You have watched and read words from ministers who have got sniffy about funerals. Almost like it was their funeral and they were the gatekeeper and the bereaved family mere supplicants to the minister’s event.
You have heard many ministers talk about a funeral has to have ‘x’ or ‘y’ content to make it ‘Christian’, or they could not lead it (yet most of us manage to act in a representative function without following a prescribed form of words: Rotary Club speech, school prizegiving, chairing a community meeting etc etc etc anyone?).
I’m helping with a funeral today. I say ‘helping’ as the family are doing it themselves. They have just asked me to give them advice about the shape and the words they will use. I will close the funeral in a minor way, with something appropriate reflecting their late family member – their respect for the local church-and a ‘spiritual but not religious’ theme. Funeral- being a chaplain enables you to adapt.
As a chaplain, and knowing the family, this feels totally natural. Past discussions with some ministers about whether one ‘should’ do such a funeral seem to belong to another planet.
Being present and available,showing love and understanding I think gets over more ‘Christian content’ than insistence on a mere form of words anyway.