The phone rings at 4:17 in the morning. Pastor Jim is twenty-nine years old. He has been in his first call for six months. He fumbles in the dark for the phone. It is Margaret, the daughter of Evelyn Parker, one of the oldest members of the church. Evelyn has been in hospice for nine days. The hospice nurse has told the family that tonight is the night. Could Pastor Jim come?
He says yes. Of course he says yes. He hangs up the phone, turns on the bedside lamp, and sits on the edge of the bed. His wife stirs. "Hospice call," he whispers. She nods and rolls over.
He pulls on yesterday's khakis. He splashes water on his face. He picks up his Bible. It occurs to him — standing in his kitchen, the coffee not yet made — that he does not know what he is supposed to do. He has preached funerals. He has sat with grieving families at the house afterwards. He has eaten the casseroles. But he has never sat with the dying. Not once. Not in seminary. Not in his internship. Not in the six months since he was ordained. He does not know what he is supposed to say. He does not know what he is supposed to read. He does not know if he should try to lead Evelyn in a prayer or if she will be past praying. He does not know if he should shake Margaret's hand or hug her. He does not know if he is supposed to know when Evelyn has died.
He drives through the dark streets with his stomach in a knot. The Parkers live fifteen minutes from the parsonage. He prays the whole way — incoherent, half-formed prayers. Lord, help me. Lord, be there before I am. Lord, I do not know what I am doing.
He pulls into the driveway. Lights are on all over the house. Two of Evelyn's grown children meet him at the door. Margaret hugs him — she is crying, but calmly. "Thank you for coming. She's in her bedroom. We've moved her hospital bed in there." He follows her through the living room, past Evelyn's knitting basket, past the framed photograph of her late husband, past the small wooden cross over the kitchen doorway. The bedroom is dim. A lamp is on in the corner. Evelyn is in the hospital bed, her white hair fanned on the pillow, her breathing slow and rattling. Her other daughter sits on one side of the bed. Her son-in-law sits on the other.
Everyone looks up when he walks in. They look at him. They expect him to know what to do. He is their pastor.
Pastor Jim stands in the doorway holding his Bible. He takes a deep breath. He is about to learn, in the next two hours, something that seminary did not teach him. He is about to learn that the bedside of a dying Christian is among the most sacred places on earth — and that the thing he brings to that place is not a sermon, not a technique, and not a script. It is himself. It is his unrushed presence. It is the Jesus who came with him through the door.
This chapter is for Pastor Jim. And it is for every pastor, chaplain, deacon, elder, friend, son, and daughter who has stood where he is standing now and wondered what they are supposed to do.
Chapter Thesis: The bedside of the dying is among the most sacred spaces in Christian ministry — and among the least taught in most seminaries. This chapter offers a practical, biblically grounded, research-informed guide to ministering at the bedside: what to bring, what to say, what to read, when to pray, how to listen, and — most importantly — how to be present when presence is the most important gift you have to give. The center of bedside ministry is not your words. It is the living Jesus who is already in the room. Your calling is simply to join Him there, unhurried, unafraid, and unembarrassed to be a witness to His tender work.
Let me name something plainly, because naming it honestly is the only way this chapter will do its work. Most pastors have had no formal training in bedside ministry. I do not mean grief counseling. I do not mean funeral planning. I do not mean visiting the bereaved a week after the death. Those things often get at least a lecture or two in seminary and a chapter in a pastoral-care textbook. I mean the specific, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute work of being with the dying in their final days, hours, and breaths. I mean the bedside itself. And for the vast majority of pastors in training, this subject receives almost no attention.1
Kathryn Butler — a trauma and critical-care surgeon who spent her career standing at the bedsides of the dying before leaving the ICU to write for Christians about end-of-life care — observes that even physicians receive remarkably little training in how to sit with the dying well. Pastors receive even less.2 Rob Moll, in his quiet little book The Art of Dying, makes the same point from a different angle: the Christian tradition once had a rich, mature body of practice for dying well and for being with the dying. Much of that practice has been lost. We have handed the dying over to professionals — doctors, nurses, hospice staff — and we have largely forgotten how to be Christians at the bedside.3
The result is that when the phone rings at 4:17 a.m., a young pastor drives through the dark with a churning stomach, holding a Bible, praying desperately that something will come to him when he walks through the door. This chapter is an attempt to give him what seminary did not.
I want to say clearly, before we go another paragraph: you do not have to be smooth. You do not have to be practiced. You do not have to say the right thing. You do not have to know what you are doing. The dying and their families do not need a polished performance. They need a faithful witness. Jesus is the one ministering at the bedside. You are the one He has sent to make His presence visible in the room. He has done this work many thousands of times before. He will do it again tonight.
Before we talk about what to say, what to read, and what to pray, we need to talk about something deeper: the theology of presence itself.
The Christian God is called Immanuel — God with us (Matthew 1:23). Of all His many names, this one lies closest to the heart of the gospel. The whole shape of the Christian story is the story of a God who comes near. He walks in the garden in the cool of the day. He pitches His tent in the wilderness. He comes down on Sinai. He fills the temple. He takes on flesh in a feed trough. He dies on a cross. He sends His Spirit to dwell in us. He promises to be with us always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). He will come again. And He will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4).
God's most characteristic way of loving human beings is being with them. That is why presence is not one pastoral skill among many. Presence is the shape of the gospel itself, worked out in human flesh.
When you sit beside a dying saint, you are not performing a technique. You are enacting a theology. The God who is with us is made visible in the shape of a pastor who is also with us. Your unhurried body, your quiet eyes, your held hand, your soft voice — these are the liturgy of Immanuel at the end of a life.
Most pastors I know feel, when they walk into a hospice room, that they must do something. They must say something wise. They must offer something useful. They must perform the office of pastor. And so they sometimes talk too much. They preach miniature sermons over a dying woman who can no longer respond. They fill the silence with spiritual-sounding words because silence is too heavy to bear.
Resist that impulse. The dying do not need a sermon. They need a companion. Silent presence is often the deepest gift you can give. Sitting quietly. Breathing with the dying. Praying wordlessly. Watching. Waiting. Holding.
