I am sitting with a blank page again, and this time it is not a stranger’s life I am trying to honor. It is a loved one’s. I have written eulogies before for members of my congregation, for names I knew from the pulpit and faces I recognized from the pew, and I loved every one of them in the way a pastor loves the flock entrusted to him. But writing for family makes the weight of the pen feel a bit heavier. The words do not come from research alone. They come from memory that still aches, from a grief that has not finished introducing itself. If you have ever sat where I am sitting now, you already know what I mean. If you have not, your time is coming, because every preacher eventually sits at this desk.
So let us talk about the work itself, because the call to speak well of the dead is one of the oldest assignments in ministry, and one of the most sacred.
Know what you are actually doing. The word eulogy comes from the Greek eulogia, a compound of eu, meaning good, and logos, meaning word. To eulogize is, at its root, to speak a good word over a life. Not a flattering word. Not a fictional word. A good word, one that is true and one that lifts. Every principle that follows flows from that root. And remember this distinction as you prepare: you do not preach a eulogy, you deliver it. Preaching proclaims a text. A eulogy testifies to a life.
This is the foundation, and you cannot skip it. Whether you knew the departed firsthand or only through the testimony of others, your task is to become a student of their life before you become the speaker of their eulogy. Call the children. Call the coworkers. Ask about the habits nobody thought to mention, the jokes only the family understood, the seasons of struggle as well as the seasons of triumph. A congregation can tell within the first thirty seconds whether the person in the pulpit actually knew the person in the casket or is reading a biography they assembled an hour before the service. Do the homework. The family is trusting you with the truth of a whole life, and they will know if you got it wrong.
A eulogy is not a biography read aloud. It is a pastoral act performed in the presence of grief. The person you are eulogizing has already finished their race. The people sitting before you have not. Every word you choose should ask a second question beneath the first: not only “is this true of the deceased,” but “what does this grieving room need to hear right now.” A eulogy that only informs has missed its assignment. A eulogy that also comforts has fulfilled it.
You cannot say everything, and you should not try. Every life worth eulogizing is too large for twelve minutes. Your task is not to catalog it but to find the single thread that, once pulled, brings the rest of the garment with it. Was this a life defined by quiet faithfulness. By fierce protection of family. By a stubborn, joyful hope. Find that thread early in your preparation, and let every story and every scripture you choose serve it. A eulogy with five themes is a eulogy with none.
Grief tempts us toward two errors. The first is sanitizing a life until it sounds like a stranger’s. The second is airing struggles that belong in private counsel, not in public grief. Neither honors the dead or the living. A well-told eulogy tells the truth, including the struggles, but it tells that truth redemptively, the way scripture itself tells the truth about its heroes. David’s failures are recorded, but so is his heart after God. Speak of your loved one the same way. Truth and love are not enemies at this podium. They are coauthors.
However you begin, however you build, you must not end with the grave. A eulogy delivered from a place of faith does not merely close a chapter; it points beyond the final page. Close with the hope of resurrection, the promise of reunion, the assurance that this goodbye carries an asterisk rather than a period. The mourners will remember your last two minutes longer than your first ten. Make certain what they carry out of that sanctuary is hope.
I do not know yet exactly what I will say at the service I am preparing for. But I know how I will prepare for it, and now you do, too.
The next time grief hands you a blank page, do not panic in front of it. Pick up the phone and call someone who knew them best. Sit in the discomfort of the truth long enough to find the grace in it. And when you finally stand to speak, remember that a room full of mourners did not gather to hear a eulogy. They gathered to be reminded that a good word is still worth saying, and that the last word over any life belongs to God, not to the grave. Go prepare that word like it matters, because it does.
-Shalom
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Every family you serve through a death will walk the same road: the phone call, the funeral home, the service, the burial, and the long silence after. Most pastors show up strong for the middle of that road and vanish before the end of it. Here is a framework, built on the letters of LAST MILE itself, to help you walk the whole way.
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