Customer Reviews

The Pastor's Wedding Manual

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jim Henry's "Wedding Manual" was most helpful to me personally. I recently officiated over my first wedding and needed ideas of how to do what "those preachers" did for weddings.

This book not only provided the typical, traditional service. It contained many different types of weddings, so I could pick and choose (along with the couple) just what was appropriate. The variety gave the couple some new angles to consider to make their wedding unique to them.

If you are looking for a starting point on how to conduct weddings, or need some fresh ideas on the same, this is the book for you.

This is one of those must have books for any new minister. If a minister ever had a question about conducting a service, this manual can guide you through with ease. I highly recommend this book and will be looking to purchase other material by this author.

This book has a good look at the contemporary wedding services for the new Pastor.
Much of this books ceremonies are just reprints of standard wedding text. However I enjoyed the introduction and the general set-up of the text.

~ Pastor Dave Plunkett

This book is very helpful in what to do before they say "I DO", in planning the ceremony, and performing the actual wedding.

I just did my first wedding with the help of this little book and it proved to be an excellent resource for me. I would highly recommend it to anyone who needs a little help. There are several weddings inside to choose from, or as I did, to take elements from different ones and put them together.

This item is in-line with a evangelical or conservative perspective--with an emphasis on personal commitment to Jesus Christ and on gender roles based on conservative reading of scripture. I would not recommend this for most new pastors if they consider themselves mainline, liberal, progressive, or even emerging. It did not resonate in my progressive, urban ministry.

I bought this book out of the really great reviews I saw here on amazon. I was absolutely impressed by all the glowing words of praise for it. Then I received the book and actually read some of it and flipped through the rest. I am a WICCAN PASTOR with my own coven and congregation in Brooklyn who performs handfastings and inter-faith weddings throughout the five boroughs of New York...and found this book nearly entirely USELESS.

Why...well, let's start with its EXTREMELY right-wing bias. It flat out tells you to counsel couples that they must cease any sexual activities happening before the wedding day. Umm umm, I don't know about you, but in preparing for my services, I steer clear of this subject as a genuine "none of my business" subject. Dictating bedroom stuff to an engaged couple is NOT the role of an officiant and I cannot think of anyone I have ever worked with or will work with who would tolerate such a speech from me or any other minister. To a 12 year old, maybe! But these are consenting adults here. So pre-martial counseling (covered in this book) should focus on "will this couple genuinely get along" rather than worrying about if and when they are having sex!

The pre-marital counseling also focuses on other very right-wing facets of theology to the degree that I think most liberal Christians and reform Jews would turn white, stuff that really does not have any objective bearing on the endurance of a relationship and stuff that reflects the values of centuries long gone. And that is just the beginning of the book.

While there is a couple nice charts for wedding planning, they all have to be modified by you as a minister to fit your real world conditions because the lists are not flexible to anything--like the fact you might not be marrying someone in your own chapel! People get married EVERYWHERE (beaches included) and you have hundreds of different physical conditions to work with. People have different sorts of bridal parties, types of vows, choices for nearly everything under the sun...it gets nausating. And the list is very rigid. You will find a better one in a bride's wedding planning book, actually.

The wedding services in this book do give a number of different Christian Protestant denomination liturgies, but ONLY certain Christian Protestant liturgies. If you have one person who is catholic and you want a catholic prayer in there, tough luck!

This is ABSOLUTELY USELESS for any sort of non-traditional, modern, or inter-faith situation. It is EXTREMELY RIGHT WING in its focus and orientation. Which is great if they want a 19th century style wedding service.

But if you are working with a modern couple with modern needs...skip it! it won't help you!

I'm looking forward to using this book.

Thanks,
Rev. Alisa Parlette