Pastors are people, too. Just because clergy are used to presiding over funerals and sitting with people and families at the end of life doesn’t make them immune to their own feelings of sadness and loss at the death of parishioners or their own loved ones.

Recently, some coworkers and I were talking about how many pastors we had been on the phone with who had mentioned an increase in the number of funerals they’d performed lately. The quick succession of these deaths and funerals seemed to be taking a toll on the pastors’ physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. With the help of our colleagues and a few pastors, we compiled the following list of resources that may serve as a comfort or guide to clergy in their ministries as well as in their personal journeys with grief.

• A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, by Jerry Sittser

• Keeping them company at the end, NY Times article by Joy Levitt

• Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, by Eugene Peterson

• All Our Losses, All Our Griefs: Resources for Pastoral Care by Kenneth Mitchell and Herbert Anderson

• Hearing Beyond the Words: How to Become a Listening Pastor by Emma Justes

• Recalling Our Own Stories: Spiritual Renewal for Religious Caregivers by Edward P. Wimberly

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” -Leo Tolstoy

Are there any resources on grief that have been especially meaningful for you?

-Katie Huffman