How well is your Parish reaching and serving the Bereaved?

In recent years many people who trained as Bethany members have generously extended their ministry to help families prepare for the funerals of their loved ones. Other parishioners, at the request of their clergy, have attended Funeral Ministry training provided by the Diocese, and help solely with the funeral liturgy, while Bethany members are available to minister to the bereaved in the ensuing months, and often years. We see these two ministries, while being separate, as closely intertwined, and we in Bethany are happy to explore and support in any way the working together of these two aspects of ministry. We are aware that many parishes are currently considering the introduction of Funeral Ministry and are in dialogue with Bethany members about ways to best incorporate the Bethany and Funeral work. In recent months we have been hearing of dialogues between the two aspects of the ministry.
Please let us know how well your Parish is reaching and serving the bereaved. If you are concerned about aspects of these ministries in your parish we would like to hear from you. We hope to exchange ideas with the relevant diocesan groups about this. So the more information we have the better!

Recently two groups described their experiences for us. We share them here.

Malahide...................
The group was started through the Parish Pastoral Council. In 2005 it was decided that the parish needed to form a Bereavement support group. The PPC found that the best type of training available was from Bethany. Eight parishioners agreed to train and by that Summer the parish Bereavement group was commissioned. Although some members were unable to continue, other parishioners have also trained since that time and today we have a group of 12 who serve in funeral and Bethany ministry in our parish. The idea of becoming involved at the funeral stage came from other parishes.
Before we started to serve, we invited several long standing Bethany groups to come and describe their model of service. At the time, our group found that the model being followed in Castleknock was most successful in reaching and serving the bereaved of their parish. In particular, we noticed that because they often served the bereaved families at the time of the funeral, people were more inclined to ask for their visits and to come to the support group. In other words, the funeral ministry gave them a natural introduction and was in fact vital to their work in reaching bereaved people. We therefore brought this model to our priests who were most enthusiastic when we proposed the above model of Bereavement service to them. They understood the importance of introducing our group to bereaved families at the time of bereavement. We agreed with them that when a death is announced, we hold back at first as the first person to visit the bereaved family is always the priest. During his visit, the priest explains to the family that there is a Bethany team available to support immediately. The priests have been given a list of our phone numbers as we have four teams and two spare visitors available on a rota basis. In about 90% of cases, the families agree to involve us.
The priest then gives us the name and phone number of the family and we take it from there. We usually give practical support by bringing a step by step explanation of the funeral symbols and a selection of readings which are contained in our Funeral Liturgy book. The families appreciate our service and we attribute our success as a group to the enthusiasm of our priests as they always encourage our parishioners to accept our service. In addition, the use of the Liturgy book means that the priest is given a completed Liturgy sheet before the funeral Mass which prompts him to call readers by name when inviting them to read from Scripture or to lead the prayers of the faithful for example. Therefore this model works well for all concerned, and one proof of this has been that at our recent volunteer night, a parishioner who availed of our services when bereaved has now decided to volunteer for Bethany training in Sept.2009.’

Castleknock..............
At the Bethany Annual General Meeting held in Milltown in 2005, Rosemary McDevitt, one of our members, outlined how we as a Bethany Group engage with the bereaved in our parish. After this presentation, the feedback was positive and indeed many groups since then have engaged with us and requested support to implement some of our practices in their own parish teams.
On the other hand, there were some who had difficulty and may have seen us as a funeral group. This was far from the truth of how we saw ourselves, and our ministry, as Bethany members.
We had experience that the open group invitation to the bereaved in the parish did not work. Either people were too shy, too private, or too intimidated to attend. The attendance was very poor and oftentimes nobody came. The difficulties expressed were the issues of child care, family commitment, night suitability, etc., not to talk about the fears of meeting strangers and breaking down in public. Confidentiality was also a major issue for some and these were some of the fears and issues people conveyed to us.

Let me explain how we manage our Bethany work in Castleknock with ten active members.

• We engage with the clergy, both formally and informally and they now see us as a very positive support to their ministry.
• We have a roster and at our monthly meetings members nominate themselves and their availability to be on duty for a month at a time.
• We give the clergy a copy of the roster, with
telephone numbers, to call us in the event of a death.
• The priest will let the family know that two members of the Bethany Bereavement team will call to help them in whatever way possible and this is the beginning of our journey with the bereaved.
• We bring with us on that occasion what is known as the “Black Book”. This book contains a variety of readings, reflections and prayers, which families may find useful in preparing for the funeral. We spend as much or as little time with people on this visit as is necessary, supporting, listening and helping in whatever way we can, depending on circumstances.
Most families are grateful for our practical support and understanding and depending on the need and engagement with us, we may return a number of times (or none) over these difficult days to help with the funeral and thus enhance our bereavement work with people right at the initial stage of grief.
• Further visits to the bereaved are made by arrangement, and telephone calls and texts are some of the other ways we keep in touch.
• Contact with all families who have been bereaved within the year is made before the Service of Light, held in November.

Please contact Gobnait O’Grady at 087 2052177 or
gobnaitogrady@eircom.net if your group would like to contribute to the discussion.