As you have heard in worship and in earlier website articles, we are working on some innovations in our name tag system. Name tags are important: they improve community life as they make identifying people, remembering names and greeting newcomers easier.
So, the latest name tag order has been placed — for people who didn’t have them; for folks who lost them; for folks whose name tags have broken. (We are also ordering some new magnet parts so that we can repair names tags in the future.)
And we’ve begun asking folks who currently have name tags to turn them in. And people have been complying.
Why turn them in? We are trying to create an easy way to store, distribute and collect them at church. And we need to have an idea how many name tags there are these days.
It’s more complicated than one might think– trying to figure out who wants and wears them (or not). It’s especially tricky trying to figure out how to offer name tags to visitors and newer folks to our community. We want them to feel welcomed and expected back. But we don’t want to rush or pressure them.
We have a plan “hatching” to create two wall cabinets where we keep the name tags, in places that are easy for everyone to pick them up and put them on. And we’re figuring out how to collect them after worship and fellowship hour. We also want to offer visitors temporary name tags…
But we happy to notice that the attention we’ve already drawn to name tags has more people wearing theirs. And we don’t want turning in the name tags to stop that trend.
So, starting this Sunday, and running until we get the name tag wall cabinet finished, we are going to have a table in the lower narthex –by the west flight of stairs up to the sanctuary — with all the name tags laid out in alphabetical groupings by last name.
We ask you to pick up and put your name tag back there on Sundays. If you are going to fellowship hour, you may either put your name tag back on the table in the lower narthex afterwards, or there will also be a basket to throw them in by the social hall exit door.
These are little changes. And maintaining the new system will take a bit more work. But we think the payoff is worthwhile. Relationships are just too important not to invest some more, basic effort in…
