I’ve been thinking a lot about vocabulary just recently. About words and titles and the way sometimes they are helpful, and sometimes – not. I’ll try and explain what I mean. We’ve probably all had experience of ‘job’sworth’ syndrome – encountering a person who has been given a particular task to do and is sticking rigidly to it with no intention of thinking for themselves when challenges arise that are outside normal experience. The person is subsumed by the role they have been given. Their normal decision making powers are somehow hampered by a fear of stepping outside a clearly defined set of boundaries. As a result of the job or title they have been given, they are somehow lessened as a person.
As a manager in the past I’ve also experienced the reverse, where giving someone a new area of responsibility (or a new title which helps define their responsibilities), has stimulated them to greater creativity, clearer motivation and a flowering of their natural talents. They have experienced their job or title as a recognition of their worth, and responded by becoming a more rounded person.
Within churches we often see a clearly defined hierarchy with one person at the top called Vicar or Priest. This title helps us to recognise that this is a person whom we can approach for help, a person with some authority in matters with which the church is concerned – positive. But it might also cause us to begin to abdicate our own responsibilities for one another because we assume that the Vicar is in charge of pastoral matters – negative. So my question is, what’s in a name? Do we need titles within the family of faith? And if so, is it time to rethink what those titles should be, in order that they free people to fulfil their potential, rather than shackling them to a job description?