Get off my land!

If this were an ideal world, Charles, Gloria, Jonathan, Rupert and others would all live in the same town as me. We would meet for coffee every couple of weeks, in a cafe that sold calorie-free cake.

We would all have as much work as we wanted.

And for those of us who are celebrants/ministers/officiants/gobs on sticks, we would know that the following happened – when a funeral director meets a family, they would spend a lot of time, asking the family what they wanted, and letting know all of the options available (including the things that they don’t “have” to have). If the family has said that they want an officiant, the FD would then go away and think long and hard to get the best match from their extensive list of ministers. They would think about the family that they have met and the personality of their ministers and would put together those that will work well together and will produce the best possible funeral; a triumph, a memorable occasion which enables the family to move on with their grief in the best way possible to them.

I don’t live in an ideal world. I live in a place that we shall call Seatown. I am also about fifteen miles from Coastville, and about twenty-five miles from Poshbourne. We have an established celebrant in the latter, but I’m sometimes called upon for holiday cover.

My esteemed mentor (She who must be obeyed) used to live in Coastville, but has moved to pastures new in another part of the country. I miss her guidance and her humour but it is honest to say that I am very grateful for her workload.

And this is because FDs are busy people, who do not go through their list of celebrants like a casting director, and think about who best will match their family. My experience suggests that the thought process is more along the lines of:

What sort of minister?
Non-religious.
Is that the same as humanist?
Close enough.
Who did we use last time?
X.Piry.
She any good?
No complaints.
Okay. What’s her number?


And that’s on a good day.

Now, I am probably doing many FDs a lot of disservice. But I think there’s a lot in the “who did we use last time” argument. Unless there’s a reason to use someone different (such as a specific request, or wanting a man, rather than a woman, etc) then it’s sound. It’s a bit like when you have a complaint with the gas board, and you know that someone called Angela was helpful. You will go back to Angela, because she did what you wanted her to do and kept you informed, and listened to you....

Now, the BHA would be happy to train a lot of celebrants who live in Seatown, Coastville, Poshbourne and anywhere else that good candidates apply. There is some evidence to back up the argument that having more celebrants on the ground does increase ceremony numbers.

Fine – but does it increase it enough? Conducting ceremonies (not just funerals) is my main source of income. Therefore, I have an average number per week/month/year that I would like to conduct to pay the bills and feed my chocolate habit.

If someone new trained in Poshbourne, then I would not get any holiday cover work there.
The other problem that I have is that currently, in Seatown, I cannot seem to get any work. To my knowledge, I have neither messed up or upset anyone, but there is a strong presence from the civil celebrants and a very good independent celebrant who is well known in the town. There are one or two FDs who have me at the top of their “godless” list, but this is not a very godless place, so between the competition and the retired vicars, I would be letting Cadbury go out of business, if I was only reliant on Seatown.

Coastville, however, treats me well. It keeps me busy and I am grateful. So how would I feel if someone from Coastville wanted to train there?

Panicky would be an obvious reaction (please don’t make me go back to office work, anything, but that, guv). After all, although I feel fairly established in Coastville, I work hard to produce good ceremonies, and to make myself easy to work with for the FDs, would someone on the doorstep be a more attractive proposition for them?

The BHA might feel that I have Seatown to work with, but I refer you to my comments above.So, if the BHA trained up someone on the way to Poshbourne and someone in Coastville, I would by right up effluent creek and lacking a method of propulsion.

And this is why local celebrants resist the training of new celebrants. It feels like a constant matter of tension. But what are the options?

If we don’t train a good candidate – what will they do? They may wait (I did), but for how long? Alternatively, unless they are dyed in the wool humanists (a rare breed) then they can simply train with another organisation or simply start out on their own. Thus, they become the competition.

If we do train a good candidate – what will I do? Have a huff moment and give up my BHA accreditation? And then what – be an independent celebrant with a lot of experience (and relationships with FDs), but the new BHA celebrant will still be there and will be my competition. There are pros and cons to being a BHA celebrant, and there are pros and cons to being independent, so neither has an absolute advantage.

So what do we do? Most people want to become celebrants because they have been to an inspiring ceremony. Good celebrants make a ceremony look easy. The recruitment process should be tough and hard to get through (I believe that it is, we are very careful who we train), but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of people out there who would make good celebrants.

If we recruit them all, we would have a huge network of quality people. And we would have some who would have to leave because they can no longer get enough work to sustain their lifestyles (I know of at least one colleague in the last year who has done this, in an area with a lot of independent competition).

No celebrants are in this for the money, but for those of us who have chosen (and yes, it is our choice, I accept that) to make this an almost full time career, then we need to have regular numbers of ceremonies.

There are some celebrants who don’t want to do a huge volume of funerals. I met a chap a couple of years ago who told me that he didn’t have the “emotional hardware” for more than one a fortnight. That’s fair enough and people like him are great for cover, etc. It’s also one of those professions where you don’t actually know what you’ll be able to cope with until you’re doing it and can see what it’s doing to you.

There is room in the network for celebrants with all sorts of workload requirements. The difficulty is getting the balance right.

I’ve really rambled on enough for now, and so I’d like to throw this open to anyone who’d like to share an opinion.

What do you guys think?