There is a 'right way' to preach through a wedding and funeral... 'get out of the way, its not about you.' It's true, no one is there to see you, yet, you have such an important part.
From storytelling, to sharing the Gospel, to ministering to the people involved, there is an opportunity to use the preaching moment to remind people of what's important, why it matters, and how to respond.
Receiving an invitation to celebrate or mourn with a family comes with opportunity and in this episode of Preaching Through Podcast we talk about some of the best practices that have made these opportunities rewarding, profitable for the Kingdom, and sweet (or bittersweet).
Discover all of our free resources: https://faithfruit.us/podcast-links
Additional questions about this topic? Email us at info@faithfulandfruitful.com.
Preaching Through is powered by Faithful & Fruitful, leadership resources for pastors so they can have a faithful and fruitful ministry over the long-haul.
There is a 'right way' to preach through a wedding and funeral... 'get out of the way, its not about you.' It's true, no one is there to see you, yet, you have such an important part.
From storytelling, to sharing the Gospel, to ministering to the people involved, there is an opportunity to use the preaching moment to remind people of what's important, why it matters, and how to respond.
Receiving an invitation to celebrate or mourn with a family comes with opportunity and in this episode of Preaching Through Podcast we talk about some of the best practices that have made these opportunities rewarding, profitable for the Kingdom, and sweet (or bittersweet).
Discover all of our free resources: https://faithfruit.us/podcast-links
Additional questions about this topic? Email us at info@faithfulandfruitful.com.
Preaching Through is powered by Faithful & Fruitful, leadership resources for pastors so they can have a faithful and fruitful ministry over the long-haul.
Do you have any crazy wedding stories?
Speaker 2:Um, no, thankfully. Yeah, I don't really. Uh, as someone who officiates weddings, I don't really want a lot of crazy stories coming out of it. Yeah, no joke, haven't made it on Tik Tok or YouTube or anything, as far as I know. You know, falling in the, you know pond or something like that, nothing that you've been aware of, at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I haven't been part of that. So I've done several weddings, mostly all family, but there's a wedding video and it's the only one that I have of me officiating a ceremony and it's hilarious, but fortunately I'm not the hilarious part. Largely I'm just in the background and I think maybe that's what you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopefully that's the case you know with. You mentioned the family wedding with my sister in law and her husband at their wedding. I did make the mistake, accidentally, of uh saying waffly wedded wife. Uh, you know. So they watch that back on their anniversary. But uh, that's about as crazy as it's been.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about weddings. Hey, welcome back to the preaching through podcast. This is the conversation that takes place, with pastors coming together to encourage one another. We hope to be one voice of encouragement. Hopefully you've got a fellowship with other leaders, other believers, other people who can really challenge you, not just in your leadership as a pastor, but just in in your faith in Christ in general, and come alongside you. We hope to be one voice in that conversation so that we can elevate the way we communicate the gospel in the 21st century. You're not meant to do ministry alone. You're not meant to do life alone. Uh, much less ministry, or God's a triune God, it matter of fact, in a recent sermon you just talked about love and how really there's this love power dichotomy and rehash that real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Part of what's amazing about the Christian faith is because God is eternally existent as one God and three persons. When first John says that God is love, that means that the heart of God's being is love between persons. If God was unipersonal, then he couldn't have love. In that same way, he would have to use power in order to create something to love, and therefore at the heart of God would be power, but while God is all powerful at his heart because he's tri-personal is love, and so that's why relationships matter and that's why we need each other Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so what we do on this podcast is we find different uh seasons, different scenarios, different topics, all sorts of different places you'll find yourself preaching through, and we extrapolate on those scenarios, those books, whatever the case might be. This conversation is all about preaching through weddings and funerals, and when we were putting together season two, it's like, well, most of what we talk about has to do with Sunday morning, and some of the things we're going to talk about is preaching through the camera, preaching through your sermon notes, preaching through an old sermon, but today it's something that really is never going to take place on a Sunday and that is a wedding or a funeral. So it's, it's a fun conversation to have in the sense of hey, it's another opportunity to preach more reps, but a little bit more nuanced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and part of what we're trying to do with this podcast in general is not to say here's the way you have to do this right, and everyone listening who's ever done a wedding or funeral you have your approach, you have the way you do it, you have the stuff you like. So I hope with this is that, as we talk about it, it helps you go a little like oh okay, there's an interesting idea. I haven't thought of that or I could try this. So hopefully this is less like here's the way and more like here's some thoughts on how to do it. That might help you get a little bit better. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's. One of my favorite things is to just model and say, hey, here's what works for me. Take that If it works for you, great. If you can take a piece of it and make it work for you, great. But here's another way to do it, and sometimes that perspective is really helpful. A lot of folks probably actually you might be the only person who has ever listened to or been a part of the preaching through podcast to know this. I host a mule and donkey training program. That's right. Every single week asks Steve mule and donkey questions answers. So if there's any equine fans or livestock fans out there listening, you can find us on YouTube, spotify, subscribe wherever you listen.
