Obituary Examples for a Pastor

A pastor's obituary is usually written by two families at once: the household at home and the congregation who sat under his preaching for decades. These three examples — short and dignified, personal and warm, and faith-centred — show how to honour a life of ministry without turning the notice into a sermon. Keep one ordinary detail, the tea he poured or the visit he never missed, and the whole man comes back.

Short and dignified

Reverend Samuel Themba Ndlovu, 71, of Pietermaritzburg, died on 9 July 2026 after a short illness. Born in Greytown on 2 April 1955, he answered the call to ministry at nineteen and served the Bethel Methodist congregation for thirty-four years. He baptised, married and buried three generations of the same families, and kept every christening date in a black notebook he read aloud to the church each New Year's morning. He is survived by his wife, Nomthandazo; their sons, Bongani and Sifiso; and seven grandchildren. A service of thanksgiving will be held at Bethel Methodist Church, Pietermaritzburg, on Sunday, 19 July, at 10:00.

Personal and warm

Pastor Willem Botha — 'Pastoor Wim' to everyone in the pews — died at home in Bloemfontein on 5 July 2026, three days after his sixty-eighth birthday. Born on a farm outside Reitz in 1958, he was never a fancy preacher. He drove a bakkie with a boot full of bread and firewood, and if your lights were off he somehow knew before you phoned. For forty years he led the small AGS congregation on Kerkstraat, patched its leaking roof himself, and made the worst filter coffee in the Free State, which he served to everyone anyway in the same chipped enamel mugs. He is survived by his wife, Sannie; his daughters, Elmarie and Lize; and a congregation that thought of him as a second father. Family and friends are warmly invited to the service on Friday, 17 July.

Faith-centred

Reverend Miriam Naidoo, 63, of Chatsworth, died on 11 July 2026, ready — as she had long told her family she was. Born in Durban on 18 September 1962, she pastored the Grace Fellowship for twenty-six years and believed a sermon was worth nothing if it did not reach the row nobody else would sit in. She kept a worn Bible mended with parcel tape, its margins so crowded with the names of people she was praying for that the last ones ran onto the endpapers. She read Psalm 121 at every graveside she stood beside, and asked that it be read at her own. She is survived by her husband, Deva; her son, Kevin; and the many she called her spiritual children.

Writing tips for a pastor's obituary

Name the congregation, not only the family. A pastor's 'survived by' can honestly widen to include the church he served for decades — 'and the Bethel congregation, who were his family too' — because for many ministers that is simply the truth.
Show the ministry in one ordinary act, not a title. 'Sat with the dying until 3am' or 'drove two hours every Tuesday to a prison chapel' tells a reader more than 'a devoted servant of God' ever will.
Let a scripture do the work he would have chosen. If you know the verse he kept returning to from the pulpit, name it — a pastor's favourite text is as personal as a fingerprint.
Keep the sermon out of the obituary. You are writing his life, not preaching his funeral; one plain sentence about what he believed lands harder than a paragraph of doctrine.

Ready to make the programme?

Free to build and download · $11.95 once for the clean PDF · never a subscription

Start a programme — free

Common questions

Who usually writes a pastor's obituary?+

It is often a shared effort. The family supplies the dates and the home life, while the elders, deacons or a long-standing member of the congregation add the ministry milestones — the year he was ordained, the buildings he saw up, the people he sat with. Crediting the church in the closing line is common and gracious.

Should we use his title or the name people actually called him?+

Use both. Lead once with the full title and name — 'Reverend Samuel Themba Ndlovu' — then switch to whatever the congregation truly called him. If everyone knew him as 'Pastor Sam' or 'Oom Wim', that warmth belongs in the obituary and tells the reader instantly how he was loved.

How do we mention his faith without it reading like a sermon?+

Show it rather than state it. One remembered habit — the verse he read at every graveside, the Monday visits to the sick, the door that was never locked — carries his faith far more convincingly than a doctrinal summary, and keeps the piece dignified rather than preachy.