mgpcpastor's blog

I conducted another funeral today.

If you are preparing for pastoral ministry, here are some observations:

• You will conduct funerals, if you are posted in a country center you’ll probably do many.
• Be prepared for the fact that the first of these may be within a week of you arriving. (Even though my first parish was in suburban Melbourne I did my first two funerals on the same day. What can I say? I didn’t know any better.)
• Being asked to conduct a funeral is a tremendous privilege. Families have suffered loss and you are invited into their circle at that very emotional time.
• Accept every invitation to conduct a funeral that you reasonably can. It’s a gospel moment, and if you don’t they’ll probably end up with someone who’ll read ‘Footprints’ and play ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ as the spiritual component of the service.
• Don’t feel obliged to write a brand new sermon for every funeral, particularly those for folk who you don’t have regular contact with.
• You’ll do funerals for people you know and people you don’t know. Over time you’ll find the ones for the folk that you know more challenging.
• Try not to accept offerings for funerals, or at least have the funeral directors make cheques out to your parish. Your parish may reimburse you for irregular expenses incurred in funerals, but these are part of the ministry in which they support you, they’re not a part time job. Sometimes declining a gift would offend. Use discretion.
• If you’re a younger sort of person the first funeral you attend as an adult may be one you conduct.
• Get experience with funerals from people who do a good job of conducting them. If your field supervisor is conducting a funeral, go along, don’t consider it a day off. If he doesn’t conduct funerals or do them particularly well (or even if he does), find out who else does and ask if you can go and observe them. You’ll be able to make contacts easily enough. Don’t be embarrassed. Learn.
• Try and get your college or seminary to get someone in and talk you all through funerals. Ask them about how to prepare messages for those services and the form of service that Presbyterians use.
• Good funeral directors are invaluable. They do a very difficult job with people whose emotions are at their most raw.
• You conduct the service, not the funeral directors. Because they organise many funerals, the directors may start organsing you. Know what the service is going to be and tell the directors how it will be. They’ll expect it.
• Don’t expect people to know what they want. I walk people through my ordinary order of service, ask if there’s anything they were expecting that’s missing and ask if there’s anything included that they’re not sure about. The overwhelming majority of people will accept a basic Christian service. That’s why they’ve engaged you.
• Try and allow the service to go 25 to 30 minutes. People are terrified it will go too long. Assure them that you don’t spend too long on any one element, but the service cannot appear rushed or truncated.
• If someone other than you is delivering the eulogy, ensure it is written out, and if at all possible get and have a copy. You’re the back-up.
• Narrate the service. Lots of people are very unfamiliar with Christian services. Try and let them know what’s happening, and what will happen so that they can keep up and not feel too alienated.
• Never ask for anyone who’d like to say a few words to come forward unless the family have directly asked you to include this. Firstly, the family deserve to have control over what happens in the service. Secondly, you need to know what’s basically going to be said.
• A good singing voice is helpful. Singing at the beginning and middle of a service is okay. Toward the end emotions can get a bit much. If it’s not a singing group, then use simple CD recordings and ask them to listen and reflect. Harry Secombe can be your friend. Again, if they’re not a singing group, don’t make them sing and thus emphasise that sense of alienation.
• Don’t be shy about Psalm 23 and Amazing Grace. Just because it’s the twenty or thirtieth time you’ve used them in a service, it’s not for this family. There’s a good reason they get used, so get over yourself.
• Don’t squib on the Christian hope. Imagine that there are Christian family members who desperately want their family to hear the hope of the Gospel and how they feel if you chicken out. I’ve never done a altar call at a funeral (or anywhere else, to be honest). But somewhere in the context of every message include the truth that Jesus has made a way for us to be reconciled to God and welcomed into His presence, if we would but receive that gift. You don’t have to reference the deceased unless you are confident of their Christian testimony.
• If the person was a lovely, gospel believing saint, whose life was full of good and much loved works, ensure you make it clear that the good and much loved works are not the reason they’re going to heaven. Their wonderful life was the fruit of their salvation, not the cause of it. The better the life, the more care you need to take to communicate this point.
• Try and keep the service itself for Christian material, but realise that before the service and after are times when other elements can sometimes be incorporated.
• Reserve the final word for yourself. The RSL and the Freemasons (if involved) will generally seek to follow you after the committal. Direct them (again with family agreement) to do their part between the service and committal, whether at the chapel or graveside. Pause the service, allow their ritual, then resume the service and make sure the final words spoken are those of Gospel hope and Triune affirmation. After all, it’s a Christian Service.

Finally, two other points:

• Always try and include the Lord’s prayer. Otherwise someone will come up to you at the end of the service and say ‘Why didn’t we have the Lord’s prayer’. Unless you like having those conversations. (At the same time, if you use it, try and get it printed in the service sheet, because less and less people know it off by heart.
• Always ask people to turn off their mobile phones. The only four or five times I’ve forgotten, someone’s phone has rung. I kid you not.