When you arrive at our church on Sunday’s you are greeted by some fantastic members of our team who offer you a name tag. You can opt out of this experience … but our hope is that the majority of our people at our services will decide to get a name tag.

I put providing name tags in category of “some times people don’t know what’s best for them.” I lead a church in New Jersey … not exactly known for it’s sunny personality. 😉 We have a fair number of people that opt out this experience but we continue to offer it because we think it’s important for our people to know names! In John 10:3, Jesus describes the Good Shepherd as one that “…calls his own sheep by name…” That’s not a random fact … names are important for identifying the story of how God is at work in your life. How can we minister to people if we don’t know their names? It’s critically important that we help our people with this first step of getting to know each other. Here are five other reasons it’s important to encourage name tags in your church …

• Guest Oriented // People want to be known. I know that there is a school of thought that says that people want to be totally anonymous when they arrive at church. The dangerous application of this belief is that we go out of way to make it hard for people to connect. We want to give people space to control their experience with our church but we want to meet them when them are ready to connect. The first step to getting connected is by allowing a nice member of our team to make up a name tag. 
• It’s an Invitation to Talk // The implicated in the name tag is an invitation to talk with other people. Our hope is that when people come to church that they connect with the community … the goal is to get people talking to each other!  People love to hear their own name … it’s the sweetest word they hear all day. By offering name tags we are multiplying out lots of great conversations in church. What a positive emotion to associate with our church!
• Creates Service Opportunities // In order to make name tags for large crowds you need a lot of people ready to make them up. This creates more service opportunities … more service opportunities means more people connected to the church!
• Helpful for Your Team // Let’s be honest … you can remember maybe 200 people’s names when you see their faces but you can probably remember stuff about 1,500 people when given their face and name. (Think about Facebook … the fact that you see people’s names and faces boosts your recall about the details of other people’s lives big time!) The name tag helps your team remember a little bit more about your people by just giving them a little bit of information about your guests.
• It’s Not About You … // Name tags by definition are about the other people around us not ourselves. It’s a declaration that I’m not the center of this universe … that I acknowledge that everyone doesn’t know me … that I’m not that big of a deal. When we put on a name tag we are serving other people who might feel uncomfortable coming up to me.