Author: Dave Faulkner

I'm a British Methodist minister, married with two adult children. I blog from a moderate evangelical-missional-charismatic perspective. My interests include digital photography (currently using a Nikon Z8), contemporary music, and watching football (Tottenham Hotspur) and cricket. For my photography, please visit www.flickr.com/photos/davefaulkner

More Shame From Televangelist Hell

The Independent reports on OFCOM sanctions against a Christian TV channel for showing programmes where pastors have claimed to heal diseases such as cancer with the likes of olive oil and Ribena (i.e., blackcurrant squash), which was supposed to represent the blood of Christ.

For someone like me who does believe in the healing ministry, this is particularly sickening, because this irresponsible behaviour masks the quiet, humble and gentle ministry of many.

I did a quick investigation online into one of the pastors named, a certain Paul Lewis. Was it just bad English that said he had not a BA or an MA but an MBA in Theology? (If you doubt me, read it here.) I guess ministry is big business.

Oh, funnily enough it is: you can buy his Anointed Prosperity Kit, which includes the ‘miracle olive oil soap’, by the way, along with the ‘divine prosperity cross necklace’ (because that is what the Cross is all about). It would be hilarious were it not so horrific.

But not to worry, he’s a real Mother Teresa type at heart. Back to that ‘About’ page:

Only once in a life- time does some-one come along with such a gifting yet humble and caring spirit to share on missions, orphanages, crisis care intervention and more to the brothers and sisters in the World.

So nothing to worry about there, then, after all. I must have it all wrong.

The trouble is, how does the Christian Church guard against these situations? We can’t do anything to stop individuals setting themselves up like this. Does anyone have any bright ideas?

3

Dumbing Down Reaches Photography

Yesterday, I took Mark on a belated treat for his seventh birthday – a tour of Wembley Stadium. We had a wonderful time, with a knowledgeable and witty tour guide called Dominic.

I took my camera gear, and have posted photos for my Facebook friends and for friends and family on Flickr to see. (Sorry, but I don’t usually make pictures of our children public on the Internet.)

And I got annoyed. Later with myself when I realised I’d been careless with the focussing of some shots, but earlier I seethed inwardly when going through the security check at the stadium. As the officer checking my bags noticed I had a LowePro camera bag and that I had a DSLR camera with interchangeable lenses, he gave me a friendly warning.

“Don’t change your lenses on the tour, or the guide will think you’re a professional photographer, and they’re banned from the tours. Choose one lens and stick to it.”

So now you know. Amateur photographers don’t use SLRs. Clearly we only use our phones, or at best a compact.  Is that the level we’ve sunk to?

1

I Have Come That They Might Have Meetings

While on holiday, we met an old friend. She had been one of my church members in the circuit before last. I had trained her as a Methodist Local Preacher, and then supported her as she candidated for the ministry. Now she was the local minister in the town where we were staying.
It was a wonderfully happy reunion, and it was interesting to talk with her as a colleague in the ministry. We had so much more than ever before to talk about, and even more in common. She loved so much about being in the ministry, but one thing drove her mad. It does me, too. Meetings. For all the emphasis on the call to preach, care, lead, envision, pray and so on, the institutional side of church life often takes over. Those who hope to cast big picture visions find themselves weighed down by the minutiae of detail and micro-management. Well can I understand why the ‘new church’ leader Gerald Coates once parodied Jesus’ words, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly” by saying, “I have come that they might have meetings and have them more abundantly.”
My conversation with my friend reminded me of an article I had found just before going away. Well known British businessman John Timpson wrote a response to a question, and he called it ‘Our meetings get in the way of any work being done‘.  Timpson says,

I have a theory that the fewer meetings you have the better you do.

Is he right? I certainly smile at his illustration of the supermarket chain Asda having a meeting room with no chairs, to keep chat to a minimum. While I imagine there are echoes there of Privy Council meetings, I also have mischievous thoughts about our Church Councils being conducted that way.

What do you think? Is Timpson right?

6

Sermon: The Spirit Of Adoption

I’m back after holiday to preach tomorrow morning for the first time in three weeks. Here goes:

Romans 8:1-17

When I was in my early years at secondary school, the girls used to debate who was the dreamiest pop star. Was it Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson, Les McKeown from the Bay City Rollers, or was it David Cassidy?