Henri Nouwen once wrote that the friend who cares most deeply is not the one who tries to remove our pain, but the one who is willing to remain with us in our pain, silent and attentive, as a companion of the heart. That kind of friendship is rare. The bedside asks you to be that kind of friend.4 The Christian pastoral tradition — Reformed, Catholic, and Orthodox alike — has long recognized that the minister's simple presence at the bedside is not a substitute for "real ministry" but is itself a distinctly pastoral and Christological act.19
The Theology of Presence: Immanuel — God with us — is the shape of the gospel itself. When you sit beside a dying saint, your unhurried body is a sign of the God who does not leave. You are not performing a technique. You are enacting a theology. Most of what you do at the bedside will be to simply be there — attentive, unhurried, unafraid. That is not nothing. That is Christian ministry in its most ancient form.
Bedside ministry begins before you ever get in the car. Before you walk through the door of a hospice room or a home with a hospital bed in the living room, prepare in three ways.
Pray for the dying person by name. Pray for the family, each member as you can name them. Pray for yourself. Ask the Lord for three specific gifts: the gift of presence (that you will be fully there), the gift of wisdom (that you will know when to speak and when to be silent), and the gift of courage (that you will not flinch from whatever the room asks of you). Pray that you will love the people in that room the way Jesus loves them.
If you have time, drive slowly. Turn off the radio. Quiet your mind. Breathe. Ask the Holy Spirit to prepare the room before you get there. More often than not, He has already arrived. Your job is simply to catch up with what He is already doing.
Before the visit, make a phone call if you can. Ask the family or the hospice nurse: What is the medical situation? How responsive is the dying person? What does the family want from this visit? Is there a specific concern — fear, unfinished business, a particular prayer requested? Are there family dynamics that will shape the room (estranged siblings, a fragile spouse, adult children from different marriages)? Is there any particular Scripture, hymn, or prayer the dying person loves? Is there a tradition the family expects (Communion, anointing with oil, last rites)?
You will not always get these answers before you arrive. But when you can, get them. It means you will walk in not as a stranger but as someone who already knows the contours of the grief in the room.
Keep a bedside bag ready. Mine lives in the trunk of my car. It contains:
A Bible — one you know well, with the ribbon marking Psalm 23. A small worship book or hymnal. Anointing oil in a small bottle, if your tradition uses it (James 5:14–15 is explicit about this practice5).18 A Communion kit with a small chalice, a small quantity of wine or grape juice, and a wafer or small piece of bread (if your tradition uses it and the family requests it). A printed copy of a short bedside liturgy or order of service (we will build one together later in this chapter). A small cross or crucifix, if it fits your tradition — something to hand the dying person if they want to hold it. A handkerchief. A pen. A small notebook.
What you will not bring: your phone on. A rushed schedule. An anxious heart. A pre-packaged sermon. A theological agenda you intend to deploy. An unconfessed hurry.
Put your phone on silent before you walk in the door. Better: leave it in the car. The people in this room deserve all of you for the next two hours. Nothing in your pocket is more important than they are.
When you walk through the door, the family will look at you. Their faces will tell you what they need.
Greet the family first. Hug those you know. Shake hands with those you do not. Let ordinary human recognition happen before you reach for anything spiritual. The families of the dying have been living in an emotional pressure cooker for days or weeks. The small kindness of being treated as a human being — not as a pastoral case — matters more than you know.
Ask before you approach the dying person: Would it be alright if I went in? This small courtesy communicates that you are a guest in a sacred space, not an authority who owns the room. Move to the bedside. Position yourself where the dying person can see you without straining their neck. Lean in close enough that you can speak softly and be heard. Do not hover over them; do not loom. Sit if there is a chair. Kneel if the bed is low.
Introduce yourself to the dying person by name, even if they appear to be asleep or unresponsive. "Evelyn, it's Pastor Jim. I'm here." The research on what the dying perceive is not settled, but one principle is consistent across the literature and across the experience of clinicians: hearing is the last sense to go. Dying persons who can no longer move, open their eyes, or speak often continue to hear the words spoken over them, sometimes up to the very end. Treat every person at the bedside as if they can hear everything you say. Because they probably can.6
Take their hand if the family welcomes it and the dying person seems comfortable with touch. A held hand is a small sign of incarnation — skin on skin, the way Jesus did it. The prophet laid his body on the dead boy in the upper room (2 Kings 4:34). Jesus touched the untouchable leper (Matthew 8:3). You are standing in a long tradition. Do not be afraid to touch the dying.
Do not speak quickly. Do not speak loudly. Match the room. Most hospice rooms are hushed. The liturgy of a dying room runs at half-speed. Slow your own body down to match it.
Different moments in the dying process call for different kinds of ministry. A person who is a week out from death but still awake, talking, and able to take Communion is in a very different place than a person whose breathing has slowed, whose eyes are closed, and whose fingers have gone cool. As a pastor, you will serve the dying better if you can roughly recognize where they are in the trajectory.7
The early-conscious stage: the dying person can talk, pray, receive Communion, ask questions, make decisions, hear a passage of Scripture and respond to it. This is the season for full conversation — for confession and forgiveness, for saying "I love you," for putting their house in order, for receiving the Lord's Supper, for planning their funeral if they want to. When you visit someone in this stage, you have the full scope of pastoral care available to you. Do not waste it. Do not assume there will be more visits. There might not be.
The reduced-consciousness stage: the dying person is still aware but moving in and out, sleeping much of the day, speaking briefly when they speak at all. Conversations may be short. They may respond with a squeeze of the hand, a nod, a glance. This is the season for short, weight-bearing words. A Psalm. A prayer. A simple blessing. The Lord's Prayer. A familiar hymn. Do not try to crowd everything in. One good thing is enough.
The actively dying stage: eyes closed, breathing changed (shallow, irregular, sometimes with long pauses and a rattle in the throat), hands and feet cool, little or no response to voice or touch. The person is near the end. Assume they can still hear you. Treat them with full dignity. Speak softly and slowly. Read a short Psalm. Sing one verse of one hymn. Pray a short prayer of commendation. Then be silent. Stay. Watch.
One practical warning: do not assume you have multiple visits. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you do not. If the hospice nurse tells you the dying person is "days out," the death may still come tonight. Act on each visit as if it might be the last one. Give what you have come to give. Read the Psalm. Pray the prayer. Sing the hymn. Offer the sacrament if it is yours to offer. Say the hard sentences that may need to be said. Do not save them for a later visit that may never happen. The bedside is no place for procrastination.
