Funeral Message for Someone You Dont Know

Editors' note: "Preacher's Toolkit" is a monthly serial that seeks to answer questions related to preaching. If y'all have a preaching-related question or issue you lot'd like for us to answer, delight write u.s. at[email protected]. Nosotros recently launched an Expository Preaching Project, for which TGC Council pastors will set complimentary instructional resources on expository preaching in both video and print formats in six strategic languages. We're prayerfully seeking to heighten $150,000 to fund the projection. To make a donation, delight click here and select "Expository Preaching" from the designation listing.

Previously:

• How Do I Prepare My Center to Preach? (Kent Hughes)
• What Should I Preach Next? (Julius Kim)
• How Practise I Handle an Unbeliever's Funeral? (Phil Newton)
• How Do I Preach Expository Sermons from Proverbs? (Dan Doriani)
• Should I Larn Hebrew and Greek or Is Bible Software Enough? (Kevin McFadden)
• How Long Should My Sermons Exist? (Hershael York)

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My introduction to conducting funeral services came at the ripe historic period of 17. I had been preaching for most a year—poorly, I might add. My dad, a funeral director in the minor community where I grew up, called to see if I wanted to conduct a funeral. A homo had died but had no pastor to conduct the service. Dad figured I needed to be tossed into the deep cease of the pool if I were heading into ministry building.

Many emotions ran through my mind: You're kidding me! What would I say? I don't know that person.Afterwards hearing my reaction, he kindly said,"I'll help y'all." So my outset lesson on conducting a funeral for someone I didn't know came from a graduate of a mortuary schoolhouse, not a seminary.

Over the years I've been asked to conduct numerous services for people I didn't know. That someone would make such a request tends to generate assumptions. The deceased must have been unconverted, or unchurched, or estranged from a church, or under church bailiwick. But are these assumptions right?

There might be valid explanations as to why someone has no pastor. Maybe the deceased was in a nursing facility for a decade and lost contact with his erstwhile church. Perhaps they recently moved into the community and died earlier finding a church home. Maybe they were a faithful member only their church folded while they were incapacitated, leaving them without a viable church home.

We could add together more than assumptions, of class, only none of them may fit the person for whom you're asked to conduct a funeral service. So how do yous approach it? Hither are five things I've learned from conducting such funerals:

1. Don't bound to conclusions.

Initial assumptions about the deceased every bit a godless, anti-church, crusty sometime codger who had nothing for the gospel may be incorrect. We need not cast judgment.

2. Be willing to conduct the service.

The last thing a grieving family needs is to do a Google search for "pastor willing to behave funeral service for someone he doesn't know." See it as an opportunity for ministering gospel grace and gospel hope.

iii. Take time to find out whatever you tin nigh the deceased.

Unless there's something amiss, almost family unit members volition talk virtually their loved ane. Having an anecdote or two from their life adds a pastoral touch to your comments. A church member told me about a funeral for an older friend who had long been homebound. He had served in ministry, but for some reason a pastor who didn't know him conducted the service. "It certain was obvious the preacher did not know my friend," the fellow member said. He took no fourth dimension to discover anything nearly the deceased. Chalk that upwardly to disinterest.

Maybe a couple of personal illustrations volition help.

A man in our congregation asked me to acquit the funeral for his brother whom I'd never met. This homo wrote a number of interesting pieces for a British magazine while residing in the U.Grand. Listening to their reflections and reading the pulse of his life in those articles added a few anecdotes to the sermon. Every bit information technology turned out, in the final conversations with his sister-in-law who regularly shared Christ with him, he professed faith in Christ. My initial assumptions proved incorrect, and then I was glad to have those conversations. It inverse my entire approach to the sermon.

On another occasion, I was asked to conduct a funeral service for a swain who died of a drug overdose. He never attended church building and had never known Christ. So I probed. What did he enjoy? Whom did he like to be with? Did he have any interests? The ane thing that came through was his love for his friends. Despite the darkness of his life, he cared virtually others. In the chapel, I saw the motliest crew of attenders I'd ever witnessed at a funeral. I realized he had friends—grieving friends who had no inkling how to cope with hopelessness at sudden death. So I offered reflection on the young man's appreciation for his friends as I weaved the promise of the gospel throughout my talk.

iv. Put yourself in the place of the family and friends attending the memorial service.

Would yous want a John Knox thundering at Mary Queen of Scots? Or would yous be more inclined to listen to the gentle, stirring prose of Samuel Rutherford? While y'all may want to hammer dwelling a biblical truth—and you should—I propose y'all do it with gentle boldness.

I remember profitable my dad with a funeral service for a known alcoholic who'd been murdered. The preacher didn't know him just knew his family. Rather than tenderness toward them, he thundered away virtually that human being's debauched life. I cringed. They already knew about his immoderacy. What they needed in that moment was the hope they had in the gospel.

five. Get out attendees with a sense of hope through the gospel.

Multitudes live without promise in Christ. But at a funeral you have a unique opportunity to ready forth the one promise that lifts despairing people—Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospel. While recognizing the brevity of a funeral sermon (15 to 20 minutes), requite them Jesus. Allow them leave with a sense of Christ as the hope of sinners.

As you comport the funeral of someone y'all don't know, realize that our Lord wastes no relationship and squanders no opportunity—and neither should we.

gayleefor1941.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/preachers-toolkit-what-to-say-at-funeral-for-person-i-didnt-know/

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