We want Christians and churches to seek to become loss aware and bereavement friendly and to resource and help each other.
What do we want?
Becoming Loss Aware
Someone dying (whether that be someone we loved or didn’t love) can have a great impact. It can affect every area of life -emotionally, behaviourally, psychologically, physically and spiritually. It can impact at any time – whether that be from the point of diagnosis, or if someone is ‘lost’ to dementia, around the time of death, or even years later, and it can take a long time to reach a new ‘normal’ with new meaning and hope.
However, the grief journey is more easily navigated if a death is prepared for and well-managed and when the bereaved person finds around them understanding support.
That’s why through this website we seek to equip churches both in the lead up to death, in their funeral ministry, and in supporting those bereaved for the length of their grief journey.
We have tabs on this website for Pre-Death Support and Funerals and How to Support Bereaved People for this purpose.
Becoming Bereavement Friendly
We don’t like to think so but bereaved people can sometimes find the Church one of the most difficult places to be. This can be because it can be emotional or remind them of the funeral, because they can be confused or angry with God, or because unhelpful things, albeit unintended, can be said or done. Alongside this, the spiritual doubts and questioning that can often arise in bereavement present the Church with an opportunity to help those who are grieving find new or renewed confidence in God and hope in this life and beyond.
We want to encourage churches to consider how welcoming and accessible they are to bereaved people. One way of doing that would be to sign up to the AtaLoss.org charter, which involves considering 12 marks of a bereavement friendly church, all of which can demonstrate to the bereaved the compassion and love of Jesus.
We have a tab on our website about being bereavement friendly and other tabs about training and ways that could resource this. Click here.
Resourcing and helping each other
To contribute Christian resources and content for this website including websites, stories or articles that will assist and inspire the Church.
Please tell us:
- what you know Christians are doing to support bereaved people
- of resources you are aware of that might help others
- of what you need to develop your own support
- of local support services (provided by churches or other organisations) that can be added to a signposting website for bereaved people (AtaLoss.org)
- of any ways you think this website can be improved.
Please also consider:
- what you can do to develop your own understanding and support of bereaved poeple.
- whether you can help with any of ours (or others’) needs – Click Here