Most of what comes out of our mouths at the bedside should be short, slow, and simple. The dying cannot process complex thought. They need a handful of sentences that carry the weight of the gospel.
Here are the sentences I have learned to say, again and again, over many bedsides:
"You are loved. You are not alone. Jesus is here."
"It is okay. You can rest."
"We are all here. We love you. We will be okay."
"The Lord is your shepherd. He is with you in the valley."
"Into your hands, Lord, we commit this beloved child."
Each of these sentences does pastoral work. You are loved reminds the dying of the central truth of their existence. You are not alone is a declaration against the deepest fear of dying. Jesus is here names the theological reality of the room. It is okay is permission. We will be okay releases the dying from the burden of having to hold the family together any longer. Into your hands, Lord commends them to the God who loves them more than you ever could.
Do not overspeak. Say a sentence. Pause. Let it land. Say another sentence. Pause. Let that one land. A dying person who hears a single sentence several times over an hour — Jesus is here. Jesus is here. Jesus is here. — has received a greater pastoral gift than they would have received from twenty sentences crammed into five minutes.
The Scriptures have a long history of being read at Christian bedsides. Some passages have earned their place through many centuries of faithful use. Here is a short list. Do not try to read them all. Read one. If they are comforted, read it again on a later visit. Let one passage do a lot of work.
Psalm 23. The first psalm I ever memorized. The last psalm many Christians will ever hear. It was written to be said at a deathbed — and has been said at ten million of them. Read it slowly.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever. (Psalm 23, ESV)
Notice that when the psalmist reaches the valley of the shadow, the pronoun shifts from "He" to "You." Up until verse four, the psalmist has been describing his shepherd. Starting at verse four, he is addressing Him. When you enter the valley, speech becomes prayer. The shepherd who has been over there becomes the shepherd who is right here. That small grammatical shift contains more theology than many sermons.
Psalm 91. Refuge, covering, the shadow of the Almighty. A deep comfort for the fearful.
Psalm 27. "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" A good text when the dying person has been afraid.
Psalm 139. "If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there." Deep and specific hope: the God who is everywhere is in this bed, too.
John 14:1–6. "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" Read this one when the family or the dying need to be reminded that Jesus is ahead of them, getting the room ready.
Romans 8:31–39. "Neither death nor life . . . nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." I have never read this passage at a bedside without someone weeping. Because it is true, and the truth lands.
Philippians 4:4–7. "The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." A soft blanket of a passage.
Revelation 21:1–5. The new heaven and the new earth. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more." Read this one when you want the family and the dying to see over the horizon.
(2 Corinthians 5:1–8, the great passage about the tent and the house, about being away from the body and at home with the Lord, is explored in detail in Chapter 2 as one of the foundations of the book's hope. I find myself reaching for that one often at the bedside, too.)22
Read slowly. Do not race. Pause between phrases. Let the pauses be long. Read the passage more than once if the room invites it. A dying woman in my first year of ministry asked me to read Psalm 23 three times in a row. She died ninety minutes later. She knew what she needed.
At the bedside, short prayers serve better than long ones. Long prayers risk making the pastor the center of the room. Short prayers leave room for silence, for weeping, for the Holy Spirit to carry the dying on His own current.
Keep a handful of short, simple prayers you can pray from memory — because you will often not be able to read when you need to pray, and you cannot always reach for a book.
A prayer for peace: "Grant to your servant, Evelyn, the peace that surpasses all understanding. Lord Jesus, fill this room with Your Spirit. Hold her. Carry her. Amen."
A committal prayer: "Lord Jesus, receive your servant. Into your hands we commend her spirit. Welcome her home. Amen."
A prayer for the family: "Father, hold this family in the palm of your hand. Give them courage in this hour. Remind them that you are with them. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."
The Lord's Prayer is often a gift — especially to a dying person who can no longer form their own words. Many Christians who have prayed it ten thousand times can still pray it when they can no longer pray anything else. Pray it slowly. Pause between petitions. Let the family join in.
The ancient prayer of commendation, with roots going back to the early Church, is also worth knowing. Some version of it has been prayed over dying Christians for more than fifteen hundred years: "Go forth, O Christian soul, out of this world, in the name of God the Father almighty, who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who suffered for you; in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you; in communion with the blessed saints, and aided by angels and archangels and all the armies of the heavenly host. May your portion this day be in peace, and your dwelling in the heavenly Jerusalem. Amen."8
Pray it out loud over the dying. Let the family hear it. Let the dying hear it. You are joining your voice to the voices of Christian ministers in every century, commending a beloved child of God to her Father. That is not dramatic. That is ordinary Christian work. And it is beautiful.
Sing if the family and the dying welcome it. Sing softly. Do not need to sound good. Sing the hymns the person knew and loved. If you do not know what hymns they loved, sing the ones most older Christians know: "Amazing Grace." "It Is Well with My Soul." "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." "How Great Thou Art." "Abide with Me." "Blessed Assurance." "In Christ Alone."
Something strange and wonderful happens at bedsides where hymns are sung. I have seen dying persons who had not responded to speech in days move their lips with the words. I have seen a stroke patient with severe aphasia — unable to produce sentences for months — sing the first verse of "Amazing Grace" in full, clear voice, the night before she died. Hymns live in a deeper part of us than speech lives. When so much else has fallen away, the hymns remain.9
Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, wrote across several books about the mystery of why patients with advanced dementia — patients who had lost almost all recognizable personhood to the disease — could still sing, and could still be found through singing. The hymns reach a place the disease has not destroyed.10
For the Christian, this should not surprise us. Worship is the deepest stratum of the human self. The disease has taken everything above it. The worship remains.
Do not worry about singing well. Sing softly. Sing the hymn the person loved. Sing one verse. Then be silent. Then hold the hand.
Sometimes the dying speak. Sometimes what they say is strange.
They may say, "I need to catch the train." They may say, "Who is going to help me pack?" They may say, "Mom is here." They may say, "It's time." They may say, "I'm afraid." They may say, "Look — can you see them?"
