Let's Discuss Lodge Growth
Too much and too little can both be harmful
A thriving Lodge with a consistently full and active line of Officers from year to year needs to take on as many new Masons each year as it has Masons who die, move away, stop attending, go NPD, or demit. This is a fairly easy calculation.
A Lodge that can’t consistently field a full and active line of Officers from year to year (or needs to fill their line with Past Masters) needs to take on more Masons each year than those lost to death, change of location, no longer attending, NPD, or demit. This calculation is a little more difficult because the Lodge needs to decide how many more each year are needed.
But we can’t delude ourselves, if we don’t do this, sooner or later our Lodge will die.
So we need to have a good idea about how many men our Lodge should seek to Initiate, Pass, and Raise each and every year.
We need to figure out, and communicate our target to our Lodge membership.
But, we must also realize that it is quite easy for a Lodge to take on too many new Masons, too quickly.
When our Lodge Initiates a new Mason, if we hope to retain him, and if we hope to fulfil our promises to him, we must ensure that we have the manpower and energy to properly confer the Degrees, and to properly mentor, coach, and educate him.
The capacity to do this will vary from Lodge to Lodge, but it is vitally important that we identify this capacity as well.
We shouldn’t be Initiating men if we can’t properly perform the degrees, or properly coach, mentor, and educate them. Indeed doing so is harmful to the new Mason, and to the Lodge itself.
It is a balancing act.
How many new Masons do we need in order to sustain our Lodge?
How many new Masons do we have the energy and ability to properly bring into the Craft?
How do we find this balance?
How do we know how many men we have the capacity to properly bring into our Lodge each year?
Let’s discuss it…
Today we’ve got to give a shout out to:
Two Guys Barber
In downtown Centralia, Washington. On the corner of Main Street and Tower Avenue, directly behind Nyholm’s Appliances.
Owned by two great Masons, if you stop in on a Saturday you can get a cut from our Assistant Grand Secretary.
If you missed the latest digest of all my writing, and some of the very best stuff from others, you can catch it here:
In it's simplest form, a lodge at a minimum should have one new master mason made that is willing to step into the line. You can have 10 master masons raised in a year, but if none of them want to be part of the leadership, then you're going to end up recycling PMs anyway. All you need is one MM willing (and fit) to lead every year, thus, the line remains fresh and the only time a PM needs to step in is when a brother has to drop out of the line unexpectedly.
But is that a healthy lodge?
When you have 1,000 members, you end up with a waiting list of men who want to eventually become WMs, which is also counterproductive. In addition you'd think that with that many members you'd not have an issue with people helping out, but there can be the issue of everyone assuming someone else will do the work.
I think one question in American masonry that should be addressed is:
How big should a lodge be allowed to get before it splits? Over all, I think more than 100 or 150 members is too many. It would be better to allow lodges to emerge, grow and die according to need.