Having resigned as minister of my church in Essex in the autumn of 1997, I am refreshed and invigorated to look at the subject that really 'winds me up' - funerals!
The local Rector and I 'went into bat' with the local Co-op Funeral Service - which does the bulk of the funerals round here, when we discovered that they were complaining about our rock-bottom fees (!) and treating us in all sorts of ways that were totally unprofessional, not to say unethical. The result is that we were 'punished' by being almost entirely bypassed for funerals for which we were not specifically asked. Instead, when the funeral director offered to the bereaved that they would 'find someone' to take the service, they took someone from their list of cheaper and available ministers. The result has been that, quite often, someone has died in this quite small community, without either of the resident ministers knowing and thus not able even to publicise the time of the funeral for them. Our place as supporters of the whole community-building process, not to say celebration (for some of the older folk dying now have had wonderful lives from which we can learn a lot of our own history and traditions ...) was therefore put under threat.
More seriously, when this happens, people have experience of funerals in which clergy are doing a service just 'read out of the book' with very few personal touches - obviously not - because the parson concerned has had little opportunity - or just has not - met with the bereaved! Thus I fear that people will throw 'traditional' funeral directors over one shoulder and the churches over the other, pouring out their wrath on both for funerals that are just not 'working' - when, in fact, the churches are a terrific resource and store of good practices for dealing with death.
I have been to some funerals in which clergy have played no part and I have been most frustrated at how much better they could have been with even a bit of our input! The thing is, that so many people who want to 'do their own thing' have simply no idea of the kind of emotions that get up and grab you on such occasions and, for instance, are so keen to have a 'fun', 'positive' time that they allow no time for people to be sad - to which they are fully entitled! There can also be negative stuff flying around in heaps that, when it is totally ignored, you just end up being unreal ...
My family department store used to have a funeral department so I can see it from their point of view as well. One of the problems is that local parsons have incredibly busy diaries so that funeral directors tend to do things thus: consult their own diaries, check a date with the bereaved, ring up the crem, check the date with them and then ring up a busy local parson and the saga begins of answerphones and tackling the complexities of life now faced because a local parson is being expected to look after more congregations, have more meetings etc than ever before. I have been told on the phone, "I have arranged a funeral at such and such a day and time. Can you do it?" That is, the minister has not been accepted as one of a team of people 'on the job' but as a dispensable part - and if you cannot manage that date, you do not get the job and it looks as though you have 'refused' to do the funeral. I nearly lost my job over such a case when the person who had died, was unbeknown to me, the sister-in-law of one of my deacons who promptly resigned! That is the sort of pressure we are under from funeral directors! "Clear your diary - or else!" A colleague once had to miss a meeting in which he was representing the Anglican church because he had his organist's father's funeral 'bounced' on him in this way!
How much easier to have a separate list of non-busy (retired? unemployed?) ministers who will say, "Yes, of course I can manage that time!" But, if it is difficult for the funeral directors to find a date agreeable to four different sets of people, that is what they get their fee for!
Funeral directors are under enormous pressure from their accountants to maximise profits and hence their beady eye has fallen on the cost of church funerals. I caught out one funeral director telling one Wivenhoe family that it was not 'normal' to have a church funeral before a crematorium committal - which is absolute nonsense. I got the bill off the family concerned - a tricky manoeuvre which it was very sweet of them to agree with but David and I had to have evidence of what the Co-op were charging - and they were very cross! For that half and hour at the crem and what it involved - £1,260! The fact is that if they can 'cram 'em in at the crem' one after the other, they can maximise their profits. I was reliably informed that, during January one year, the Co-op was making £600 profit per funeral. (See the survey that indicated SCI fees were 37 per cent and the Co-op 17 per cent more then the independents.) This they can do if they bypass the churches. In our case, it means that most of our town cannot get to the funeral because the crem is the other side of Colchester (two bus rides away) - out of the question for the frail elderly. The only thing we can do is to have a memorial service in the church which can take just as much time to prepare and, because the family have been 'cleaned out' by the funeral director already, what can you charge them? Nothing!
Yet, churches and ministers are hanging on by their fingernails financially also! The whole business of church and money is a minefield! Some parsons are extremely poor and funeral fees are part of their survival kit - and, to my horror, usually comes in a brown envelope of cash, furtively handed to you at the time of the funeral, sometimes in full view of the bereaved! I stopped that! The fee for hiring the church is usually very modest - mine was £30. It is also a 'nice little earner' for the retired minister who gets asked.
I have got an awful lot of information and evidence here on the subject. There are church groups that are meant to monitor the subject for us but, because the area is so delicate, they tend to be rather timid. It think we need a Rottweiler or two!
My personal opinion-to-be-going-on-with is that, in every town, the independent funeral directors, the council and the churches should get together to produce a leaflet to go through every door, informing people of their rights and opportunities in this field. People may be streetwise when it comes to shopping for groceries but not for shopping for funerals!
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