These statements are part of what the hospice literature calls nearing-death awareness — the language, often symbolic, through which the dying describe the inner experience of approaching death. The landmark pastoral study on this is Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley's Final Gifts, written out of decades of hospice nursing. They argue, with hundreds of documented cases, that the dying routinely communicate awareness of their own impending death, the presence of deceased loved ones, and the need to "go" — often in symbolic language involving travel, journeys, packing, or being met by someone familiar.11
More recent research confirms and extends their findings. Dr. Christopher Kerr, chief medical officer of Hospice Buffalo, conducted the largest prospective study to date of end-of-life dreams and visions among dying patients. Across more than 1,400 hospice patients, he and his team found that the vast majority of the dying — roughly eight in ten — report vivid, meaningful, and predominantly comforting dreams and visions in the final days and weeks of life. The most common content is visits from deceased loved ones. Patients consistently described these experiences as "more real than real." They brought, in most cases, a deepening peace as death approached.12
The Research in Brief: In the largest prospective study of its kind, researchers at Hospice Buffalo found that roughly 80 percent of dying patients reported meaningful end-of-life dreams and visions — most often visits from deceased loved ones — in their final days and weeks. Patients overwhelmingly described these as comforting, profoundly real, and spiritually significant. Earlier pastoral studies by Callanan and Kelley, and neuropsychiatric studies by Peter Fenwick and others, reach the same conclusion from different angles. What the Christian tradition has quietly known for two thousand years, and what hospice nurses have long whispered to one another, now has a growing scientific literature to match. The bedside is, very often, a place of sight — not of shutdown.
The pastoral question is not, first of all, what does this prove? The pastoral question is, how do I respond when it happens in my room?
The answer is: do not correct the language. Do not argue. Do not explain. Receive it.
If the dying person says, "Mom is here," do not say, "Your mother is not here. She died twenty years ago." Say, "I am glad she came for you. You can go with her when you are ready. Jesus is with her."
If the dying person says, "I need to catch the train," do not say, "No, you are in bed." Say, "It is okay. You are ready to go. We love you."
If the dying person says, "I am afraid," do not rush to reassure. Ask, gently: "What are you afraid of? Can you tell me?" Listen. Then, when you understand what the fear is, address it: "Jesus is with you. He has gone before you. You will not be alone in this. He will carry you home."
The Christian framework that the author of this book defends throughout — that human beings are body and soul, that the soul survives bodily death as a conscious, experiencing subject, that Christ has conquered death and waits for His own at the threshold — is not contradicted by the language of the dying. It is confirmed by it. For a fuller theological treatment of the soul and the conscious intermediate state, see Chapters 2 and 3. But you do not need a book of theology to respond well at the bedside. You only need to take the dying person seriously, to receive their words as gift, and to affirm the Jesus who is already in the room.13
Among the most surprising things you will learn at the bedside is this: dying persons often wait. They wait for someone to arrive. They wait for a grandchild to come home. They wait for a sibling to get on the plane. And — most importantly — they often wait for permission.
Hospice nurses have said this to me many times, and the research has caught up with what they have always known: a dying person who senses that a spouse or child cannot bear the loss will sometimes hold on, long past the point medicine can explain, until they are told it is alright to go. The medical literature includes case after case of this pattern. In one well-known case reported by Morse and Perry, a five-year-old boy who had been in a coma for three weeks dying of a brain tumor — surrounded constantly by family members — was finally, at a minister's suggestion, told by his family that they would miss him but that he had their permission to die. He regained consciousness, thanked them for letting him go, told them he would die soon, and did so the next day.14
This is one of the most important pastoral gifts you can help the family give.
Watch the family. Are they holding on so tightly that the dying person cannot let go? A grown daughter clutching her mother's hand and saying, through tears, "Please don't leave me, Mama, please don't leave me, please" — and Mama is not leaving, because she has always been a mother who took care of her daughter, and she is still taking care of her, even now — this is a moment when the pastor can quietly do an enormous pastoral good.
Take the daughter aside, gently. Help her see what is happening. Help her find the words: "You have loved her well. She has loved you. She is tired now. It is okay to tell her she can go." Rehearse the words with her if you need to. Walk back into the room with her. Stand beside her as she leans over her mother and says the hard, holy sentence: It is okay, Mama. I love you. I will be okay. You can go.
Often, within minutes, the breathing changes. Often, within an hour or two, the death comes. I have seen this so many times I no longer count it as coincidence.20
If the family cannot give permission — if they are frozen, or too angry, or too far away — you may, gently, give it as the pastor. Lean close to the dying. Speak softly. "Evelyn. It is Pastor Jim. You have been faithful. You have loved these children well. They will be held. They will be okay. Jesus is waiting for you. When you are ready, you can go. We love you."
This is not putting words into the dying person's mouth. This is giving a frightened soul a pastoral permission to rest. Ten centuries of Christian bedside ministry have done this, and you may do it too.
There is no harder pastoral question than this one. It can come from the dying person themselves, wondering in the last hour whether they have any hope. It comes more often from the family, in the kitchen down the hall, asking in a whisper: Pastor, do you think she's going to heaven?
Here is how I try to answer. Not perfectly. But here is how I try.
First, if there is clear evidence of faith — a lifelong profession, a known walk with Christ, a testimony that the family has witnessed for decades — affirm it gently and warmly. You are not pronouncing heaven; you are honoring the evidence of faith Christ gave this woman. "Evelyn loved Jesus. She knew Him. She trusted Him. We entrust her to Him with confidence." Do not manufacture theological precision. Say what is true, and mean it.
Second, if the evidence is not clear — if the dying person is cognitively unresponsive and did not have a clear testimony, or if faith was hidden or mixed — do not pronounce damnation, and do not pronounce heaven either. Point instead to the God who knows, to the Christ who receives, to the love that does not end. "Only the Lord knows her heart. But we know the heart of the Lord. He is a faithful Savior. His love is deeper than we can measure. We entrust her to the God who is good, the Christ who is tender, and the Spirit who has been at work in ways we cannot see." That is honest. That is pastoral. That is true.
Third, if the dying person is still conscious and you have any window of communication — and if the Spirit prompts you — offer the gospel. Simply. Without pressure. Without manipulation. "Evelyn, Jesus loves you. He died for your sins. He is risen. He offers you His mercy right now. If you want Him, He will take you. Even now." Then wait. A whispered yes is enough. A nod is enough. A tear is enough. The Lord knows the heart.
