Stirling Baptist Church, Scotland

The Bereavement Journey® has been running on a regular basis at Stirling Baptist Church since 2016, and the church is now celebrating having run over fifteen courses!

These take place at The Life Centre and The Haven, two community outreach centres supported by Stirling Baptist Church.  

The church’s commitment has been essential in maintaining and delivering The Bereavement Journey – providing facilities and a dedicated team. Pastor Anthony Luxton and the Church also provide special services of comfort twice a year, offering prayer ministry at each service; additionally, the Church offers dedicated healing services.  

The Stirling Baptist community team has continued to develop a support network Listening Service, a Renew Wellbeing café, monthly bereavement coffee meet-ups and a counselling service. Occasionally team members follow up with personal visits. This is provision of wraparound support for the course.  

The Bereavement Journey now runs twice a year alternating afternoons and evenings, and is publicised through church networks, local GP Health centres, libraries, and council support services. At least twelve mental health nurses refer people to The Bereavement Journey. People also come through personal referrals.  

Publicity for the programme includes flyers and posters around the church, and community centres and digital/screen publicity within the church.  

Alison & the team meet regularly to pray and discuss before the course starts and after each session. In addition, the team is supported by another church prayer team who prays for them.  

Each session of the programme starts with a warm welcome – Participants are given the opportunity to chat with the team over a coffee and to meet others. In the seating area each person is given a gift of a personalised welcome pack and their Participant Manual. 

Everyone is then organised into smaller groups for the breakout discussions to encourage the sharing of stories, listening to each other and the building of relationships within the group. On-going contact with the team and its helpers is maintained once the programme has ended, through the provision of monthly coffee meet – ups. This has proved to be of great support for those who are not quite ready to be fully independent on their grief journey.  

Testimonies 

“Although I found it emotionally draining, I found the course helpful and looked forward to each session.” 

“Small group work was very effective.” 

“The most important thing I learnt was that grief presents itself in so many different ways and that it’s okay not to be okay.” 

“The thing I appreciated about the course was the kindness of the team and the quality of the materials provided, and the amazing hospitality.”