To make my way in a Lodge I had to move lodges. No one should have to do that. A Lodge should always help a brother work his way around the lodge not keep holding him back.
Harmony. Harmony is a roadblock. Sounds weird, I know.
We place fairly great emphasis on harmony, on consensus, on unanimity (look how we do our balloting for candidates, elections for leaders). And we are a conservative organization. Not politically, but in the sense that I think the fraternity is fundamentally suspicious of change: something important & vital might be lost! It is not in the power of any man to make innovations in the body of masonry. Plot twist: there's no definition of what is the body of masonry, so what you're *not* allowed to touch has no real bounds.
You are asking what we want ourselves & lodges to "become". That implies change.
The roadblock in my opinion is how do you change that which actively resists change? By slow, grinding consensus building. Which is a careful skill to develop over time, but not one everyone has. Does that mean they are not permitted to change? Well, no not really - but also practically - yes.
I would say most have the following roadblocks: A lodge who has slipped from the memory of the community it resides in due to 50 years of apathy and burned out Masters/secretaries. Due to 70 years of poor financial planning, a lodge stuck with an ageing membership on a fixed income with no funds to keep the buildings and grounds up for the next 30 years and a building built for 3X the membership that currently exists. Finally, a lack of clear dedicated and well educated leadership enabled by well kept and freely available Grand lodge Metadata to make the best decisions and lead to any sort of prosperity. There, I said it. The decisions necessary to turn that around are difficult. But drastic change requires, sacrifice and hard work.
Since I joined Masonry I hear a lot of “we gotta change, we gotta do better, we need to be growing” talk and that all comes with a lot of handwringing. The thing that always seem to be lacking are good ideas, not that there are no ideas; just not great ones. I have also taken my turn on this particular torture rack many times. I often get asked as one of the youngest members of the lodge what brought me in? How can we reach more people like you? And so on and so forth. I honestly didn’t have any good answers either. I think the real roadblock is not knowing what to do or having any good ideas about where to start.
So I’m gonna plug an article for a second time because I really think it’s a great place to begin thinking. Despite the title I guarantee you it’s a worthy read. You could sum it up with, “well times they’ve changed”, but that isn’t really the take away. The take away is that technological society has changed so drastically and quickly that old modes of being are now simply no longer relevant. We need to start thinking about this from a different angle and I believe this article will get you thinking in the right direction.
Read the article because we need a paradigm shift.
I had to move lodges to hopefully find the experience I was needing, and what I felt was best for the fraternity. There were more than a few brothers in the lodge that didn't agree with my assessment of what was wrong, yet when I pointed out to them just what the problems were, they acknowledged it, but refused to change to fix them. Instead, they fell back into the old comfortable "we've always done it that way" mentality, and merrily continued to ignore what was really going on.
I do want to point out that over the years, the Lodge Leadership Retreat has morphed into something quite valuable. Beyond the basic classes like secretary duties, financial planning, installation planning, temple board governance (all valuable classes) they have expanded into subjects like leadership, retention, beyond the six steps, and other classes that point out problems and potential solutions facing the fraternity today. I urge all lodges to send brothers to the LLR, as you are investing in your future. It's no coincidence that one indication that a lodge is failing is that they haven't ever sent anyone to attend these classes.
To make my way in a Lodge I had to move lodges. No one should have to do that. A Lodge should always help a brother work his way around the lodge not keep holding him back.
Harmony. Harmony is a roadblock. Sounds weird, I know.
We place fairly great emphasis on harmony, on consensus, on unanimity (look how we do our balloting for candidates, elections for leaders). And we are a conservative organization. Not politically, but in the sense that I think the fraternity is fundamentally suspicious of change: something important & vital might be lost! It is not in the power of any man to make innovations in the body of masonry. Plot twist: there's no definition of what is the body of masonry, so what you're *not* allowed to touch has no real bounds.
You are asking what we want ourselves & lodges to "become". That implies change.
The roadblock in my opinion is how do you change that which actively resists change? By slow, grinding consensus building. Which is a careful skill to develop over time, but not one everyone has. Does that mean they are not permitted to change? Well, no not really - but also practically - yes.
I would say most have the following roadblocks: A lodge who has slipped from the memory of the community it resides in due to 50 years of apathy and burned out Masters/secretaries. Due to 70 years of poor financial planning, a lodge stuck with an ageing membership on a fixed income with no funds to keep the buildings and grounds up for the next 30 years and a building built for 3X the membership that currently exists. Finally, a lack of clear dedicated and well educated leadership enabled by well kept and freely available Grand lodge Metadata to make the best decisions and lead to any sort of prosperity. There, I said it. The decisions necessary to turn that around are difficult. But drastic change requires, sacrifice and hard work.
Since I joined Masonry I hear a lot of “we gotta change, we gotta do better, we need to be growing” talk and that all comes with a lot of handwringing. The thing that always seem to be lacking are good ideas, not that there are no ideas; just not great ones. I have also taken my turn on this particular torture rack many times. I often get asked as one of the youngest members of the lodge what brought me in? How can we reach more people like you? And so on and so forth. I honestly didn’t have any good answers either. I think the real roadblock is not knowing what to do or having any good ideas about where to start.
So I’m gonna plug an article for a second time because I really think it’s a great place to begin thinking. Despite the title I guarantee you it’s a worthy read. You could sum it up with, “well times they’ve changed”, but that isn’t really the take away. The take away is that technological society has changed so drastically and quickly that old modes of being are now simply no longer relevant. We need to start thinking about this from a different angle and I believe this article will get you thinking in the right direction.
Read the article because we need a paradigm shift.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-conservatism-failed
I see many road blocks in Mansonic lodges, and most of the time the road blocks are us.
I had to move lodges to hopefully find the experience I was needing, and what I felt was best for the fraternity. There were more than a few brothers in the lodge that didn't agree with my assessment of what was wrong, yet when I pointed out to them just what the problems were, they acknowledged it, but refused to change to fix them. Instead, they fell back into the old comfortable "we've always done it that way" mentality, and merrily continued to ignore what was really going on.
I do want to point out that over the years, the Lodge Leadership Retreat has morphed into something quite valuable. Beyond the basic classes like secretary duties, financial planning, installation planning, temple board governance (all valuable classes) they have expanded into subjects like leadership, retention, beyond the six steps, and other classes that point out problems and potential solutions facing the fraternity today. I urge all lodges to send brothers to the LLR, as you are investing in your future. It's no coincidence that one indication that a lodge is failing is that they haven't ever sent anyone to attend these classes.