In Bro. Pike’s imagining of what Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction Craft Lodges would look like1 he contemplated that Lodge Officer positions would hold three year terms. Of course, in our Craft Lodges, we practice one year terms.
To be clear, the Scottish Rite SJ Charters no Craft Lodges, and Pike did not seek for it to do so. Rather he imagined how those Lodges could operate and work, if they did exist, in order to educate Scottish Rite SJ members about what they could have experienced prior to receiving the Fourth Degree.
As a 4 term Master, in a row, I only wanted to serve one year and circumstances, such as COVID, officer line gap, I found myself in a long progressive term. Two years, is fine, finish unfinished work. Having already served in my home lodge in New Mexico, there is something to be said for holding back officers that are not ready to advance. Is moving the line more important than the qualifications of a officer? I wish our craft, needs to have a Lodge committee to test the officer before elections to see if he's ready to move on. I've seen too many people unprepared for their role of eventually being Master. If they don't attend Leadership Conference, they will be crippled and their year in the East will be a disaster. We do need to tighten up officers qualifications, somehow.
The bad: 1-year terms for officers near-on cripples a lodge's ability to do long-term planning (you'll see so much discussion of aligning the line to get a 5-year plan, it's super hard, and frequently doesn't work for any number of reasons)
The good: if you were trying to organize an institution to actively resist change to its core principles, 1 year terms are how you'd do it. Nobody stays in the chair long enough to implement really big changes. Everybody is "re-establishing context". If you wanted to resist a despot getting hold of your lodge and making it impossible for a lodge to breathe, well then you'd set up a rotational line where there's (supposed to be) a new guy every year. Even if you got a crazy master, it'd only last a year and many things he did could be easily undone.
It's like a buffer in the solution that prevents the pH from swinging. The only way you can change anything big is to have a succession of masters of different minds all agree *AND* prioritize the continuance of the thing (tradition, practice, whatever).
Big pros. Big cons. People wonder why Freemasonry has such a problem with "we've always done it this way", well 1-year terms are a part of it. It's hard to change anything for real when leadership can't focus beyond 12 months. Then again: "it's hard to change things" means that it's also hard to whipsaw the institution with bad ideas.
While I don't feel one year is enough to really learn, adapt, and work down all the rough edges as a Master. I spent about 3 1/2 years in the East. The half was stepping up while the WM was on extended and unexpected travel for work.
Even with our GL Leadership Retreat, there is no substitute for sitting in the Oriental Chair. My Lodge installs in November. So by the time you have 4 or 5 months of becoming use to doing your job, it's about time to go dark for the summer. Time to prepare the family gatherings for those months. And when we come back, it is just about time for elections.
MWGL of WA also has the Proficiency in Lodge Management as an option for those Brothers in the Line. Maybe some Lodges require that for the incoming Master?
My opinion, would be 2 years in year chair. Give each Brother time to grow, learn and really appreciate that Chair and it's rituals. Three years is quite a long time.
I'm on my second year in the East and it seems that it has been that way for way too long. One Brother would be in the East for two years and then the SW would be in the East for two years and the SW would go in the East again for two years. The same two Brothers would switch places every two years and the Lodge stagnated for some time. Little in the way of new ideas materialized. Fortunately, I think I will change that by going to the JD after this year and rotate the whole line between the East and the JD's place. All of them qualified in my opinion to move to the East with fresh ideas.
Funny, this is exactly what I was entertaining as the subject of my first post! You see, Brazil is a whole different story. I'll give you the bullet points:
- We actually have Scottish Rite Craft Lodge; actually, of our about 3,500 Craft Lodges, I estimate a whooping 90% of them work the Craft Degrees on AASR [we have several others Rites - French or Modern, Adonhiramite, Emulation, York Rite, Shröder, Rectified Scottish Rite, Brazilian... and a few ones that are only practiced on certain states, such as the Hungarian; this is, of course, not mentioning non-regular Freemasonry and their own practices]
- Our terms are usually 2-year long; my own Lodge is an exception, in that we work with 1-year terms with the possibility of a second term if necessary [it has happened 3 times in the last 10 years]; there are very rare Lodges where they work with 4 or 5 years long terms
- Almost no Lodge works with a "succession line" [my own Lodge being an exception again, though the succesion is more expected than mandatory]; the only official requirement is being a 3rd degree Mason, having being part of the Lodge for the previous year and having attended at least half of the meetings
- Almost all Lodges meet weekly; some work twice a month and it's extremely rare to go to a Lodge that meets only once a month; we do not have the tradition of "going dark" during the Summer, though we suspend our work from December, 21st, till January, 20th
- There are several Lodges where it's common for the same Brother to be reelected to the Chair a number of times; the oldest Lodge in my hometown [that sponsors my DeMolay Chapter] had a Worshipful Master that was elected every 10 years for 4 decades [1966, 1976, 1986 and 1996] and another who occupied the Chair for 6 years, then after an interlude, another 4 years.
