Bad Eulogies and Toasts: One Pastor’s Rant

Hallo, lovelies. This is for all of you as it is a rant submitted by M., who has a few things to get off her chest. I’ll let her do that, then I’ll respond, then you comment? Got that? Let’s go.

Ok. Not sure quite how this fits in with other topics you cover here, but I have a bit of a rant concerning “etiquette” (for lack of a better word) in giving wedding toasts and eulogies. Maybe you have something to say about this?

I’ve just come from a funeral where the first of four(!) eulogies was a fifteen minute autobiography of the speaker’s relationship to the deceased, full of inside jokes and very few words about the man who had died other than “he was a good guy.” The second eulogy was a different friend of the deceased talking about his “roller coaster” of grief.

I flashed back to a few weddings I’ve been a part of recently, where the wedding toasts have been long, rambling accounts of how the maid of honor or best man came to be friends with the couple, and gushing about their shared experiences, and saying little if nothing meaningful to mark the joyous occasion of the wedding and the happiness of the couple.

I’m feeling troubled by the self-centeredness of it all. When you are speaking to newly married couples, and ESPECIALLY when you are speaking of the deceased, you have an obligation, I think, to put yourself aside, and to see yourself as a vehicle through which to help the larger assembly do the work of grief and love, memory and celebration.

It is not a competition to prove how you know the persons in question better than anybody else. It is not a stand-up comic routine. It is not a time for you to process your emotions.

We trust that you are close to the persons in question because you are the one speaking. And certainly there will be opportunities for warm humor, both in eulogies and toasts. And you don’t have to be a robot – showing emotion makes you human, and we all relate.

But I repeat. It’s not about you. Stop talking about yourself. Stop rambling. Stop trying to show off or trying to make the moment about your own emotional needs. Honor the ones whom you have been called to honor. Help us to know them better. Speak well wishes on our behalf. Help to paint a picture of lives well lived.

But for goodness’ sake. Put yourself aside with dignity and honor. Be a vessel. Be composed and concise. Be gracious and poised. Be sensitive to the dignity of the occasion. You will shine all the brighter for it.

Dear M.,
The first rule of BTFM is that PeaceBang ALWAYS has something to say about anything ritual, ministry or church-related. So let’s dive right in!

First, let me commiserate. I, too, have suffered through interminable, narcissistic eulogies that were all about the person speaking and did nothing at all to illuminate the deceased for those who did not know him well as the speaker and would have liked to.

I, too, have cringed through inappropriate and self-centered ramblings during wedding toasts, funerals, ordinations and social justice rallies.

When it is clergy committing these sins of the ego, I have little to zero patience. They should know better. We don’t need to hear about you, your accomplishments, your personal connection to the issue or person ad nauseum. Make your remarks pertinent, make them appropriate, make them engaging and ministerial, and get off the dais. Leave the sarcasm and chummy insidery stuff in the sacristy; it doesn’t belong in the worship service and should be controlled as a matter of decorum.

However, when lay people are speaking at services, I have a lot more patience because I actually consider it to be my job to orient them to their role, to discuss with them what the elements of an appropriate eulogy are, and what some common mistake are for those preparing to give a eulogy. Perhaps you have also worked with lay people this way, M. If you have given them this information, helped them think through how to prepare a eulogy, and given them helpful guidelines in advance and they still blather on and on about Number One, you’re entirely justified in being p.o’d. If you haven’t, though, give that a try. Remember how many people have never been to a proper funeral or memorial service in this age of casual memorial gatherings. If the only experience people have with funerary rites is to scatter Uncle Chip’s remains off the side of the boat off the coast of Nantucket, they shouldn’t be expected to have an innate sense of propriety. Help guide them, pastor.

