A few weeks ago, we experienced an unexpected death in our church family. We are a younger church, and this was the first death since I arrived on staff at the beginning of 2018. Thankfully, even though we don't do a lot of funerals, I believe we did a wonderful job of ministering to the family and leading a Christ-honoring service.
However, this situation helped us realize that we had several things to think through. As our church family continues to get older, we are going to find ourselves doing more and more funerals, and we need to be prepared.
As a result of this situation, I put together a simple Funeral Policy for our church. The purpose of this policy was to make sure that we had a plan in place. That way, the next time someone passes away, we already know what we will do, and how to best serve a family who is grieving the loss of a loved one.
Here are some of the questions we had to think through:
- Our involvement: Who are we willing to do funerals for? Members? Non-members? What about someone who isn't a part of our church at all? And, is there a certain pastor on our team that needs to take the lead in these moments?
- Funeral home: What funeral home do we recommend? Is there one in our city that does a better job than the others? And, should we offer to join the family when they meet with the funeral home?
- Cemetery: What cemetery do we recommend? Just like with funeral homes, some cemeteries are better than others. So, which one is the best in our city?
- Our facilities: Are we willing to use our church campus for the visitation and funeral service? Or, would would it be better for everything to take place at the funeral home? And, if we do it on our church campus, is there going to be a cost for the setup and cleanup?
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Meals: Is our church going to provide a meal for the family? This is very common in many churches, especially here in the South (I am in Alabama). Or, is there a better way for us to handle this? Could a meal be provided by a small group instead?
If you haven't already started thinking through these questions, let me encourage you to do so soon. And, if you would like to see the Funeral Policy that I created for our church, you can view it HERE.
