Find a minister

If you already know the minister whom you would like to take the funeral, then simply tell your funeral director, who will make all the arrangements.

If you know that you would like someone from the Church of England to lead the funeral, but don’t know a specific person, tell the Funeral Director, who will have a wide range of local contacts. This may include the vicar from the place where your loved one lived, or it may be a licensed lay minister, who are often available to take funerals.

Sometimes the place where the person organising the funeral lives and the place where your loved one spent most of their life might be different from the place where they died. Older people move into residential care or sheltered housing in later life, but their ‘home town’ might still be the place where they wanted to have a funeral.

To explore the option of having a funeral in a place other than where your loved one lived at the time they died, it’s best to first contact the vicar of the church where you’d like it to be.

Using the search box below, you can search for a church by postcode to find a particular parish and the name of the church there. In the results of your search, click on a church’s name and the contact details should be displayed. You can usually telephone or email, and the vicar or another church contact will respond to your enquiry as soon as they can. If you have any problems getting in touch with a particular church, contact us for help.

Church of England funerals can be lead by a vicar, a retired vicar (who has the Bishop’s permission to do so) or a licensed lay minister. All of them are specially trained and have lots of experience in taking funerals.