Congratulations on your engagment!

Our desire here at Fellowship Bible Church is to help you thrive and succeed in your Christ-Centered marriage. 

Vision: We take marriage and preparation for marriage seriously because we believe that God has designed marriage to be a beautiful parable of His awesome love for His people. That’s why we offer the members of our church gospel-centered counseling to help every couple celebrate and step into a loving, healthy, Christ-centered marriage.

Pre-marital counseling at Fellowship Bible Church is available for couples who desire biblical guidance as they prepare for marriage. The counseling process typically includes 6 sessions focused on biblical foundations for marriage, communication, conflict resolution, and spiritual unity. To help cover materials and assessment costs, there is a $50 fee for the pre-marital counseling process.

Payment Link: https://churchteams.com/m/b/Register.asp?a=c1duWnl0blVIeEk9 

1. We require at least 6 counseling sessions prior to any marriage.

Our goal is to have 6 counseling sessions which are before the wedding. And we strongly encourage at least 2-3 additional sessions during the first year of marriage. 

Please see below for details on Fellowship Bible Church pre-marital counseling process. It should be noted that it is not mandatory that the Fellowship Bible Church pastor who officiates your wedding will conduct the pre-martial counseling. There are several mature couples at Fellowship Bible Church who preform pre-martial counseling on the pastoral team's behalf. Also, if you are receiving pre-marital counseling from another church/pastor and having Fellowship Bible Church pastor officiate the ceremony, we reserve the right to reach out the church performing the cousneling to discuss their process.  

2. At Fellowship, we want the weddings we officiate to reflect a biblical view of marriage. If either person has been previously divorced, we will walk through that story together to ensure there was a biblically supported basis before moving forward with performing the ceremony.

If this applies to your situation, please indicate as such on your pre-marital applicaiton form. A previous marriage and divorce does not necessarily exclude you from remarriage as we recognize there are a host of situations and circumstnaces that may be factors. Therefore, upon receiving your application, there appropriate pastor will share in detail Fellowship Bible Church's position on marriage, Divorce, & ReMarriage and hear your story. This will help us understand your backgrounds, and determine if the church can perform the wedding ceremony. 

3. We will not marry a couple if one person is a Christ-Follower and the other is not. 

We believe that marriage is a gift from God given to all people. Men and Women, who may not even know God,  marry and receive this gift. Marriage unites two people into one and we believe that becasue of that weight of the covenant, Scripture commands to all those who know the Jesus to not marry and unbeliever. 

4. Because we believe God’s design is for sexual intimacy to be expressed within marriage, we ask couples who desire to be married by a Fellowship pastor to pursue sexual purity leading up to their wedding day. If a couple is currently living together or sexually involved, we ask that they be willing to take steps toward honoring the Lord in this area before moving forward with the wedding.

We believe what Scripture teaches about the importance of keeping the physical inimacy of sexual relations within the covenant of a biblical marriage. This can be a challenging discussion or possibly come across as judgemental - but our heart behind this policy is to establish proper expectations of marragie before the marriage and to do so based on God's Word. As a pastoral team of a local church we frequently counsel with husbands and wives who sturggled through this during the engagement and the results impacts the marriage. 

Pastoral & Staff Honoraria 

Please know that no one at Fellowship Bible Church is in this to make money on people's weddings. We love being part of weddings for people in the church. Compensation simply recognizes the time, energy and expense to those involved. In many cases, the participants are missing the bulk of their weekend with their own families to be with yours. Further, as you will see below, the pastors, and or key leaders of Fellowship Bible Church, will be investing a notable amount of their time over the course of this process whether pre and post wedding counseling sessions. 

The fees that suggested below are assuming your wedding location is within a 30 - 45 minute driving distnace of Fellowship Bible Church. If you wedding is further away, please adjust the fees and honoraria accordingly. 

Pastoral Officiant: $250 (Outside of Pre-Marital Fee) 

Fees are due to the pastoral officiant 7 days before the weddings date. Checks should be made out directly to the people involved, not to the church. 

If these fees will be a severe hardship, we are willings to work with you to determine a more feasible amount. To help determine the validity of the hardship, additional information about your wedding expenses may be requested (such as catering, photography, transportation, flowers, etc)