How to Conduct Christian Premarital Counseling: 6 Essentials

Pastoral counseling can be tough. Premarital counseling is no exception, offering its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. Your job is to help a couple prepare for a lifetime of covenant faithfulness. These conversations can shape how a couple will come to understand marriage, love, conflict, and forgiveness for years to come. Every session carries weight.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone. There’s a lot of help offered out there—some good, but some not so much.

After having led numerous couples through premarital counseling, I’ve identified six essentials that can help pastors and ministry leaders conduct fruitful premarital counseling. These essentials don’t focus on fixes or clever “marriage hacks.” Instead, they’ll help you ground your counsel in Scripture, prepare couples for real challenges, and cultivate marriages that reflect the beauty of Christ and his church.

Table of contents

1. Focus on establishing a proper view of marriage, not “marriage hacks”
2. Ground your premarital counseling in the nature of marriage as a covenant that reflects the gospel
3. Approach premarital counseling as discipleship, not as therapy
4. Conduct counseling not merely to relay content, but the sacred grandeur of marriage
5. Give the couple plenty of homework to do in between sessions
6. Don’t just complete the counseling; build a long-term relationship with couples
   Conclusion

1. Focus on establishing a proper view of marriage, not “marriage hacks”

It’s easy to assume that premarital counseling should focus on practical topics like communication, finances, or intimacy. After all, a prevalent view of pastoral counseling today treats counseling like therapy rather than discipleship (more on this later). It can be common to focus on trendy tips for a better married life. But we should avoid this for a variety of reasons.

i. Specific pieces of advice are easily forgotten

First, such details will not likely be recalled in the future. If the couple has not been married before, they will lack a certain degree of context in which to place such tips. As our brains often work, we dump such info. Like cramming for a test about a topic we’re not really interested in, couples may be able to regurgitate the advice, but most likely will quickly forget it.

ii. A healthy view of marriage can be applied to unforeseen situations

When we focus on helping couples foster a proper philosophy of marriage, we ensure that whatever future problems they face, they carry with them a mental framework through which to process them. Possessing a proper view of marriage will help them deal with unforeseen problems that no amount of imagined scenarios in counseling can possibly prepare them to handle.

Proof of this approach can be seen in the world of politics. Every political season, candidates are asked questions regarding current crises (e.g., existential threats from a rogue nation). They are then asked to give detailed ways they would handle those specific situations. But if we think about it, such questions are not as helpful as they appear, simply because by the time that candidate gets into the office, they’ll face a different set of crises. Their previous detailed responses matter to a degree. But seeking to understand a candidate’s governing philosophy and perspective is far more insightful. Whatever newer threat emerges, we understand how they will likely respond because we will have grasped their underlying philosophy.

In the same way, it is far better to help couples develop a philosophy of marriage grounded in Scripture than to focus on techniques for things like communication or handling finances. This framework will enable them to navigate unexpected challenges that no pastor can anticipate. Details may be forgotten and situations will change, but a philosophy will remain.

iii. Focusing on practical tips conveys a misguided view of marriage

Finally, an approach that focuses on marriage tips conveys that the primary concern in marriage is getting certain practical details right. Yet this communicates something very misleading: that marriage is helped by superficial and easy means. By contrast, focusing on gaining the right view of marriage (divinely derived), we rightfully declare that it’s not just their souls that desperately need divine grace, but their marriage, too.

2. Ground your premarital counseling in the nature of marriage as a covenant that reflects the gospel

To this end, focus on the way God defines, explains, and expresses marriage as a covenant relationship. Spend considerable time exploring the foundational truths found at the first marriage (Gen 2:20–25). Take long and intense looks at Jesus’s teaching on marriage in the Gospels (Matt 19:3–12). And work through it with them with an eye to the basis of marriage, which is the gospel (Eph 5:25–33).

i. Teaching marriage as a covenant combats harmful alternatives

This emphasis—that marriage is a covenant that reflects the gospel—will help couples battle alternative viewpoints that often undermine marriage. For instance, today love is incorrectly understood as purely emotional or romantic in nature. This false version of love downplays commitments, fuels fickleness, and drives increased selfishness in marriage. Such things oppose a godly marriage.

ii. It encourages approaching marriage as sacred opportunity

Also, by meditating on the covenantal nature of marriage, it forces the couple to consider their upcoming marriage as a sacred opportunity to bear witness to the gospel. In other words, their marriage is not primarily about them and their happiness, but about drawing the world’s attention to the beauty of the gospel! Among other things, this causes couples to work hard in their marriage so as not to bring shame on the gospel.

Their marriage is not primarily about them and their happiness but about drawing the world’s attention to the beauty of the gospel!

Certain resources can help you and them keep this in mind. One to consider working through is Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.’s book, Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel (Crossway, 2016). This guide can be a helpful starting place for your own study of the covenantal nature of marriage.

While focusing on these basics in premarital counseling may not be the trendiest approach, it is the best way to build godly and long-lasting marriages.