Speaker 2:So in both cases you're used to people who know a lot about donkeys.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, that's right. So one of the things that is most helpful for people folks always think, oh, I need to go out there and I need to get a trainer. I need somebody to come in and train this animal for me. I can't do it, I can't do it. But what we've found is that just by modeling for people and just by giving them an option other than what they were doing, they're actually able to get quite good results in the direction that they were already headed, and so you know, we really we're not going to turn this into a mule or donkey show, but that whole aspect of modeling and just giving you some tools, that's really what we're after. So I really only have one thing to contribute to this conversation, at least as far as like. I might have some stories, but like insight, the first time I was ever asked to do a wedding, I was incredibly nervous. I was I had preached before, I had spoken to large groups very comfortable in those scenarios. I enjoy it. But when it came to the wedding, it's something that I had never, never done. Nobody had ever really taught me how to do one. I'd never paid attention to the sermon at the wedding, except for the ones that were really bad, and I just really had no framework of what to do. So I got together with the lead pastor at our church I was on staff at the time and I just told him I was like I'm really anxious about this. I don't want to mess this up. This is like a really important deal. One thing he said to me which was so helpful is that Nobody is there to see you. Right, nobody is there for whatever it is you're going to say and all of a sudden all the weight just came off of my shoulders and it turned into a really enjoyable experience, almost like. What we've talked about with you is like, man, I'm preaching Christmas. It's just so difficult. Well, luke, you, you like people having an aha moment and Christmas doesn't give you that thing. I was like, oh man, all that weights kind of just off my shoulders.
Speaker 2:What's interesting, the last few weddings I've done, the photographers have made a bigger deal than at least I remember this happening years ago. Where what they've said is hey, when the, when you tell the couple that they can kiss and they kiss, get out of the way, because we don't really want you in the shot of them kissing. We don't even the background looking at them. That's weird. So just like, scoot over and that's a little bit of a Picture of what you're talking about. Like no one is there to see you. They don't really. They might take a photo with you afterward, you know, but it's not really about you. It is about Honoring and celebrating that couple and I think it is also an opportunity to Maybe make people think a little bit about Jesus. But yeah, it's certainly not about you.
Speaker 1:All right. So let's dive into it. Let's talk a little bit more. All right, your first 200 sermons are gonna be terrible. This is something the late Tim Keller once said, meaning that no matter how hard you study, how many hours you put in or how much you work on your preaching, there's this glass ceiling that can only be broken with more reps. So getting reps becomes your main way of growing as a preacher. But what happens when you surpass 200 sermons? What are you supposed to work on? Where should you try and grow? Or what muscles are you gonna need to build to have a faithful and fruitful Preaching ministry over the long haul? Well, the preaching lab is a curriculum developed by our co-host, luke Simmons, that fills this gap and takes preachers beyond what they've learned in seminary or Bible college. This live experience provides preachers with meaningful feedback, insight and instructions so that they can improve their preaching for a faithful and fruitful preaching ministry. During this 12 week preaching cohort, preachers learn of minor adjustments to their sermon habits that have a major Impact on the preaching moment, tweaks that nobody in your congregation have the ability or the confidence to give you. It's a deep inspection of your routines, habits, study and preaching, all so that you can become a better steward of the gift God has given you every single week an audience. This is your opportunity to return the favor back to your congregation and preach a sermon that is faithful and fruitful. Visit faithful and fruitful comm slash lab to learn more about the preaching lab live cohort, as well as the preaching lab on-demand video curriculum. Now back to the podcast. So back in season one we had an episode all about preaching through Christmas and Easter and we opened up that conversation asking what type of opportunity for gospel preaching exists there, like what type? It's a big evangelism Opportunity. And you had said, yeah, I think it might be a little bit overrated, and really the crux of what you were getting to is, at that moment people aren't really necessarily there for the sermon, they're not necessary, there's a lot of other things on their mind, and so really just trying to get them to come back is the evangelism opportunity as opposed to conversions, and so, in a similar way, I feel like weddings and funerals line up in that same category. There's an opportunity, there's a sermon. We're gonna open up scripture, we're gonna talk through what this means biblically, and I think Me in my young age, I was like this is a real gospel opportunity, and that might have been where a lot of the pressure was coming from, because, in reality, no one was there to see me, no one was there to take in what it was, what wisdom I had. They just wanted to celebrate, and so is there a. We'll talk specifically about weddings now and then we'll move to funerals, but is there an? A evangelism opportunity that exists?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, anytime you get to open God's word, there's an opportunity to talk about the goodness of Christ and the goodness of what he's done for us. There's absolutely a gospel opportunity. And I mean, weddings and funerals are not the only place where it's not about you really, as a preacher. It's never about you. Yeah, you're on stage and you know you're not ducking out of the way on a Sunday morning Like you would, you know, duck out of the way of a photo at a wedding. But it's never about you. It's always about the Lord. It's always about what he's doing, it's always about his good news. So, yeah, anytime you have an opportunity to share Publicly in that environment and I make it clear with the folks that I officiate their wedding, I just say, hey, listen, if you want me to officiate your wedding, I will be talking about Jesus and I tell them that, whether they're Christians or not. But I just want to be really upfront about that. That's the way I do weddings. Now you could go get married by someone else who isn't going to do that, but that's something I'm going to do and so, yeah, I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's more Planting the seed, sowing the seed evangelism than it is closing the deal evangelism right, Like I think an altar call At the wedding altar would be a little weird. You know I maybe that happens at some of those environments, but I've never seen it and I'm not inclined to do it.
