Selling out?

In my first years in ministry, the senior minister I worked with had a policy of performing weddings for any couple that asked, whether they were connected to the congregation or not. He believed that this was one way to show hospitality to couples who did not attend church and who later  might return to church as a result of that hospitality.

Since I was a newly ordained associate minister, the senior minister's policy became my policy. And due to my status in the hierarchy, I got stuck with most of those nonmember weddings. I came to dread them more than any other aspect of ministry.

The unchurched couples would order me around like any other service provider they had contracted with. They would bore me with rants about why they hated organized religion or why their wedding pictures would actually be much prettier if taken at First Congregational Church. And why, they wondered, couldn't the videographer stand in front of the cross and Bible to get the best shot of the ring bearer? Surely you can picture that ring bearer—too young to talk, with no idea what he is doing, dressed up like a little magician in satin and velour.