Church may ban garden weddings

According to the Presbyterian Church, couples who choose garden weddings were going against tradition. Photo/FILE

A church might ban garden weddings because they are a threat to the traditional Christian ceremony. Reverend David Gathanju, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), said marriages should be held inside the church.

Current trends have seen many couples asking clerics to conduct marriage ceremonies outside the church. However, PCEA is questioning this practice.

According to the church, couples who chose garden weddings were going against tradition. Some couples hold the ceremony in the church grounds while others chose other venues, including hotels, recreation gardens, and even the beach and national parks.

“The law provides for holding of marriages in dedicated buildings and at specific hours. The ceremony is presided over by ordained ministers,” Rev Gathanju said in a brief to delegates attending the church’s top decision making organ — the General Assembly — at Tumutumu parish near Karatina.

However, the law says that ceremonies can be held outside such venues with permission. The Rev Gathanju wants the delegates to take a position on garden weddings because, he says, there has been a notable movement towards ceremonies outside dedicated buildings.

The moderator also asked the General Assembly to look at the issue of Sunday weddings. Popular among many couples for providing flexibility and budget cutting opportunities, such weddings are seen as competing with Sunday worship. “The church’s position is that weddings be conducted on other days of the week and not Sunday,” said Rev Gathanju.

Budget conscious couples are increasingly choosing Sunday because they do not have to compete to book the church, send invitations, or lose a work day to hold the ceremony. Sunday wedding couples have their ceremony blessed by a church minister after normal church services.

Separately, PCEA members need to raise Sh100 million every year to maintain the new university at Kikuyu. Rev Gathanju on Thursday told the church’s General Assembly at Tumutumu that the church would need to inject Sh100 million to develop the Presbyterian University of East Africa.

Higher education

In a keynote address to the assembly, Rev Gathanju said the church had undertaken to provide the money before the university got its letter of approval from the Commission for Higher Education. The church plans to convert its main mission hospitals into teaching institutions for the university’s faculty of medicine, he added.