What do we do when death calls? We — the church — come alive!
Paul L. Walker
On Thanksgiving Day, 1980, our family gathered at Grandmother’s house in Tennessee. We laughed, sang, and played with uncles, aunts, and cousins. Extended family had come from all over, and we felt a special closeness on this perfect day of fellowship and reunion.
Thirty-six hours later I received a phone call.
“Reverend Walker,” the voice began, “I’m sorry to inform you that your wife and son have been involved in a serious head-on collision. Julie will recover, but your son was killed. Where do you want us to send his body?”
A dull ache washed over me. It can’t be true!
In a terrible moment, the joyous closeness of Thanksgiving changed to the empty loss of death. Paul, my first-born, was gone. Paul, who had just finished his master’s degree and was beginning work on his Ph.D., this son who had brought nothing but pleasure and pride. Tell me there’s been a mistake!
For thirty-two years in the pastorate, I’d had to help families grieving the loss of a loved one. I had thought often on the question, “How can I best help these hurting people?” It would seem, then, that this personal loss would be more easily understood and handled.
Not so! As I felt so deeply when my son died, the death of a loved one is agony. There are no textbook approaches, no easy answers, that will take away the pain, but we can offer help to people who are facing the worst hurt of all: death.
A Faith Approach to Death
Our own view of death will inevitably be conveyed in our relationships with those experiencing death. As Christians, then, there is no other alternative but to bring a faith approach to our ministry to the grieving. And this approach provides the only true comfort and help.
Death is inevitable, universal, unpredictable. It affects us all. Further, death is almost always accompanied by fear. It is hard for us actually to conceive of death as possible; to see life really ending; to think in terms of finality, loss, and emptiness.
We often associate death with all things bad and negative. We don’t like to use the word death, so we talk about “going to be with Jesus,” “passing away,” “meeting the Master,” “crossing the divide,” or “receiving our reward.”
Yet the Bible addresses death openly and provides us with a way to overcome it. When someone in the congregation dies, the grieving family and I return again to the Scriptures’ wisdom. In the biblical view, life on earth is temporary. It is depicted as a shadow, a weaver’s shuttle, a handbreadth, a vapor. The Bible makes it clear that real life is eternal life. Death, overcome by Christ, brings timeless life. For believers, it is not to be feared. We are triumphant in the resurrection of Christ.
In every encounter with those experiencing death, we bring this faith approach. This is the uniqueness of our Christian experience, and it can be conveyed through our words and actions. This is not smugness, but we come with an abiding confidence that through the hurt, emptiness, and ache, we can emerge in the power of the Christian faith.
For the bereaved there is always the question, Why? Why did this occur? Why did God let this happen? I have found it helpful to focus instead on the question, What? What can we expect from God? This concept seems to have therapeutic value for those whom I have counseled.
We can expect God to work for good in all things. This is the universal promise of Romans 8:28. While everything that happens to us is not necessarily good in itself, under the direction of the Father, every situation blends together for a symphony of ultimate, eternal good.
We can expect God to finish that which he has begun in our lives. This is the promise of Philippians 1:6, rendered by one translator as “He will put his finishing touches on you.” In the time of trouble, our faith may seem small, but God will nourish it until it grows to the size he desires. We will someday be glorified because God completes every work he begins.
We can expect the Spirit to intercede for us. Paul makes this clear in Romans 8, adding, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” God acts on our behalf.
I saw the power of this faith in the Whitmire family. D. J., the husband and father, died suddenly from a heart attack the evening before he, his wife, and his son were to join the Mount Paran Festival Chorus for a Christmas choir trip to Israel. The once-in-a-lifetime trip included singing at Manger Square in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve before an international television audience.
Such a sudden death was naturally a tragic blow to the entire church. In this case it had special significance since Stan, the son, was the piano accompanist for the Chorus and could scarcely be replaced at such a late date. I wondered for them, What do you do when tragedy strikes just when you are packing to take a trip designed to fulfill a lifelong family dream?
Sure, Martha and Stan were crushed; they grieved; they felt the loss and emptiness of death; but they also found inner resources through the power of faith. They remained behind one day, attended the funeral and the interment, then joined the group in Jerusalem and finished the tour. Martha wrote me a note following the trip:
The way God’s love comes through others amazes me. From the Thursday night three weeks ago until today, I have not felt alone. Maybe briefly, but not for very long. God, through someone or something, shows me his love.
After we arrived in Jerusalem, I woke one morning with the song “Unfailing Love” on my mind. I sang it. For about three days, that song kept going through my mind — on the bus, walking with the crowd.
