# Membership numbers



## mrplod (Jun 22, 2014)

Greetings Brethren from Alabama,  we are to have our Lodge annual communication on June 23rd and once again due to deaths and snpd our numbers are still dropping?  I was wondering what most Lodges have as numbers of MM's on Lodge roll.  My Lodge, Coosa Valley 929 F&AM Alabama will start out next year with 135 Master Masons on out rolls. 
Fraternal greetings, Brother 
 Steve Greenall.


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## goomba (Jun 22, 2014)

Hello brother!  I live just down the road from you in Rockford.  My lodge is Ware No. 435 we have around 86 MM's on the rolls.


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## Brother JC (Jun 22, 2014)

My NM lodges are very different; one has 200+ MMs, the other has around 50. My CA lodge has 15, with 3 EAs.


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## CTSloan (Jun 22, 2014)

Hello Alabama brothers, I'm from locust fork #481. We have roughly 160 on the roll. Not a bad number for a small community in my opinion. My question to you is how many do you have on regular meeting nights?


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## Zack (Jun 23, 2014)

65 members.  25-40 at meetings.  Some are visitors.


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## Pscyclepath (Jun 23, 2014)

Southwestern Little Rock, AR:  Membership has been hanging steady at around 130 for the past three years.  Average stated meeting attendance is 20-25; 55-60 at the monthly family nights.  Degrees, we pull in anywhere from 35 to 50, counting our traveling brethren.


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## goomba (Jun 23, 2014)

We have between 6-10 show up.


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## CTSloan (Jun 23, 2014)

Zack said:


> 65 members.  25-40 at meetings.  Some are visitors.


That's a pretty good percentage, even with visitors. 



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## CTSloan (Jun 23, 2014)

Pscyclepath said:


> Southwestern Little Rock, AR:  Membership has been hanging steady at around 130 for the past three years.  Average stated meeting attendance is 20-25; 55-60 at the monthly family nights.  Degrees, we pull in anywhere from 35 to 50, counting our traveling brethren.


Pretty good numbers for family night. How many stated meetings do y'all have per month?




goomba said:


> We have between 6-10 show up.


I'm sure it's always the same brothers? Y'all meet twice a month?
We usually have 20-30 at stated meetings and  25-35 at degrees counting visitors. I think the lack of participation of current members is a bigger problem than the numbers on roll dropping. I understand without new members eventually lodges will close but, our current membership needs to be there. I don't know the specifics of why they aren't coming and I understand some work nights, some have kids playing ball ect. What can we do to get our current membership active?


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## pointwithinacircle2 (Jun 23, 2014)

mrplod said:


> I was wondering what most Lodges have as numbers of MM's on Lodge roll.


Masonic Atrophy is just like global warming.  The best opinion that science has to offer is that the world has been getting warmer for 10,000 years.  (No one was complaining about global warming when the leading edge of the glacier was in Indiana!)   The truth is that things change over time.  They always have and they always will.  Man adapts to his enviroment.  The trick is not to panic just because we have never seen the change before in our lifetime.


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## Pscyclepath (Jun 23, 2014)

CTSloan said:


> Pretty good numbers for family night. How many stated meetings do y'all have per month?



Stated meetings, once monthly on the first Thursday.  We also meet every Wednesday and Thursday evening for fellowship and (supposedly) ritual practice & instruction.  Each Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. until around 9:30 or so for coffee and candidate instruction.  Community breakfast at the lodge on each second Saturday.  Rainbow Girls meet every Monday, and Tuesdays belong to the OES.  So there's usually something going on at the lodge every night of the week except Fridays and Sundays.

Family night has traditionally been a potluck meal with the Lodge furnishing a meat dish, but this year we have just slap outgrown what can be managed with potluck, so I prepare a basic meal for ~60 plates - meat, starch, and 2 vegetables - and whatever the folks bring in for potluck is extra...  that way no one goes home hungry or at least unsated.  This month's family nite will feature chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes & gravy, fried okra, butterbeans, and cornbread.  We're known for setting a pretty good table at degrees and meetings; the same guys who cook for the Scottish Rite temple downtown have their home lodge here.


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## CTSloan (Jun 23, 2014)

Y'all are a busy group. 


