Live, never recorded
Two full days live via Zoom with a facilitator present throughout, capped at ten participants so everyone presents and everyone is heard. Join from anywhere. There is no travel.
Certified Funeral Celebrant Training
When the story is too hard to tell,
When the story is too hard to tell,
we train the people who will.
Two days of live training and certification, on Zoom. For people across Canada and the United States who guide families through celebrations of life.
A certification of Life Celebrations Academy
Formerly the Certified Celebrants Association of Canada. Same people, same standard.
Why this training
Taught by people who did one last week
Our facilitators are working celebrants, not lecturers. The material comes out of thousands of services, and it is built for the family sitting in the front row.
You do the job, not watch it
You hear a life told once, write the eulogy overnight, and deliver it to the group on day two. No one leaves without having done it for real.
Support after the course
Certification is the beginning. Members keep access to resources, a private community, and the people who trained them.
What a celebrant does
You are a storyteller
A family knows their loved one better than anyone. What they cannot do is stand up days after losing them and tell that story well. The words are there, and grief takes them away.
So they ask someone else. A celebrant listens closely enough to find who their loved one really was, and tells that story for them.
It is careful work and it carries real weight, and it can be learned.
Why we built this
A note from Wayne
For most of the last century, no one had to think about this. A death happened and a sequence began. The church supplied the meaning, the clergy supplied the words, the funeral home supplied the shape. A family supplied a signature.
That arrangement has gone. Congregations are closing. Clergy are unavailable to people who are not members. And nearly four in five Canadian families now choose cremation, which removes the last thing that forced a date, a venue and a shape.
What is left is a family holding an urn and a question no one prepared them to answer. Often the answer is nothing. No one decides against a service. The decision simply never gets made.
Rosanne and I have led over two thousand funerals across more than forty years. My grandfather owned Prevett Funeral Home, so this is the third generation of my family in this work.
The first time we offered to lead a funeral, we were told the home had plenty of retired clergy they could call. That was the industry’s reflex, and it worked, because there were plenty. No one says it now.
We used to navigate death by product and place. What is left is the person. That is the gap. What is missing is the one thing a family cannot buy.
So we train celebrants. We are not after more of them. We want better prepared ones.
Wayne Prevett
Executive Life Celebration Coach
The heart of the course
The Eulogy Project
On the Saturday you hear the story of a young man, told out loud the way a family tells it. On the Sunday you deliver his eulogy to the group, and we work through it together.
Ten people build something different from the same story, and that is what people remember.
Last week I facilitated funeral number 100 on my list. Some families call me back because they want me for the next loved one who passes. After a full life as a church musician and funeral home office assistant, I am in the career that makes me complete.
Nola Wilson · certified 2016
Our mission
We equip, empower and encourage passionate people to represent and guide families through meaningful celebrations of life.
Led by
Wayne & Rosanne Prevett
Between them, more than 7,000 life celebrations, over 2,000 of them funerals, and more than 2,000 celebrants trained and certified.
Where this sits
Part of Life Celebrations Academy
The Certified Celebrants Association is one of the certifications of Life Celebrations Academy, the training body founded by Wayne and Rosanne Prevett. Funeral celebrancy is what we certify here. The Academy also trains wedding officiants and new life celebrants, and holds the wider body of resources, field guides and continuing training.
And after that first year
Your certificate makes you a celebrant. Other celebrants are what keep you going.
Your first year includes a eulogy review, because the first year is the hard one. After that, it continues through the Crossroads, the membership at Life Celebrations Academy, where the people who were in the room with you carry on.
It is also where you will find everything else the Academy offers.
Reviews of your actual work
Two full ceremony reviews a year on top of the eulogy review. Send a video of yourself leading a service and get it back with honest, specific notes.
The wider Academy library
Beyond your own celebrant library, you get the field guides, the material for weddings and new life celebrations, and three books read in full.
An hour with Wayne, once a year
One to one, on whatever you are actually stuck on rather than a set curriculum.
Certified Celebrants pay 25% less. Your certification earns you a standing discount on Crossroads membership, for as long as you hold it. The code comes with your certificate.
Ready to begin?
Courses are capped at ten participants and fill in advance.