# Boring Our Members To Death



## MasterBulldawg (Feb 2, 2014)

This was sent to me and it makes for a good discussion:


*New post on 11th & 12th Districts Masonic Association*
















*Boring Our Members To Death*

by MA1112-Secretary 

*By Christopher Hodapp
 author of Freemasons for Dummies*

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
_The Spirit was immovable as ever._
-Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Sit down and chat for about ten minutes with an insurance agent, and let him quote you chapter and verse about the death rate among the World War II generation. Okay, I'll grant you, there's a certain ghoulish aspect to it. I'm bringing it up because, like Scrooge's portentous Spectre, Freemasons have spent the last fifteen years pointing an empty sleeve at the grave, and blaming our declining membership numbers on the four-million Masons who were members during our boom years, who have had the very bad timing to pass on to the Celestial Lodge Above in record waves over the last dozen or so years.
Once you're sufficiently bored by your insurance guy, give your Grand Secretary a call and ask him how the numbers compare between the death rate of members every year, versus the losses from demits and non-payment of dues. Prepare yourself for a shock. In most jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, the losses of members from deaths has been statistically tapering off, while the losses due to Freemasons walking away from the fraternity have been rising at an alarming rate. Oh, we're initiating a very healthy dose of new Masons every year all right. But men whom we have initiated, passed and raised are deciding in increasing numbers to say no thanks to what their local lodge offers. Masonic membership rolls are still dropping, but not from natural causes. The truth is, we are boring our members to death.
It has long been understood that the Baby Boom generation didn't join the Masons. As a result, there is a five-decade difference between the generation of men who kept Freemasonry alive for us and the men who are now moving into leadership positions throughout the fraternity. At any other time in the history of Freemasonry, each succeeding generation came along approximately in twenty-five year intervals, making changes in their lodges, and in Freemasonry as a whole, to reflect their needs and desires. Masonry has always adapted to serve the societies in which it resided. Until recently. Now, instead of a twenty-five year adjustment in direction, Freemasonry is suffering from fifty years of habit and hardening of the arteries.
Not long ago, I visited a lodge that had fallen on hard times - very hard times indeed. At one time, their rolls held the names of more than 1800 members. Today, they are down to 200. That's not an unusual state of affairs for a fraternity that artificially swelled in size after World War II, but for men who see success and failure only in the narrow terms of numerical statistics, it is an emergency of epic proportions. There were members in that lodge who remember those heady days like they were yesterday. They remember the degree nights with 150 Masons on the sidelines. They remember the dances, and the Christmas parties, and the big group trips. They remember the dinners when the dining hall was packed to the rafters, with their kids running up and down the room, while some successful member from the civic or business world tried to give a speech. They look on those days fondly, and are bewildered by the fact that no more than eight members show up for the average meeting today. They'd had no candidates in four years, and they literally begged their members to come and participate. No one did.
The men who kept that lodge barely alive tried to do things the way they have been done when most of them joined a half century ago. The same eight men met for a meager meal before their monthly meeting. They opened lodge with perfect ritual. They read the minutes and the bills. There was rarely any business, new or old. They closed and fled the building, and were home by 7:30, before prime-time network programming got started for the night. Over the last five years, the same eight members have been trading officers' positions, and they just got tired. They were fed up. So, they decided to merge with another lodge and be done with it.
As with any turning point of this magnitude, all 200-plus members had to be notified of the meeting. Only twelve cared enough to show up to vote to euthanize their lodge. They had no fight in them to save their lodge. They wanted to simply slip into the ranks of another, give up their charter and their 140-year history, and vanish from memory. They had killed their own lodge with their own failure to embrace any change, and in fact, many of them were enraged that some brethren from outside of their lodge had come in to try to resurrect them at the eleventh hour and interfere with their plans for a quiet suicide.
