Masonic quotes by Brothers |
Help Me Maintain OUR Website!!!!!! |
ideas for worshipful mastersby Bro. Chris Hodapp, P.M.
I have received many requests for a copy of the posting I made
on the Indiana Craft
Mailing List.
So here are some of the things we have done over the last few years at Broad
Ripple
Lodge, some of which were started by PGM Roger Van Gorden, our
Master in 2000.
Bear in mind that most of these suggestions are not original.
Let me reiterate: our PMs and general membership have left us alone to have our
way
with the place, and the PMs and older members who regularly
participate have been
totally supportive of us. We have NOT had to deal with sideline
insurrections over
ANYTHING we have tried. I have heard horror stories from other
Masters, and I am
releived to say I have none.
1. ALL Stated Meetings were Table Lodges for a year.
2. Redecorated Lobby and entry area. (Ratty furniture, no art, and accessories
from when
Truman was president make a terrible first impression on
potential new members. If you
think it's ugly, how will a new member see it? If you don't
know, ASK YOUR WIFE!)
3. Landscaped front yard. (Ours was full of rocks and overgrown shrubs.). If
your
building looks tired, unkempt and decayed, what does that say
about Freemasonry to a
potential new member? What does it say about your own pride of
membership?
4. Professionalized look of website and kept it up to date. If a potential
member sees that
your site is dated 1997 and none of the hyperlinks work, they'll
move on.
5. Monthly Trestle Board with photos. Make Lodge look fun, and if they don't
come,
they're missing great experiences.
6. Stopped charging for meals, including Thanksgiving. Catered or convenience
food
rather than the same few brothers chained to the kitchen. They
will burn out.
7. Added stereo system and big screen TV to dining room. (Football and
basketball nights
next year after Craft practice. Make Lodge a place to hang
around in, not eat, meet and
flee)
8. Purchased motorized stairclimbers to assist our older members (we have lots
of steps)
9. Started Masonic Angel Fund for local kids (see our website for details)
10. Made $100 donation to Masonic Home Foundation for every month a member (or
members) died.
11. Poinsettias hand delivered to Lodge Widows at Christmastime by Master.
They'll
love you forever. Get them on your side and their grandson may
join.
12. Started Annual Chili Cook-Off with permanent trophy at Lodge. The noisier
the
rivalry gets, the better. Encourage outlandish claims and
bragging rights...
13. Presented Lifetime Achievement Award to older member 64 years a Mason who
comes to every meeting and degree. These men built our Lodges.
Acknowledge their
achievements publicly.
14. Insisted on post-meeting gathering at local tavern for members, spouses,
friends. Do
NOT hang out in the parking lot of the Lodge bitching after
meetings. That's not how to
forge new friendships.
15. Regular dialogue with OES Matron. Kept them involved in our public events.
16. Sought out degree help from other Lodges. Liberal use of honorary
memberships for
regular visiting helpers.
17. If you are a young Master who does not know all ritual for all degrees,
learn ONE of
them well, and have your Wardens do the same for the other two.
Performing a smaller
number of parts well is more important than stumbling through
many of them badly. Do
NOT get pressured into doing more than you are able by the
18. Joint Lodge picnic with other Lodges
19. Let a Lodge from a Temple that goes dark in summer hold Craft practice at
our place.
Joined in with them.
20. Dramatically expanded library. Write book reviews of new ones and promote it
in
your Trestle Board.
21. Started book exchange open to everyone in Lodge family. Bookshelf in the
dining
room.
22. Officers chairs left empty for two years rather than push new members into
them
immediately.
23. Make sure Lodge name is seen out in the community. Business cards, pins,
jackets
with S&C and Lodge name, who to contact for info on door of
Lodge along with web
address. If the building is closed, how will a new man find
someone to ask?
24. Extend invitations to Prince Hall Lodges for visits. Current leadership
within Prince
Hall Masonry in Indiana requires that the PHA Lodge get
permission to visit from their
Grand master, so check with the Master of the PHA Lodge you
contact for their latest
rulings on this matter. In 2004, we assisted a group of PHA
lodges with their annual
Thanksgiving Dinner for the poor, and in 2005, we made Indiana
Masonic history by
conferring the Master Mason degree on two Prince Hall
candidates.
25. Always keep petitions in your car. Let me say that again: Always keep
petitions in
your car.
26. If 200 members stay away, get new ones who won't! If only seven show up,
have fun
with each other.
27. Made up a new member's notebook, containing:
28. Freemasonry IS NOT RITUAL. If you can do all parts flawlessly, yet never
have
candidates and no one comes to meetings, how will the ritual
save your Lodge?
29. Plan with your Wardens so there is continuity for years to come - stop
reinventing the
wheel every year. Do NOT hide good ideas from your Master so you
can claim victory
during your year. Do NOT pass on problems to the next Master.
Solve them now!
One thing we shamelessly cribbed from another Lodge was to make the three newest
members of the Lodge the Junior Warden's Committee, making them
responsible for food
and cleanup, in association with the Stewards. It rotates as you
get new men in, instead of
saddling the Stewards with the job for an entire year. If they
like doing it, it develops
camaraderie among the new guys. If they hate doing it, it
encourages them to go out a get
a new man to join. Our guys jumped in with vigor and tout
themselves as the KFC (Knife
and Fork Committee). They now meet together on Friday nights at
area restaurants, and
are promising restaurant reviews for the newsletter. Believing
there are no small parts,
only small actors, they have padded their parts and are having a
ball. Be sure to buy them
a knife and fork Mason tie clip.