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## goomba (Jun 23, 2014)

It is the same ones.  The "good" news to that is the majority of us have been Masons for less than 5 years.  There has been two major issues that we are working of fixing.  We currently have a few things in the works that will hopefully help.  If not I'm content with our small numbers.


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## CTSloan (Jun 24, 2014)

goomba said:


> It is the same ones.  The "good" news to that is the majority of us have been Masons for less than 5 years.  There has been two major issues that we are working of fixing.  We currently have a few things in the works that will hopefully help.  If not I'm content with our small numbers.


That is good news. I guess better to have 10 good brothers than 50 card toters. 


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## cemab4y (Jun 24, 2014)

You should check out the membership numbers at

www.msana.com

The Masonic Service Association of North America, keeps the statistics for all Grand Lodges in North America. The membership numbers are reported by each Grand Lodge.

Freemasonry in the USA/Canada hit its peak in the years after WW2, and has been declining ever since.


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## cemab4y (Jun 24, 2014)

see  http://www.msana.com/msastats.asp


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## cemab4y (Jun 24, 2014)

I do not that gentleman.


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## cemab4y (Jun 24, 2014)

cemab4y said:


> I do not know that gentleman.


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## Brother_Steve (Jun 25, 2014)

nj showed an uptick this past year.


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## Levelhead (Jun 25, 2014)

We have about 130 paying members but max 20 show up and usually 10 most of the time. We are close with alot of other lodges so we all help out each other when we can, like if were short chairs for a degree.


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## Brother_Steve (Jun 26, 2014)

Brother_Steve said:


> nj showed an uptick this past year.


Well, since I now re-read the statement, new jersey showed an uptick.

However, we have in our lodge alone 100 members who are on the books but have not yet paid dues for 2013 and 2014. They are about to be dropped.


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## Warrior1256 (Aug 19, 2014)

From what I have been told my lodge here in Kentucky has approx. 80 members but there are far bigger lodges. One that I visit has approx. 350 members.


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## Roy_ (Aug 20, 2014)

Just out of curiosity, but the numbers you all name are for _one_ lodge? Over here (Netherlands) it has long been so that when a lodge reached over 30 members, it split in two. That is about the only reason one city has more than one lodge (of one order). Nowdays there are smaller and larger lodges since new membership is not like it used to, but I do not know larger than, let's say, 40 member lodges in my country.

Now my own (clandestine) lodge has only 11 members (including me and my girlfriend who recently joined, three more initiations soon) which is _really_ small, too small actually, but this is how things go. We currently do not even have enough MM's for all functions, so a little creativity is required. As of now, we have 3 EA's, 3 FC's and 5 MM's.


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## dfreybur (Aug 20, 2014)

In the US before the turn of the 20th century there was a tradition that once a lodge reached 100 members it would "hive" or split to become two lodges.  This is how cities came to have multiple lodges.

In the US around the turn of the 20th century it was noted that larger lodges could have larger budgets and thus could afford better buildings.  There were many magnificent Masonic buildings erected between 1900 and 1930 as a result of this change in tradition.  Very few of these buildings are still in the fraternity but some are.  My mother lodge http://www.pasadenamasoniclodge272.org/ owns one of these magnificent structures.

When there is a debate about quantity versus quality keep in mind how many members it took to be able to build such a building.  Then question whether having such buildings is worth it.  It's not any easy value trade off to justify a stance at either end of the spectrum.

There is also a century long up and down trend in our numbers.  By about 1960 when the builder generation aged out the US Masonic population peaked and started a decline.  Sure enough around 50 years later we are once again seeing enough petitioners to stop shrinking and start growing.  The trend in erecting large buildings did not take this long term trend into account and that's why most of the buildings have been lost to the fraternity.


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## Roy_ (Aug 20, 2014)

Thank you for the information. During WWII over here not only Freemasonry was forbidden by the Germans, but also the possessions of the lodges were forfeited, sometimes destroyed, sometimes returned after the war, but in both cases a new start had to be made.
I don't think we've ever had the size of lodges like you do though. This is also a reason why Freemasonry is much more visible in the streets in the USA than it is over here. Here, almost no large buildings with square and compass on the front or things like that.
Yep, history surely treated us differently.


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## dfreybur (Aug 20, 2014)

Many of us have a Forget-Me-Not pin in our collections remembering the suppression and then reemergence of the gentle craft there.  Maybe you have a prayer that mentions a tree might grow again after being cut down.


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