To answer the question, are 1 year terms too short? Not necessarily; it works for my Lodge because we have a "master plan" that we follow and each successive Worshipful Master advance it, the Past Masters serving as councillors. I think the experience of being in charge is quite important, as is the experience of returning to the columns. I am not sure how your by-laws and regulations work, but maybe you could experiment a bit? Longer or shorter terms, more or less frequent meetings [obviously, those meeting have to have a purpose], succession line or not... the essence of Freemasonry must be preserved, not it's temporary arrangements.
Seeing the previous comments and reflecting on my own experience one year isn't enough and in rare instances three years is pretty good. But the rare instances are rare because everything in the Lodge has to function really well. Membership development is strong, programs are interesting and engaging, officer line is full and stable, and ritual and degree performance is solid. Even then, I feel that there should be no more than the expectation of multi-year terms. The annual election process provides a ripcord that at times may be needed.
Would brothers be more cautious about who they put in a progressive line if they weren't sure of his abilities both in public speaking and the ritual work, let alone management and leadership?
If the WM chair is 2 or more years, how would that affect the progressive line? Would someone who doesn't like cooking put up with sitting as JW for years if all of the chairs terms were likewise lengthened?
I know of plenty of examples of brothers having to sit multiple back to back years to address issues with the progressive line, but that is a fix to a problem, not a policy.
As we right size Lodges down to fewer members, there's far more opportunity to be in line, perhaps too much so. We shove people forward and skip chairs to where a still-new member often sits in the East. Longer terms would easily fix that, and let new members catch up to fill in the line properly.
As a bit of trivia, Paul Revere was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for three years.
In those days elections were by paper ballot "every voter writing the candidate he thinks best qualified." None of this progressive line stuff. He wasn't even there when he was elected, and he wasn't the first choice originally. The first one elected declined.
Ideally, this is the way it should be done.
But, we should delve deeper into the reason why the progressive line exists. As folks mentioned in this discussion, the progressive line came about because of growing numbers of members and a waiting list developed to try and handle the amount of men wanting to eventually become master of the lodge. But why so many men wanting to be WM? They aren't content to do good work and labor in the quarries instead? Do they think they can do better? Or, is it a ticket to punch in your masonic career? I suspect the latter.
I will comment on my experience in the East. At the close of my year I felt in many ways I was just beginning to get comfortable in that Chair. It would also allow for any gaps in the line to be filled over that time period. I see our District Deputies to the Grand Master grow into their position during the second year they are in that office.
This is only tangentially related to the actual topic of this post, and really more towards footnote 1, but I can’t find a better place to put it :-)
It seems to me as though M:W: Bro Cameron is reading the new SRRS book, Porch and the Middle Chamber, and there are a couple of interesting historical additions to that footnote.
Albert Pike first moved to New Orleand in about 1853, which was a time of significant upheaval in the Grand Lodge of Louisiana and in the Scottish Rite in Louisiana. At that point Pike would have been able to see, and attend, Lodges working that had originally been chartered by Scottish Rite bodies (pre-1812 GLoLA formation) and had been working as such ever since. He would also have seen in that on going schism the disharmony and danger that could result from a Scottish Rite Supreme Council chartering craft lodges, which I believe impacted his view later when he wrote about his ideals for what a Scottish Rite craft Lodge might look like.
