What is a Columbarium?

Columbarium is a structure of recesses in its walls to receive urns with ashes of deceased loved ones. It is an updated version of a church cemetery. A columbarium can be placed indoors - freestanding or as part of the church structure. It can also be an outdoor structure as part of a memorial garden. The memorial garden could include a scattering ground, a common area for placing ashes and a nearby structure for name plaques.

A columbarium is a final resting place for those of our congregation who choose cremation. Cremation, which speeds the process of returning the body to dust from which it theologically came, is an acceptable concept and growing practice in the church. Cremation and the interment of ashes is a reverent Christian method of burial. It is consistent with the precept of the sure and certain hope in the Resurrection. God’s promise that in the resurrection the Lord will raise up all who die in the faith in new imperishable spiritual bodies bearing the image of man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:42-50). Inurnment in the church is not only a telling witness to the faith and hope of those who have died, but is an ever present reminder, as the Psalmist says, that we are dust but God’s love will last forever.

The practice of cremation is most welcoming where it meets with individual preference. The church council and columbarium task force is neither an advocacy group for or against cremation. The fact remains that for whatever the reasons may be – economic, ecological, a lessoned sense of “home town” – increasingly Christians of all western churches are choosing cremation for the disposition of their remains.

History of Christian Burial

Since ancient times, Christians have placed their dead in or near the church to symbolize the continuum of faith from birth to death – from baptism to resurrection. Burial in a churchyard, or within a cathedral or church, has been an ancient and revered custom throughout the centuries in all Christian lands. From the earliest Colonial days, the American church has provided places of burial within its grounds, in peaceful church graveyards, in crypts in walls, or in walkways of the sanctuary itself. Burial in the church, a place of prayer and peace, has given the dead a dwelling place in a living community of faith. Memorial crypts and columbaria exist in many Protestant and Catholic churches, including many Lutheran churches.

GUIDED BY THE GOSPEL: GATHERING • GROWING • GIVING