Speaker 1:But I'm really excited to scatter seed when I was in the church, when I was working full-time, and that's my background. I started off as a worship pastor and then I moved into technical director and then I moved into communications pastor and loved all of those seasons of my life. That's when I was being asked to do weddings and one of the Most difficult things for me was like what if I'm asked to do a wedding for someone who's not a believer and they, they want a spiritual wedding, they want elements of faith. Maybe they go to the church, maybe they don't, they have a tie here, so I'm getting assigned to it. I really don't want to do a wedding for somebody who doesn't take this Seriously the way I would, or at least doesn't look at it through the lens that I do. This is an eternal thing. This is a. This is a culmination of a lifestyle and an introduction into a new step. And I figured like, well, the easiest way to get out of this would just to not be a preacher anymore, not to be a pastor anymore, and I don't think that's really gonna be.
Speaker 2:You get out a lot of things by not being a pastor.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, a lot of squirrely situations. When it comes to marrying a couple who is a faithful members of the church and you have history with them, it's kind of a no-brainer and it's natural and you're excited to do that. But when you don't know them and you're unsure of the faith story there and the, the belief, how do you kind of navigate that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question and I know that different people have somewhat different takes on on pieces of what I might say here. But the first thing I'd say is that marriage is not a Christian thing, it's a human thing. Right, it is one of the first things that God created. It's one of the first elements of human society and human existence, and so I don't even necessarily think that pastors and churches Must be the ones officiating weddings, because I don't think it's mostly a Christian thing, I think it's mostly a human thing. So that's one of the reasons I don't have an objection to people who are not Christians, who want me to officiate their wedding, and I'm up front with them. Here's what I believe and here's what I think is good news, and here's how I'll approach this. And if they want that, and I'm like, great, this will be awesome and really the best evangelism opportunity is actually with them. Right, because at that point then I'm going to say, all right, well, part of the equation here is we're going to do some premarital counseling and I'm going to have you read through some bible stuff and we're going to talk through some stuff, and, and so that's the best evangelist opportunity. So that's, that's pretty easy. And then, as you said, people who are faithful members of your church and you go back for a long time, or a family member who's a believer and like that's easy, like super fun. The the one part that is the most dicey to me Is when you have a Christian and a non-Christian who are who want to get married, sure. Or where it's even more dicey is when you have someone that is certainly a Christian and someone that's like Uh, I, I'm not sure, or they're not sure. And that's the spot where I do think the scripture would say that a Christian should not marry a non-Christian Right. If you're married and you're non-believers and one of you becomes saved, it says in Corinthians that you should stay where you are right. You shouldn't necessarily get a divorce just because you've become a Christian and they haven't. But it does also say we shouldn't be unequally yoked with unbelievers, which means if you have the choice to not enter into a marriage where you're a believer and they're not, you should avoid that choice. So that's a spot where I would say, hey, I'm not really willing to do that. The other thing that I would do is for folks who are part of our church but who are living together. I would make that a condition of me officiating their wedding. Say, hey, if you want me to officiate the wedding and you're part of our church, then you need to walk in steps of obedience to make sure that you're honoring the Lord sexually and with your physical relationship. And so that's some of how I think about it. Fortunately, I haven't run into too many times when I've had to disappoint people, but I have had some Real quick.