I feel if you prepare correctly you can accomplish things as a warden and finish things as a past master of your lodge. When I was master I encouraged my officers to start the wheels of any item they wanted to task themselves with as soon as they can. I also spoke with past masters to give them the space to finish any task they feel needed completed. I myself did a 1, 3, 5 and 7 year plan as soon as I became JD. Made my years a little easier.
As a 4 term Master, in a row, I only wanted to serve one year and circumstances, such as COVID, officer line gap, I found myself in a long progressive term. Two years, is fine, finish unfinished work. Having already served in my home lodge in New Mexico, there is something to be said for holding back officers that are not ready to advance. Is moving the line more important than the qualifications of a officer? I wish our craft, needs to have a Lodge committee to test the officer before elections to see if he's ready to move on. I've seen too many people unprepared for their role of eventually being Master. If they don't attend Leadership Conference, they will be crippled and their year in the East will be a disaster. We do need to tighten up officers qualifications, somehow.
It's just a straightforward tradeoff.
The bad: 1-year terms for officers near-on cripples a lodge's ability to do long-term planning (you'll see so much discussion of aligning the line to get a 5-year plan, it's super hard, and frequently doesn't work for any number of reasons)
The good: if you were trying to organize an institution to actively resist change to its core principles, 1 year terms are how you'd do it. Nobody stays in the chair long enough to implement really big changes. Everybody is "re-establishing context". If you wanted to resist a despot getting hold of your lodge and making it impossible for a lodge to breathe, well then you'd set up a rotational line where there's (supposed to be) a new guy every year. Even if you got a crazy master, it'd only last a year and many things he did could be easily undone.
It's like a buffer in the solution that prevents the pH from swinging. The only way you can change anything big is to have a succession of masters of different minds all agree *AND* prioritize the continuance of the thing (tradition, practice, whatever).
Big pros. Big cons. People wonder why Freemasonry has such a problem with "we've always done it this way", well 1-year terms are a part of it. It's hard to change anything for real when leadership can't focus beyond 12 months. Then again: "it's hard to change things" means that it's also hard to whipsaw the institution with bad ideas.
While I don't feel one year is enough to really learn, adapt, and work down all the rough edges as a Master. I spent about 3 1/2 years in the East. The half was stepping up while the WM was on extended and unexpected travel for work.
Even with our GL Leadership Retreat, there is no substitute for sitting in the Oriental Chair. My Lodge installs in November. So by the time you have 4 or 5 months of becoming use to doing your job, it's about time to go dark for the summer. Time to prepare the family gatherings for those months. And when we come back, it is just about time for elections.
MWGL of WA also has the Proficiency in Lodge Management as an option for those Brothers in the Line. Maybe some Lodges require that for the incoming Master?
My opinion, would be 2 years in year chair. Give each Brother time to grow, learn and really appreciate that Chair and it's rituals. Three years is quite a long time.
I'm on my second year in the East and it seems that it has been that way for way too long. One Brother would be in the East for two years and then the SW would be in the East for two years and the SW would go in the East again for two years. The same two Brothers would switch places every two years and the Lodge stagnated for some time. Little in the way of new ideas materialized. Fortunately, I think I will change that by going to the JD after this year and rotate the whole line between the East and the JD's place. All of them qualified in my opinion to move to the East with fresh ideas.
Funny, this is exactly what I was entertaining as the subject of my first post! You see, Brazil is a whole different story. I'll give you the bullet points:
- We actually have Scottish Rite Craft Lodge; actually, of our about 3,500 Craft Lodges, I estimate a whooping 90% of them work the Craft Degrees on AASR [we have several others Rites - French or Modern, Adonhiramite, Emulation, York Rite, Shröder, Rectified Scottish Rite, Brazilian... and a few ones that are only practiced on certain states, such as the Hungarian; this is, of course, not mentioning non-regular Freemasonry and their own practices]
- Our terms are usually 2-year long; my own Lodge is an exception, in that we work with 1-year terms with the possibility of a second term if necessary [it has happened 3 times in the last 10 years]; there are very rare Lodges where they work with 4 or 5 years long terms
- Almost no Lodge works with a "succession line" [my own Lodge being an exception again, though the succesion is more expected than mandatory]; the only official requirement is being a 3rd degree Mason, having being part of the Lodge for the previous year and having attended at least half of the meetings
- Almost all Lodges meet weekly; some work twice a month and it's extremely rare to go to a Lodge that meets only once a month; we do not have the tradition of "going dark" during the Summer, though we suspend our work from December, 21st, till January, 20th
- There are several Lodges where it's common for the same Brother to be reelected to the Chair a number of times; the oldest Lodge in my hometown [that sponsors my DeMolay Chapter] had a Worshipful Master that was elected every 10 years for 4 decades [1966, 1976, 1986 and 1996] and another who occupied the Chair for 6 years, then after an interlude, another 4 years.
