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.
My Lodge used to go what we called "Camping" a couple of times a year. It really grew the Lodge. Guys would come, then the next time bring someone, and after a couple of years, the whole thing just kind of took off on its own.
Then we had a string of WM's who didn't do it. In my view, the Lodge suffered pretty badly from the loss of it, but the good news is that I think that the current leadership is going to start it up again.
I put 'camping' in quotes above, because we just called it camping. In reality we stayed in a big house on the water. That house happened to be owned by the Rainbow, so was perfect for our purposes, but there are plenty of great places like it on sites like VRBO. That was our way of making sure that it was accessible to all our members, not just the younger ones.
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
One particular event that really seemed to go over big with our membership was dinner followed by live theater. A child friendly show. I remember well that we did have families along, and quite elderly members as well. That was one event that everyone seemed to really love.
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.
My Lodge used to go what we called "Camping" a couple of times a year. It really grew the Lodge. Guys would come, then the next time bring someone, and after a couple of years, the whole thing just kind of took off on its own.
Then we had a string of WM's who didn't do it. In my view, the Lodge suffered pretty badly from the loss of it, but the good news is that I think that the current leadership is going to start it up again.
I put 'camping' in quotes above, because we just called it camping. In reality we stayed in a big house on the water. That house happened to be owned by the Rainbow, so was perfect for our purposes, but there are plenty of great places like it on sites like VRBO. That was our way of making sure that it was accessible to all our members, not just the younger ones.
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
One particular event that really seemed to go over big with our membership was dinner followed by live theater. A child friendly show. I remember well that we did have families along, and quite elderly members as well. That was one event that everyone seemed to really love.