On a beautiful Saturday afternoon Mars Hill Shoreliner Kevin Poirier took fellow Shoreliner Elizabeth Camardo to be his bride; Kevin and Liz have been attending Mars Hill Shoreline since day one of its inception and have faithfully served in the hospitality ministry since then.

Kevin first saw Liz at the Spaghetti Factory with a friend and remarked to his brother that his friend ’sure did have a beautiful girlfriend’. He met her again a year later and this time she was single. Kevin recalls that the first conversation they had was about the five points of Calvinism and the premature handshake, as discussed on Seinfeld. He was smitten instantly. A couple weeks later he asked her out and they began discussing marriage two weeks after that.

The ceremony took place at the 1st Baptist Church in Marysville and was the first wedding at Mars Hill Shoreline officiated by our own Pastor Steve Tompkins. He spoke from Ephesians chapter five which says,

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior,”

and

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

Both Kevin and Liz feel very strongly that for their marriage to work they will have to put Jesus front and center instead of placing one another on a pedestal in worship; that if they make Jesus their first love, every other relationship will fall into place.

Pastor Steve closed with the words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes which say,

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun.

As a community we rejoice in the fact that we are Christ’s bride and we will see Him soon at the final wedding banquet. Similarly, we celebrate the joining together of our brother and sister in Christ as a reminder of that promise.

- Christopher Thrower