They didn't do anything to appeal to new members. But neither were they serving their existing ones. They weren't broke. These were children of the Depression. They had almost $200,000 in the bank. So why did they do nothing to interest their aging members? Bus trips to Branson. $100 cruises to the Caribbean. Casino boat trips. Tours to Masonic sites in Britain. Trips to the Holy Land. Catered dinners. Sponsored movie nights. Loads of public awards. Medicare drug program presentations. Estate planning seminars. Computers at lodge to send emails to the grand kids. Power-chair races in the halls. In short, give their existing members a reason to keep coming to lodge, to keep enjoying it, to love it.
Neither did they do anything to attract new members. They rent the lodge room in the big downtown Temple building, so like most tenant/landlord relationships, they figured they didn't have to put a dime into the place if they didn't own it. That's somebody else's job. Really? If only they had tried investing in their lodge. Put in new lighting so members could see three feet in front of them. Upholster the sad looking chairs and benches that have the original leather from World War I on them. Tear up the worn and moldy carpet and replace it - maybe with one of the only black and white checked carpets in the U.S. that we talk about in our ritual but almost nobody seems to have. In short, make it look like something worth coming to. Make it look like something worth joining.
Then start kicking the members into participating in lodge - not worrying about who was going to be what officer or memorize which part of the ritual. Actually talk about Freemasonry, its history, its symbolism, its philosophy. Actively visit other lodges and help with their degrees. Get members interested in other activities in the building, or volunteering to help some of the community groups that have been meeting there with greater frequency. We talk a big line about charity and helping the community, so let's start giving time, and not just checkbook generosity. And if they still didn't have a full lineup of guys willing to be officers, just sideliners, it wouldn't matter.
Because, once the place looked like living inhabitants occasionally might be in the place, and that it was actually a vibrant, active lodge, maybe, just maybe, some of their grandkids might get interested in Freemasonry, because they were seeing Freemasonry in action, instead of Freemasonry inaction. The business author James O'Toole says, "People who do not think well of themselves do not act to change their condition." Even a lodge that only has eight regular attendees has within its active ranks the resources to wake itself up, to do things that make them truly happy to be there, and sometimes to even surprise themselves.
Leadership has no age, and there are no limits on imagination. But a lodge has to mean something to its members. It has to remain part of their lives, every day, every week, every month. Because once it's more fun, or less hassle, to stay squeezed comfortably in the LaZBoy, curled up with a remote control, than it is to go to lodge, we have lost them. No one would ever voluntarily join a memorization club, and no one wants to join the oldest, greatest, most legendary fraternal organization in the world, only to be sentenced to a lifetime of cold cut sandwiches made with suspicious meat, generic cola, and monthly meetings of nothing but minute-reading, bill-paying and petulant sniveling over why no one comes to meetings anymore. Be honest with yourself. What rational human being seriously wants to go to the trouble of leaving home to go and listen to someone spend twenty minutes reporting that nothing happened at last month's meeting either?
It will be the lodges that provide programming for their active members - whatever their age may be - that will survive and prosper into the future. But those that stubbornly cling to the notion that lodge is no event, that lodge is just one more meeting to be borne, that lodge is that most terrible of things, Ordinary - those are the lodges that will literally bore themselves to death. Those are the lodges that will slip silently away in the night. And the shadows of things that Might Be will have faded into the concrete Reality of a deserted lodge room.
_"Ghost of the Future!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company, and do it with a thankful heart_