3. Approach premarital counseling as discipleship, not as therapy

In our therapy-heavy culture, it’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing a pastor as a life coach. When this occurs, pastors can feel a pressure to become something they are not. It can also alter our approach. For example, a pastor might prepare for counseling by reading popular therapy books on marriage.

But I think this sidetracks us from our proper role as pastors and veers our counsel from the true scope of our ministry. After all, most pastors are not trained to handle such things. (I certainly am not!) Nor does the Bible require pastors to achieve competency in these things.

As pastors, our goal is not to help couples “score a perfect ten” in marriage (though that would be amazing)! After all, one can have a comfortable marriage and not necessarily a godly one. Rather, our goal in premarital counseling is to help disciples of Jesus bring glory to him through their marriage.

We help them see that marriage is a gift—not that it gets in the way of their discipleship—but as a tool to help them grow as disciples. Vitally, they must grasp that God is not interested in giving them a perfect, care-free, problem-free marriage. He is interested in making them like Christ.

This angle will flavor the content and the tone of our counseling. And it will encourage the couple to view their future marriage, and even the troubles that arise in it, as opportunities and tools for God to shape them.

Having this perspective at the outset stabilizes them from abandoning their marriage when (not if) things get difficult. It encourages them to seek the Lord deeper (together) when marriage gets harder. We want couples to come to realize that such hardships and frictions are the very means that God uses to mold us into godly men and women.

Approaching marriage this way also keeps things in perspective. Marriage is to be treated as a special and sacred bond, but it is not to be treated as the most important thing that exists. This balanced perspective helps rid couples of delusions of grandeur, preparing them for when their marriages do not provide everything that they hoped. After all, our relationship with Jesus will go on forever. The covenant between couples will last until death—but not beyond (Matt 22:23–33). Marriage is not an end, but points to something greater (Eph 5:32). This perspective guards couples from suffocating their marriage with unrealistically high expectations.

4. Conduct counseling not merely to relay content, but the sacred grandeur of marriage

I do not mean that the content is trivial. It certainly is not. But importantly, the way counseling is conducted also communicates a powerful message about the sacred nature of marriage.

Imagine you attend a required lecture for work. Everyone is required to go through this training. But when you show up, the lecturer has no notes, stumbles over every word, and is entirely unprepared. The presentation content lacks direction. You realize quickly that little planning was devoted to this. This communicates something. Whatever the topic is, it must be unimportant.

In the same way, if we show up casually, with little forethought, deciding instead to have somewhat directionless conversations about various marriage topics, we downplay the sacred covenant into which the couple is about to enter.

Ensure that the couple sees that you take their marriage as seriously as God does.

So prepare well for counseling sessions. Have a clear direction, organize each session, create notes, and compose thoughtful questions. These non-verbals communicate something vital. Ensure that the couple sees that you take their marriage as seriously as God does. Prayerfully, your serious attitude towards their marriage may rub off on them, and they will begin to view their marriage more seriously.

5. Give the couple plenty of homework to do in between sessions

This is not to create busywork. It is to force them to discuss vital matters that they might not have reason to otherwise. Give them an excuse to do so, and motivate them to find the time.

Plan on giving them individual assignments as well as homework to do together.

i. Provide them questions to answer individually—& together

Individual assignments are useful so that each person’s biases might be exposed and then discussed together. But be careful how you form your questions. Don’t ask questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Instead, work to construct questions that force them to be honest, revealing their true heartbeat, instead of simply giving the “right” or expected answer. After all, parroting answers will not improve the counseling—and it will certainly not help their future marriage.

Also give them questions to work through together. This is helpful because it can force them to have conversations about topics they may have never had to discuss openly with each other before.

ii. Assign them different kinds of homework

I prefer to give couples various kinds of homework.

First, homework should include reading and studying certain Bible passages, like the first marriage (Gen 2), Matthew 19:3–12, and Ephesians 5:25–33. If they do not have Bible study tools to use, you might encourage them to try Logos for free. A steady diet of the Bible over several weeks will do wonders for their own growth, as well as give them a foundation in Scripture to start their marriage.

I also encourage couples to read at least one book on marriage. For years I have used Dave Harvey’s book, When Sinners Say I Do (Shepherd, 2007). Consider assigning a chapter or two each week.

6. Don’t just complete the counseling; build a long-term relationship with couples

As their pastor, the help you can provide to their marriage does not end when the counseling does. Your role has just begun.

So, as you conduct your premarital counsel, do so in a way that signals to them that you are now an ally of their marriage—and will be for a long time to come. Signal to them your desire to stay in contact and serve as an ongoing resource to them when, in the future, they need answers and practical help in navigating their covenant marriage.

Conclusion

While pre-marital counseling done well certainly takes effort and time, the dividends are worth it. After all, if our marriages are to reflect the glory of the gospel, then our struggle in helping them shine is more than worth the effort!

Suggested resources for premarital counseling

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