Over the last few months I have attended a couple of funerals which left me feeling somewhat disappointed in that while they were led by a pastor and each contained a hymn and a Bible reading, they felt decidedly secular.

I’ve had this experience a few times when attending funerals and weddings conducted by Pentecostal and evangelical pastors. There has been total focus on the human subject (the deceased or the bride and groom) but very little attention to Jesus or the gospel.

Rather than conducting a distinctively christian service which glorifies the Lord, they seem to have taken a secular ceremony and added a christian element to it.

The heart of the problem is this: in rejecting formal orders of service to be more “contemporary” or “relevant” we inevitably end up being indistinguishable from the world.

A written liturgy with formal prayers and declarations allows us to both worship the Lord and honour the people we are celebrating. The liturgy doesn’t have to be inflexible or in King James English. It does allow us to think about what needs to be said and how to say it.

There is a balance between the type of liturgy that is unchanging and said by rote and one that is flexible. I remember one person at a funeral I conducted saying, “At least we knew who we were burying not like when that other lot do them.”

I think that many pastors would do well to follow a more formal order of service rather than throwing together a bunch of things that they think should happen on the day. Above all else, the gospel must be preached on every occasion or else we are failing in our calling.