REV. DIANE QUAINTANCE (Minister, Presbyterian Village Church): And so I invite you to begin to think about your own end of life; your wishes, your hopes, your fears with those whom you love.

NORMA QUARLES: Preparing for a good death -- it's a topic now being discussed from the pulpit.

REV. DIANE QUAINTANCE (Minister, Presbyterian Village Church): Though we don't know when or where or how, death will come to every person. It comes to saint and scoundrel. It comes in the dark of night and the light of day. It comes as a welcome transition to some and as a stunning shock to others.

QUARLES: Ministers such as Diane Quaintance of the Presbyterian Village Church in Kansas City, Missouri, are beginning to talk about death and dying as part of the growing "Compassion Sabbath" movement -- it's a way to tend to the emotional, medical, and spiritual needs of the dying.

Begun two years ago, the goal is to improve end-of-life care in the United States. Groups in 24 states now participate in the program.

The Reverend Charles Beaty was one of the original organizers of Compassion Sabbath. At 34, he has already come to terms with his views on death and dying both as a minister and as a person facing a life-threatening illness.

REV. CHARLES BEATY (International Mission Board): I've got terminal cancer. I could still be going around thinking I was immortal, living that way. But like people in this hospital where I am who are in their eighties and nineties, they're all facing death because it's on their doorstep.

QUARLES: Most of Beaty's time is now spent on spreading the message of Compassion Sabbath.

REV. BEATY: What they need is someone to love, to minister to them into the door of death and to the next life, which is the real life. And, they need someone to help them with that.

QUARLES: The movement grew out of a 1995 study on dying funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

MS. MYRA CHRISTOPHER (CEO and President, Midwest Bioethics Center): What they learned was that people in this country die alone, isolated in intensive care units, on average for 10 days. Those who are conscious, most of them [are] in pain at the time of their death and unable to get appropriate pain treatment. We can manage pain. There is no excuse for that.

QUARLES: The study also found that often patient's wishes, such as their living wills, were being totally ignored. A third of the families studied were financially devastated by heroic but unwanted life support efforts.

Moreover, even clergy admitted that they had been ill-prepared in seminary to deal with death.

REV. KELVIN CALLOWAY (St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church): We had the intuitive feeling that many of our colleagues were not as effective in this ministry as they could be.

QUARLES: Frances Krouse's husband, on life support, has been close to death five times.

MS. FRANCES KROUSE: I have yet to hear a minister ask me, "How are you dealing with this? How is your daughter dealing with this? The family?" What about their grief, what about their care, what about their spirituality?

QUARLES: To reform end-of-life care, the Midwest Bioethics Center, under the direction of Myra Christopher, decided to concentrate on clergy.

BEATY: We as ministers, need to show our congregations that we're very afraid of this, and we're just like them. But that there is a hope that God's gonna be there for them; that they can trust Him to get them through this.

QUARLES: So far, more than 900 clergy have attended Compassion Sabbath workshops in Kansas City.

MS. CHRISTOPHER: Clergy do want to be involved. They are hungry for information. They want to take leadership. And, once they feel confident, then, in fact, the things that they are inspiring their congregations to do are so much more creative and substantive.

QUARLES: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish communities are all participating in Compassion Sabbath.