appropriate in any given premarital counseling setting. It provides a wide range of well-researched information to help the busy pastor offer guidance and support to the couple -- and there is a good balance of emotional support and practical suggestions. This is a resource that will be used and appreciated through many years of ministry.
David S. Moyer
Conference Minister
Wisconsin Conference, United Church of Christ

Here is a much-needed resource that covers all the bases of premarital preparation. The resources reviewing the relationship's development and family profiles are invaluable, as are materials addressing the subject of blended families. The multi-denominational approach makes this a sourcebook that ministers from any tradition will find helpful and timely. And the sample wedding guidelines and resources for training wedding directors are by themselves worth the value of the book. Preparing Couples For Marriage is a must for every pastor!
Joy A. Baumgartner
Senior Minister, United Church of Marco Island
Marco Island, Florida

Preparing Couples For Marriage is a well-conceived resource that combines both scholarship and practicality. The amount of substantive material available is impressive, and the flexibility by which it may be used makes it a useable and useful resource. Optional sessions are invaluable in addressing the needs of special marriages. This is certainly a "must have" resource.
T. Ronald Vaughan
Minister, New Salem Presbyterian Church
Stony Point, North Carolina

This resource book provides an endless reservoir of aids and guidance for the busy pastor. The discussion of the practical aspects of "getting married" is pointed, relevant, practical, and necessary. During my ministerial career I officiated at over 1500 wedding ceremonies -- and how I wish I could have used Preparing Couples For Marriage. Les Wicker's colleagues in pastoral ministry will feel profound gratitude that such an important asset is now available to them.
Emerson S. Colaw
United Methodist Bishop (retired)
Former professor, United Theological Seminary

Preparing Couples For Marriage provides plans, pastor's pointers, and even prayers that cover the entire spectrum of marriage preparation organized into seven or less sessions depending on couples' needs and time constraints. New and veteran pastors will find this to be a most valuable resource. Les Wicker sensitively covers difficult and delicate issues such as interfaith, interracial, and intercultural marriages plus marriages following divorce or death. Helpful handouts to facilitate discussion and handy checklists to organize the myriad details of the preparation process round out this comprehensive compendium of materials to help the pastor prepare couples for marriage.
Ricardo Broach
Multicultural pastor and former Roman Catholic priest

Les C. Wicker is currently the senior minister of Delavan United Church of Christ in Delavan, Wisconsin. He previously served congregations in Florida and North Carolina. A member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Wicker received his Ph.D. with a specialization in Marriage and the Family from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is also a graduate of Greensboro College (B.A.) and Duke University Divinity School (M.Div.).

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