In my the course of my work with the Coordination Program of the Transition into Ministry program, the question I am most often asked is, “What are you learning through this program?”

While I have never had trouble responding to that question, I now have something to put in folks hands that will be far more effective than the few points I could make in a brief conversation.

An “Alban Institute Special Report” on the transition into ministry has just been published and is now available for wide distribution. The report, Becoming a Pastor: Reflections on the Transition into Ministry, is co-authored by James P. Wind, President of the Alban Institute, and myself.

If a copy of this report has not come across your desk, I encourage you to request your copy today. You can do so by downloading the PDF version here (4.2MB). You can also request hard copies (while supplies last) directly from the Alban Institute.

To read the report in online, or for further conversation about this report, we encourage you to visit the Becoming A Pastor website which has been developed specifically for this special report.

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The economic crisis we are in has been ballooning over the past couple of months.  I have yet to hear a sermon that addresses the anxiety that is raging these days.  A few weeks ago I was in a congregation, a large evangelical congregation.  The text for the day was from Philippians 3, where Paul proclaims his re-valuation of all things that matter in light of knowing Christ—his embrace of suffering the loss of all things, prized things he has now come to count as dung.  Not a mention of living faithfully midst the turbulence of the times when assets can so quickly become liabilities.  Last Sunday I was in an Episcopal congregation on the coast of Maine.  The Lectionary text was from Matthew 25, the parable of the Talents.  Rather than picking up on the condemnation of burying assets for safekeeping out of fear rather than investing them wisely (even if conservatively), the Rector chose to reflect on the Collect of the day which pointed to the exhortation to read Scripture.  I have been in an American Baptist Church not too far from my home for two Sundays—not a mention of things economic.

It seems we, the Church, have much to answer for in these times and certainly much to speak to.  At the very least we have to confess that we have cooperated with this debt-based economy.  Our readiness to address finances tends to coincide with our need to pledge the budget for the fiscal year to come or to ramp up for the looming capital campaign.  The connection to debt and sin is unmistakable in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels.  In the mind of Jesus, there was a correspondence between the experience of enslavement to sin and the experience of indebtedness.  This does not necessarily lead to an equation between debt and sin—but it does provide an interesting point of correlation worthy of exploration in a time when the dangers intrinsic to debt are being elaborated on as never before in the society at large.

If you have a sermon (perhaps one you preached or you heard) that addresses the current economic crisis in an effective, evocative way, send it along ( dwood56@earthlink.net ) and we’ll post it on the site.  Preaching economics is always important…but especially in these times.

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A Confession: over my 25 years of ministry I have harbored a low-grade aversion for Funeral Homes and Funeral Directors. This has nothing to do with an avoidance of death. It has everything to do with the abdication of the church when it comes to the aftermath of death. Corpses, coffins (or the preferred term, according to my Funeral Director colleagues, “caskets”) and graveyards (or, less offensively, “cemeteries”) have become the domain of Funeral Directors and their Homes. All too often, the message delivered from these death experts was, “We’ll take it from here and call you when we need you.” This feeling that I was treading on someone else’s turf was made all the more plain when the Funeral Director handed me the honorarium he (and it was a “he” with one exception in 25 years) had negotiated as part of the funeral package.  

We’re a long way from the time when the deacons of the church would gather in the parlor of the home of the deceased to prepare the body for the wake and the burial in the church yard. The history of the rise to dominance of Funeral Homes and their resident Directors is a fascinating one—at least from the standpoint of a pastor.  

Tracy was in his mid forties. Healthy, robust, outgoing, and full of adventure. He ran his own excavating business and was the master of the earth-moving machine. In the introverted culture of rural Maine life, his extroverted nature was a breath of fresh air for this extroverted leaning pastor. The call came to my cell on a Saturday afternoon. The signal was weak, but strong enough to pick up the trauma unfolding on the other end of the line: “Tracy’s dead!” It was Becky, Tracy’s wife of more than twenty-five years. She could barely get the words out. She went on: “He was crossing the road on his snowmobile and he was hit broadside. He’s dead.” The following Wednesday, the day eventually set for the funeral, was Ash Wednesday. The season and the magnitude of this death for the congregation and the small town as a whole made me bound and determined not to follow the assigned script for funereal practice I had been inducted into decades before. I had only arrived the year before to be the Pastor of this small Baptist congregation.  

To make a long story short, we set up a vigil at the church. There would be no wake at the Funeral Home. This time, the church would keep watch and become a sanctuary for the dead and the grieving. The sanctuary was cleaned from top to bottom and flowers were kept to a minimum. The afternoon before the day of the funeral, the Funeral Director delivered Tracy’s body to the church where it was received by the deacons. The casket was placed in the sanctuary with a Christ Candle at the head of the casket. That evening hundreds of people filled the sanctuary and visited and lingered with the family and each other. This little church had not seen this kind of life in living memory. 

When the wake was done, the congregation remained. All through the night, the candle burned and parishioners came and went, sitting reverently, praying fervently, keeping faith with Tracy. This continued right up to the time of the service the following day. The building never felt the same after that night. The church experienced a kind of awakening to its place in the community. To this day, I believe it was a transformative moment.  

This particular way of doing things did not become a practice in that congregation. However, services at Funeral Homes for members and related others became a rarity. They were almost always housed in the sanctuary. 

All that to say, I am learning to be more constructive in my critique of Funeral Directors and their Homes. The critique begins at home. What does it mean for the church to reclaim its ministry to the dead and the grieving? That’s the question pastors and congregations need to answer.  

Let me end this post with a positive turn toward the Funeral Director and his/her profession. I point you to a Frontline documentary entitled, The Undertaking, which aired on PBS in October, 2007. This program features the life and work of undertaker, Thomas Lynch and is based on his critically acclaimed book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. The book and the film combine for a wonderfully redemptive chronicle of the life of one undertaker. It was a reminder of the how good that profession can be and how much better we as pastors need to become at undertaking our role with the dead and the grieving. You can download the program from iTunes for $2 or watch it for free online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/undertaking/view/.

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