By Daniel Scherling

We all face end-of-life decisions for ourselves and our loved ones; the choices we make will affect others.

The funeral or memorial service for a loved one is an out-of-the ordinary, emotion-filled event. It is also a ritualized occasion with certain predictable and recognizable elements. And since the death of someone loved is truly a life-changing experience for the living, the service is a memorable experience.

As a pastor, you have the power to help orchestrate an exceptional, extraordinary funeral or memorial service that will encourage those left behind to heal and grow. You also have opportunity to advocate for grieving individuals in their greatest time of need.

Serving as Advocate

Every day in North America, grieving families spend thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars on funerals, cremations, and burials. In the worst moments of their lives they have to make critical decisions quickly, without opportunity for research or adequate time to read the fine print on contracts.

And while the trusting and bereaved may think they’re dealing with a family-owned operation that has been in the community for years, many funeral homes and cemeteries are owned by large corporations that are part of a multi-billion dollar business known as the death-care industry.

In her 1963 book, The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford detailed how the American funeral industry, including casket companies, undertakers, vault manufacturers, florists, and monument makers, had evolved. Prior to her death in 1996, Mitford updated her best-selling account and said little had changed in the years since her book was released.

“According to the funeral industry’s own figures, the average undertaker’s bill—$750 in 1961 for casket and ‘services’—is now $4,700, to which must be added the cost of a burial vault, flowers, clothing, clergy and musician’s honorarium, and cemetery charges. When these charges are added to the undertaker’s bill, the average cost of an adult’s funeral today is $7,800,” Mitford wrote.

Following a lay-off after 20 years in the nonprofit sector, I started a second career as a funeral director. Up to this time, I was unaware of anything concerning arrangements, costs, or rituals. My only lens was through the death of my maternal grandmother in 1970 and my paternal grandmother in 1983. I took a death and dying course to meet my sociology requirements during undergraduate study, and following graduation, I occasionally provided music for funerals and memorial services. In a very real sense, I now was exposed to the business of funeral directing.

I began to observe some of what Mitford portrays as “an industry of bloodsuckers … out to squeeze every possible penny from grieving families.” As is the case with corporately owned business enterprises, the bottom line is the profit line. Its challenge to funeral directors and “family service counselors” is to upsell packages or plans to include all basic services and merchandise: embalming, dressing and casketing of the deceased, use of facilities, funeral vehicle, casket, and outer burial container (vault), plus “family support benefits,” which include a guest book, service folders, and bookmarks that usually contain the obituary of the deceased.

Serving as a pastor, you are a ministry advocate called to serve specifically on behalf of others. It is your privilege to come alongside families and help protect them as consumers of funerary services and assist with the ritual aspects of effectively caring for their loved one’s remains.

You can support families by helping families determine what they need and do not need in the way of funeral services. As a ministry advocate to the grieving, you can deliver a level of service that exceeds expectations every time, unselfishly giving of yourself to a family so the experience in the days leading up to their loved one’s service will be as positive as possible.

Jessica Mitford, more than anyone else, should be thanked for changes in how we currently approach the business of death. Today, anyone can ask a funeral home for a detailed price list of goods and services and receive it as a right of law. An entire consumer culture is now on guard when dealing with the funeral industry, resulting in a network of not-for-profit funeral and memorial societies.

To be fair, many in the funeral industry consider their work as a calling. I recall one embalmer who said, “The first time I embalmed someone, it was like I was coming home. I knew that it was what I was meant to do. There’s something very intimate about it; I’m the last person who gets to know these people. I guess I take my work very seriously.”

Honoring Loved Ones

For all the good she did, Mitford was wrong in her conclusion that funerals were sentimentalized and unnecessary. She was wrong in ways that really matter, in ways detrimental to the human spirit and to the deep spiritual and emotional needs of faith communities. As Thomas Long said, doing away with funerals would result in “losing the capacity to mark ritually the profound significance of the experience of death, to place our losses into a larger framework of society and religious meaning.”

As witnesses to life on earth and in the life to come, it is imperative we Christian clergy be intimately involved in giving respect and honor to the dead. This is precisely why we encourage rituals—social and spiritual—to appropriately reflect a loved one’s life-long connection to others and to God.

Ephesians 5:8 reads, “In him there is no darkness at all (NIV).” Knowing that we once lived in darkness but now live in the light of the Lord is our most powerful incentive for Christian service. Creator God truly has illuminated our lives and is the source of any light we could hope to reflect in supporting others compassionately through the dark experiences of their lives.

 

Daniel Scherling is media strategies coordinator for CASA50+ Network and lives in Colorado Springs, CO. He studied mass communication at Evangel University in Springfield, MO, and recently completed an MA in Theology from Fuller Seminary. He has worked extensively in the nonprofit sector, and is currently part-time data administrator and music associate at Broadmoor Community Church in Colorado Springs.