Has any of the following ever happened to you at St. Theodore’s?

You see somebody who recognizes you by name and you are embarrassed because you don’t recall his or her name.

You see people at church who have been there “forever,” but you only wave and smile because you can’t remember their names.

You see somebody who you think may be new…but no maybe they are just from a different service and you don’t want to be embarrassed by asking if they are a visitor.

You attend a different service and actually feel like a stranger in your own parish.

Well great news!

The “Name Game” has officially ended at our parish. One of our key objectives at St. Theodore’s is to be an inviting and welcoming church.

It’s really hard to accomplish this level of fellowship if we don’t know each other’s name and let that be a barrier to getting to know each other. Just as important it is impossible to welcome visitors to our church if we don’t even know they are visitors.

How do we accomplish this you ask? Well we aren’t going to ask anyone to memorize the picture directory. It’s really simple. We are all going to have our own “specialized” St. Theodore’s name badges. These name badges already have your name on them.

The vestry asks that when you come to church you get your name badge from the wall unit in the hallway between the narthex and Pengelly Hall and put them on. Before leaving church we ask that you return your badge to the pre-labeled spot on the wall unit. It’s that simple.

You don’t have to remember to bring it from home. It will always be at church waiting on you. We will also have “visitor” badges so we can identify who is visiting us each week.

Hopefully they will be happy to wear a badge when they see everyone else in the parish has one on as well.

When will this program start? It has started…. look for your name badges next time you come to church and wear them proudly.

Take this opportunity to go up and shake hands with your fellow parishioners because now you are on a first name basis with all of them.

The vestry would like to extend a very special thank you to Larry Hartman who graciously agreed to build our wall rack. When you see Larry please thank him.

Also a very special thanks to Lana McDonald and Harriett Neer who labeled our rack and created all the name tags.

Your Vestry