In David Cassidy’s case, they would sing along with a glazed look in their eyes:

How can I be sure
In a world that’s constantly changing?

That others, such as the Young Rascals and Dusty Springfield, had charted before him with the song, was immaterial. It was David Cassidy singing ‘How can I be sure’.

While I’m not trying to suggest that we boys were too superior, given that the music wars for us at that age were between Slade and Gary Glitter, I do want to concentrate on that question: ‘How can I be sure?’

It’s a question that has been asked in many ways by many people over the ages. In particular, Christians have asked it this way: how can I be sure that God loves me? Catholics would point to the sacraments as a sign. Calvinists would talk about the promises of God in Scripture – except then someone would say, but how do I know they apply to me as one of the elect, not one of the damned? So some moved on to other supposed signs of divine favour, such as wealth and prosperity.

Into this debate came John Wesley, with his particular doctrine of assurance. One thing Wesley stressed (along with such things as the promises of Scripture) was the work of the Spirit in assuring us we are children of God. And the classic passage about the Spirit revealing to us that we are children of a heavenly Father is this one in Romans 8.

So, then: in what ways does the Spirit affirm and strengthen our knowledge that we are sons and daughters of God?

Firstly, it’s a matter of being led by the Spirit:

those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (verse 14)

Let’s be careful here: language of being ‘led by the Spirit’ has been horribly debased in the church. ‘I feel led’ gets reduced to the most trivial of forms: ‘I feel led to eat a Mars bar’; ‘I feel led to wear blue jeans’, and so on. No: Paul’s point about being led by the Spirit is altogether more serious, and far removed from the frivolous use of the language sometimes found in Christian circles. For what precedes is this:

For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (verse 13)

We are led by the Spirit in order to be Christlike. The Spirit enables us to resemble the family likeness.

Most of you have noticed how much Mark looks like a redheaded version of me. When he was born, a church member jokingly told me never to take a paternity case to court, because the judge would take one look at me, one look at Mark, and throw the case out with laughter. On the other hand, when I was born, someone next to my mother in the maternity hospital looked at me and said to her, “He doesn’t look like you, he doesn’t look like your husband – what does your milkman look like?”

We expect children in some way or another to display a family likeness. One of the ways we know we are children of God is that over a period of time, we start to behave more like Jesus than we did before.

This is not to say it is easy. Nor is it to expect instant miracles. For ourselves, we may find it hard to detect the changes. I find that the key more often is that others notice the changes in us.

The story is told of a pupil at a school whose behaviour was so bad and so disruptive that the staff no longer knew what to do with him. One sanction after another had been tried. Every punishment and every incentive failed to bring about any change in him. He was as dreadful as ever.

Eventually, the Head Teacher called the boy into his office one day. He said to the young man, “We are at the end of our tether with you. There is only one thing I can think of to try, if you and your parents will agree. I want to adopt you as my own son. You will come and live with me. You will take my surname. Every time you are in trouble, it will be my name that is dragged through the mud.”

The boy agreed. His desperate parents agreed. This was the turning point in the boy’s life. Not that he became perfect, but he knew he was loved and wanted as an adopted son. For it isn’t just the fact that we take on the family likeness as evidence that we are adopted children of God, it’s also that spiritual adoption changes us. It works both ways. Being led by the Spirit is the evidence of adoption, and adoption entices us to be led by the Spirit.

All of which leads to the second strand I want to share with you this morning. If the Spirit reveals to us that we are adopted children of God, then that means we are loved by the Father. Hence Paul says in verse 15,

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father.

The Holy Spirit not only changes us in holiness more into the family image of Christ, nor only does the impartation of grace motivate us to live differently, the Spirit also enables us to call God, Abba, Father. Not merely reverence, but closeness: you will have heard many preachers tell you that ‘Abba’ is the word a Jewish child used to address their father in tenderness and trust. No wonder Paul goes onto say in verse 16,

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Not only in the pages of Scripture but also written on our hearts is the knowledge that we are children of God, dearly beloved children who can address him as Abba.

I have a favourite story I love to tell about this. Several years before I met Debbie, I once went out a few times with a girl whom I used to meet in London. We would have a meal and see a film together. On one occasion, she told me over the meal before the film that she had something serious to tell me. I went into pastoral mode and she said, “I’m an adopted child.”