The author of this book has written a companion scholarly volume on postmortem opportunity — the biblically defensible hope that God's saving love does not end at the moment of physical death but continues to reach the unsaved in the dying process, in the intermediate state, and at the final judgment. That hope is explored pastorally at length in Chapter 13. For the bedside itself, you do not need to argue the case. You only need to know, in your bones, that the God who pursued the lost in this life has not stopped pursuing them now. The Christ who wept at Lazarus's tomb weeps at Evelyn's bedside. His love is not on a timer. Whatever door is still open, He will walk through.15
When the family asks you, Pastor, is she saved? — you can say, in full truth: "I do not know everything. But I know the One who knows everything. And I know His heart. His love is relentless. His mercy is wider than we can imagine. We entrust her to Him with hope."
That is not a dodge. That is gospel.21
A Note on Discernment — When There Is Unfinished Business: Sometimes at the bedside, the dying person wants to speak. They want to name an old sin. They want to confess something long buried. They want to forgive, or be forgiven. They want to talk about the child they lost at sixteen, the marriage that cracked, the estrangement that never healed. When this happens, stop everything else. This is holy ground. Listen without interrupting. Do not rush absolution. Do not minimize the sin. Do not moralize. When they have said what needs saying, offer them the gospel: the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin; the Father welcomes home every prodigal; there is no failure He cannot forgive. If your tradition permits, pray a prayer of absolution over them. If your tradition is more Baptistic, simply pray a prayer reminding them that because of Christ's cross, their sin is already carried away. Where there is estrangement, help them write a note, make a phone call, or dictate a message to the absent person. Do not try to finish the estrangement yourself. Some unfinished business will remain unfinished. That is alright. The grace of Christ is wide enough to cover the unfinished parts too.
The dying person is not the only person in the room. Often there are three, or six, or twelve other people — spouses, adult children, grandchildren, siblings, sometimes an ex-husband, sometimes an estranged daughter who flew in three hours ago. A hospice room is a family room, and families under pressure do not always behave well. Part of your job at the bedside is to love the family into their final hours together without letting those hours be poisoned by old wounds.
Help them rotate. A common mistake is for one devoted child — usually a daughter, often the one who has been the primary caregiver for months — to refuse to leave the bedside for any reason, including sleep. This is understandable. It is also unsustainable. Gently encourage them to take breaks: "Your mother will be okay while you eat something. Let your brother sit with her for an hour. Lie down on the couch. You will need strength later tonight." The exhausted caregiver is often the one most in need of your pastoral attention.
Watch the dynamics. Who is holding things together? Who is falling apart? Who has not spoken all evening? Who is talking too much? Who has been marginalized by the rest of the family? Notice, quietly, who the invisible person in the room is — the black-sheep son, the second wife, the divorced daughter-in-law, the Muslim granddaughter who feels out of place among her Christian relatives — and find a way to include them. A hand on the shoulder. A question directly addressed to them. A small signal that they, too, belong in this holy room.
Encourage them to say what needs to be said. Not to the pastor — to each other, and to the dying. Many families have never learned to speak plainly about love, forgiveness, gratitude, or goodbye. The bedside is often the first place where these words get spoken aloud, and the last place where they can. "Have you told your mother you love her today? She can still hear you. Now is the time." Give them words if they need words: "You could say, Mom, I love you. Thank you for everything. I am so proud to be your daughter." Walk them to the bedside. Step back. Let them do the work. This is their ministry, not yours.
Normalize the practicalities. Someone needs to drink some water. Someone needs to eat a sandwich. Someone needs to sleep on the couch for two hours. The vigil of dying is more like childbirth than anyone warns you: it takes longer than you expect, the body of the watcher grows tired, and small human things like crackers and a blanket matter more than you thought they would. If you can do something useful — make a pot of coffee, take the dog out, answer the door when the hospice nurse arrives — do it. Service at the bedside is not beneath the office of pastor. It is the office of pastor.
Do not try to fix the unfixable. Some families will have old conflicts that cannot be resolved in the eleventh hour. A sister who has not spoken to her brother in fifteen years is not going to embrace him over their mother's hospital bed, no matter how beautifully you preach. Do not push. Sometimes the most you can do is pray quietly that the hardness will soften over the coming year as they grieve together. Entrust the unfinished family business to the Lord who will be at work long after the funeral.
You may be present when the death comes. You may not be. Neither is wrong. Sometimes the family calls you back a few minutes late. Sometimes a dying person waits until everyone has stepped out of the room — as if they needed privacy to make the passage. Sometimes the death comes the moment you walk in. Do not attach spiritual meaning to the timing. The Lord's timing is the Lord's business.
If you are present, the breathing will slow. The pauses between breaths will lengthen. There is often a final exhale that does not become an inhale. The family will know, usually a few seconds before you do. Someone will say softly, She's gone.
Do not move too fast. Do not speak immediately. Let the silence have the first word. The silence is its own sermon.
After a moment — not too long, not too short — pray a brief commendation: "Into your hands, O Lord, we commend the spirit of our sister Evelyn. Into your hands." Then, gently, turn to the family: "Evelyn has gone home."
Let them weep. Let them touch her hair. Let them kiss her forehead. Do not rush them out. Some families will want to sit with the body for an hour. That is a precious hour. Do not shorten it.
Practical matters will begin to press in — the hospice nurse has calls to make, the funeral home needs to be notified, family members need to be called. Help with these things when the family is ready, not before. Often, just saying, When you are ready, I can help you make those calls is enough. The family will tell you when they are ready.
The ministry does not end at the death. For many pastors, the next two hours are some of the most important pastoral hours in the entire grief process.
Stay for a while. Sit with the family. Let them weep. Let them laugh (a tender thing — they will remember funny things their mother did; let the laughter come; it is not disrespectful). Let them tell stories. Eat a cookie if there are cookies. Drink a cup of coffee if there is coffee. Be a human being in the house, not a funeral director.
Help with concrete practicalities when the family wants them. Make a list with them of people who need to be called in the next twenty-four hours. Ask if they want help calling. Offer to send a note to the church prayer chain, with their permission. Offer to come by tomorrow afternoon for a first planning conversation about the funeral. Do not schedule that conversation for the morning. Let them sleep first.
Before you leave, pray one more short prayer over the family. Remind them that Christ is with them. Remind them that the church is with them. Remind them that Evelyn is with Christ, and that the separation is real but not final.