Masonry isn't just about food. These guys want knowledge, information,
and
STUFF! They are proud of their membership. They want medals,
aprons, regalia,
certificates, books, jewelry... Ours is a Craft with a long
heritage, and they WANT things
that will make their friends and family envious and - more
important - curious about
Masonry too. That's what first made THEM notice us to begin
with. Don't think it's
shallow to interest potential new members with a "made you look"
brashness. Rings,
jackets, license plates - all of these things attract attention
and at least nudge men into
asking what it's all about. Remember, I said INTEREST new
members. It's up to your
Lodge to get them through their degrees and keep them interested
after that. The point is,
they want their friends to join with them, and the "stuff" might
get those friends to at least
ask.
Upon raising, we give a new Master Mason a S&C lapel pin, a commemorative pin
for
our Lodge, an engraved pocket name badge, and a boxed set of
miniature working tools.
For a year on Masonic 'birthdays' we also passed out a small, brass trowel.
These things
don't cost much, but go a long way towards making a man feel
that the Lodge is
immediately investing in them.
I became an Entered Apprentice in November 1998, and was raised in March 1999.
So it
was with no little terror that I found myself installed in the
East for the year 2001. We
had lost 5 officers from the Line in 1999 for a variety of
circumstances. A wise Past
Master agreed to step in at the VERY last minute to be Master
that year, but as 2000
wound to a close, the sentiment was that we should look into
selling our building and
closing, moving or merging. We were lucky to have seven guys
come to Stated Meetings
and we did virtually no degree work that year.
The most important thing our outgoing Master taught me was to stop dwelling on
the
numbers game. Our Lodge has regular income, a paid-for building
and some assets. If
220 members never set foot in the place, didn't participate,
didn't communicate, IT
DIDN'T MATTER. If some of the officer's chairs went unfilled, IT
DIDN'T MATTER.
What DID matter was that the little group of Masons who DID come
had a good time
with each other. We held every Stated Meeting as a Table Lodge,
paid our bills, always
had a great meal (paid for by the Lodge - no hat passing), maybe
had a guest speaker,
voted money to charities, and had a couple of hours of true
fellowship. THAT was what
was important. A year ago, we had seven guys who truly liked
each other's company,
who got along, who cared about what was going on in each other's
lives, and maybe went
for a beer afterwards. And the other 200 members were paying for
us to have a great time
and practice Freemasonry. What a deal!
My year, we raised eight men, all under 40 (and most under 30), had two more
being
voted on, three transferring in from out of state lodges, and
more petitions on the way.
Sure, we still need the help of brothers from other Lodges to
help us put on degrees, but
they come if we ask, and they have a good time with us. They
come to our Lodge because
we have new candidates all the time now, and why just practice
when you can be
conferring a degree?
We redecorated to make sure our Lodge no longer looks and smells like Grandma's
front
parlor. We had picnics and dinners and cook offs and events with
other Lodges. We've
tried hard to let young men know that their input is welcome and
that we will change our
activities to reflect what THEY want out of Lodge, instead of
demanding that we adhere
to the same annual events planned during the Coolidge
Administration. We publish a
monthly newsletter that doesn't look like it was surreptitiously
Xeroxed after hours at
work. In it, we thank those brothers who have helped or showed
up or contributed
because people like to see their name in print and like to be
acknowledged for doing a
good job. We try to keep our website up to date and looking
fresh and professional, and it
has become the electronic front door that so many of our newest
members first knocked
on. Those new members are enthusiastic and want to dive right
into our activities and
degree work - and we encourage them. They are telling their
friends about Lodge and
some of those friends are asking for petitions. And our
post-meeting gatherings at the
local watering hole have gotten larger and last a lot longer
now.
My Senior Warden and I were too new at this to know the "way it's always been
done in
past" so we were willing to try whatever works. And guess what?
Those same 200
members still stay home, don't participate, and don't
communicate. But then, they didn't
show up at meetings to vote down big expenditures, or veto
by-law changes, or stop us
from starting a Masonic Angel Fund, or any of the other things
we did my year that I was
told would cause heart attacks within the membership. So, those
same 200 guys are now
paying for 15 or 20 of us to have a good time. We had a full
officer's line the next year,
and some disappointed men who we didn't have chairs for. I don't
know if we have truly
turned our Lodge around in the long term - only time will tell.
But it's a far cry from the
year before, and no one is talking about selling our building
now.
Before I became Master, I was privately told to take my time, rock no boats,
hide good
ideas from the Master ahead of me, pass problems along to the
Warden behind me, just
learn my ritual, read my Blue Book rules, and I'd get along just
fine. Otherwise, I risked
insurrection and eternal damnation from the Old Guard. I was
just too stupid to listen. As
a Mason I may have been wet behind the ears, but I was smart
enough to know that the
only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
The ultimate point I'm making is that if you are disappointed by your Lodge and
it is not
living up to the lofty goals of the fraternity you thought you
joined (as I morosely thought
just a year ago), GET IN THERE AND CHANGE IT. Be the Master of
your Lodge. Lead
with a vision and MAKE IT STICK. If you enrage a lineup of
cranky Past Masters who
are forcing your lodge to remain mired in the 19th century, what
will they do? If you are
afraid your lodge is shrinking and failing at its mission, yet
you allow "buzzard's row" to
keep you going down that same path year after year, you are
doing a great disservice to
your Lodge and those men who built it to begin with. The men who
started your Lodge
had ideas and strength and they were the leaders of your
community. If they saw their
Lodge losing members and failing now, I promise you they would
not be complacent.
They would try everything they could.
They would be Builders, Masters of their Craft. They would give their workmen
good
and wholesome instruction for their labor. Accept no less from
yourself.
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