----------



## Companion Joe (Feb 2, 2014)

Numbers don't scare me. I'd rather have 20 men who want BE Masons than 200 who want to be CALLED Masons. The only reason numbers are an issue is money when the Grand Lodge sticks its hand out. I would dearly love to see a hundred members out every time the door is unlocked. That would be awesome. But as far as I am concerned, at least within my lifetime, as long as I have two others willing to meet as Masons, my Lodge will be OK. I truthfully am encouraged. In 2013, we actually netted a push in terms members gained/lost. So far in 2014, we have two new Master Masons; we have two ready for their FC degree, 5 to be balloted on for their EAs; and one (at least) petition to be read at the next stated meeting.

Just last night, I was talking to a past Grand Master. We were looking at a Life Magazine cover from 1956 (see below) where all the Grand Masters were pictured on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He said, "That's when Masons were respected in this country. We need to back there." I hope we do and will do everything I can to make it so. But, I honestly don't know - in today's world - how to make it happen. If someone has suggestions, I am listening.


----------



## dfreybur (Feb 3, 2014)

Companion Joe said:


> Just last night, I was talking to a past Grand Master. We were looking at a Life Magazine cover from 1956 (see below) where all the Grand Masters were pictured on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He said, "That's when Masons were respected in this country. We need to back there."



That's on the wall in one of my lodges.



> I hope we do and will do everything I can to make it so. But, I honestly don't know - in today's world - how to make it happen. If someone has suggestions, I am listening.



Ask every new petitioner what they want.  There are lodges will full degree calendars.  Ask them what they do and how they went about achieving it.  Gather the data and act on the data.

Young brothers want a wide variety of stuff.  Some come for the history - Do that or these brothers leave for the Scottish Rite or NPD.  Others come for social events - Do that or these brothers leave for the Shrine or NPD.  The list is long.  When several young guys want something consider becoming a lodge that specializes in that.


----------



## Bro Darren (Feb 3, 2014)

With the influx of misinformation at everyone's fingertips you find more people petitioning to become members of the infamous shadow government that some believe that we are. 

I'd love to see the numbers of new initiates that become Master Masons and then fall out not long after when they find out that we are not these things that they were expecting. 

Is it a bad thing, that these new members don't last? I'd say not!

It's far better to have a lodge with 20 or more serious Masons than a lodge filled with brothers seeking misguided journeys. A lodge filled with serious Masons will be the foundation of a strong future. 




Sent From My Freemasonry Pro App


----------



## goomba (Feb 3, 2014)

I am reading this paper at an upcoming lodge meeting.


----------



## rfuller (Feb 3, 2014)

When I joined my lodge with my best friend, I was 21.  Including me and best friend, there were a total of 5 regularly attending brethren under 40.  10 years later we only have 5 or 10 regularly attending brethren over 40.  A lot has changed at my lodge in the last 10 years.  We're not scaring off the older brothers.  They're dying off, moving off, going into nursing homes.  The 5 of us younger members showed up just in time.  Right now there are only two brothers in the line over 35.  Our current WM is my best friend that I joined with.  He's 32.  We're a really young lodge. Right now we have 5 EA's with 3 more on the way next month.  (That's a lot for a smallish lodge with about 20-30 regularly attending meetings.)

So let me tell you what we're doing.  The younger brothers have been there long enough to understand what's going on.  They've formed their own opinions.  We started working our way into leadership and we're making changes.  We don't do short cuts.  One of the things the older generation thought we might want was 1 day classes.  We (the millennials) are the microwave generation after all.  I understand the thinking, we seem to want everything right now and don't want to do much work to get it.  We've got Google and Wikipedia at our finger tips.  There was this thinking that if we could short cut masonry we could get our numbers up again.  Well, the problem was that the millennials wanted a break from all that nonsense and craved a place where we could slow down and actually spend some time growing.  You see, we're also Postmodern. 

Modernism embraced the zeitgeist and threw the baby out with the bath water.  If it wasn't cutting edge, it was considered junk.  Everyone was so consumed with moving toward the future and creating the world of tomorrow today.  But when they did that, they lost a lot of great things.  Keep in mind, my notion of postmodern is heavily influenced by my background in Architecture and my Postmodern Christian Theology.  But the premise of both are similar.  In postmodernism we stopped, we looked around at what we were left with and realized that the future we created wasn't the Utopia we thought it was.  In fact we lost a lot when we were trying to rid ourselves of the old.  Mies van der Rohe said "Less is more." But Robert Venturi said "Less is a bore." 

In both Architecture and Religion postmodernists went back before modernism.  We looked back to see what we lost.  What value did we inadvertently throw out?  Philip Johnson broke from the modern glass sky scraper by putting a pediment on top of the AT&T building in New York.  Post Modern Christianity brought back the hymnal.  While Johnson's AT&T building was borrowing from Greek and Roman architecture, you would hardly call it neo classical.  It was still a sky scraper.  And while every 25 year old in church suddenly knows all the words to "Come Thou Fount" for the first time in 200 years, I don't think Robert Robinson had David Crowder's shaky voice or acoustic guitar in mind when he penned it in 1757.  The point I'm trying to make with all this is that we are looking to the past to find value, but also using those lessons we find in the context of the 21st century.  There's a huge resurgence of artisan goods with the Hipster community.  People my age don't want a new schwinn bike.  They want a hand made street cruiser with hand stitched leather seat and beer holder on it made from local, organic, renewable wood. 

