Hi, I'm Jonathan Lehman, and I'm here with the one and only man sitting across the table from me with closed lips, whose name is Mark Devere.

Indeed.

Welcome to this episode of Nine Marks Pastors Talk.

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building healthy churches.

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Mark, we're going to talk about funerals.

Have we never talked about funerals?

I may have mentioned it in passing, but no.

I recall illustration.

How did this come on?

Maybe a Shirley Luther more illustration you've used from time to time. But no, let's concentrate on this topic. You've been

pasturing... So how did you get this idea if we've never done this? Alex emailed me this morning

these set of questions. How did Alex get the idea? I have to ask him. We have a whole running list of things to talk about.

I assume it's somewhere on the list.

You've been pastoring for 30 years.

How many funeral services would you say you've done?

I don't know.

But the on thing is...

100.

100.

The on thing is I did scores in my 30s and have done very few in my 50s.

...