Let's Have More Lodge Meetings

Frankly, I don't think we meet often enough

Our Lodge system gives Lodges tremendous flexibility to experiment and find out what works best, for their own situations. But, I don’t think that this flexibility is taken fully advantage of. It seems to me that in most ways, most of our Lodges are largely the same.

Photo by Roman Bozhko on Unsplash

It certainly seems that way when it comes to meeting frequency. We are meeting less and less often. When I first became a Mason, I think that most of the Lodges I was familiar with met twice per month. Now most are down to once a month. Two in my home County have in the last year or so added months in which the Lodges go dark.

Before my time, back when Masonry was growing by leaps and bounds, there were a lot of Special Meetings. There had to be in order to keep up with the demand for Degree work. Now that demand is of course not what it was, so Special Meetings are more rare.

It can’t escape notice though that as membership in our Lodges has fallen, our Lodges are meeting less and less often. Are these two things related? I think probably so. How much easier is it to build and maintain friendships within a group of men that see each other every week than every month?

I believe that a Lodge should experiment.

A Lodge should follow the example of the majority of Lodges in Mexico that meet every single week. I brought this up as a discussion topic here on Emeth quite some time ago, and the idea wasn’t well liked, but I think we should consider it, and I think some brave Lodge out there should buck the trend of meeting less and less often, moving to weekly meetings.

But, we should follow the example set by our Brothers in Mexico fully, not just as to frequency.

They meet every single week, but those meetings are short, and they contain zero business.

The meetings consist of educational presentations or discussions, led by the Lodge’s newest Masons. Open-Education-Close.

They do have business meetings of course, for business needs to be done, but they limit these to one every three or four months. That might be too radical of change for one of our Lodges, but how about instead of meeting on the 4th Monday of each month, a Lodge meets every Monday of the month, with all business reserved to that 4th Monday?

They also include a meal with their weekly meetings, but it is a restaurant meal, and it follows the meeting. Open-Education-Close-Dinner at a restaurant.

Why couldn’t we Open Lodge at 6 or 7 PM, Close Lodge no more than an hour afterwards, and then go enjoy dinner at a nearby restaurant?

I think that a Lodge should try it for a time. See how it works.

The worst that could possibly happen is that the members of the Lodge end up not liking it so they go back to monthly meetings. The best that could possibly happen is a revitalization of Freemasonry.

That, it seems to me, is a risk well worth taking.

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Today was a superb day at the Western Conference of Grand Masters. Much was discussed, and much was learned by all. I hit all the highlights in Emeth Chat as the meetings were going on.

If you would like to keep up with the Conference of Grand Masters of North America and the Commission on Information for Recognition over the next few days, you can do so via Emeth Chat which is available in the Substack app for iOS and Android. Find it at the link below.

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I learned something really interesting today. I like to think that I pretty much know all the mechanics of Freemasonry after all my years and roles in the Craft, but this I did not know:

In our Lodges, as we all know, one can’t walk between the Worshipful Master and the Altar. So, we go around the Altar, crossing between it and the Senior Warden in the West.

In Mexican Scottish Rite Craft Lodges (the vast majority of Lodges in that nation) one must walk between the Worshipful Master and the Altar. This because one can’t walk between the Altar and the pillars.

A little over a year ago, I led a sizable delegation of Washington Masons on a visit to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity Lodge in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Where we were joined by their Grand Master. Luckily for us apparently, they were very forgiving of the fact that we were all wandering around, violating a prohibition in their floorwork. No one ever said a word, or even grimaced.

I think that there is probably an important lesson for us in that.

When visitors come to our Lodge, we must be entirely focused on welcoming them. Not worried about any of our customs that they might be accidentally violating.