Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was also raised Southern Baptist (though I’m a liberal mainline protestant now) and my dad was an assistant pastor/choir director for most of my childhood. I couldn’t disagree with many aspects of Southern Baptist theology and doctrine more, but this was not my experience at all. Sure people prayed for sick family members, but the focus was always more on repenting and being reunited in heaven than it was on stayin…
We apparently had vastly different experiences within the same denomination. Prayers were almost always for healing. Repentence almost never came into it as the subject of the prayers was usually "saved". Nor were the prayers for being reunited in heaven because that was assumed to be a given. Feeding into all of this were the half-baked stories from the pulpit of healing. Of some miraculous last minute renewal of he…
My mom went through her metastatic cancer surrounded by an amazing hospice chaplain who happened to also be her Sunday School teacher, helpful Sunday School classmates and other church members, and realistic expectations all around. She was pretty blunt but cheerful about what was happening, and insisted on a DNR when it started looking really futile, which one of her fellow Baptist friends witnessed without hesitation.
It was a great comfort to be able to begin her obituary, "she passed away at home, surrounded by her family and friends," and her church community believed that she went to meet her Lord in peace.