Endeavouring to be sensitive, I adopted an expression of concern.

“No,” she said, noticing my response, “you don’t need to worry. I’m glad I was adopted. It means I know I was wanted.”

Those words have stayed with me. ‘I know I was wanted.’ I believe we can see our status as adopted children of God the same way. Being adopted into the family of God means we know we are wanted. When the Holy Spirit whispers into our hearts that we are God’s sons and daughters and that we can tenderly call him Abba, we know we are wanted. After all, God set out on a mission of love to draw us into his family. In Christ he even took on human flesh and later died for us. How much does God want us? Jesus opens his arms wide on the Cross and says, “This much.”

What does that do for us? Does it not give us the most amazing sense of security in the love of God? We do not have to be like the girl in a field pulling petals off a flower, saying, “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.” The Spirit’s testimony to our adoption through Christ as God’s beloved children gives us a rock solid hope in the love God has for us. Let us never allow ourselves to think that God only begrudgingly has us in his kingdom because Jesus won him around through the Cross. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but all that he did for us came from the Father’s heart of love for his created beings.

This wonderful love of God, then, is not only meant to be a ‘safe space’ for us, it’s more. The safety that God’s love gives us is then the jumping-off point from which we can leap into great risks of faith for him.

And that takes me neatly into the third and final point I want to make about the Spirit’s witness to our adoption into the family of God. It’s about our inheritance as God’s children. Verse 17:

Now if we are children, then we are heirs— heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Parents who care for their children will make provision for their future, as much as they reasonably can. Our wills lay that out for Rebekah and Mark, not only financially, but also we considered their care, should we die before they reach the age of majority. All being well, they will have an inheritance.

The curious thing for the children of God, though, is that we have an inheritance, even though there is no remote possibility of our heavenly Father dying! We shall inherit the glory of a resurrection body (verse 23) along with our great elder brother, Jesus. It will be our inheritance to reign with him in God’s new creation.

And that knowledge holds us in good stead now. For while the certainty of God’s love for us enables us to dare great things for him, we also know that daredevil faith leads to suffering, just as it did for Christ. Just as Christ suffered, so shall we. But just as Christ had an inheritance to anticipate and it kept him going, the same is true for us. As children of God, we have an inheritance with Christ. We have an eternal destiny in the purposes of God, and so when difficulty or opposition comes our way now, we need not keep our eyes fixed purely on the trials of the present: we can look into God’s great future and remember what our heavenly Father has willed for us – a will we inherit not when he dies (which he won’t) but when we die.

In this, we have something that not everybody has. The story is told that during Jim Callaghan’s tenure of 10 Downing Street in the 1970s, he had one particularly tortuous meeting about the Troubles in Northern Ireland with Ian Paisley. Callaghan and Paisley could not agree about anything in their conversation. Eventually, exasperated, Callaghan said, “Surely we can agree that we are all children of God?”

“No,” thundered Paisley, “we are all children of wrath.”

To our ears, that may seem a typically severe Ian Paisley statement, and in one sense it is. But Paisley was right that not everyone is a child of God. While we are all God’s offspring in the sense that we owe our existence to him, not all are adopted into his family. That happens by his grace to those who entrust their lives to him in Christ.

And when we do that, we receive the love God has been longing to pour out on all (which may be obscured by a term like ‘children of wrath’). We are adopted, because he so wants us in his family and not outside, and we can take risks because we have that great security. And we are guaranteed an inheritance that means we can cope with the setbacks and the resistance to our faithful living, because we know what the Father in his love has for us.

This is what the Spirit of adoption does, in revealing the Father’s boundless love to our hearts.

0

Sermon: The Unity Of The Spirit

We’re two months through a three-month series on the Holy Spirit. This was our subject last Sunday morning, but it was an all-age worship service, where we couldn’t go into much depth. Normally we have an evening service on the same day where we take that morning’s them deeper. However, this time that service got delayed by a week, and so here is the adult sermon for tomorrow night based on last week’s theme. You’ll see the odd reference back to last week in this text. Longstanding readers will also notice one or two favourite old sermon illustrations coming back into play.

