Funerals
Authored by Tim Isbell
This webpage contains links to a set of resources to help ministers perform funerals.
I first began my local church pastoral ministry career after a long career outside the church. When I went to the church to do an interim I expected my time there might last as much as 6 months. I had never preformed a funeral and was nervous about having to start with someone I'd never met. So I asked the office manager for a list of who was sick enough that I might have to do a funeral in the next 6 months. She gave me 3 names.
I visited them within the first week or two and somehow the word got out that if the interim minister came to visit you, then you were on his "short list." Not a real smooth beginning, but it worked out as I served as the pastor for the next 18 years - and it's still our church home.
When the first of the three died I realized I needed a cram course on the basics of doing a funeral and a graveside. So I called another minister in the area and asked for help - fast! Fortunately he spent a couple of hours with me and I managed to stumble through my first one. It was at that point that I knew I'd better start a file on how to do the next one, and the one after, and so on.
This webpage offers what I know about doing funerals, memorial services, and gravesides. I don't claim that it's great, but I sure wish someone had given me the link to it back when I was trying to figure out how to survive my first.
I make it a point to meet with as many of the close family as possible prior to designing the service. This is usually a single meeting that occurs 2-3 days before the service. It helps me make sure I have all the history and details straight. In many cases I already know at least half of the data, so I don’t drag the family through that. But the list certainly aids me in making sure I haven’t missed anything.
This document provides some detail and resources for the various elements that are in a typical service.
Funeral/Memorial Sermon Samples
Here are three 10-minute sermons that I've used in various situations. I'm sure I got the core ideas in them from someone else, but my notes are not good enough for me to know where. I'm sure they'll give you some ideas for writing your own; or just feel free to use these.
This works at a graveside and also at the location where cremation ashes are stored, or distributed.
This is a more general resource on how to make pastoral visits. It deals with visiting in hospitals and around seriously ill situations. It also contains links to a storehouse of great scriptures, indexed for various situations. One of these situations is death, another is suffering.
Blessings, Tim
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