The Pastor's Handbook: Funerals, Weddings and Dedications

Sunday you can prepare for. These arrive with a phone call. Somebody dies on Tuesday and you are standing in front of the family on Thursday. A couple asks you to marry them and suddenly you are running a rehearsal and holding a legal document with a filing deadline. A young mother asks about having her baby dedicated, and half the church is not sure what a >Seminary gave these one afternoon between them. THE PASTOR'S HANDBOOK is what should have been in your hands the first time. >FUNERALS AND MEMORIAL SERVICES. What to say on that first phone call and the three things never to say. The family interview, with the eight questions that actually produce a eulogy. Timed orders of service for a funeral, a memorial and a graveside. The call to worship, the committal in both burial and cremation forms, and the benediction, printed to be read aloud on the worst day of your week. Working with the funeral director. And the hard ones - the death of a child, suicide, when you do not know where the person stood with God, and when >WEDDINGS. What to ask before you agree, and when to say no. Four premarital sessions written out. How to run a rehearsal for thirty people who are all talking at once. Three ceremony lengths, three sets of vows, and every word from the welcome to the presentation. The marriage license, who signs it, and your >BABY DEDICATIONS AND WATER BAPTISM. What a dedication is and what it is not. The charge to the parents, including the question most churches never ask. Five things to teach before anyone gets in the water. And the mechanics nobody teaches - water temperature, footing, the hold, and how to keep hold until they >FREE PRINTABLE FORMS. The interview sheets, checklists, the ceremony script page and both certificates are yours to download and print as often as you need >Scripture is from the Berean Standard Bible. Buy it once and use it for the life of your ministry - permission is given to reproduce the checklists, interview >Written for solo pastors, bivocational pastors, associate pastors handed their first funeral, chaplains, and anyone who has ever driven to a house not knowing what they were going to say.