Speaker 1:do you have a curriculum or did you develop your own thing that you walk people through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I developed a thing that leverages a workbook by Wayne Mack called. I don't like the title of this, but the title of it is Preparing for Marriage God's Way. I don't care for that because I don't think there's only one way and I'm not sure Wayne Mack is clued in on exactly the one way that you would prepare for marriage. But it's a really helpful workbook because it gives lots of exercises and answer these questions. Now it's so long that it would probably take your whole marriage to actually finish it. So I've just selected six or so lessons out of there and then we'll talk about those in the premarital process. But what I've actually decided to do now at this stage is we have built up a number of folks in the church who just part of their ministry as Christians is that they do premarital counseling. So, unless it's a couple that I really know or for whatever reason, I just feel like the Lord is telling me, hey, you need to spend extra time with them. I will typically say, hey, if you're gonna do this, you need to meet with these folks, or these folks and they're gonna handle your premarital counseling, and then we'll meet two or three times just to talk through the wedding. If it's a couple I don't really know we'll spend a little bit of time together just so I can get to hear their story and understand them a bit better. That's typically how I approach that.
Speaker 1:We really wanna start focusing in on the preaching part, because this is the preaching through podcast. As you are meeting with them, as you're preparing, what do you really like to facilitate with that message portion of the wedding? How do you prepare that? I'm interested.
Speaker 2:So there's two pieces of it to me that I combine in a way that if you're listening it doesn't necessarily feel like two pieces, but in my head it's two pieces. One is the couple's story and the second is the message. And again, if you were just at the wedding, it would all be in one continuous chunk. But that's how I think about it, and I think one of the more unique things that I do in weddings is tell the couple's story. I get lots of really great feedback on this. I have a lot of people tell me that was one of the most personal weddings I've ever been to. That was one of the most warm weddings I've ever experienced. They really, really like it, because what happens is typically there's a lot of people at the wedding and they know the bride, they don't really know the groom or vice versa. Right, they know some of. But so what I try to do is actually tell each of the you know the bride and groom's story individually and then how they met and how they got engaged and what's led to this point and some of that stuff. And so what I do is I have a questionnaire. It's about, I think, about 12 questions, and they fill it out ahead of time and then I use it to write their story. You know, dave Shrine was born on such and such and such and such place and his brothers, and it's a nice way to be able to honor the parents, honor grandparents, honor siblings you all talk about. You know, growing up she really liked to go canoeing with her dad and she learned hard work and perseverance from her mom. And you know, and it's a way to honor the family, honor some of the folks that are involved, and you know, and then, especially if they are a Christian, part of what I do is ask them to tell about how they came to faith, and so it's a way of me sharing the gospel through their testimony. That doesn't feel heavy-handed, it just feels like I'm just telling you their story. I mean, who can argue with their story? So so I include that and then I just I have fun with it, you know, and I tell them like I don't want this to feel silly, I don't want it to feel slapstick, but it's also like let's have fun with it. And so there's times, for, you know, inevitably on the first date there's some kind of quirky or funny thing, or, you know, one of the questions on there is when you first met them, what did you think? And so you know it gives you an opportunity to laugh, and so that's the story part. So I do that. Yeah, I think that is a really helpful way to approach it. We can pause there and I can talk about the message first, but is there anything there you want to go deeper on?
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting is in preaching. In general, depending on who you watched your history, I've always felt a pressure to be funny. I've always felt a pressure to make people laugh and to be interesting in that way. Right, and you said in one of our episodes that teaching and preaching teaching assumes that people already care, whereas preaching is how do I make them care about this? And I think comedy is one way to endear yourself to people and get them to relax. And in my limited amount of preaching on a wedding day, I found that the greatest moments of comedy come from their story. That just removes all of the pressure because even if it's not a funny story, because you know the person, it all of a sudden becomes funny. It's like, oh yep, that's who Luke is, that's exactly how he is. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you know, I recently did a wedding and they were both firstborns, you know. So I made a little crack about how, oh man, like they're gonna take things really seriously and so like there's a way to just be able to have fun with it. Again, not to make it silly, definitely not to make it about you, but I think because there are so many people who aren't Christians and they aren't used to hearing sermons and they kind of imagine, whatever it is, it will probably be stuffy and it will probably be boring and it will probably not be interesting. And so, beginning the message by telling their story in a way that's genuine and sincere and warm, with a little humor, it is very disarming and, I think, opens the door for people to potentially be open to hearing. You know the rest of what we talk about.
Speaker 1:I had a very close friend who I officiated her wedding, and she knows that I like to joke around in sarcasm and you know we can debate whether I take it too far. Saundra will tell you I do. But she says you know, I just want to make sure that it's not, you know, a goof fest. I was like. I was like oh, it's not going to be a goof fest. You are going to get so many comments after this wedding about how much people love the ceremony. I guarantee that to you. And she's like okay, okay. Well then, like before I left, she was like we're right, all my family came up and it's really just no one's there to see me. You make it 100% about them and people are gonna love it.
