We have our brand spankin’ new Master Mason.
Maybe right after he receives his Degree, or maybe quite awhile after it, at some point, he is going to miss a Lodge meeting.
It is going to happen.
When it does, we need to call him and tell him that we missed him.
If we don’t call him, he is going to decide a couple of things:
That no one cares that he missed the meeting.
That it isn’t important that he missed the meeting.
And then it is going to get a heck of a lot easier for him to miss the next meeting. And so on. Until he is no longer an active Mason in our Lodge.
It is going to happen. With the vast majority of Masons. Sooner or later.
But, it wouldn’t happen, if we were to give him a call.
In virtually all cases, Lodges don’t have a problem getting enough men through the door. Rather membership problems are caused by a truly atrocious rate of retention.
What percentage of Masons on the rolls of our Lodge are actually active?
What percentage drop each year?
Those are the fundamental causes of struggles with membership in the vast majority of our Lodges.
And nothing will do more to solve that struggle than a simple phone call to the new Master Mason who missed a meeting.
That call shows him that we care.
That call shows him that his attendance is important to us.
So, let’s give the Brother a call.
And let’s retain him.
Bravo, MWB Cameron!
I remember someone telling me as a kid that Church Pastors used to do this back in the day, particularly with the smaller, community churches, but I also remember someone telling me a Catholic Pastor would do the same thing. Not to badger, but to see if their family is okay, things like that.
From time to time, I’d run across a formerly active member of our Lodge in my travels at the grocery store, hardware store, etc. The cool thing is a lot of the time, that formerly active member would stop me and say hi, because I didn’t notice them, like they’d come up behind me, for example. A nice conversation would ensue, and they’d tell me what’s going on in their lives, and more often than not, they looked forward to the day when they can return to being active. And every time, I’d tell them I miss them, and we miss them. I know that has meaning to them.
But it takes more than one member. For some of these formerly active members, it gets to the point where Clayton engages them, and Clayton misses them, but seemingly not the Lodge. So I end up keeping a friend, but the Lodge loses a member. And for me personally, that’s great, I’m glad to keep these good Brothers in my circle of friends, and to me, still Brothers, but I’m still disappointed that I can’t get the Brother back to active again; the Lodge still has to step up to the plate. So the one call is definitely a big step in the right direction, but more than one call, from more than one Brother, is even better.
And that one call or conversation in the public space CANNOT be badgering. I’ve seen it before where one of the members of my Lodge would go: “HEY, I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN LODGE!” (All caps indicating his loud way of talking) and the formerly active member would agree that he hasn’t been coming to meetings lately, and our member would answer, “WELL, WHY NOT?” This kind of engagement, to me, is even worse than not engaging him at all. Some of the older generation truly don’t see why I think this way, but for me, I think it puts that formerly active member on the defensive. But that’s me. I think you have to engage them in a manner where they would feel welcome to come back when the circumstances allow it, rather than making them feel guilty for not being able to attend.