The Difference Between Basic and Advanced Wedding Officiant Skills

Henry Reyenga

I want to welcome you back today. We're going to talk about the difference between the Basic Wedding Officiant Skills class that you have already taken before moving on to this course.

The Wedding Officiant Skills class, the first one you take here at Christian Leaders Institute, is very oriented around helping you get through the wedding ceremony, do well, understand how the ceremony is put together, and do basic pastoral care, but not really go too deep. It does not really pay attention to things like who you are marrying, why they are getting married, and how you can serve the couple.

The first course really focuses on giving you the basics. In many ways, it is designed for that wedding officiant who is asked to do one wedding. This person knows the couple well. This person understands their role in the couple's life because they have been around them for a long time. They have a lot of people-smart savvy with the couple. Trust has already been established.

So that first course is really excellent at helping you perform a wedding ceremony one time.

Now, that course can be very beneficial if someone wants to stop there and not take this course. But this course really goes deeper.

The foundation course answers this question:

How do I become prepared and ordained to officiate a Christian wedding?

This advanced course asks a deeper question:

How do I serve the bride and groom, their families, the ceremony, and the ministry setting with deeper biblical, pastoral, chaplaincy, coaching, and practical wisdom?

So whatever your role may be, this course goes deeper.

It may be that you are a wedding officiant and you want to know, "How do I do that better?"

It may be that you are a chaplain, a minister, a coach, or a life coach.

All of that goes deeper in this class.

A person may learn the basic order of a wedding ceremony. They may know where to stand. They may know how to speak, how to lead the vows, how to put a basic wedding message together, how to pronounce the bride and groom husband and wife, and how to deal with some of the basic license issues.

All of that is covered in the first class from the Basic Wedding Officiant course.

But now, in the Advanced Wedding Officiant course, it goes further.

You will be trained to notice things that are very important in ministry.

Is there abuse going on?

Are there issues that need to be resolved?

Can you refer the couple to a trained minister in pastoral care?

Do you know a Christian counselor they can go to?

Now, this does not suggest that you are now a therapist. It does not mean that you are now a counselor or a pastoral care specialist.

It is not even saying that if you are not a Life Coach Minister yet, that you suddenly become one.

What it is saying is that you can begin to see some of the marriage issues in a premarital way, even as an officiant, that could bless and minister to the couple.

This course gets you further along in your discernment and ministry abilities.

If you are taking this course and you are a Life Coach Minister, this course will pair very nicely with that training.

If you are a minister on staff, this course will pair very nicely because you will understand more of these dynamics.

If you are a chaplain, you will understand your lane even more effectively because you will understand some of the issues related to getting married, and Advanced Wedding Officiant Skills will help you navigate and negotiate those situations.

I remember, in my own experience of performing weddings over the decades and studying this topic, when I was first in ministry.

I had the knowledge from the essential Wedding Officiant course that we teach here at Christian Leaders Institute. I learned about doctrine. I learned about marriage between one man and one woman. I learned about the covenant of marriage.

We are going to talk about those things in this course as well.

I remember knowing all of that at a basic level, but I always felt just a little bit of concern because I would think to myself:

"I know where to stand. I know how to work with the family in a functional way."

But over the years, I studied this topic more and more.

In recent years, I have continued to study this ministry skill and ministry presence.

As I have been doing that, I have come to understand that the more we learn and the more we grow in this topic, the more effective we become in ministry.

We become more effective in marriage ministry—perhaps even what we might call premarital ministry.

So that is the difference.

The difference is not just knowing where to stand.

The difference is knowing how to serve.

As you go through this course, by the end of it, you are going to be confident at a level and competent at a level that takes you further along in your ministry competency, your ministry confidence, and your ministry effectiveness.