Speaker 2:Well, and maybe we can, with this episode, include some sort of download where people can get those questions that I asked a couple to fill out because that might be helpful. Maybe I can even provide an example of a story or two that I've written over the years. It's a lot of fun and it's a good way to start the talk.
Speaker 1:So you start off by really acquainting everybody with who it is that's getting married, and talking a little bit about essentially what it means for them, their story, and then you make the transition into where does this come from and talk a little bit about that second part.
Speaker 2:Maybe we should say the outset. My goal here is to go about 10 to 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:That's a really, really. I sat through one sermon at a wedding. It was seriously like 30 minutes and I kid you, not man, 10 minutes of that was him talking about the shirts in his closet.
Speaker 2:That's a lot.
Speaker 1:It was a lot. That's the only wedding I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the longest wedding sermon I've ever heard was at my wedding and, to be gracious to Pastor Paul who married us, the fellow who was gonna marry us, pastor Ken, came down with appendicitis or something on the day or so before so pinch hit Molly's old youth pastor. But yeah, it was a long message. We watch it back and you're fast forwarding and you just see a lot of swing. You're there for a long time. So, yeah, I think keeping it brief is important. So what I do for weddings is I've written three wedding sermons One that is really especially for folks who are Christians, one that is especially for folks who are not Christians and one that I think can be used pretty easily one way or the other. So the one that is especially for Christians is especially for Christians in that it's somewhat unpacking and doing some teaching about the roles of husband and wife found in Ephesians five. The one that is explicitly like for non-Christians is one that is really and really I can actually use that for both. It's really talking about how a marriage is a picture of Christ's love for us and how every great story follows the same storyline, because every great story is borrowing from the true story of the world that there was a bride who needed to rescue and a hero who came and didn't just risk his life but gave his life, and so that's that one. And then the other one is actually one that I specifically wrote for a family wedding when I was like you know what? I don't want to just reheat what I normally do at weddings, I want to write something special. So that was the third one. So typically I'll pick from one of those and I imagine if I ever have a chance to officiate one of my kids' weddings or something like that, I may write another one but, I'm definitely not looking to rewrite a brand new thing every time. So I have those messages and basically what I'll say in all of them is hey, I'm going to talk to you, couple, while everyone else listens in, and I'm going to remind you of some of the reasons why God created marriage and stuff like that. So it's reminder. My hope, with the folks listening, is that it is especially for those who are married. Here's a reminder of what marriage was about. Here's a reminder of why it's worth it that you stay in your marriage. Here's a reminder of what you're being called and expected to. But again, I'm trying to keep it short because, even though I'm saying it's for them, they aren't going to remember. I mean, like the couple is not going to remember anything you say. For the most part They'll remember some of the funny stuff and some of those moments. So, yeah, that's how I approach it, different than how I do on a Sunday. On a Sunday, I preach with notes, but I'm not very tied to my notes. When I do a wedding, I actually use my Kindle and I read the whole thing. So, which doesn't feel weird in a wedding, that feels pretty normal and I'll have to practice it some so that I don't just feel like I'm looking down at the Kindle. But yeah, so I do it that way and it's pretty straightforward, it's pretty simple. But I'm really trying to, like I said, sow seed of the gospel. I'm not at that point, like I said, calling for a response. I'm not offering an invitation. If a couple really wanted me to do that, like if that was something that mattered to them, I would do that, so I wouldn't be against it. But my general thing is to go. I'm going to tell the gospel through their testimony, if they're believers, and through talking about the beauty of Christ's love for a church. I mean, really so much of what marriage represents is the gospel, and so it's. I mean, guys, this is a layup, you know, like there's it's not hard to figure out how to talk about the love of Christ for his bride.
Speaker 1:So the first time that these people are going to largely get together is at a wedding, and then the next time that this same collection of people, or a very similar collection of people would presumably get together would be at a funeral, and so that kind of turns the corner very.
Speaker 2:They're very similar in terms of they're the only two ways to get me in a suit. There you go.
Speaker 1:Very similar in that way and also like storytelling and opportunity to really live what everybody knows to be true about these particular people. Now, I've preached several weddings. I never preached a funeral. While I was working at the church, I wound up doing sound for a lot of funerals and I remember the first time there was ever a casket in there. It was an open casket. It was the first time I'd ever seen a deceased body and it was very, just, very weird for me. I was probably 24, which I consider myself very fortunate that we've had good health and that's not always the case and so I had not been around death and funerals and things like that as part of my story. But running sound, it felt weird, setting up sound around and so just all sorts of anxiousness, but immediately I was just completely disarmed when the service began because I felt like, wow, she was incredible, she was an amazing woman. Oh man, how awesome. They got to know her and funerals immediately became something that I enjoyed being a part of, albeit it was in a different capacity than preaching. So there's similar dynamics, but there's also very different dynamics. What's your experience as far as preaching through funerals?