John 17:20-26

Ephesians 4:1-6

Are we united? Are we one as Christians? As Methodists? As worshippers at KMC? To listen to some Christians, you would think that the whole matter of unity was simple. Someone in a previous circuit once glibly told me that Methodists and Catholics believed the same things. Er, no we don’t. And after the recent episode where Liverpool’s Roman Catholic cathedral withdrew permission for a Methodist ordination service to take place there, it’s clear the Catholics don’t think we believe the same.

Or is it right what I heard in a prophecy at an ecumenical renewal gathering many years ago: “Weep, for my Body is broken”? Yet on the other hand, there is so much we have in common.

So which is true: are Christians united, or not?

The answer, surely, is both. Yes and no. And in the two passages we have different answers. As Jesus prays for all who will believe in him, he assumes his disciples are not united and prays for the Father to make them one. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, he assumes that the church is one in the Holy Spirit, and so his concern is not to make them united but that they maintain it. Both will be a challenge to us. Let us explore them in turn.

Firstly, we are not united. Jesus prays that all who believe in him may be as united as he and the Father are united, and that this unity will be a missionary witness to the world (John 17:20-23).

One of my previous churches had what I thought was a rather tacky letterhead for official correspondence. The logo was an outline drawing of the church building. I objected that the church was not the building, but the people. I asked that we have a new logo, showing some people gathering around the Cross. Because that was the church.

Did I get my way? No.

But I think I was right. I believe Jesus came to form a community, centred on him, even if it was in continuity with Israel. The New Testament word ekklesia literally means, ‘those called out’, and it originally referred to the assembly of people who made decisions in a Greek city. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it renders a Hebrew word qahal, which also means assembly: it refers to the assembly of Israel in the wilderness, when she was called out of Egypt. We are ‘called out’ to be an assembly of people. No special buildings existed for a long time.

We become one, then, when we are drawn to the Father through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Our unity is based on the Father’s love, the atoning work of Jesus and the enabling of the Holy Spirit. So deeply do we share in what God has done for us that we become one.

And we become one, not only in the sense that we have these things in common, but that God binds us together and makes us into one body. We are not isolated individuals who share a common interest: God binds us into a new community, because his purposes were always bigger than just saving individuals. Human beings were created as social creatures, and society needs a model of a new community. That is God’s great purpose for the church.

So our witness is seen when we so live for Christ and for one another, that we put God and one another ahead of our own desires. This is what speaks powerfully to the world. They will not be impressed by a mutual love of Wesley hymns, or a preference to hear different preachers every week. Solid, binding love in the company of Jesus will make an impression. Nothing less.

What will not give a good witness is when we major on minors, when we behave as if we can live without each other, when we gossip or when we tear each other to shreds. There is more than enough of that in the world. It does not need the Church to add to it. Of course, we shall have conflict, but our task then is not to pretend that the conflict does not exist, but to model a path of love, grace and truth towards resolving it. We have the same differences as human beings as the rest of the world, but what Christ has done for us gives us the resources to work through those tensions and be a model of harmony.

So we do not have unity without God giving it to us in Christ, but the fact that he has leads on to the second half of our thoughts, where Paul says we are united. He builds on what God has done for us in Christ, and which the Holy Spirit makes real and present. Now we do have the gift of unity, our task is to maintain it.

And so before we ever get to all the protracted and apparently fruitless discussions between denominations about formal unity, Paul gives us some basic tasks in our relationships that will enable us to maintain the unity of the Spirit:

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2)

I wonder if you remember the four sets of contrasts I set up between different types of people in the all age worship last Sunday morning? Some of us are such opposites that it requires these very qualities of humility, gentleness, patience and bearing with one another in order to maintain our unity. We need to deploy these qualities so that we appreciate the different gifts other people can bring, rather than being frustrated by them.

So the person who loves being in crowds mustn’t tell the one who loves solitude that he is not a people person, and the one who appreciates solitude must not say that a sociable person is shallow. The person who uses her five senses and has an eye for fine detail can be a gift to the man who operates by a sixth sense and only sees the big picture. The man concerned for the truth and the woman who cares for harmony and love both have essential gifts for the church. The one who plans and the one who is spontaneous need patience to avoid winding each other up, when in fact each of them has a useful contribution to make.

