There is an undeniable wedding culture that surrounds Harding. Each year, many students decide to tie the knot before graduation and want to include as many friends as possible in their big day. One of the most important aspects of any wedding is the officient.
The bride and groom often look to someone special to conduct the ceremony. As it turns out, ordination is a fairly easy process available to almost anyone.
According to Dr. Monte Cox, dean of the College of Bible and Ministry, most churches of Christ do not require the officiant to be ordained to perform a wedding. Cox said this idea most likely dates back to Martin Luther’s conviction in the priesthood of all believers. If members of the church of Christ get ordained, they do so solely to follow the law.
“For legal purposes, if someone wants to perform a wedding in the state of Arkansas, they go to the county court house, get an ordination paper and they take it to the elders,” Cox said. “There have to be three elders from a given congregation that say ‘this person is an ordained minister in the churches of Christ.’ They sign it, take it back to the courthouse and it gets recorded there. And that’s it. That is ordination.”
Junior Locke Adair, a youth and family ministry major, is set to officiate his first wedding this December for Harding juniors Barrett Henderson and Rachael Koch. Adair said what had been a longstanding joke turned in to a reality after the couple got engaged.
“In high school we had a joke that I would officiate his wedding, but I never really took him seriously,” Adair said. “After they got engaged at Tahkodah (Henderson) gave me a hug and said, ‘Alright so are you ready to do the wedding?’ Even then I just kind of dismissed it.”
Adair said he talked about it seriously with Henderson and Koch a few days later, and agreed to be the officiant. After thinking about it for a couple of days, he said he realized the gravity of the responsibility he had taken on.
“I went to a wedding just to see what it was like, because I hadn’t been to a wedding in years,” Adair said. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
Graduate student Ben Hansen officiated his first wedding at the age of 21, and is booked to perform a second in the next year. Hansen said even though he majored in ministry, the idea of officiating weddings causes him some anxiety.
“Doing a wedding is the scariest speaking job I know of,” Hansen said. “I would much rather speak in chapel or anywhere else, really. Because when you do a wedding there are certain phrases you have to hit on, and you can’t mess them up.”
Although both Adair and Hansen expressed that they felt inexperienced because of their age, they said they were honored and excited to be entrusted with such an important role in the lives of their friends.