Speaker 2:So I've probably done more funerals than weddings. I've done a lot of both, but I bet if I counted them up it would be more funerals than weddings, and weddings are more fun, but in a strange way I like funerals more. Like they're more precious. And I come home from funerals a different person and this is a verse that I almost always include in every funeral sermon I do is Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2. It says it's better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. And you go. What I mean? He's almost literally saying it's better to go to a funeral than to go to a wedding. And he says you have to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting. Now, this is written by Solomon, smartest, wisest guy who ever lived maybe not smartest, but supposedly the wisest. And you have to ask well, why on earth would it be better to go to a funeral than to go to a wedding? And he says for death is the end of all mankind and the living will take it to heart. And so the reason a funeral is more fulfilling and the reason a funeral actually is really important, the reason our preaching in a funeral matters a lot, is because in a funeral, the living will take it to heart. There's a reality Every one of us is going to end up where this person is in terms of at some point we're going to die. It's hard for us to believe, it's hard for us to take seriously, but even for just a moment, folks have to come to terms with that truth and I do think that's why funerals are a bit more of a ripe gospel opportunity. Like preaching at a wedding is like preaching to green apples. Preaching at a funeral is preaching to red apples. The circumstances and the pain and the loss have ripened folks potentially to the gospel. So I think there's a good opportunity there and, yeah, I've done a lot. The first one I actually did was for my cousin. I was a young man, I wasn't a preacher or a pastor at that point, but I was headed in that direction and I was probably 23. And I preached at my cousin Sam's funeral. He was 18, a really tragic death in a small town and it was a really difficult experience. But I learned something important through it that I think does inform how we should approach the preaching of it, because I'm going to these mentors of mine and saying, hey, this has been a really tragic death for a lot of different reasons. It was a very public death and what happened and small town and a lot of people know the story and the advice I got was to say listen, your job really you're not the Holy Spirit. You don't have a Holy Spirit badge. Your job's not to determine and this is true of any funeral your job's not to determine where is the person now and to give some verdict on the meaningfulness of their life. That's not what you're supposed to do. What you're supposed to do is to say, hey, if this person had the opportunity to come back from eternity and tell you something, here's what they'd tell you. And we get that from Luke 16. In Luke 16, jesus tells a parable, probably of a rich man in Lazarus. And the rich man, who had all this comfort in life, is now in torment and he's looking at Lazarus, who was this poor man in life and now is in the presence of God and enjoying the sweetness. And the rich man, from his anguish, is saying could you send Lazarus to go warn my brothers, could you send them to go tell them to repent? And the point of it is hey, if they aren't going to listen to the scriptures, they're not going to listen to Lazarus or an angel or anyone else. But the point for this conversation is to say people on the other side of eternity know what it's like on the other side of eternity. They've had to stand before God, they've had to face judgment, they've had to understand here's my eternal future and on that basis I think Christian or not, or undetermined they would come back and I will often say this in a sermon, if so, and so had the opportunity to come back here as much as they love their mom, as much as they love their son, as much as they love that. That is not the first person they do. The first thing they do is they would grab this microphone and they would tell you what I'm about to tell you, and then I'll share the gospel and I'll share about the hope of Christ. Oftentimes, in that message, I'll say something like you really need to think about this, because now is the most likely time. Right, you've just been ripened by the circumstances of this. You're staring at the reality of your own future. Now's the most likely time, now's the only certain time, like you don't know how much longer you have right. So take care of this. And now is the time that you have right. And it says in the scriptures today, if you're hearing God's voice, don't harden your heart. And so I again will not typically do an altar call, but I will really challenge people with where they are and where they're headed, and I'll try to do that Now also try to include people's life and story. One of my favorite things at many funerals is and if I have the chance, to not just preach at it but help organize the whole thing. Where possible, I'll encourage folks to have a time of sharing. You typically have a couple of people who are assigned to go up and give a eulogy or do formal speaking. I love the funerals where you then do a bit of an open mic, and this is always risky, right. Some people listen to me like, oh my gosh, that sounds like a terrible idea. You gotta moderate it. I don't ever let people hold the mic.
Speaker 1:That's step one right there.
