Home > In The News > Daily Herald 01/29/1998

A reverend for hire: Minister travels to couples
BY KATHRYN GRONDIN
Daily Herald Staff Writer

Jim Rehnberg's dad performed weddings on TV in New York in the early 1950s, with Ed McMahon honing his role as emcee.

So it's not hard to believe that Rehnberg also does marriages - or that he has fun with them.

"I'm in the love business," Rehnberg said. "I've got the funnest schtick there is."

It was a combination of ministry in his blood, career frustration and a friend's nudging led the Geneva resident down the aisle to his spot front and center as the Rent-a-Rev.

As a minister for hire, Rehnberg meets during the week with couples planning weddings. He also counsels couples and does some professional arbitration work. Weekends are filled with rehearsals and weddings.

"Essentially, I get into my car Friday morning and I get out of it Sunday night. I spend the time in between going to weddings to rehearsals to weddings to rehearsals to meetings to rehearsals ... to more weddings"

From Rockford to Lake Michigan to the Wisconsin border and essentially to Interstate 80, Rehnberg performs from one to six weddings in a weekend, he said.

"When I meet a couple, I build the wedding around them because it's their wedding," Rehnberg said.

To do that, he meets with them and finds out about their histories, their families, religious heritage and their dreams and hopes.

"By the wedding day, it looks like it's done by a friend," he said. "I can look like a Baptist, a Lutheran, a judge, a priest it depends on the type of wedding.

"I've done weddings from Rockefeller Chapel at University of Chicago to underneath an oak tree in forest preserve."

Rehnberg's trek to become a full-time minister for hire started years ago.

He attended Wheaton College, earning a bachelor's degree in biblical studies, before heading to Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Min., for a master's of divinity in pastoral ministries.

During that time he married Margy, and they had two children, Chad and Charissa.

After graduating in 1978, he served as senior pastor of a small church in St. Paul for three years. But found he couldn't support a family of four on $210 a week.

"In the fall of 1980 I decided to get a regular job but still look for a way to pester people without being in a church," Rehnberg said. "From there for the next five years my resume looks like a pizza."

Then in 1983, it all started changing when a friend asked him if he could legally perform weddings. For the following 12 years he performed weddings as a hobby, until his business endeavors as a manufacturer's representative took a bad turn.
Dubbed Rent-a-Rev, Geneva's Jim Rehnberg officiates weddings for a living, including Terri and Joe Long's Lake Michigan fete. Photo courtesy Jim Rehnberg


"I decided to do weddings because they were much simpler and a whole lot more fun," Rehnberg said. "That was about 2,000 weddings ago."

While no fathers have ever headed in his direction with a shotgun, some weddings have been expedited for special circumstances, he admits.

He's also seen some interesting trends: Recently a surge in Japanese couples have flown in from Tokyo.

"The bottom line, it's cheaper," Rehnberg said. Run-of-the-mill Japanese weddings with all of traditional trimmings could cost $40,000, he said. The bride alone changes clothes two or three times, he noted.

"One day I went to a biker wedding in Batavia at noon. Following that I went to (Aurora) and went to the Stonebridge Country Club for a country club-style wedding," Rehnberg said.

In addition to performing weddings, Rehnberg has christened babies, led funeral services and read scriptures at ceremonies led by others.

A longtime friend of Geneva Mayor Tom Coughlin, Rehnberg stepped up to read a Bible passage at Coughlin's wedding in 1993.

"I think the world of Jim," Coughlin said. "There a some people that are just really kind people, and he's one of them."