Few of us have been trained to prepare congregations in any substantial way for the assaults of our final enemy, death.
Rick McKinniss
In seminary the rallying cry of my circle of classmates was “Life-giving ministry!” We were determined to extend that ministry in all circumstances and against all obstacles.
When I got into my first pastorate, however, I encountered three funerals in the first four months. And a terminal case of cancer was slowly killing one of the key lay leaders. Suddenly my rallying cry seemed incomplete. I needed to prepare myself and my congregation to face death.
I shared my frustrations with various colleagues and discovered to my surprise that many of them could tell similar stories. They felt the same concerns I did, but few had been trained to prepare their congregations in any substantial way for the assaults of our final enemy, death.
It helped, as I studied the Epistles, to find Paul himself came late to realize the need to prepare a congregation for the loss of fellow members, family, and friends. Believers at both Corinth and Thessalonica were badly shaken by the deaths of some of their members before the soon-expected return of Jesus. Both groups had questions and concerns. Had they correctly understood the gospel message about the resurrection and the promised age of blessing? And, if more deaths were to be expected before Jesus should return, what pastoral practices ought to be instituted? Such questions, if left unanswered, threatened to undermine these congregations he had worked so hard to establish. So Paul found it necessary to prepare both churches for the certainty of more deaths within their ranks.
As usual, I have found Paul’s response a good one to follow. Paul begins to prepare the Corinthians and Thessalonians for death by laying a theological foundation.
Laying the Theological Foundation
I have become convinced this is exactly where our preparatory work must begin, and it is probably best done before tragedy is confronting a congregation.
Death is a metaphysical issue, a theological issue. Indeed, for most people, it is the theological issue. Folks who want nothing to do with theology — “Boring,” “Too dry,” “I want something practical” — automatically shift into theological high gear when death intrudes into their lives. People want answers that will enable them to carry on when they have been sent reeling by the death of a loved one. Death demands a theological response.
This would be easier if we could start from scratch, but almost everyone in my church already has an operational theology of death. This theology may be well-studied or gathered from clips of conversation when Grandma died. It may be grounded in Scripture or in pop psychology paperbacks. But no matter how hurtful or sub-Christian some of these lay theologies may be, it’s important to proceed with care in replacing them with a healthier, more Christian theology of death.
In my first year of ministry, one of our church’s heroes of the faith was struggling with terminal cancer. Many people in the congregation were troubled by the extent of the suffering she was forced to endure. Most troubled, naturally, was her husband, Rudy. During one visit he echoed what others in the congregation had said more than once: “God has some purpose in Katherine’s death. I know he’s going to use it in a great way. Otherwise, why would she be forced to endure such agony day after day?”
My first instinct was to challenge that notion. I don’t believe God’s actions are meaningless; nor do I doubt that he or we can carve meaning out of tragedy. But I’m quite certain we can never fully interpret the meaning of anyone’s agonizing death this side of eternity. Even if we can see a beneficial outcome from someone’s death, this theology of “God is using her death” has a side that darkens many people’s faith. What goodness can we see in a God who employs such terrible means to accomplish his ends?
Fortunately, I bit my tongue that afternoon. Some wise Voice whispered against the arguments I was fashioning: If you take this away from him now, what comfort will he have at the prospect of losing his life partner of fifty years?
I began to see that taking the wrecking ball to people’s theologies would tear down not only their ideas but their feelings and hopes as well. Through teaching and preaching, I was going to have to build patiently for them a new theological framework, one that would join faith and reality. I believe this framework includes three main concepts.
The foundational concept is the goodness of God. If Scripture teaches anything about God, it teaches that he is good. If people are to love and trust God in times of grief, they must be convinced of God’s goodness. So it’s become my practice whenever I make a statement about God — whether about his sovereignty, his justice, or even his wrath — to include in some way the message that our God is good and to be trusted. More than once I’ve told my congregation, “If I had only one sermon to preach, I would preach the goodness of God.”
The second key concept is that death is evil. That seems obvious enough, but I find many lay people saying things like, “Death is a part of life. Dying is as natural as being born.” Scripture declares that death and pain and grief are unnatural, contrary to God’s intentions for his creation. Paul refers to death as an enemy. Jesus came to conquer sin and death and hell. To be sure, for the Christian, death is the experience by which one passes into eternal life, but Scripture would have us view death primarily as an ugly and painful intrusion into God’s creation.