Then go. Drive home slowly. Turn off the radio. Breathe. Eat something when you get home. Call a colleague or your spouse or a friend. Debrief — not the details, but the weight. Bedside ministry is costly. It exacts a real emotional and spiritual toll. Pastors who attend many deaths must develop specific practices of restoration, or they will hollow out. We will talk more about this in the Pastors and Caregivers section below.
Return to the family within twenty-four hours. Do not let them be alone in the first day. Bring a meal. Listen. Do not rush them into planning. The funeral will happen. The family needs you more than the funeral does.
Let me take you back to the opening of this chapter. Pastor Jim stands in the doorway of Evelyn Parker's bedroom. He has a Bible in his hand. He does not know what he is supposed to do.
He walks slowly to the bedside. He greets Evelyn's daughters. He greets her son-in-law. He kneels down next to the bed so that his face is near Evelyn's face. He takes her hand — it is cool, but not cold. "Evelyn. It's Pastor Jim. I'm here." Her eyes do not open, but he can see, in the corner of her mouth, the smallest flicker. He squeezes her hand softly.
He does not preach. He reads Psalm 23, slowly, pausing between phrases. He prays a short prayer — "Lord Jesus, hold Evelyn. Give her peace. Hold this family." He hums the first verse of "It Is Well with My Soul," almost inaudibly, because he is not a confident singer. Then he sits quietly. He holds her hand for thirty minutes without saying a word. The daughters cry softly. The clock on the dresser ticks. The oxygen machine hums.
Evelyn dies at 6:42 a.m., as the sky is turning gray at the window. Pastor Jim is still there. He prays a short commendation. He says, gently, "Evelyn has gone home." The daughters weep over their mother. He lets them. He does not rush them. He stays until 9:30, drinking coffee at the kitchen table, listening to stories about Evelyn's knitting and her garden and the time she won the church bake-off three years in a row.
Later that afternoon, Margaret calls him. She is crying. She says, "Pastor Jim, I just wanted to thank you. I don't think I'll ever forget this morning. You didn't — you didn't say very much. But you were just there. And it felt like Jesus was there. I don't know how to explain it."
That is the explanation. There is no other explanation. Jesus was there. Pastor Jim made Him visible by not getting in the way.
He will do this hundreds more times in his ministry. Each time, it will be a little less terrifying. Each time, he will bring a little more to the room. Each time, the room will ask a little more of him. He will never finish the work of learning how to be at a bedside. Neither will you. Neither will I.
But the work is simple at its heart: be there, unhurried and unafraid; hold the hand; read the Psalm; say the short, true things; sing softly; give permission; commend the soul to God; weep with those who weep; go home. Repeat, for the rest of your ministry. Amen.
This chapter has been written largely for pastors, chaplains, and those who minister at the bedside. The reflection questions below are for you. Sit with one at a time. Bring them into your prayer this week.
1. When you imagine yourself at the bedside of a dying saint — especially in the final hour — what comes up in you? Fear? Inadequacy? Holy dread? Something else? Where does that reaction come from? How has your background shaped your relationship to the bedside?
2. What was your most meaningful experience at a bedside? What happened in you during or after that experience? What did you learn?
3. What was your most painful or confusing experience at a bedside? Have you processed it? With whom? What would you do differently now?
4. What do you currently carry in your "bedside bag" — physical and spiritual? What is missing? What needs to be added or removed?
5. When you imagine praying over a dying person, do you tend to pray too much or too little? What does your tendency reveal about your trust — or lack of trust — in the Holy Spirit's work in the room?
6. Who in your congregation — elders, deacons, seasoned laypeople — could be trained alongside you to be present at bedsides when you cannot be? What would it look like to invite them into this ministry?
7. If you were to die tonight, who would you want at your bedside? What would you want them to do? What does your own answer teach you about how to serve others at theirs?
Because this whole chapter has been addressed to pastors, this closing section does not need to repeat the same ground. Instead, I want to offer six specific practices that will, over time, mature your bedside ministry. I have learned these from older pastors, from hospice chaplains, and, most often, from my own mistakes.
Stop improvising. Assemble the kit described earlier in this chapter — Bible with ribbon in Psalm 23, small hymnal, oil, Communion elements if your tradition uses them, a small liturgy, a pen, a handkerchief — and keep it in one place. In your car. In your office. Somewhere you can grab it at 4:17 a.m. without thinking. An ounce of preparation at 2 p.m. on an ordinary Tuesday is worth a pound of improvisation at 4 a.m. on the night of a death. Practice getting the bag and being in the car within ten minutes. You will thank yourself later.
Over the years, I have come to depend on a simple, repeatable order for bedside visits. Not a script — a scaffolding. Mine looks roughly like this: greet the family; approach the bed and greet the dying person by name; read one short Psalm; pray one short prayer; sing (or hum) one verse of one hymn; say the short, weight-bearing sentences; sit in silence for at least five minutes; close with a short benediction.
Write your own. Type it on an index card. Laminate it. Keep it in the bag. When your mind goes blank at the bedside — and it will — you can glance at the card and find your footing. A liturgy is a gift for the one with stage fright. And bedside ministry has stage fright built in.
Memorize the Lord's Prayer (you probably already have it). Memorize the ancient commendation. Memorize Aaron's blessing from Numbers 6:24–26: "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." Memorize one short prayer in your own words that you can pray in any hospice room without looking at a book. When the dying person can no longer read, you cannot read either. Memory is the lamp that stays on when every other light has gone out.
This may be the hardest. We live at the speed of our phones. We measure our days in tasks completed. Pastoral ministry, however, runs at the speed of the soul. The dying cannot be rushed. The grieving cannot be rushed. The Holy Spirit, I have noticed, cannot be rushed either.
Practice unhurriedness in the rest of your life so that it is available to you at the bedside. Drive in the right lane. Put your phone in a drawer. Take walks without podcasts. Let silences stretch. Eugene Peterson warned pastors against the "idolatry of a vast ministry that I don't have time for." The pastor who cannot sit quietly in his own study will not be able to sit quietly at a deathbed either.1623
Unhurriedness is not laziness. It is trust. It is believing that God is actually present in the room, actually at work, actually capable of doing the real ministry without your help. You are not the pastor. Christ is. You are the visible sign.
You cannot be at every bedside. You will not always get the 4:17 a.m. call. Other pastors, elders, deacons, seasoned laywomen and laymen in your congregation will be at bedsides you cannot reach. Train them.