And four eulogies? Don’t allow it! That’s your job, too — to work with the family to craft a service that isn’t a punishing ordeal for those gathered to remember their loved one. My stock remark as I gently urge the family to trim the list of speakers is this, “I know it’s tempting to have all of these wonderful people speak, but I have to tell you that what they say will be very repetitive, and after 20-25 minutes no one can hear what they’re saying. It’s too much. Choose two or three people representing different aspects of your mom’s life, and remember that this service is just the beginning of sharing memories about her.” Even if the family pushes back hard, I’m in a good position to say, “Okay, but you HAVE to let me check in with all the speakers to give them some guidance. I can let them know how many pages or words to write, and I insist that no one speak extemporaneously. That NEVER goes well, trust me.”
One hundred percent of the time, someone in the family chimes in and says, “Oh yea, remember when we went to that funeral for Mike’s old girlfriend’s father? And six people talked and we were all so hot and bored and that that one guy got up and wouldn’t stop talking? You know Uncle Morty would be that guy.”

As for wedding toasts, I’m afraid we have no jurisdiction over the proceedings once the happy couple have been pronounced wedded spouses and skipped off to their future together. Just have a few champagne cocktails yourself and suffer through the indulgent nonsense like everyone else. Better yet, sign the license, skip the reception, and go have a nice quiet dinner with friends. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

9 Replies to “Bad Eulogies and Toasts: One Pastor’s Rant”

  1. Totally agree with your advice Peace Bang. For funerals I tell peopel they can share at the reception or write a letter to the family — “families love to hear your wonderful experiences with xxx.” At the service 3 speakers— 3 minutes each -written remarks. I tell them to practice and to write it out because otherwise they will be overwhelmed in the moment and might not get through it. I can also always read it if they break down entirely.

    Weddings – generally the couple picks the “toasters” and so whatever — I rarely go to those events. Only family and even then leave as early as possible before everyone has consumed too much food and alcohol.

  2. My senior rabbi always had a strict “no more than four eulogies” policy, but one time I was unable to enforce this. The family wanted to leave time and space for EVERYONE at the memorial service to come up and speak as they wanted to. The entire group were musicians, which had some positives and negatives: positive, they weren’t long-winded, negative, no one wanted to miss a chance to be in the spotlight. It was torturous for me (that’s when I learned not to make plans for directly after a funeral), and I thought the family must have felt the same, but when I went up to them afterwards, they said, “That was exactly what we wanted, thank you.” They were also planning a second memorial service in NYC, which was supposed to have 300 guests. Once again I recommended assigning speakers, and once again they declined, saying, “If it goes exactly how this one does, we’ll be very happy.” (Of course, whoever rents them the hall or runs the sound won’t be happy, which is the problem).

    I continue to encourage people to save “open mic” time for visitation (you would say wake, we say shiva), but that funeral made me think twice about enforcing limitations. I use the expression, “It’s your funeral” a lot. I have to remember it’s not about my time or comfort, either, though I feel like there has to be some limit on how long they can expect me to be there. People tend to view their special events as the only ones of their kind to occur in the world, ever. Is it the clergy’s place to say, “You’re not special, you only get two hours of my time?”

    As you can see, I’m a little torn on this, but mostly I just wanted to share the story.

  3. The “rant” and your response are an important to reminder all clergy regarding our role and responsibility to keep funerals (sometimes with firmness) to guide the participants as to what is respectful to both the diseased, his or her family and the congregation. Funerals shouldn’t solely focus on the one departed, but also upon God who granted us the joy of having known the person as well as how this individual lived out their faith.
    I will never forget a beloved pillar of the church’s memorial service, where two former pastors were invited by the family to speak a few words. Out of respect to his widow, who was quite elderly and frail, I told them in a phone call, followed by an email that I welcomed their participation but PLEASE keep their remarks to UNDER five minutes. As the current pastor, I also took care to limit my homily to 12 minutes, so as to not overload the congregation.
    When each of the former pastors got up to speak, they opened their Bibles,read a lesson they had chosen and then held forth. The first pastor did a “show & tell” of a Christmas gift the deceased had made for her and then proceeded to talk 17 minutes about a conflict that had taken place many years ago between the departed’s family and some neighbors.(the neighbors were present) Being a small town, everybody knew what had happened and many of them had an expression of disbelief on their faces. It was all I could do keep from reaching up and yanking her by the hem of her frumpy dress off the dais! The next clergy woman got up and spoke for 15 minutes! Do the math and these two prolonged what was an already full service by almost 30 minutes. I was horrified !! And angry! Since that debacle,should one of those former pastor be asked by a family to participate in service, I give them a scripture lesson or prayer to read, and remind them to NOT contribute any additional remarks. If they have something about the departed to lift up, I ask them to share it with me and I will incorporate in into the homily.