I’ve not always found it easy to believe that the church can exhibit this kind of unity in the Spirit. I’ve been in gatherings where we’ve sung Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord’, and we’ve come to verse four and found it hard to sing:

E’en now we think and speak the same
And cordially agree;
Concentred all, through Jesu’s name,
In perfect harmony.

Because my experience has not been of cordial agreement, but of rabid disagreement, sometimes on the most fundamental areas of Christian faith, sometimes because people were not prepared to have a generous spirit towards those whose personalities or cultural tastes were vastly different. It made it agony to be a Christian in those circumstances. I can think of one or two churches and religious institutions to which I would happily never return.

However, the challenge is clear, and the elements of healing and peace present when you encounter Christian communities and congregations that are committed to the humble, gentle, patient love that the unity of the Spirit entails make such places like iced water on a hot day. In fact, more than that, a community that exhibits these qualities can be a powerful witness to God’s love in the world.

And that leaves me with just a couple of closing questions. One is, how can we be like this? It seems to me that this is a basic issue of Christian holiness. And like all other matters of holiness, the New Testament holds two things in tension: one is that we are called to obey, and the other is that we need the Spirit’s empowering. I put these together and say that holiness is active co-operation with the Holy Spirit. Therefore we need to hear God’s call to this unity of the Spirit and be prepared to obey with the humility it requires to put it into action, but to do so in reliance upon the Holy Spirit. We say ‘yes’ to the Father, and at the same time seek the Spirit’s help.

My other question is this. It’s all very well saying that a Christian community living in the unity of the Spirit can be a powerful witness, but how will that be seen by the world? It isn’t much good if the only way this is experienced is within the inner confines of the church family. And seeing as most of the population don’t come much into contact with who are, what we are like and what we do, isn’t that all a bit hopeless?

I would suggest that this therefore comes down to another of those issues of where we need to reimagine church. Just as I’ve emphasised since coming here that mission is a primary function of the church, so we must carry that through to all areas of church life. One such area would be our small groups, where the love and unity is often best experienced. We need to think of our small groups as more than Bible study, fellowship and prayer for each other. We need to see them as cells for mission.

I have no time tonight to go into the details of what has become known as the ‘cell church movement’, but Graham Horsley, who is coming to preach at our Missions Sunday on 9th October, is a Methodist expert on that subject. But essentially, we can see small groups as the church in microcosm. They follow what has become known as the ‘Four ‘W’s’: welcome, worship, word, witness. In ‘welcome’, they get to know one another better. In ‘worship’, they worship in a form appropriate to the group size and members. In ‘word’, they study the Bible, but with an emphasis on practical application. And in ‘witness’, they pray for people who need God’s love and they plan outreach activities of all sorts. With that stress on witness, the cell group has a great opportunity to demonstrate the unity of the Spirit as it interacts with the world.

So the challenge of unity in the Spirit is clear and important. We have no unity save that in Christ, but what unity that is. It is to be guarded and maintained. If we do that with the humility that entails, and depending on the Holy Spirit and in the presence of the world, then we have a gift for those we live among, a missional gift of God’s love.

May it be so.

0

Contrasting Amy Winehouse And Danniella Westbrook

Last night, my friend Dave Clemo made a contrast between Amy Winehouse and Danniella Westbrook on his Facebook page. Referring to Winehouse’ death and Westbrook’s conversion, he wrote:

Amy Winehouse & Daniella Westbrook. Both were young and famous. Both had serious drug addictions. One died, the other survived and has been clean for ten years. One is dead, the other is born again. That’s the reality of faith in the Lord Jesus.

While I share Christian faith with Dave I would put it slightly differently, since Westbrook had been clean for drugs for about eight years before she found faith in Christ. However, there is certainly a poignant contrast to be made between these two famous young women who consumed vast quantities of narcotics. In addition to Dave’s words, I received this afternoon the weekly email from The Word Magazine, in which the lead quote was from Winehouse:

I don’t need help because if I can’t help myself I can’t be helped.

How tragic is that? Westbrook sought help – first to be rid of her addiction, second in faith. Winehouse ruled out the possibility. Some criticise Christianity for being a ‘crutch’, but what if we all have broken legs, so to speak? While there are certain forms of dependency that are immature, to deny the need of dependence upon others is dangerously foolish, as Winehouse’s words show.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not writing this to join in some pious post-mortem condemnation of Winehouse. I hope and pray that whatever went on in her final hours and days, the God of mercy was reaching out to her. But perhaps an age that talks of either not needing help or only of self-help needs to hear again that a true mark of maturity is knowing when and where to seek help.

