Does your Lodge ever do big events to build bonds of Brotherhood between Masons?
Ever go on camping trips? Road trips? Weekends away?
If so, do you feel that doing so is beneficial for the Lodge? Do events like that truly build bonds between men?
If your Lodge doesn’t do things like this, do you think you should consider it? What would hold you, or your Lodge back from doing something big and fun?
I ask of course because the Grand Lodge of Washington currently has 48 people in Puerto Vallarta Mexico, where our Masons will spend time visiting local Lodges, and getting to know our counterparts. I’ve always felt that large events were extremely beneficial for a Lodge. A Lodge might not be able to pull off a trip to Mexico, but certainly weekends camping or on road trips is easily done.
My lodge in NM would do an annual weekend camping trip. I personally never got to attend, but heard it was awesome. I think one concern in my local lodge is the age group. Our average age is over 70, so that does limit options as to what the lodge might opt to do.
We did not do big events in my lodge, but we did try to plan social events like bowling night, or going to a movie opening together, and volunteering at some event for another organization (habitat for humanity for example) to get people together and working together outside the Lodge.
The difficulty in doing this for many lodges is the generational gap that exists in most between the younger members and older members and what the interests might be. For younger men with young families it also presents a difficulty in being gone for entire weekends without making it something that is family friendly (which then often isn’t something older members want to do), that tension is something that made it hard to find things to do longer than 4-5 hours
My lodge in NM would do an annual weekend camping trip. I personally never got to attend, but heard it was awesome. I think one concern in my local lodge is the age group. Our average age is over 70, so that does limit options as to what the lodge might opt to do.
We did not do big events in my lodge, but we did try to plan social events like bowling night, or going to a movie opening together, and volunteering at some event for another organization (habitat for humanity for example) to get people together and working together outside the Lodge.
The difficulty in doing this for many lodges is the generational gap that exists in most between the younger members and older members and what the interests might be. For younger men with young families it also presents a difficulty in being gone for entire weekends without making it something that is family friendly (which then often isn’t something older members want to do), that tension is something that made it hard to find things to do longer than 4-5 hours