Grieving people know this only too well already. It’s when we deny that death is evil that we hurt them. Richard, a friend and fellow minister, lost his daughter Sarah a few years ago. Only five years old, she died of unexpected complications from a simple virus. Richard and his wife grieved deeply and openly. Many people in the community of faith were uncomfortable with Richard’s openness; they chastised him because he called the death of his daughter tragic and senseless. “When I call the evil thing good, or a tragedy a blessing, I’m not telling the truth,” he told me in exasperation.
Not that Richard was without hope. “My faith in the goodness of God enables me to cope with this tragic loss,” he told me. “Because of that faith, I have hope I will one day see Sarah again.”
That expression of hope is, of course, the crowning piece of any theological framework that enables a congregation to deal with death. “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead,” Paul tells the Corinthians, and in this mighty event is the promise of our own resurrection to eternal life. My congregation, like the one in Corinth, tends to forget this remarkable truth. I’m sure it’s because I don’t trumpet it frequently and fervently enough. A recent event in the life of our church convinced me of that.
One of our members, a young, healthy mother of three, contracted an extremely virulent cancer. Martha’s doctors gave her a 5 percent chance of survival. When this was announced to the church, the congregation was devastated. The week after the announcement, we canceled adult Sunday school classes and gathered all the adults in the sanctuary to express feelings and to pray. During this time, one wise woman said, “What is happening to Martha is a terrible thing. If she is not miraculously cured, she will die. But we do have a hope beyond this world. The Lord has promised us a place where there is ‘no more death or mourning or crying or pain.’ Regardless of what happens to Martha as a result of this illness, this is a hope she can live on forever.”
That word was not new to any of us that Sunday morning, but it was a word from the Lord in season. It called us, troubled as we were, to believe our unique belief, to hope our unique hope. It was not unlike the words Paul shared centuries ago with two troubled congregations in Thessalonica and Corinth. Belief in the goodness of God, and hope, based on his victory over death, give the people of God a theological foundation, a place to stand when facing the onslaughts of the final enemy.
Educational Programs
But at some point theology demands a methodology.
I’ve found few packaged programs to help prepare a congregation for death. Publishing houses are not altogether unlike the pastors to whom they sell their wares; most of us would rather think about life than death. There are, however, some intentional things a congregation can do to help its members prepare for the experience we’ll all face.
The obvious, and perhaps best, strategy is to treat the topic in Sunday school lessons, youth group programs, and Sunday services. One of our members is a sociology professor at a local college. Mike specializes in several areas, including the subject of death and dying (he has been known to answer when called “Dr. Death”). Mike put together a six-week adult Sunday school elective called “Dealing with Issues of Death and Dying” that focused on stages in the grieving process, how to comfort one who is dying, how to comfort the bereaved, what is important in planning a funeral. The class gave people not only information but the chance to talk about our culture’s most taboo subject.
Obviously, we were fortunate to have a resident expert. There are, however, some curriculum packages available that deal with similar issues. David C. Cook’s Lifestyle Course, “If I Should Die …” provides excellent resources for the non-expert to lead a class on this topic.
One of the best things Mike did with his class was take a field trip to a local funeral home. The trip was not hard to arrange; it is the rare funeral director who will turn down an opportunity to have local folks come through. While at the home, the group discussed how to arrange a funeral and what the funeral should accomplish. The experience helped people, while in a noncrisis situation, prepare for their next visit to the funeral home, whether in the role of one bereaved or one comforting the bereaved. Such a visit is also valuable for youth groups, and even for elementary Sunday school classes.
Another way to help children begin thinking about this issue is for parents to take them to visitation sessions or funeral services for people to whom they are not intimately related.
Several years ago when an elderly lady in the congregation died, I suggested to my oldest son, Mark, that he come with me to the visitation. He agreed. On our way to the funeral home I prepared him for what to expect — family members weeping or talking quietly, the flowers, the casket with the body in it. We rehearsed what he could say to the bereaved family members: “I’m sorry that Mrs. Sturm died.” We talked about what my role would be that evening and the next day at the funeral. On the way home Mark and I talked about what he had seen and heard and felt.
There are many other things a church can do to help its members prepare for death. One summer our church sponsored a weekly study group using Rabbi Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People as a springboard for discussion. The author’s perspective was certainly not Christian, but the best-selling book raised issues timely for our congregation; many members at that time had parents or other family members who were seriously ill. The group provided a forum to construct together a Christian framework for dealing with death and, more important, it provided support for those already grieving anticipated losses. Some members of the group still speak about the significance of that summertime experience.
I know a congregation that did a six-week Sunday evening series on preparing for death. Rather than preaching on the topic, the pastor used short case studies1 on death-related issues, had a married couple talk about a “near-death experience” when their canoe capsized on a white-water expedition, and arranged a presentation on making a will by a Christian financial consultant (nearly half of all people in this country leave no will). For six weeks the topic of death and dying was on the front burner for that congregation. That series triggered dinner conversations, stimulated reflection, and helped a wise pastor share the load of grief counseling for many years to come.
