Committment vs Covenant (Guests: Pastor Brian Carter, Stephanie Carter, and Panelists))

Dear Future Wifey

Laterras R. Whitfield

Religion & Spirituality, Relationships, Education, Christianity, Society & Culture

5 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when a church offers to pay your rent to move out or give you a free wedding to get married? In this powerful episode, host Laterras Whitfield takes us inside Concord Church's revolutionary "Cohabitation Challenge" - a program that's helped over 120 couples transition from living together to sacred marriage.

Through intimate conversations with Pastor Brian Carter, his wife Stephanie, and couples at various stages of the journey, we witness how one church is tackling declining marriage rates in the Black community with radical compassion rather than judgment.

## Timestamps and Key Takeaways:
- 8:30 - Pastor Carter explains the three options offered to cohabitating couples: move out with financial support, find another pathway, or commit to marriage through their 90-day challenge
- 15:45 - A couple married since 2009 shares how they became part of the very first Grand Wedding
- 28:20 - The importance of intentionality in marriage and balancing work life with home life
- 37:15 - A previously divorced man describes how his wife's trust in "the Jesus she saw behind him" helped heal his resistance to remarriage
- 51:30 - A couple reveals their journey from high school classmates to expectant parents navigating long-distance and cohabitation
- 1:08:45 - An engaged couple discusses overcoming family resistance and securing a father's blessing before their upcoming wedding

The episode culminates with powerful advice for those currently cohabitating: "You're never going to be ready for anything in life... so if you took that leap to move to Dallas from your hometown, why not take the leap to be with your forever and reap all the benefits and blessings God has for your life?"

Don't miss this transformative conversation about choosing covenant over convenience and building marriages that last. Subscribe now for more episodes that discover, uncover, and recover love.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Because I want to offer them three options.
0:02.1	One is to move out, which means we're going to pay your rent and help you transition out.
0:05.5	Hold on, hold on.
0:06.1	You can't just throw that out there.
0:07.3	Y'all going to pay two months of the couple's rent.
0:10.2	What made you envision doing the grand wedding?
0:13.8	It really became out of division of how popular cohabitation became.
0:17.2	I wanted to preach about it, but I said I never want to preach about something.
0:19.9	We're not giving people a pathway to restoration. We give them three options. One, move out. We're going to help you with rent. Two, move away from doing a relationship this way. Find another pathway. And then the third one is marry now. What we call a 90-day cohabitation challenge. And at the end of that, we'll give you free wedding, free dress. We're going to take care of everything. You just work on the relationships. We married over 120 couples. And we've seen how it's been redemptive in their lives. We were shacking up for seven months. And then Pastor Carter issued the call for the cohabitation challenge. We looked at each other and we said that he is talking to us and this is what we need to do.
0:59.4	For a woman to submit, it's not just the man that she's trusting. It's really the Jesus she sees behind him. My wife trusted the Jesus she saw behind me more than I did at some point.
1:06.0	The number one question I got when she was pregnant with Ethan was, are you ready? And my
1:10.0	counteracted question would be, how could I be ready for something that I've never done before? And that's the same thing when it comes to marriage. I once heard someone say, find someone who you can have a bad time with. And it's easy to have a good time with someone. And there's no one else that I would rather go through those bad times with. So just take that leap of faith.
1:28.0	God was real loud in that moment. You know, it was something that had been pulling in my heart. I knew that I wanted to marry her. I knew that with how both of us were raised, with how both of us operate, we wanted to do it the right way. He talks about the cohabitation challenge, and he just introduced the pay your rent part. And I was like, look, there you go. We were moving up, buddy.
1:45.1	We were literally visiting.
1:48.1	Hey. He just introduced the pay-your-rent part. And I was like, look, there you go. You're moving up, buddy.
1:45.2	We were literally visiting.
1:48.1	They said they was visiting them, but God visited this.
1:50.6	That's what I'm talking about.
1:51.7	And how many years I've been married?
1:52.7	Going on 16.
1:54.0	16 years of marriage.
1:56.2	That's absolutely beautiful.
	...

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