Reignite a True Love Connection with special guests Pastor Darold and Co-Pastor Karen Montgomery from Life-Changing Experience Worship Center, Pensacola, FL. They will share the secret sauce that has added flavor to their marriage for over 30 years! Join my Co-Host, Sylvia Shipman, and myself, Searita Jones, for this conversation on “A Burning Love Moment!”
Interview Transcription
Below is a transcription fo part of the interview! Watch the video for the entire show.
Searita Jones:
Right into it. We are just going to start with our questions, and we want to know about that secret sauce because you two have been married over 30 years, and I am saying, “What has kept you in love?”
Pastor Darold:
Be true to our vows from a covenant standpoint. We never looked at the vows from a contract standpoint.
Searita Jones:
Yes.
Pastor Darold:
What we promised to do to each other and to God, we took that serious individually. I believe when we formed that threefold cord, then God blesses what we do. We take each other seriously. While at the same time, we don’t take each other seriously because the reason why we like each other is because we are best friends. We laugh. I think laughter is one of the things that if you don’t have in your marriage, to be able to laugh with your spouse and sometimes even laugh at your spouse, you are going to miss a friend moment that can bridge the gap between irregularities, and you’re going to have those states. You got to be able to have a friend. What that brings me to is the three types of love: Phileo, that’s friendship.
Pastor Darold:
You got Agape. That’s that God type of love. Then you have the Eros, that is the romantic or erotic, where we get erotic love. Sometimes when we’re having difficulties or irregularities, we have to shift from one love to the next to get us back to what we need to because sometimes she doesn’t like me, but she always loves me. She has to lean on Agape or even Phileo to get us back to Eros, you understand what I’m saying.
Searita Jones:
I understand what you’re saying.
Pastor Darold:
We’ve tried to do that over the years, and we sneak off every now and then, because you got to take time for yourself. I think biggest thing that has worked for us is we work as a team. We work as a team. We don’t do anything. One of the things that I teach when we do premarital stuff and we do our wedding stuff, we do our marriage couples and all of that, is you give up the ‘I’ for the ‘we’. You understand that principle to give up the ‘I’ for the ‘we’ and work as a team, there’s nothing you cannot accomplish. I thank God for this, I think I did.
Searita Jones:
I know that’s right. It’s so true and you have to work as a team. To be willing to take the good with the bad and to honor your vows. I think that’s why there’s a lot of divorces because people are not honoring the vow, the covenant they made not only themselves, but with God. They forget that they made a covenant with God, and ready to throw in the towel when things get rough and smooth as you want it to go. Sylvia.
Sylvia Shipman:
Yeah. I wholeheartedly agree. Even in this, and pastor, you can help us out, Pastor Karen in Montgomery. In this pandemic that we’re in, so many people that have lost that sauce. As you know, the divorce rate has gone up and even in the body of Christ. What can you share with our listeners about how to bring that sauce back in? Because you said a powerful thing that when you don’t honor the contract, you’re honoring that commitment that you made that vow and building upon that love. What can you help the listeners with that are finding it hard during this time and literally throwing in the towel and saying, it’s done? How can they bring that sauce back in? Get those juices back going again.
Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I think that’s a good question. One of the things pastor and I have found over the years that we have to do, Sister Sylvia, is we have to sometime reinvent the wheel. I know people think that you shouldn’t, but sometimes we go through different stages and ages in our lives, and we’re not the same people we were when we were 20. We got married when we were in our twenties. One thing we do is we keep doing something else to bring back the spice. Like you said, in our twenties, we didn’t have to go off to spice up things because the spice was still there. Now we’re in our fifties. We do have to go out. We make it a point to do things together. I think that’s one of the things that has kept the spice because we’ve always made it a point, even though our lives are super busy, to do things together. Just about everything we do, we still at this point do it together.
Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I believe that is one of the secret sauce that has kept our marriage strong, healthy and invigorating. Just with a lot of fun, we like to have fun together. That’s the main thing. You got to smile and you got to laugh. You got to just let your guard down sometimes and do things out the box that you wouldn’t normally do such as, one of the things I want to do for my birthday, which was super out the box before the pandemic came was I wanted to do that break out of jail thing. What is that called? The escape room. This is not him, but do you know he did it with me? Sometimes the times we have to compromise and do things with our spouses that we wouldn’t normally want to do. That did the world for me when he did that.
Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I know that’s not his thing, but we did the break out of jail while we had on orange jumpsuits, the pastors. We had on our little orange jumpsuits when we did it. We just have fun, you have to bring that. If you lost the fun, bring it back. Bring it back into your marriage. Of course pray about it. We are always very prayerful, and we continue to ask God to give us wisdom in the marriage because you need it. We need it. Especially in this time where we’re in a home together, 24/7, you kind of need to ask God to give you what you need during this marriage.
Searita Jones:
Yeah, love it. I love it. We’re all Christians, we’re all believers in Christ. A lot of people on the outside world believed that you can’t have fun when you’re following Christ. That is the furthest thing from the truth. Can you tell us some of the things that you do? I know you said the escape room, but what are some other things that you two do to have fun?
Pastor Darold:
Well, one of the things we try to do being that we’re not only married in ministry, even we try to bring this same mindset to the church. Not just America with the marriage ministry, but to the entire church to have balance. Balance is huge in our ministry. I don’t want anybody to think that because you’re a Christian, because you’re saved, that you cannot have fun. We do all kinds of things to have fun. At the church and here’s how: 2120 Jazz, our year-end celebrations are epic in the city. We don’t do watch night. We drop in balloons. We got music, we got the arts on display. We do all kinds of stuff. We got 80s nights that we’re doing. We’re going on marriage retreats. Everybody’s dressing up in 70s. All kinds of stuff because God does not get offended when his children have fun. Believers miss that because they think they’re going to offend God if they laugh. What happens is if they develop that mentality and you don’t know how to enjoy each other, that creates a wedge and the enemy can slip in through any crack you give him.
Pastor Darold:
Sometimes I tickle her. I know how to make her laugh. They clown on me left and right. I told him, I’m going to put some cameras up in the house. I’m going to make me some money. I’m going to call Oprah and say, “You want a reality show?” You need to see that. They let me have it. I wouldn’t have it any other way at all because this is my buddy, this is my best friend. This is my ride or die. Whatever colloquialism you want to use, she’s that. I just love it.
Pastor Darold:
As long as it doesn’t offend God, as long as it doesn’t offend heaven, as long as it doesn’t contradict with the scriptures, we’re rolling. We’re going to go out to eat. We’re going to have fun. We know we can’t necessarily do the club thing, so we try to create atmosphere that the church, so the saints can have, what was the thing we did the year before? They got to dance and do their thing. We do so much, I’m trying to remember which one it was. Our Twitter award show is a big hit at the church, and different things that we do so that the saints can have an outlet. They can enjoy each other. Leave the kids at home so we can come in and just have fun because saints need that. Marriages need that. All this stuff is going on, we need a reason to laugh. Do not lose that ability to have fun with each other because if you lose that, you create a crack and the enemy needs just a sliver to get in. You try to keep him out with whatever we got.