Bereavement care is being defined here as the support and encouragement a follower of Christ provides to a person who has experienced the death of someone who was close to that person. While grief is experienced due to a variety of experiences, such as separation or divorce, loss of a good job, or a death of a favorite pet -- and regardless of an onlooker's opinion of such losses, these are felt as acute losses to the person who experiences them -- while such experiences can generate grief, this is different in reason, outlook, and response patterns from the person who loses a human relationship because someone died.

There is some variety in what support and encouragement is available for persons who are experiencing bereavement.

• There are support groups, anywhere from a handful of people to a couple of dozen.

  • • Advantages to this type of support are that it is usually structured in some form, following a set curriculum that has been found over time to be accurate and consistently helpful. Also, the participants' losses can be varied, with some persons having experienced in their own lives the loss of the same type of relationship as others in the group. At the same time, others in the group may have been bereaved of a different relationship, and so group participation helps state the fact that there are others grieving in different ways for different losses. The participant is not alone in his or her grief.

    • At the same time there may be perceived disadvantages to bereavement care through (only) a support group setting. A person who has lost, say, a spouse, will grieve differently than a person who has lost a parent, or a child, or a good friend. There may be the emotional conclusion in a person's mind that he or she cannot relate to the other person's loss, since the lost relationship the other person is mourning is different from the lost relationship the person is currently mourning. Then too, a bereavement group usually is most active in offering support and encouragement at the time of the group meeting, but then outside of those hours for the rest of the week, the group participant mourns on his or her own.

    • Support groups can be further described as either faith-based or secular, as either Christian faith-based or based in a world religion, as either psychology-focused or Christ-focused, as either denominationally-oriented or as interdenominational, etc. In reality, some of these distinctions just mentioned are over-stated for the sake of highlighting their differences. ALL bereavement support groups want at least to uphold the grieving person so that he or she constructively processes and journeys through grief without getting stuck. This is not to deny that there are fundamental differences behind these varieties of groups. But a common goal for all of them is to help the grieving person. A Christ-focused support group such as, say, GriefShare, tries to offer encouragement and perspective from the Bible and specifically from an evangelical, gospel- oriented viewpoint. This is why we at Century are using the GriefShare materials -- they fit what believe is the biblical response to grief which we as a church want grieving persons to know and find comfort in.

• An alternative support model is the individual coach / care giver. In this model a trained person comes alongside the grieving individual for a defined length of time, to encourage, listen, pray with, and otherwise help the grieving person though his or her journey in bereavement. Such a support person only ministers to one or two bereaved persons at a time, and is in contact with the bereaved person multiple times throughout a week for perhaps a year or more. Stephen Ministry is a parachurch equipping ministry that has excelled in this approach, although the training expense is admittedly high for a church to first subscribe and then to pay additional costs for each volunteer within their church to receive standardized training. Some parish models of congregation life have parish ministers whose specific role is to walk side by side with one or two bereaved persons at a time for a year or more, and this would be a variation of what Stephen Ministry seeks to do.

  • • The advantage to a one-with-one coaching approach to grief support is chiefly found in the focused care a bereavement volunteer can extend;

    • while perceived disadvantages may be less tried-and-true coaching because there is not an established "curriculum" to work through, or else there is a greater possibility to deviate from the established curriculum without realizing it and being corrected, Furthermore, one encourager only brings one perspective to the table, and he or she can more quickly "burn out" in this ministry if there is not a broader support plan as well. So clearly there is room within the church care ministry for both a group approach and a one-with-one approach to bereavement support.

In addition to varieties of bereavement support models, there is the reality that there is variety in the people who themselves are grieving. Some bereaved persons find more comfort and productive support from an individual or two walking alongside as coach(es) for a prescribed length of time. They may not be comfortable sharing their soul so to speak in a group setting, because they want to grieve in more private ways. But others who grieve may find more encouragement in a group setting, especially if there is not a one-with-one option locally. We see this as a factor when bereaved folks who reside outside our immediate municipality commute into town in order to participate in a bereavement support group in our area.