To answer the question, are 1 year terms too short? Not necessarily; it works for my Lodge because we have a "master plan" that we follow and each successive Worshipful Master advance it, the Past Masters serving as councillors. I think the experience of being in charge is quite important, as is the experience of returning to the columns. I am not sure how your by-laws and regulations work, but maybe you could experiment a bit? Longer or shorter terms, more or less frequent meetings [obviously, those meeting have to have a purpose], succession line or not... the essence of Freemasonry must be preserved, not it's temporary arrangements.
Seeing the previous comments and reflecting on my own experience one year isn't enough and in rare instances three years is pretty good. But the rare instances are rare because everything in the Lodge has to function really well. Membership development is strong, programs are interesting and engaging, officer line is full and stable, and ritual and degree performance is solid. Even then, I feel that there should be no more than the expectation of multi-year terms. The annual election process provides a ripcord that at times may be needed.
Oh that's so cool. You looked familiar but I couldn't place it
Would brothers be more cautious about who they put in a progressive line if they weren't sure of his abilities both in public speaking and the ritual work, let alone management and leadership?
If the WM chair is 2 or more years, how would that affect the progressive line? Would someone who doesn't like cooking put up with sitting as JW for years if all of the chairs terms were likewise lengthened?
I know of plenty of examples of brothers having to sit multiple back to back years to address issues with the progressive line, but that is a fix to a problem, not a policy.
As we right size Lodges down to fewer members, there's far more opportunity to be in line, perhaps too much so. We shove people forward and skip chairs to where a still-new member often sits in the East. Longer terms would easily fix that, and let new members catch up to fill in the line properly.
As a bit of trivia, Paul Revere was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for three years.
In those days elections were by paper ballot "every voter writing the candidate he thinks best qualified." None of this progressive line stuff. He wasn't even there when he was elected, and he wasn't the first choice originally. The first one elected declined.
Ideally, this is the way it should be done.
But, we should delve deeper into the reason why the progressive line exists. As folks mentioned in this discussion, the progressive line came about because of growing numbers of members and a waiting list developed to try and handle the amount of men wanting to eventually become master of the lodge. But why so many men wanting to be WM? They aren't content to do good work and labor in the quarries instead? Do they think they can do better? Or, is it a ticket to punch in your masonic career? I suspect the latter.
I will comment on my experience in the East. At the close of my year I felt in many ways I was just beginning to get comfortable in that Chair. It would also allow for any gaps in the line to be filled over that time period. I see our District Deputies to the Grand Master grow into their position during the second year they are in that office.
This is only tangentially related to the actual topic of this post, and really more towards footnote 1, but I can’t find a better place to put it :-)
It seems to me as though M:W: Bro Cameron is reading the new SRRS book, Porch and the Middle Chamber, and there are a couple of interesting historical additions to that footnote.
Albert Pike first moved to New Orleand in about 1853, which was a time of significant upheaval in the Grand Lodge of Louisiana and in the Scottish Rite in Louisiana. At that point Pike would have been able to see, and attend, Lodges working that had originally been chartered by Scottish Rite bodies (pre-1812 GLoLA formation) and had been working as such ever since. He would also have seen in that on going schism the disharmony and danger that could result from a Scottish Rite Supreme Council chartering craft lodges, which I believe impacted his view later when he wrote about his ideals for what a Scottish Rite craft Lodge might look like.
I feel if you prepare correctly you can accomplish things as a warden and finish things as a past master of your lodge. When I was master I encouraged my officers to start the wheels of any item they wanted to task themselves with as soon as they can. I also spoke with past masters to give them the space to finish any task they feel needed completed. I myself did a 1, 3, 5 and 7 year plan as soon as I became JD. Made my years a little easier.