Our first objective is to identify congregational needs. We accomplish this task by assessing how a congregation is talking about end-of-life concerns. We then provide materials to assist furthering those conversations.

Once we identify the community's needs we provide educational materials and resources to enhance the support of grieving persons in their community. At the same time, we provide congregations support to feel comfortable talking about end-of-life planning, specifically Advanced Directives and mortuary decisions. We engage the latter with educational materials about individual rights, options, and sustainable practices such as Green Burial.  We assist ministers and communities with information about being reflective, non-judgmental listeners; engage uncomfortable grief and stigmatized deaths such as suicide; encourage the acknowledgement of diverse forms of grief, and we also promote the ritualization and mourning of all losses.

The third component of our task force is collaboration with organizations that promote sustainable mortuary practices, empowering congregations and communities to make good choices about death care.

Retreats

Retreats are a time for IRDSH and its volunteers to engage groups of people about Advanced Directives. Our retreat Advanced Directives: Meaning-making and Accepting contextualizes end-of-life decisions with spiritual questions about the self, one's life, and one's death. It is a time to reflect on one's life, dying, and memory. This retreat is an opportunity to ask challenging questions about end-of-life decisions, while also reflectively thinking about such questions with one's peers. This retreat is a time to become informed about one's rights and to meditate on one's funeral wishes. The retreat includes completing an Advanced Directive and learning about sustainable burial practices.

Our other retreat includes less information and specifically focuses on grief. Spirituality and Grief: Finding Peace After Loss is a time to reflect on one's loss and share it with others. It is a time for the community to honor each other's story and find support in a spiritual context, which reflects the community and individual's beliefs and emotions. It is a time for the individual and community to find "healing" through the support of community.

Principles and Ethics

Lastly, the Institute fulfills its mission by working with diverse communities as they establish their own framework on how to support their grieving members, address their on-going grievances, and how to uphold the rights of families preparing for a death or a funeral.