We live in an age where the vast majority of the population does not identify with one particular faith, and views the presence of the church in the community as countercultural. Many people do not know who their local minister is and, because clergy are becoming stretched across wide geographical areas, the intimate links between a priest and his or her flock are disappearing fast.

So, when someone dies and they were not directly linked to a church or religion, who is going to lead the funeral service on the day?

Funeral directors are often the first people to have this conversation with families. If there are no strong and obvious connections to a church or faith, the funeral director will discuss options such as working with celebrants or humanists, who are often independent. An independent, or civil, celebrant is different from a humanist because they can include religious content, bible readings and prayers if the family wishes. So, the funeral service can be a blend of religious and secular rather than being purely one or the other.

The conversations I have with families about the inclusion of religious words in the service fascinate me. The majority of people who do not feel God in their lives will want at least one nod to Christian hope. Nearly every service I have taken has included the Lord’s Prayer; many have had hymns; a few have also had a reading from the bible; and three have even had a full Christian committal well.

I find it moving to witness so much faith at a time of such sorrow and it is a humble faith; a faith which doesn’t have a name or a belonging. It is a tiny little tea light which lives deep inside but what light that candle gives!

The funeral service is evolving all the time. It always has done. In the Stone Age, people were buried with objects; by Victorian times the funeral was a wealthy status symbol; the First and Second World Wars brought an end to ostentatious mourning because of scant time and money; and now we are at another huge shift in thinking, with the birth of the modern person-centred ceremony, a yearning for a ‘celebration of life’ with the focus on the person who has died.

For me, the work of an independent celebrant is to find out what best befits the person who has died (and those people left behind) and to turn it into a beautiful, meaningful, ceremony which inspires the congregation and gives them a feeling of hope and peace.

Many of the services I take are for Shoobridge Funeral Services, based in Honiton, Exmouth and Exeter, and it is the changing nature of funerals that is of vital importance to them. They and I spend hours with each family, guiding and supporting them through decisions they need to make at a time when they are very fragile and raw with emotion.

I officiated at a service where an idea from the children’s book, The Paper Dolls, was very important to the twin girls mourning the death of their father. Throughout the ceremony, I wove the idea of people living on as memories deep inside us. It brought comfort to the family and it made the ceremony theirs.

In another service, the family chose ‘Shiny Happy People’ by R.E.M to be played in the solemn time before the committal (the final farewell). Foot-tapping and sadness might not work for many people but for this family it reflected the life that they were there to celebrate and it was right.

For families to say the appropriate goodbye gives a deep strength and, ultimately, hope, whether this is a rousing song to get people dancing or holding on to the idea that this person will live on in their memories, ‘in the place where the lost things go.’ We who have the privilege of walking beside people in their darkness and grief have a duty to guide them towards light and love and this is through openness and choice. And that is a road we take together.