One aspect of being a Revs husband
is that sometimes the other half will share what has gone on at one of the
various meetings she attends.
I think she does this as a form of debriefing to help her think through some of the issues raised.
And of course as part of the conversations at church with others I'll sometimes learn some news. (This often happens when my wife is busy with somebody else or simply at one of her other churches and so people are telling you something for you to pass on as a message.)
So I know about some things because of conversations at meetings I wasn't at. And I know about other things because people have asked me to pass a message on to my wife. (I normally write these the key words from these messages down at the end of the conversation so I can pass them onto my wife accurately.
What is a bit tricky is knowing
- if you know what I mean - what information is in the public domain and what isn't. Now I know that
according to best practice the person telling you the information shouldn't share stuff
they weren't meant to - or should make it clear what information shouldn't be shared with others.
Buts lets face it, people are rarely
that clear in one to one conversations or in discussions in meetings.
I find what helps me deal with all these "what am I meant to know or not meant to know" situations is that fortunately I have a very bad memory unless I write things down.
This is fortunate because - when people have conversations with me starting with words like "Have you heard about xxx" or "What do you think about what happened at the xxx meeting" I can truthfully say I don't remember what that was all about.
I'm useless at remembering names.
But as the wife is a curate people seem to sometimes assume that if she knows their name then so will I.
When you're part of a church community it really does help to be able to call people by their first names. And its far more preferable than "I've forgotten your name" smokescreens like "Hi mate", "Greetings Friend", "Wotcha" and soon on.
Over time I've picked up a couple of tips to help me remember names better ...
1) Always try and use the persons name a couple of times early on in your conversation. For me this seems to help cement their name in my short term memory a bit more.
2) In your minds eye try to associate the person and their name with somebody else you know well.
3) I almost always carry a bit of paper and pen with me so - as soon as I can after a conversation - I scribble down the name and a couple of key facts from the conversation to help me remember them.
4) Then when I get home I enter their name onto a list
with a brief something to help me remember the person. For me this seems to work as long as every
now and then I read through the list and the reminders.
When we moved for my wife's curacy we wee lucky in that the church was having an away weekend in the summer before she started as their curate. So we managed to get along to the weekend which really helped us learn a few names.
In addition at the end of the weekend a group photo was taken. With the churchwardens help my wife was able to write a key underneath the photo of people's names. A quick glance at the photo and it's key every now and then helped us quickly learn people's names.
In fact this worked so well my top tip to church's welcoming new staff would be to take a group photo of the congregation, add people's names and send that to the new staff member a couple of weeks before they start.
