July 2, 2025

I have often been with members of our church who are coming to the end of their days on this earth, or who are facing the death of a family member. For those who have never experienced a loss this close, I try to prepare them. As many of you know, before you can begin to feel the weight of the death, you are faced with a host of decisions and logistics that are often overwhelming. In many cases, the ministry of our church has been an enormous means of grace.

Many of you send cards, come to the visitation and even bring food to the member’s home when you know that family will be visiting from out of the area. This is very helpful. It can be a big challenge to make funeral arrangements, burial arrangements, funeral service decisions and try to take care of family and friends who visit. In order to help care for our members, we are often able to offer our church facilities for a service and a meal. Our practice is to offer our facilities, when we can, for funeral services for our members, or for a member’s immediate family member like a mom, dad or child.

If you could be with me in my office when I am meeting with a family or listen in to some of my phone conversations, when I inform church members that we can offer our facilities free of charge and a funeral meal, free of charge, you would get to see what a blessing and encouragement this is. While this is a regular part of our life together as a church, I wanted to speak to this because we just finished a stretch of 7 days where we had 3 funeral services here at the church. Each of these had times of visitation in our Gathering Space as well as a very nice meal provided in the gym. We can do this because of you. Let me explain.

You pay for the custodian staff who do an excellent job of keeping our building clean and operational. The custodial staff cleans then arranges the Gathering Space, for a time of visitation. The bathrooms are clean, the halls are clean and extra tables, picture easels and flower stands are brought out for the family to use as needed. Our tech dude (Josh) has pictures, background music ready to go as well as tech details set up for the service, such as lighting, sound checks for music, and in some cases, live streaming. When the funeral directors arrive and the family for visitation, they know they will be greeted at the doors and things will be ready. This allows the family to focus on being available to the guests who come to visit with them. We can take care of making sure that the details and logistics go smoothly to serve them.

I often ask people what their family is going to do when they die? In most cases they are pondering the answer when I simply tell them: “They are going to eat.” People have to eat, don’t they? In order for us to provide a meal, we have to figure out how many are coming to the funeral. Then someone has to buy all of the food, and people have to cook it, prep it, set up the tables and chairs in the gym, serve it, and clean up the kitchen and the gym. This is a 1 day and a half to 2-day job for each meal. Yes, it is a big job, but as many of you know it is a big blessing. This happens because there are some very generous people who drop what they are doing, make changes to their schedules and do the shopping, the prepping, serving and clean-up. And as I said, they did it 3 times in one week. Once again, your generosity in giving provides a wonderful building, kitchen, and food. Your generosity in serving provides these services with so much love and excellence.

Thank-you Deb, Ruth and the Funeral Dinner Team! You’ve really gone above and beyond recently. Thank-you Josh, Cliff, Jessica and the custodial staff who do so much so well, that we just assume that everything will be ready. It takes a team and together you display the fruits of the gospel that I get to declare in the funeral. Thank-you church. Your generosity enables your church to care so tangibly and beautifully.

Grace and peace,

Bob

Sunday’s Text:  Luke 12:35-40