In many churches, the older women who have buried parents and sat with dying neighbors know more about bedside ministry than the pastor does. Honor them. Ask them to teach a class. Pair younger church members with them for visits. Create a small "bedside team" that can be called when families need presence but the pastor is out of town or at another hospice. Teach them the same simple practices this chapter has taught you: greet, sit, read one Psalm, pray one prayer, sing softly, hold the hand, give permission, commend the soul, weep with those who weep. Most of them can do this already. They just need to be told it is ministry.
A church that can send three trained laywomen to a bedside when the pastor cannot go is a church that has learned how to be the body of Christ in the most important hour of a member's life. Build that kind of church.24
Bedside ministry is costly. It extracts things from you that sermons and committee meetings do not. You will sometimes come home and find yourself unable to sleep, or unexpectedly weepy, or unusually short with your children. You will sometimes dream of the person who died. You will sometimes carry a kind of heaviness for days.
This is not weakness. It is the cost of being at the edge of eternity on another person's behalf. Christ Himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus — and at that point, He knew He was about to raise him (John 11:35). If tears were appropriate for the One who was about to conquer death, tears are appropriate for you too.
Make room for this cost. Have a colleague you can call after a hard bedside — not to process the theology, but to put down the weight. Have a spiritual director or pastoral therapist you see quarterly if not monthly. Take your day off seriously. When you have sat with several deaths in a short span, take a retreat. Walk in the woods. Read a novel. Watch your grandchildren play in the yard. The work of Immanuel costs the incarnate body something every time. You will need restoration.
And if, over years of bedside ministry, you find yourself going numb — if you no longer feel the weight of the room, if you find yourself bored at hospice visits, if you begin to treat the dying like cases rather than persons — do not tough it out. That is a warning light. See a Christian counselor. Take a sabbatical. Do the work of getting your soul back. A numb pastor is a dangerous pastor at a bedside. A tender pastor, in the long run, is the faithful one.17
You will learn this work slowly, over many bedsides. Every pastor who has done this ministry before you was once the pastor you are now. Every saint whose bedside you attend was once a child in a mother's lap. We are all traveling the same road; some are ahead of us, some are behind. The God who is with us has walked every step of it before, and in Christ has carried the darkest part Himself.
You do not have to do this perfectly. You only have to show up. Show up with your Bible. Show up with your bag. Show up with your heart. Show up slowly. Show up tenderly. Show up with the certainty that the Lord is already there.
When you walk in, you will find that He is. Every time. Without fail. Amen.
Rob Moll, The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010). A slim, pastorally rich recovery of the lost Christian tradition of dying well. The best single book for a pastor new to bedside ministry.
Kathryn Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019). Written by a Christian trauma surgeon. Clear on the medical realities, faithful on the theology, and practical for pastors who need to understand what is happening to the dying body.
Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying (New York: Bantam, 1997). The landmark book on nearing-death awareness. Not explicitly Christian, but indispensable for anyone who will sit at many bedsides. Read slowly.
Christopher Kerr, with Carine Mardorossian, Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End (New York: Avery, 2020). A hospice physician's account of end-of-life dreams and visions in more than 1,400 dying patients. Empirically rigorous, pastorally moving.
The Book of Common Prayer (any edition), especially the service "Ministration at the Time of Death." For non-Anglicans too: this short liturgy is gold, and versions of it have been prayed over dying Christians for many centuries. Worth knowing by heart.
Walter Wangerin Jr., Mourning into Dancing (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992). Pastoral reflections on death and grief from one of the best Christian writers of the last fifty years. Read it not for technique but for the music.
1 On the absence of formal bedside training in most seminary curricula, see Rob Moll, The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2010), chap. 2 ("The Forgotten Art"). Moll's broader argument is that Protestant Christianity in particular lost the medieval ars moriendi ("art of dying") tradition and has not yet recovered it. ↩
2 Kathryn Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), introduction and chap. 1. Butler, a trauma and critical care surgeon, writes that medical schools still devote only a small fraction of the curriculum to the care of the dying, despite the fact that every clinician will attend many deaths over a career. ↩
3 Moll, The Art of Dying, chap. 2 and chap. 4 ("Community at the Deathbed"). ↩
4 See Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1974), 34, where Nouwen argues that the friend who simply stays with us in our grief, without trying to fix or explain, is often the friend who truly cares. ↩
5 James 5:14–15 (ESV): "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." While many Protestants have historically been cautious about the practice of anointing — concerned about medieval abuses — the biblical text is explicit, and a growing number of evangelical pastors now offer anointing to the gravely ill and dying. Whether used in conjunction with Communion or as a distinct act, the oil is a tender sign of the Lord's tenderness. ↩
6 The principle that hearing is the last sense to go in dying is widely reported by hospice nurses and is consistent with neurological studies of electroencephalographic activity in the dying brain. For a recent representative study, see Elizabeth G. Blundon, Romayne E. Gallagher, and Lawrence M. Ward, "Electrophysiological Evidence of Preserved Hearing at the End of Life," Scientific Reports 10 (2020): 10336. Although the study's authors are cautious about drawing conclusions regarding subjective awareness, the preserved auditory processing they document is consistent with the long clinical tradition of assuming the dying can still hear. ↩
7 On the phases of dying and their pastoral implications, see Christopher Kerr with Carine Mardorossian, Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End (New York: Avery, 2020), especially chaps. 1–3. For a complementary Christian pastoral treatment, see Butler, Between Life and Death, chaps. 3–5. The dying trajectory is also developed for grieving caregivers in Chapter 18 of the present volume. ↩
8 A modernized and widely used form of the ancient Christian prayer of commendation, known in Latin as Proficiscere. A traditional Anglican form appears in The Book of Common Prayer (1979) in the service "Ministration at the Time of Death." Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and many Lutheran traditions preserve similar forms. The prayer's earliest versions go back at least to the sixth century and have been spoken over dying Christians continuously since. ↩
9 On the durability of hymnody in the dying and in those with advanced neurological decline, see Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson, "Terminal Lucidity in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 197, no. 12 (2009): 942–44. For a broader pastoral discussion of terminal lucidity, see Chapter 11 of the present volume; see also J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1 (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023), chap. 8, "Terminal Lucidity." ↩
10 See Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 2008), chap. 29, where Sacks describes the extraordinary preservation of musical and hymnic memory in patients whose broader memory and personality have been devastated by dementia. For the Christian, this invites more than neurological wonder; it hints at the deeply formative role of worship in the human self. ↩
