The heart of the funeral has to be the sermon. A funeral message isn’t lengthy, but it should be long enough to provide substance for faith to grasp. I aim for a ten-to twelve-minute message. I try to make my style conversational. There’s no place for the bombastic, the flamboyant, or the spectacular. Regardless of my text, I include a brief statement of what happens when a person dies, how God helps those who sorrow, and how we can prepare for our own eventual deaths.