Often people aren’t aware of what their options are. Obviously when the person holding the information at the point of contact is able to conduct the service and receive more cash…… draw your own conclusions.

Personally I don’t get paid to do a funeral. It is a lot more work. It is my job and calling to give pastoral care to people in their grief.

Haven’t been asked to do it in weeks though.

An uncle of mine died earlier in the year and, not being a man of Christian faith, his funeral was conducted at the crematorium. I was standing outside the chapel chatting to a woman while we waited the arrival of the funeral cortege. She seemed to have some kind of uniform on so I assumed she was employed at the crem. However, it turns out she was some sort of humanist minister (basically she worked for the funeral director but had done extra training) and she would be conducting the service. She spoke quite normally in conversation but when the service started she turned into the Queen…where did that come from? It was all I could do to stop myself laughing! Anyway, being a lifelong Liverpudlian and something of a Johnny Cash fan, my uncle slipped behind the curtains to the strains of ‘Ring of Fire’. That made me smile!

it’s the same sort of feeling I get whenever I see the hell and damnation street preachers.

does this guy not understand the damage his comments could and probably already have done?

It’s such a shame that he’s still stuck in the grips of modernism with it’s separation of sacred and secular and has failed to embrace a changing paradigm that again allows and encourages an exploration of God in all things and all places.