We like the "throwback" but we still want a contemporary twist on it.  And the same is true for Masonry.  We don't want watered down Masonry.  We want full form lectures.  We want education at our meetings, not just the minutes from last month and treasurer's report.  We want to discuss allegory and history.  We want artisan Masonry.  Masonry that takes an extravagant amount of time and dedication.  I don't shave with some Gillette foam I put up off the shelf at WalMart.  I use hand crafted shave soap and a boar bristle brush, both made locally by hand.  And the same is especially true for Masonry.  With something so deep, woven so heavily throughout history, with so much to learn, we deserve more than just a one day class or a ham sandwich and a dixie cup of Sam'sClub Cola before we go listen to the minutes from last month's meetings before we haul ass out of there as quickly as possible.  There's so much more to Masonry that just the degrees.  Masonic education doesn't end when you turn in your Master's Proficiency.  That's just the beginning. 

My lodge is actually starting to act like it.


----------



## JohnnyFlotsam (Feb 4, 2014)

rfuller said:


> My lodge is actually starting to act like it.



:14:
This is just... cool. You guys are definitely doing something right. Keep up the good work.


----------



## Companion Joe (Feb 4, 2014)

I am feeling good about this year. I just got back from our stated meeting.

We read three new petitions tonight.
We set two EAs for next Tuesday.
We set three EAs the following Tuesday.
We set two FCs the Tuesday after that.
The Tuesday after that will be state meeting again where we will vote on the three new petitions.

That's a total of 10 new guys in the pipeline in addition to the two MM we have already brought in this year, and it's just Feb. 4! If we can round up some some of the stragglers who haven't finished their degrees, this could be a year that throws back to the 50s-60s.


----------



## JJones (Feb 4, 2014)

rfuller, that sounds amazing! Keep up the good work.


----------



## Andrew Bruskin (Dec 6, 2015)

MasterBulldawg said:


> This was sent to me and it makes for a good discussion:
> 
> 
> *New post on 11th & 12th Districts Masonic Association*
> ...



The problem with American Masonry today is that it is not appealing to the majority of the population.

For instance, many people are struggling to find work and pay the bills.  Why isn't Masonry at the forefront of this, trying to solve this problem?  In my city, a lot of people and families are homeless.  Why isn't masonry connecting with community leaders and make a prominent impact?

Instead, masonry as a whole sits on the sidelines.  We have four hour meetings that essentially discusses lodge business and brings brothers in.  When new members discover that masonry is about constant ritual work and little else, they run away and stop paying their dues.  In fact, 85 percent of membership losses is from members who have left the fraternity.  

Why are they leaving?  They are bored!  Many have families and job commitments .  But they determine that the money and time they are giving to the fraternity is not worth it.

I'm telling you the bare reality, my brothers.  Lodge needs to become much more than initiation factories.  It needs to be the forefront leader of the community. There should be influential speakers, trips for members and fundraisers, fun enough where one can take family and friends.  

No lodge should ever be a business meeting.  Sadly, that's what many lodges have become.  And we wonder why members don't show up?


----------



## Warrior1256 (Dec 6, 2015)

Andrew Bruskin said:


> I'm telling you the bare reality, my brothers. Lodge needs to become much more than initiation factories. It needs to be the forefront leader of the community. There should be influential speakers, trips for members and fundraisers, fun enough where one can take family and friends.
> 
> No lodge should ever be a business meeting. Sadly, that's what many lodges have become. And we wonder why members don't show up?


Very true. Officer installation at my mother lodge is slated for tomorrow.  I am going to speak to the new WM about bringing in brothers to give lectures on Masonic history, symbolism, etc. Maybe slide shows or anything other than just a business meeting.


----------



## Glen Cook (Dec 6, 2015)

Our speaker at St Andrew's Lodge (Utah) for November was a professor  in Middle East studies who presented on the division of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War as a precursor to our present conflict. January will be our Burns Supper.


----------

