Thursday, February 24, 2005

what's in a name?!

i'm working on content material for the new hOME website and i've got to the ubiquitous 'Contacts' page. after putting in the usual caveat that this is not a list of who the important people are in the community i have gone on to list people by their functions (please refer back to earlier post about positional/functional leadership and relating that to categories of 'being' as well as 'doing')...Warden, Deacon, Archivist, Artist-in-Residence etc. the problem is that I have no idea what to call myself. i am quite enjoying the fact that it's a problem because perhaps there is some significance in that. perhaps titles have had their day. but i don't want to think of it as a title, more as a description (like the others i've mentioned above). and it is only for things like web sites. i mean no one is going to address me as 'Vicar Matt' etc. But what do i put? 'Pastor' is not going to work for me 'cos pastoral ministry is not my strength area (my wife will back me up on that one) tho I'm getting better. 'Leader' is too vague 'cos actually there are a lot of people in our community who that would apply to. my current favourite, to go with the monastic theme that is an important strand in our community, is 'Abbot' but i think it might be a bit daft. there is some interesting info about the origin and role of an Abbot here. any suggestions? (what an opportunity for those who want to take the bobba!)

2 comments:

Chris said...

At one church I attended during uni, the pastors called themselves 'tour guides' which I thought was rather clever...then just the other day, I saw the same suggestion on Jason Clark's blog here: http://emergent.typepad.com/jasonclark/2005/02/tour_guide.html

but it's just a suggestion, take it or leave it...

Anonymous said...

So the question is what do you see your role as Matt? Perhaps in defining the functions you feel are unique to your role in hOME we can have a stab at putting a label on it? Not sure about "tour guide" in Oxford, could cause all sorts of confusion with the tourists! Are you an "elder" of the community or do you see that as a different role?
Steve