LeAnne Gompf, Funeral Director for Gompf Funeral Service, recently attended a three-day workshop to become a Certified Funeral Celebrant. The training was held at Ohio Funeral Director’s Association Headquarters in Columbus.
The Funeral Celebrants Training is a new approach to personalized funerals presented by Doug Manning and Glenda Stansbury of the InSight Institute. At the end of 2016 they had trained over 3000 Funeral Celebrants throughout the United States and Canada.
A Funeral Celebrant is a lay-person, clergy person or funeral director who has been trained in the specific area of conducting funerals for families who wish to have a personalized and individualized funeral service experience.
Our society has become much more mobile and much less tied to the church, a news release states. Many people are not affiliated with a religion or theology and do not have a clergy person on whom to call in times of death. Also many people are not comfortable with a traditional religious funeral ceremony. Therefore, the need for Funeral Celebrants has become more apparent.
This practice is used widely in New Zealand and Australia. In some cases, Civil Celebrants, who are licensed by the government in those countries, perform more than 50 percent of the funerals and weddings. Doug Manning, one of the leading speakers and authors in the area of bereavement, toured these countries several years ago and brought back the idea that people in the United States and Canada needed this option.
The three-day training included people from all over the country who will either offer these services to families who come to their funeral homes or individuals who contact the Celebrant directly to do services in their community. Celebrants offer personalized funeral services, tributes, memorial services, and graveside memorials. They meet with the family to help them design a service that reflects the life and attributes of their loved one.
Gompf plans to publicize the fact that this option is available for the families in our community and surrounding area and hopes to be offering these types of funeral services, celebrations and memorial services in the near future. For information, contact LeAnne or Gene at the funeral home, 419-864-9045.