Life and eternity depends on it.

1

My Memory Of John Stott

Yesterday evening, reports appeared on the web that John Stott had passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 90. (This search will take you to about two hundred stories in Google News at the time of typing.) Obituaries cover his evangelism, his leadership of All Souls, Langham Place, his key place with Billy Graham in the Lausanne Movement, his commitment to social action as core to evangelical understandings of mission, his clear Bible teaching, his concern for the Majority World, his love of birdwatching and much more. I particularly recommend Christianity Today’s obituary.
More concisely, Maggi Dawn has described him this morning on Twitter as

 The most compassionate, sane evangelical Christian I ever met.

I have read many of his books. Favourites of mine include his expositions of Acts and Ephesians (the latter is particularly worn and battered). However, I only heard him preach once. I was training for the ministry in Manchester at the time, and he came to preach one evening at the local Anglican church, which had a large student ministry. Dr Stott agreed to stay behind afterwards and field questions.
I attended that meeting. I was engaged in my postgraduate research in Theology, specialising in ecclesiology, the doctrine of the Church. I asked him a question. Why did he think Archbishop Robert Runcie had chided evangelical Anglicans at the third National Evangelical Anglican Congress in 1987 that

‘If the current evangelical renewal in the Church of England is to have a lasting impact, then there must be more explicit attention given to the doctrine of the church’?

Dr Stott gently batted the question back at me, with quiet grace and a faintly sparkling smile. “Why do you think he did?”
I had no sense that he was trying to dodge the question. Rather, like Jesus, he knew that questions could be more deeply explored by asking further questions. He wasn’t short of answers himself, and for those who want to know, it is worth reading his book The Living Church.

Farewell, then, in this life, to one of the most gracious, compassionate  and hard-thinking evangelical Christians to have come to prominence in the last century. May more of us in that tradition seek to emulate his example.

1

The Press And Danniella Westbrook’s Conversion

Former EastEnders soap star and notorious cocaine addict Danniella Westbrook has become a Christian. Read this interview in The Mirror, which is utterly devoid of the cynicism Christians often expect from the press. Not so the Daily Mail, often the self-proclaimed defender of Christian values, from the snide title of its piece to the snarky comments about finance. Is this a class thing? Westbrook more neatly fits the Mirror’s demographic, yet that section of society generally has a lower attachment to Christianity.

1

Funerals: The Initial Contact And Visit

Blogging has been light here recently, with only sermons posted for a few weeks. Even then there wasn’t even a sermon last week, due to taking an all age service, and for the same reason there isn’t one this week, either. I’ve been under huge pressure workwise, much of it involving tragedies, and to be honest I’m exhausted.

Since one of the major things I’ve been involved with in recent weeks is funerals,  I thought I might post some advice regarding them from a minister’s perspective. Here are some of the things I have learned in nineteen years as a minister, much of it by trial and error.

Often a call from a funeral director comes out of the blue, but occasionally you are expecting it, because you know someone from the church has died. In most cases, I find the date and time for the cremation has already been set. Try to fit in with this if at all possible. Only decline or ask for a rearrangement if there is no alternative. A death is a priority. If you get the chance to negotiate the date, though, all the better.

Here is the information you should obtain from the undertaker:

Full name of deceased
Date and location of death
Cause of death
Any church connections (in my case, Methodist) – and is there any particular reason the family wants a Christian minister to take the service?
Name, address and phone number of contact person (who is usually but not always the next of kin and/or chief mourner)
Any music requests made by the family, such as hymns or entry and exit music
Does the family want gifts to go to a particular good cause in their loved one’s memory? (You may be announcing this at the funeral.)
Anything else the undertaker thinks is relevant

The funeral director may well ask you about your fee. My working policy is never to charge where there is a church family connection, because people have been contributing towards my stipend through the offering. If I am being called in as an outsider, though, I generally don’t mind taking a fee. My stock response to the undertaker in those circumstances is, ‘Pay me the same as you would pay an Anglican.’ That saves me the embarrassment of setting a fee. And if I were to set my own fee and out of charity make it lower than the C of E’s standard fee, it can cause bad ecumenical feeling, because the Anglicans can then think you are undercutting them in order to gain more business. We’re not in competition, even if they are in the dominant position.