A Context for Grieving
Some of the most significant preparations for death, however, involve not scheduled programs or instruction but the context for grieving. If people in the congregation do not feel free to express honestly their hurt and feelings, the most orthodox theology and the best curriculum will help little when death strikes.
Our church has long provided a time for sharing in the morning worship service. Tears are no more out of bounds during this time than is laughter. Real hurts, real doubts are expressed, as are real joys and real triumphs. I confess that when I first came to the church, this time made me a bit nervous. But soon I realized this sharing session announced to everyone present that real life and real faith can coexist.
This prepares people for death in several ways. A key one is it reminds us that some of life’s experiences are bitter pills to swallow. We ought to expect that some experiences, even with all the resources of our faith, will be endured only with great difficulty. I recall hearing a Christian author tell about suffering a miscarriage quite late in a pregnancy. The next day her pastor stopped by with these words, “I know that because of your faith you’re going to do just fine.”
I contrast that story with one I heard from Gary, a member of my church, when I returned from a recent vacation. Gary had been conducting a week-long basketball camp for high school boys, and during the opening moments of the first day of camp, one of the campers had a seizure. Gary performed CPR, but despite his efforts, the boy died in his arms.
After the ambulance had gone and the family had been notified, Gary called some members of his home growth group and asked for prayer — both for the boy’s family and for himself. He told me later, “I must have had a dozen phone calls or visits that evening. People shared; they listened; they ministered. I’ve never gone through anything so painful as watching that boy die, and with you on vacation, I didn’t know who to turn to. But you should be proud of this church. They came through!”
Creating this caring climate for grieving people can happen in many ways. The type of sharing we do on Sunday morning won’t work everywhere. In a colleague’s church that is a bastion of reserved Norwegian Lutheranism, a context for healthy grieving has been fostered through the congregation’s involvement with the local hospital’s hospice program. Several key organizers of the program were from this church; they recruited volunteers within their congregation to minister to those dying and to comfort their grieving families. In a church with several hundred members who are senior citizens, this involvement has helped prepare the congregation for death.
Crisis Responses
Sometimes the best preparations for death come through our last-minute responses in the midst of a crisis.
Earlier I mentioned our decision to cancel adult Sunday school classes and hold a group session for prayer the week after the congregation learned of Martha’s troubling prognosis. This decision was made with her permission and full support. The time allowed the church to support Martha and her family in prayer and to stand with one another in the midst of the fear and faith, confidence and confusion, hope and hurt we all were feeling. Out of that session and visits with Martha and her husband has grown a prayer group to meet with them each week for the duration of her illness. The group is praying for God’s healing intervention, but they also stand prepared to give encouragement and comfort should the illness progress and death occur.
Another time when a last-minute response helped prepare our congregation to face death came on (of all Sundays) Easter morning a few years ago. We had planned about as high a service as one can pull off in a Baptist church, and I had honed my sermon to a razor’s edge. Just before I was about to ascend to the pulpit, I was handed a note: one of our members had taken a turn for the worse and was not expected to survive the day.
Alice was held in high-esteem in our congregation. Just about everyone in the church had a half dozen “Do you remember when Alice …” stories to tell. We had watched a debilitating case of Alzheimer’s disease strip this fifty-nine-year-old woman of nearly all her adult capacities. But few people in the congregation knew Alice had entered the hospital Friday afternoon, let alone how close she was to death.
I wrestled with what to do, then decided to scrap almost all my sermon. I announced the grim news and invited one or two people to lead prayer for Alice and her family, many of whom were in the service. Then I began to preach an Easter sermon out of the deeply felt grief of the moment and spoke of the risen Savior who invites us to share in his conquest of the grave. I didn’t have any well-polished points or dramatic illustrations. Nor did I have quick answers to the “Why?” I read on the two hundred faces. I just tried to point the congregation to the One who was raised from the grave that first Easter morning. I asked them to reflect on what he had accomplished for Alice and for the rest of us who believe.
They were shaken; so was I. But those few, unprepared responses helped us face the death that did indeed come that afternoon. Though last minute, those actions were life giving.
Congregations need to be equipped to face the trauma of death with both realism and faith. With proper preparation, congregations can discover that even our final enemy is unable to kill a lively faith or deaden a life-giving ministry.
Many cases are available through the Case Study Institute, The Intercollegiate Case Clearing House, Soldiers’ Field, Boston, MA 02163.
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