Dear Church Family,

The book entitled A Christian Ending outlines the history of how Christians have honorably and respectfully buried the bodies of their departed ones throughout the centuries. The second half of the book is a manual on how we can implement these ancient, spiritual and respectful practices within our own church communities. Surprisingly, there are few legal restrictions on individual private burials.

Also, for many, funeral home burials have become cost-prohibitive, forcing families to resort to cremation.

We have a wonderful opportunity to make a completely different choice. Instead of turning over our loved ones to strangers at the hour of death, we can keep them with us, preparing their bodies, placing them in the church, reading psalms over them, and burying them naturally and with dignity.

We feel that this is a ministry our parish can provide in a non-mercenary spirit to people during a time of grief and shock. An offering of love to those in need.

To get started in this direction, we plan to hold a book study of A Christian Ending. Copies of the book will soon be available in our bookstore. We encourage you to read it. We will schedule the book study discussions soon. We hope that many will embrace this ministry and that we will soon have teams ready to put it into practice.

Jay and Susan