Great question! Well, if the pastor or someone on his leadership team is aware of this, the pastor (& potentially his wife with him) or one of his pastoral assistance (& potentially his wife) should call them into a meeting & talk to them about what they are doing & see where they are, why they chose this route, then offer Word-based counsel to move them past that & help them get out of that bad situation--which would mean either encouraging them to get married & offering them counsel or tell them to move apart from each other until they are ready to get married. Also, to potentially take it a step further if the couple is receptive, after meeting with them together, have the pastor meet w/ the young man & the pastor's wife meet w/ the young woman 1-on-1 respectively & talk w/ each of them individually. This would potentially help to get some deeper communication across regarding issues that they may not have wanted (or would not want) to discuss in each other's presence.

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So many times people in this type situation use finances & their thoughts that it will help them get ready for marriage as a reason to stay in this situation when it actuality it doesn't help any of these things, typically only makes them worse.