Because a death is a priority, do not wait long before phoning the contact person given to you by the funeral director. It may well be they were with the funeral arranger when you took the original phone call, so sometimes you can allow them time to get home, but do not waste time. You need to see them as soon as possible, because you may not get everything about the service tied up in one visit. They may need to ask questions of other family members before resolving some details.

When you phone the contact person, explain who you are (they may well already have your name, though) and say you are sorry these are the circumstances in which your paths cross. Then simply say that you think it would be helpful if you could visit to discuss their loved one’s life and to plan the service. Let them have your phone number, just in case the arrangement needs to be changed.

At the meeting, after a preliminary conversation where you may be asking about the circumstances that led to the deceased passing away, offer to take them through an outline of a typical funeral service as a guide. I tell them I am not imposing a formula on them, because I want it to be personal for them. At the same time, experience tells me I need to be sure of certain minimum standards. Very occasionally a family will get pushy and think that I am simply there to follow their commands. However, you don’t pay a car mechanic and tell them what to do: if you are wise, you normally take the mecahnic’s advice.

In running through the service, I explain that I will be at the crematorium before they arrive to check that everything is ready in the chapel. When they arrive and we are ready to begin the service, we need to know whether they wish to follow the coffin into the chapel or be seated first. I don’t mind which they do, but I strongly advise they should make up their minds before the day, rather than be faced with that question just as they are trying to compose themselves for the service.

If they are going to use music on CD for any part of the service, a crem will typically appreciate having that music two working days beforehand, in order to check it will play on their system. Not all will gurantee to play computer-burned CDs. If you do have to have that, the best advice is to stick to CD-Rs, not CD-RWs, and to ensure that the music is in a standard lossless format such as WAV, not in a compressed format such as MP3, WMA or M4A/AAC, let alone more obscure formats like Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless or FLAC.

After running through the service, we discuss the deceased’s life. Over the years, I have developed a short series of questions or categories that help to put together the material for a eulogy:

Birth, siblings, school and early life
Working life
Marriage, relationships and family (take note of children’s and grandchildren’s names)
Hobbies, interests and pastimes
Character and personality

I find it important to end with that last one. It’s the area of the deceased’s life that will unite everyone who gathers to mourn their passing. Whether they knew the person as a family member, a friend, a neighbour or a colleague, all will recognise certain personality traits.

If family members are going to participate, either by giving the eulogy, reading a poem or in some other way, ask to have a copy of what they are going to say. This is not in order to be censorious, but so you can be ready to step in, should their emotions overcome them on the day.

In all the planning, be aware of the particular time limits at the crem. Twenty-five minutes is typical. Some expect you to be done and dusted in twenty. Some even impose financial penalties for over-running. So two hymns maximum; eulogy, five minutes.

Before I close the visit, I explain that I shall not write the eulogy until the day before the service. Why? Because occasionally I find that people think of other stories or facets of their loved one’s life that need to be included. And very occasionally they tell me that something they have mentioned needs to be omitted, because Aunt Bertha is coming, and if I talk about that particular incident, it will cause upset. You may tell the contact person that other family members can get in touch with you, if they want to add their own thoughts.

My other parting comment is to invite them to ring me or email me with any questions they have about the service. No question is too silly or trivial. If it makes them anxious, I can put their minds at rest.

Increasingly, families ask for a printed order of service. Funeral directors often provide or facilitate a printer to do this. Try to be involved in the proofing and approval process. More and more printers put PDF drafts on a secure website. It can be invaluable if you are allowed to be one of the reviewers who comments on a draft. Elements of the service can be accidentally omitted. Words of hymns can be wrong. And I have had a few occasions where the family has changed the content of the service without consulting me.

I hope someone will find these thoughts helpful. I am sure too that the moment I click ‘publish’ I will think of other tips and reflections! But if these limited thoughts are useful, I will be pleased. Feel free to add your own thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

I will try in the next few days to add a further post or posts about preparing for the service, and the conduct of the service itself.

2

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