The Israel trip was certainly the right thing for us. Leaving here wasn’t easy, but we felt the Lord was in this trip from the beginning. We still hurt, but this same God who’s been so near won’t leave us now.
Thanks again for your love and support. Please continue to pray for us.
Love in Christ,
Martha
Ministry to families when the deceased did not know Christ becomes more difficult. In these cases the faith approach focuses on the family that remains. I spend extra time with the grieving family following the funeral. I try to help the family gain a sense that God is going to see them through. “There are many things we don’t know or understand,” I may remind them, “but there is only one thing you can do now, and that is to leave the situation in God’s hands.”
An Empathetic Approach to Grief
A second key aspect in ministry to the grieving is genuine empathy. Only then can we be truly helpful resources in the time of grief.
Bereaved people may describe their grief in a variety of ways, but they all feel acute sadness, irreparable loss. It’s not unusual for grieving people to complain of physical problems or to have a preoccupation with the image of the deceased. Often there is a sense of guilt, hostile reactions, restlessness, even assumption of characteristics of the deceased.
In all this, we want to help in three areas. One, we want to aid the person’s transition from the problems of separation back into the mainstream of life. Two, we try to caringly help the person accept the hurt, the loss, and the emptiness. The grief process is a natural, necessary response to death. Those who do not honestly face the loss run the risk of delayed severe emotional reactions. Three, we seek to help family members confirm their faith. Our resources for these tasks include, primarily, prayer and the Word, empathetic listening, and counsel.
In my experience, this ministry involves several stages.
1. Relationship building. My first task is to let the person know I am really interested in his or her problem. As pastors, we are so busy that it is easy to be preoccupied and unwittingly show it through our posture and listening behavior. So right at the start, I want to communicate by words and actions, “I want to enter your private world, understand your hurt, and help you deal with it.”
2. Exploration of feelings. Then I want to encourage people to express how they feel. Grieving people often feel guilty, angry, numb, or resentful. People may say to me, “I feel cheated by what God’s done to me.” I’ve found people won’t admit these feelings if I haven’t first built a relationship with them and then given them verbal permission to express these emotions.
3. Interpretation of the feelings expressed. I was counseling a man whose wife, an alcoholic for twenty-two years, had just died. The woman had gotten drunk one evening, as usual, and the man had helped her to bed and tucked her in. Later he found her dead in her sleep. The man felt a terrible sense of guilt, thinking he was responsible for her death. “It’s my fault,” he told me. “I should have known what was going to happen.” These feelings of guilt and responsibility for the death, though unrealistic, are powerful. When my son died, I kept thinking, If only I had asked him to spend another night!
The counselor can help the grieving person see that these feelings are rarely realistic. None of us knows what is going to happen.
4. Determining possible alternatives. At this point, we help the person think of the choices available. “Do you feel ready to go back to work?” “Would a vacation be helpful?” “Have you considered living with your mother or sister for a few weeks?” Once the various options have been listed, the person needs help thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of each.
5. Helping people follow through. Once a decision is made, people in deep grief sometimes need help carrying it through. When my dad died, my mother stayed with us for two weeks. Then she decided it was time to return to her home in Florida and resume her activities. For a few days, I called her each morning and said, “Mom, what are you going to do today?” That gentle but firm call helped her do what she had decided.
Yet even our best efforts to facilitate the grief process may not be well received. There are always those who become bitter, resentful, and hostile.
I remember one family whose daughter died after an extended illness. The family established a memorial fund. Because our church is large, we’ve had to set a policy that we will advertise such a fund or scholarship for four weeks only. We announced the fund frequently during that period, and people in the church gave generously.
But it wasn’t enough. One year later, the family wanted the girl’s picture displayed on the Communion table and a special offering taken. Without authorization, they called Sunday school teachers and committee leaders and told them to take up offerings for the fund. They held several garage sales, and many people in the church helped them. But then I would see the girl’s mother in the church hallways dressing down someone who hadn’t helped.
Finally it had to be confronted. I met with the parents and let them know their demands were unrealistic and their behavior was hurting others. They have attended only occasionally since, and the breach has never been satisfactorily repaired.
Regardless of a person’s response, however, we are called to be facilitators, to help people as they “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
A Caring Approach to Details
When death calls, the bereaved face a myriad of details. They have to think of cemeteries, burial lots, funeral homes, caskets. They need to contact family and friends, determine the funeral service format, arrange music, set schedules, take care of food for the family. Good pastoral care helps lift the burden of these details.
To do so, however, means that we, too, must attend to many practical details. Through the years, our church has established a procedure that seems to work well most of the time. When we first learn of a death, we do the following:
1. Alert the appropriate support groups. In most cases the person and family involved will be part of a Sunday school class, one of our choirs, or a small group of some kind.
