Name Tags

  I was at a meeting the other night where the suggestion was made that to make the church more welcoming to visitors we all should wear name tags. Every person who regularly attends on Sunday would wear a name tag, and that makes visitors (non-name tag wearers) easier to spot. It also helps us become re-acquainted with those people who have attended the church forever with us, but whom we don't really know.

  As I silently sat at the meeting, all I could think was this is a cheap copout. We're pretending to know people whom we really don't know. Our name is something unique to us and cannot be severed from our personal stories. Our first name holds the story of our life - with its trials, ambitions, and wonderful moments. Our sir name tells an even longer story of our heritage and family. Our nicknames tell of those private and sometimes embarrassing, but always intimate moments. But to wear a name tag skips right over all of that. It allows us to approach someone on a surface level without any intention to get to know them, to hear their story. I think we have enough of that type of shallowness in our society.

   For example: When I was at the installation ceremony for a friend of the family who was becoming a DS, we all had to wear name tags. After a while of brooding over the hated tag, I forgot about it. Until it came to the end of the service for communion and a time of meet and greet. At the alter rail the pastor serving the elements leaned over and addressed me by name. I freaked out and couldn't figure out how this person knew me, until I remembered the tag. The same things happened at the meet and greet, where instead of people asking my name and trying to get to know me, they just looked at my name tag and glossed right over any attempt for connection. 

   We live in a society where we desire everything to be easy, including getting to know people. But there is a process, that begins with asking people their name and inches forward into more intimate areas. It's a long process. Honestly, even with my closest friends, I'm still getting to know them, and there are things that I learn about my family that are new just about every day. Yet, we try to circumvent this process in the church with a name tag. Is there any hope for intimacy if we aren't willing to take the time, even to introduce ourselves and ask someone their name?