Speaker 2:Like I'll walk or whoever's walking around. I was like, hey, you hold the mic. Like don't let them hold it because you might never get it back, but what happens? I mean, the reason it's so encouraging is because, especially for the family who remains, they know their experience of their loved one but they don't know how everyone else experienced their loved one. And so when other people get to tell stories and get to talk about the difference that person made, I mean it's so meaningful and so sometimes what I'll do and I actually I did this once at a funeral I got invited to come do this funeral for someone I had literally never met. Like I didn't know the person and I didn't know anyone at the funeral, but it was like someone in our church knew someone at that church, knew someone at that church, and they were like do you know a pastor who could come do this funeral? And, by the way, that was one of the saddest funerals I've ever done, because the idea that you would have no connection at all. And so at that funeral all I could do was listen to people share and then basically freestyle a message and I'm listening as people are talking about what's great about this person, and I essentially turned it into a message. That was some version of like, hey, all the stuff you loved about this guy is actually stuff you would love about Jesus if you got to know him, and so that's what I did with that, and so sometimes I'll do that a bit where I kind of know okay, I'm gonna do Ecclesiastes 7.2. I'm gonna do now's the most likely time, now's the only certain time, but sometimes I'll a little bit more just freestyle it through it, which I realized for inexperienced preachers that would be probably not recommended, and for other folks, depending on what it is and who it is. You need to be mindful of that. The other thing that happens sometimes in a funeral is it just is going on and on, and on, and on and on. I did a funeral recently where family members literally had to leave to catch planes and some of the folks who had shared had gone long, and so that's the moment where I just got to land the plane here. So that's a little bit of how I approach it, but I really think it's a sweet opportunity because of how the circumstances of death do tenderize us. A lot of times there's a video or a slideshow and personally that's when I start to go. At some point there's gonna be a slideshow of my life and my kids and our relationship, and what's that gonna be like. That's why I think the Lord for funerals Like you go. Here's the stuff on figuring out if I'm in America. I'll just not deal with that by not being a pastor. Well one of the sweetest things about being a pastor is being invited into those moments and getting just to have the Lord disciple me and say, Luke, life is short, it is a vapor. Make it count.
Speaker 1:There's two types of funerals that I've been at. There's some that really are sobering and there's a few moments of laughter, but it's a lot of mourning. And then there's services where this is not a funeral, this is a celebration of life. We went laughter. How are you feeling out that situation and crafting together what you wanna say, cause obviously you wanna be respectful of whatever their wishes are. So how are you feeling out the family ahead of time? Basically, get clarity on hey, which way should I take this?
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of it depends on how well do I know the family and how open are they to what needs to happen. Sometimes they've really come in with a clear sense of it. But I really would say I, really my encouragement to folks is that the feel of the funeral would match to some extent the feel of the loss. And I will always ask with a wedding or a funeral, hey, when people leave this, how do you want them to feel? I did a funeral for a month's old baby who died instantly a Sid's thing and you know it'd be really weird if it was like, hey, we want to make this a celebration of life, like it's just tragic and it should just feel tragic. And actually by turning that into something else, you would be harming the family who is who needs a tragic grief process. Yeah, that's a very different thing than here's this person who died as a older person. They lived many decades, they had a great impact, they suffered a lot over the last years and you know their entrance into eternity is actually like what a relief. I mean that's where I go like, okay, you want to call it a celebration of life.
Speaker 1:I'm in.
Speaker 2:I can do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know. But I just would try to encourage people to have that match, and this is talking now more about the pastoring than the preaching. But I do think as a society we struggle with grief and we just gloss over it too fast. People want to. They want to honor their loved one, you know. Especially if the loved one was fun and they were the life of the party, they go well. They wouldn't want us to be sad. No but you actually need to be sad, and that doesn't mean we can't have moments of levity and that doesn't mean we don't have moments to laugh. Actually, you're doing yourself a disservice in the long run if you just rush ahead of that sorrow, and so we'll talk about that on the front end and then a lot of times, especially when it isn't so decisively tragic or celebratory, if it's somewhere in the middle that's part of how I'll often introduce the ceremony. At the beginning I'll say, hey, you know, a lot of us are coming at this from different perspectives and a lot of us feel different ways. Some of us knew so-and-so very well, some of us didn't know them as well, and we just want to give you permission to feel whatever you need to feel during this time so that hopefully, you can move toward healing and growth. So, yeah, that's how I think of that.
