Saying ‘I do’ over 50 times – IPHC mass weddings make a comeback after Covid

The International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC) in Zuurbekom, Westonaria, hosted a mass wedding on Sunday – where 53 couples tied the knot on one day.

The church holds three ceremonies of mass weddings each year, which are on Good Friday, one in September, and also another one in December.

This was, however, the first mass wedding since Covid. Church members were in a jovial mood as they celebrated those who were getting married.

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Priest Mpho Makwana said the wedding ceremony allowed everyone to receive blessings from Comforter Modise at the same time, once the couples had tied the knot.

“On average during Easter and December the church marries about 170 couple in their mass weddings.”

Makwana said the first mass wedding the church held was in 1969 – and the church was established in 1962.

Members are allowed to marry each other and polygamy is a feature of the church, an act which women of the church do not disagree with.

Same-sex marriages are, however, prohibited.

Makwana said they are guided by Leviticus 18 verse 22 and Leviticus 20 verse 13.

“In our kingdom we do not bless gay marriages, simply because the Bible doesn’t allow us.

“Perhaps other people, their theology allowed them to do so, but the Bible we read and everybody reads doesn’t allow us,” he said.

“We haven’t had a situation where one of our young people openly said they are gay and they want to get married.”

On marrying a person who is not a church member, Makwana said it is impossible to comfortably fall in love with someone not of the church.

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This is because of the way they would be living and the contrast with a member of the church’s lifestyle.

“It is more practical and easier to marry within the church. When you get to the church, you will see that the choice is wide.

“You are never out of choice, so we have never had the urge [congregation members] to go and look outside the church to find a partner,” Makwana said.

One member attested to this, saying his lobola for his first wife was paid by Modise in 1990.

“For the second marriage, the comforter also paid lobola when I told him I wanted get married again.

“He even paid for me to go on a honeymoon to the Cape,” the member of the church said.

Divorce is discouraged, but is allowed on one condition.

“It is in very extraordinary circumstances that it does happen [divorce],” Makwana said.

“There’s only one condition that God allows a couple to divorce: it is when one finds their partner being intimate in the action with someone else,” Makwana said.

“The Bible says that is the only time you can ask for divorce because possibly the memory that you saw as you find them [the adulterers] might be difficult to erase.”

One of the newlyweds, Mpho Modiba, was very happy to be married as he has been waiting since 2019 to tie the knot with his first wife.

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“We went to the marriage commissioner in 2019, and we have been waiting since then,” Modiba said.

“Today, I am happy that I get to finally fulfil my dream.”

Modiba said he was going to consider taking a second wife when the time is right.

“We are praying to a God of polygamy. Definitely when the time comes, we will see.”

His wife Khutjo Modiba said she was excited that she was finally married.

“We getting married in a good condition, the church helped us a lot,”Khutju told The Citizen.