  4. Beyond rude–the original story AND the ones in the comments. Rather than say, “it’s your funeral”–I often remind them that when folks are grieving, one or two great stories will be both memorable & merciful for the listeners. I only say memorable, and omit merciful, but often there is a savvy family member picks up the message I’m trying to convey and does the “policing” for me. The clergy who give a mini-sermon…UGH UGH UGH UGH. Our denomination encourages us to politely decline such invites “back”–for good reason, as you so clearly explain. It is not about looking our best, but doing our best. And this is one place so fraught with faux pas. CLERGY, I’m looking at you! This post so clearly elucidates why I think funerals/memorial services should happen as close to the death as possible…lately I’ve had memorials that, with endless weeks and months to plan, have become some hybrid beast of grief and showpersonship that I can neither navigate nor understand.

  5. I am not a member of the clergy. Earlier this year, I went to a vigil (rosary, in the olden days) for a wonderful woman who had been the parish cook for many years. She was down to earth, kind, and almost maternal about the priests she cooked for. The priest in charge of the vigil spent most of his time talking about a funeral he had done for ANOTHER woman and only a little time on the woman lying in the casket right next to him. There were so many good things to say about her (and yes, it was appropriate, I thought, when he did mention his two favorite dishes that she had made) that I wondered how he could be so tone-deaf.

  6. In my context (South Dakota), there is the tradition of the family prayer service. It’s the evening before the funeral, during the visitation. There are prayers and scripture readings, but it’s primarily about giving people time to share their memories of the deceased. Yes, it’s open mic, and yes, sometimes the stories shared get a little dicey, but I have found these services to be wonderful. It gives people the opportunity to share and laugh and grieve together, keeps me from having to deal with inappropriate things in the funeral (I just say, “Hmmm, that would works wonderfully in the family service!) and as a relatively new pastor in this congregation, I get to learn more about the deceased which helps with the funeral sermon.

  7. Since I’m the one who sent in my rant, I figured I should say something. 🙂

    When I was writing it up (with no initial intention of sending it along here or anywhere!), I myself was conscious of the fact that there is at least some sphere of control that I, as a pastor, can have over funeral speakers, and that there is no sphere of control that I’ll ever have over wedding toasters. But it all frustrated me nonetheless.

    The bigger ministry issue for me has to do with how I can continue to help people in my congregations engage in the practice of loving God first, then neighbor, and only afterwards thinking of themselves. In a culture that is increasingly self-centered (if not flat-out selfish at times), how do we as pastors help those in our care to engage in the spiritual practices of humility, collective (rather than individual) celebration/grief, and deference to the other?

  8. Lay person here – just had to do this last weekend (before I read this).

    A tip sheet would be helpful. If I ever have to do this again, please remind me that two and three-quarters pages printed at 14 point, wide spaced (ie big and easy to read) is about three and a half minutes. Print it and read it aloud a few times to check for final editing, any inflection points or pauses, and to check the time. The stopwatch function on the phone is useful. Three minutes is perfect, and four is too much. Possible outline – Introduction – my name and how I knew the deceased; where they were in life when I knew them (challenges, joys, what they contributed to their community), “lessons learned”; give thanks. Print the final and put it in a three ring binder that will open flat. Do not lose the binder.

    PS My clergy have told us that there are Animal Care workers with tranquilizer darts in the choir who start their preparations at the three minute mark.. It is a useful image.

  9. In the UK the context may be slightly different re funerals….but if a family member is to speak I give them a word limit. 500 words will take about 5 mins to deliver…and that is all the time they have. in the context of a funeral service which should be about 20 minutes long because of the constraints on time at the Crematorium, if they over run the next family will be waiting outside…

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