Speaker 1:Is there any insight that you have for the level of connectivity to the family and the rest of the events at weddings? I felt a pressure to be present for a lot of it but I wasn't really necessarily needed. I was needed for a very specific point and in other instances of just being connected and ministry opportunities, it's kind of like, well, I don't really know the family or I know the family but I wouldn't have been invited otherwise. Do you feel what type of level of engagement should I have beyond the actual responsibility?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think of it in two directions. The first is who's calling the shots and who are you listening to really? So when I do a wedding I make it very clear I'm only listening to the bride and even at the rehearsal I'll say hey, listen, if you have a bunch of good ideas, I'm not interested in them. I'm only listening to what she thinks, and I'm just very clear about that. This is for her. At a funeral it's often different. There's a number of different interests. There's sometimes a spouse who's left behind, there's sometimes multiple kids. Sometimes the dynamics between all that is a little bit weird. So you are trying to figure out who really is calling the shots here. That can get tricky, but that's something I think that you're trying to read as you design stuff. And then to your point, it really a lot depends on how well you know these folks. Are they part of your church or are they not? At a wedding, I generally don't have a big problem saying, hey, I'm going to be at the rehearsal but I'm not going to come to rehearsal dinner. I'm going to be at the ceremony but I'm not going to stick around for the reception. I don't feel very bad about that, whereas when people are grieving I feel much more hey, I'll show up early, I'll stay there a long time, I want to be able to follow up with you, I want to be able to spend time with you in the coming weeks, that sort of thing even really practically Like if I do a wedding, part of the expectations I lay out is an honorarium, whereas I don't charge anything for a funeral. So just approach this differently.
Speaker 1:As I said in the beginning, I really don't have a whole lot to offer in this episode, just because my experience is so minimal. But I think one thing that I would like to contribute here at the end is that I think it's okay to say you'll evolve over time in these areas and your level of maturity and how you handle things. Your experience will dictate how you might handle something today, in your mid 20s, versus how you're going to handle something in your mid 40s or mid 50s. I know for me, death is a really interesting thing. For me. I don't get sad, I don't cry. I told you ahead of time. Mostly that's because I have not really lost people in tragic circumstances. I've lost my grandparents, but they were both ready to go. I've lost some friends, but they were not actively contributing into my life. I did lose somebody who, a month before he passed away, had reached out to me is like I want to get to know you. You've talked about depression. I'd like to know more about that. I have a friend who I'd really like to support, so I want to hear your story. I have a son who is, you know, young and about to have a baby. I'd like to hear what it was like for you to be young and have a baby, and so we got together, and so that was more difficult, sure, but I always felt guilty. I felt bad about not crying or about not showing some sort of emotion that I was supposedly supposed to have. And one thing that helped me was somebody told me in these moments there's going to be plenty of people who just lose it and they're going to lean on the people who can kind of maintain their composure, and so she said I need people like you around who can kind of remain lucid and focused, and so that was very, very comforting, and I think accepting how I handle these situations has really allowed me to evolve over time and be like OK, it's OK for me to be who I am, but it's also good for me to be open to hey, I want to handle this differently now, and so I think that's the only thing I would really add, other than what I contributed at the beginning is like you'll evolve over time, you'll learn how to do things better, and I think the biggest weight off the shoulders is that, ultimately, there's something bigger happening here than what it is you bring to the table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, as much as we start out the episode saying this is not about you it still isn't Right. There is a reality that part of what's happening in preaching is that you are giving away your presence, and I think that's why it's so tiring. Like it's just wild how I mean, you can give a sermon on a Sunday morning and go home trashed and you're like why it? Like I talked for 30 minutes how hard was that? Like it's like you're not just delivering content, you're giving of yourself, and your presence matters and your presence communicates, and that's true on a Sunday morning, that's true to wedding and that's especially true to funeral. And so I do think, being mindful of your presence, nothing you need to perform or be something you're not or react in some melodramatic way but your presence is also part of the message. It is part of what shapes people, and that's true all the time.
Speaker 1:This is such an enjoyable format being able to just say, hey, look, you're going to preach through all sorts of different scenarios and circumstances and there's not a right way to do it, but here is a way to do it. And our hope is that, through this episode, some of the pressure that maybe you felt on your shoulders in these, you know, situations, maybe that can come off a little bit and you can really turn it over to God and turn it over to the spirit and say, hey, just allow me to be present for what you are calling me, to be here in this moment and be present for the people and show up big for them in the ways that they need me to show up, because ultimately, it's about a bigger story that's happening here. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. As always, we're really grateful that you spend a little bit of time with us. There are millions of podcasts out there. The fact that you're here listening to this one, we really hope that it's served you and you've gotten something out of it. And if you think it would be beneficial to other people, be sure to share it with them. At the very least, head over to Apple Podcast or Spotify. Leave a review. We'd really appreciate that, and if you would like any of the resources we discussed, you can go to faithfulandfruitfulcom. We'll have information there on how you can get resources from the podcast. If there's anything you'd like for us to talk about, you can email us at info at faithfulandfruitfulcom. Those will come to both Luke and myself and we'd love to be able to shape maybe the way we approach some episode, or maybe even do an entire episode on something that is important to you or a situation you find yourself in right now. Luke, anything else you want to say before we're done with this episode? Nope, alright, thanks for listening. Take care, everyone. I'll see you next time.