Support groups are also coordinated by neighborhood to provide a meal for the family. The Ladies’ Auxiliary pays for the meat, and neighborhood people provide everything else. The church office arranges for flowers to be sent to the family.
2. Initiate pastoral care. I or another pastor will meet with the family, offering to be available for counseling, helping with calling family members, or any other needs that may arise, such as helping to select funeral home services. Walking into a room filled with caskets can be devastating to the bereaved. Sometimes they want me simply to be there with them. I may clarify the different options available or help them decide what they can sensibly afford to spend.
3. Arrange the funeral service. At some point the service itself is discussed. Once the time and place have been settled for the newspaper and public announcement, there is ample opportunity for detailing the final order of service. We have found this is best worked out after most relatives have been contacted and the initial shock has subsided.
We offer all the church resources available, which include accompanists, soloists, the chapel, and so on. At the same time, I watch that the grieving family does not overdo. The deceased may have had five favorite songs, and they want all of them played. Or the family may have known four or five ministers through the years, and they want all of them to have a part in the service. I try gently to guide them away from too much. I’ll list all the elements they want in the funeral service. Then I may say, “Let’s think this through. This service will run sixty to seventy-five minutes. I know how you feel, but my experience tells me that will be too long; you’ll suffer too much.” Then, perhaps, “These two songs are quite similar; perhaps just one could be played.”
In some cases, I’ll work with the family to outline three possible services, from simple to elaborate. Then I’ll suggest they let them sit and come back to them the next day when they can think through the options more clearly.
My goal is to be flexible yet make the funeral worshipful and strength giving, regardless of the situation surrounding the death.
4. Follow up. Within ten days after the funeral, a personal letter is sent to the family and a follow-up visit is made.
Where there is persisting grief because of tragic circumstances, such as suicide, a child’s death, or crime-caused death, counseling is arranged as needed over an extended period. The appropriate support groups are also called upon to keep in touch.
In the counseling process, I look for symptoms other than pure grief. In some cases, a grieving family member may have actually hated the deceased. When the person died, he had to act like he loved her, but now he must deal with his deeply buried feelings of anger.
I listen and try to understand the full impact of the separation. Often I work to relieve guilt feelings, and challenge the bereaved to renewed activity. Grieving people need work and activity as therapy. When my son died, I would lie awake in the middle of the night and think, I can lie here and grieve myself to death or I can get up and do something. Our house has never had such clean closets.
We may suggest to grieving retirees that they come work at the church for a while. There is always plenty of office work to do, and they are then busy and around people.
Beyond counseling, however, there is the koinonia, the church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We try to keep in touch with the family through the various support groups, but, in truth, this is probably the weakest link in the chain. So often, we forget the lingering effects of grief. The caring friends, helping people, and supporting group return to normal, and on occasion, the grieving ones are overlooked. This always hurts when it is discovered, and it results in a continual reorganizing of follow-up procedures.
For the most part, however, the church as a caring community comes through. The Wells family’s experience illustrates this. Pam Wells, a twenty-one-year-old member of our congregation, was an experienced hiker. While camping in Texas with a national hiking club, she was killed by a flash flood.
I had observed Pam’s spiritual development over the years. Just a few weeks earlier she had shared a part of her diary with me:
I am writing this right after my psychology class. I feel the love of Jesus all over my spirit. I’ve just talked to another believer in Christ. The unity and communion of the Holy Spirit between two believers is so fantastic!
I was traveling in the Pacific and Japan for the Air Force when it happened, so I was not able to be there personally for the funeral. Upon my return I received a letter from her father. Here is his testimony of invincible faith:
While you were out of town last week, we found the Lord sustaining us by his Spirit working through the Mount Paran staff and family in a most unusual way. Pam’s death, of course, leaves us with a deep sense of personal loss. Our immediate response was, “Lord, give her back, please — she’s only twenty-one!”
But we found out on our knees, some hours later, that his thoughts are far above our thoughts and his will beyond our will, and in his perfect will he had called her home. So in the following early-morning hours we released Pam into the arms of Jesus Christ. It’s not easy, but then, he didn’t promise us a garden of roses.
What he has done staggers and boggles the mind. Imagine! Eternal life beyond the grave! Truly no sting in death! Instead, a hallelujah chorus singing “To God Be the Glory!”
Yes, it’s true. He’s given us his assurance in his Word that he never forsakes us, even in our darkest hour and at the point of physical death. This assurance is undergirded by the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters everywhere. We find this fellowship especially in our church.
What do we do when death calls? We — the church — come alive!
Copyright ©1987 Christianity Today
