Convener · Timekeeper · Connector · Relationship Development

Four functions a gathering usually needs, held lightly and rotated: someone who holds the container, someone who protects the pacing, someone who links outward, someone who brings in what the body will need.

A Circle needs no hierarchy and does benefit from knowing who is doing what. These four are named alongside the Scribe as the functions that most often want a name, and each is described by its verb rather than by any standing it confers.

Convener — holds, opens and closes the meeting container. Not the leader and not the chair: the one who makes sure the gathering begins, that it begins as itself rather than as a drift of arrivals, and that it ends rather than dissolves (Host, The Turn, Seal the Circle).

Timekeeper — protects pacing. The least glamorous and among the most protective. Without it a gathering spends its energy on whatever came first and closes on whatever nobody had time for, which over a season silently determines what the body works on (Critically Effective Time Limit, Honesty about time, Attend To The Most Important Things First).

Connector — links with other Circles and carries the flame outward. This is the role that keeps a body from becoming an island: it knows what the neighbours are doing, and it is where passing the flame stops being an aspiration and becomes somebody's actual attention (Pass The Flame, The Board, Midwife a New Circle, Islands of Coherence).

Relationship Development — develops new relationships, resources and opportunities on the Circle's behalf. The outward-facing complement to the Connector: where that one weaves with kin, this one meets strangers (Resource the Work, Ask for Help, Fostering Ecosystemic Resource Flows, Sponsorship).

The discipline attached is one line and governs all four: roles exist to serve the Circle functionally, not to confer status. They rotate seasonally. They are offered as archetypes a gathering may draw on rather than as posts to be filled, and a Cell does not need one of each (Roles, Term Limits And Rotation, Servant Leadership).

Two rosters are live in the canon and they are not the same four. The Game's ordinary run of a Cell names two hosts for the season, a Keeper of the record, a Scribe, and a Carrier for each new Cell planted; the Circle Guide names these. They overlap at the Scribe, and the Guide's Connector and the Game's Carrier are close cousins.

Also called: the Circle Guide's roles · roles lightly held Stands on: Roles · Servant Leadership · Cell · Term Limits And Rotation Opens onto: Host · Keeper · Scribe · Carrier · The Two-Coordinator Rhythm · The Turn · Pass The Flame · Resource the Work · The Board · Recognitions Are Not Titles To Be Sought In play: the table — named after a few weeks of play, not on the first day Sources: The LIØNSBERG Circle Guide, §Roles (Lightly Held), held within The LIØNSBERG Playbook (unmarked; five roles and the one discipline) · Play — Choose and Rotate Roles (first-season vintage) · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Circle Guide Open: Two role rosters run in the canon — this one and the Game's hosts, Keeper, Scribe and Carrier — and no page reconciles them. · The Guide gives no handover form, and a role held lightly still has to be put down in a way the next holder can pick up.