11 Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying (New York: Bantam, 1997), chaps. 1–6. The concept of nearing-death awareness was introduced and developed through their pastoral-nursing practice. ↩
12 Kerr and Mardorossian, Death Is But a Dream, chap. 3 and appendix, summarizing the cohort studies conducted at Hospice Buffalo. On the cohort size, depth, and the patients' own rating of the experiences as "more real than real," see J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1, chap. 4, "The Realness of the Experiences," noting that in Kerr's study of more than 1,400 patients, most rated the experiential realness as ten out of ten. See also Peter Fenwick and Sue Brayne, "End-of-Life Experiences: Reaching Out for Compassion, Communication, and Connection — Meaning of Deathbed Visions and Coincidences," American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine 28, no. 1 (2011): 7–15. ↩
13 On the theology of the conscious intermediate state and the survival of the soul as the foundation beneath a Christian response to nearing-death awareness, see John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), especially chaps. 6–7; and the treatment in Chapters 2 and 3 of the present volume. For the biblical and theological argument that Christ is actively present to the dying, see J. Steve Miller, Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2022), chap. 4, "The Surprising Presence of Jesus." ↩
14 Melvin Morse and Paul Perry, Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children (New York: Villard, 1990), cited in Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1, chap. 8, "Terminal Lucidity." The case is widely referenced in the terminal lucidity and deathbed awareness literature. See also Callanan and Kelley, Final Gifts, chap. 11, on the pastoral importance of giving permission. ↩
15 On postmortem opportunity as a biblically defensible evangelical hope, see especially James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation after Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021). For the earliest Christian voices, see Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6.6; Origen, Commentary on Romans (on Romans 2 and 5); Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection. The pastoral unfolding for bereaved Christians is developed more fully in Chapter 13 of the present volume. ↩
16 Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), chap. 2, "The Unbusy Pastor." Peterson's broader body of work — especially Working the Angles and Under the Unpredictable Plant — develops the spiritual discipline of unhurriedness as foundational to pastoral care. ↩
17 On the specific cost of long-term ministry to the dying and on practices of pastoral self-care, see Kenneth J. Doka, ed., Living with Grief: When Illness Is Prolonged (Washington, DC: Hospice Foundation of America, 1997), chaps. on clinician grief and compassion fatigue; and H. Norman Wright, The Complete Guide to Crisis and Trauma Counseling (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2011), chaps. on caregiver self-care. ↩
18 James 5:14–15 has been central to the recovery of anointing in evangelical circles; for a measured Protestant treatment of the practice and its biblical basis, see Daniel Doriani, James, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), chap. on 5:13–18. ↩
19 For a classic Reformed treatment of the "ministry of presence" as distinctly pastoral work, see Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology: A Christological Foundation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), chap. 4. For a Catholic and hospice-oriented treatment of the same idea, see Christina M. Puchalski, ed., A Time for Listening and Caring: Spirituality and the Care of the Chronically Ill and Dying (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), chaps. 1–3. ↩
20 The pastoral principle of "giving permission" is treated briefly in most hospice training literature; for a book-length treatment from a hospice physician, see David Kessler, Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2010), chap. 7. See also Callanan and Kelley, Final Gifts, chap. 11. ↩
21 On the pastoral handling of the "is she saved?" question — including the dangers of both overclaim and underclaim — see Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 6, and Scot McKnight, The Heaven Promise: Engaging the Bible's Truth about Life to Come (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2015), chaps. 11–12. For the postmortem-opportunity hope that undergirds the pastoral posture recommended here, see further Chapter 13 of the present volume. ↩
22 See 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 (ESV): "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. . . . We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." This passage, which anchors the conscious-intermediate-state conviction of this book, is treated exegetically in Chapter 2. ↩
23 On the spiritual significance of unhurried presence in Christian ministry, see Marva J. Dawn, The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), chaps. 3 and 5. ↩
24 The practice of training lay "bedside teams" is widely encouraged in hospice chaplaincy literature. For a practical church-based model, see Dale A. Matthews and Connie Clark, The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer (New York: Penguin, 1999), chaps. 11–12, and the companion small-group training materials produced by Stephen Ministries, founded by Kenneth C. Haugk. ↩
Beilby, James. Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation after Death. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021.
Blundon, Elizabeth G., Romayne E. Gallagher, and Lawrence M. Ward. "Electrophysiological Evidence of Preserved Hearing at the End of Life." Scientific Reports 10 (2020): 10336.
Butler, Kathryn. Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019.
Callanan, Maggie, and Patricia Kelley. Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying. New York: Bantam, 1997.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Dawn, Marva J. The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.
Doka, Kenneth J., ed. Living with Grief: When Illness Is Prolonged. Washington, DC: Hospice Foundation of America, 1997.
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Fenwick, Peter, and Sue Brayne. "End-of-Life Experiences: Reaching Out for Compassion, Communication, and Connection — Meaning of Deathbed Visions and Coincidences." American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine 28, no. 1 (2011): 7–15.
Kerr, Christopher, with Carine Mardorossian. Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End. New York: Avery, 2020.
Kessler, David. Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2010.
Matthews, Dale A., and Connie Clark. The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer. New York: Penguin, 1999.
McKnight, Scot. The Heaven Promise: Engaging the Bible's Truth about Life to Come. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2015.
Miller, J. Steve. Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic: Evaluating Death-Related Visions, Terminal Lucidity, and After-Death Communications. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
———. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, and Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2022.
Moll, Rob. The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2010.
Morse, Melvin, and Paul Perry. Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children. New York: Villard, 1990.
Nahm, Michael, and Bruce Greyson. "Terminal Lucidity in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: A Survey of the Literature." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 197, no. 12 (2009): 942–44.
Nouwen, Henri J. M. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1974.
Peterson, Eugene H. The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
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Purves, Andrew. Reconstructing Pastoral Theology: A Christological Foundation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004.
Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Rev. ed. New York: Vintage, 2008.
Walls, Jerry L. Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Wangerin, Walter, Jr. Mourning into Dancing. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.
Wright, H. Norman. The Complete Guide to Crisis and Trauma Counseling. Ventura, CA: Regal, 2011.