Overcoming The Shock

What do you say when words aren't enough?Every pastor knows the moment. The phone rings. Someone has died. And within hours you are walking through a door to meet a family whose world has collapsed - expected to speak truth into the unspeakable, to hold people together when everything is falling apart. Overcoming the Shock: A Pastor's Guide to Walking with the Grieving is the book written for that moment - and for every moment that follows it.
Drawing on deep biblical theology and hard-won pastoral wisdom, John James Abekah walks ministers through the full arc of grief ministry: from the theology of why death still devastates us, to what to say at the bedside, to how to preach a funeral sermon that honors both the loss and the hope, to the quiet follow-up work in the weeks and months after everyone else has gone home. In this book you will discover: Why death remains shocking even when we know it is coming - and why that is not a failure of faith The many faces of grief and how to recognize them in your congregation Exactly what to say - and what never to say - in the presence of the bereaved How to craft a funeral message that holds both the darkness and the light A practical week-by-week pastoral follow-up calendar How to help your congregation become a grief-attentive community How to sustain yourself through the accumulative weight of grief ministry How to offer resurrection hope that answers death rather than erasing it This is not a book of tidy answers.
It is a pastoral companion for ministers willing to enter the valley with the people they serve - trusting that the God who conquered the grave walks every step of that valley with them. For senior pastors, associate ministers, hospital chaplains, grief counselors, and every ministry leader called to walk with the dying and the bereaved. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. So must we be.