Lodge Finances
Let's use the knowledge that we possess
Personally, professionally, Masonically, you name it…
I do what I believe myself to be good at.
I avoid, like the plague, doing those things that I don’t believe myself to be good at.
Maybe this is lazy. I don’t know.
I tend to view it as being self aware.
But, undoubtedly, it prevents my challenging of myself in certain ways.
I think it is OK, and great, and wonderful (no, just because I put three words there like that doesn’t mean that I used AI in the creation of this essay!) for people who want to challenge themselves to do so. If all they are wasting is their own time and money if whatever it is they are trying to do results in dismal failure.
But it certainly isn’t OK, or great, or wonderful for a guy to ‘challenge’ himself using a Masonic Lodge’s money.
Through my Masonic career, I’ve been elected Worshipful Master three times. I’ve also been appointed by various Grand Masters to take over Lodges and serve as Worshipful Master two times.
Honestly, I like serving as Worshipful Master, and I don’t think that I’d turn down an opportunity to serve as such. Why? Because I think I’m a fairly smart guy, I think I understand the intricacies of our Craft, and the law governing our Craft better than most, and I think I run a pretty darn good meeting.
But I would never, under any circumstances, allow a Lodge to elect me, or otherwise accept an appointment as Lodge Treasurer. Why? Because I struggle like heck with financial recordkeeping. I’m just not good at that sort of work.
So, I stick with what I believe myself to be good at.
As Masons we are charged to assist our Brothers who need our assistance. Including with financial assistance. And I’ve seen lots of Lodges open their checkbooks for a Brother who is struggling financially. Helping our Brothers in need in that way is a wonderful thing. A commendable thing.
But when a Brother comes to us needing that sort of financial assistance, that should communicate something really important to the Lodge. It should communicate to the Lodge that the Brother in question probably isn’t all that great handling money.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. A guy isn’t a bad guy because he fell on hard financial times. He isn’t somehow lessened because he made financial errors. He’s just probably not good at handling money. And that is not an indictment of his character.
But we should remember that he’s probably not good with money.
I am aware of two Lodges through the years that each gave one of their members significant financial assistance because those Brothers had run into extreme financial distress. Both Lodges stepped up, and both Brothers received the financial help they needed.
Both Lodges also, in what I would consider to be a short period of time, vested significant financial control over the liquid assets of the Lodges with those Brothers.
One of these Lodges was poor and rural, the other well off an urban. It didn’t matter, the result was the same in each case. In both cases it ended in disaster. In both cases large percentages of the Lodge’s money was lost.
Not because the Masons in question were bad guys, I don’t necessarily believe that. It ended in disaster because they didn’t know how to do what the Lodge gave them the authority to do.
In essence, in my view, the Lodge set them up to fail. Because the Lodge had ample warning (due to their past fiscal distress) that these men weren’t particularly good with money.
That’s a failure of the Lodges, perhaps just as much as it is a failure of the Masons in question.
And I have to wonder, why on earth would any Lodge choose to do something like that?
This is a tough one to decide the correct course of action.
Today, there are many who are thrust into financial issues due to the economy and/or employment issues. But yes, there are people who are not good money managers. I don't save for a rainy day, which is not a good thing either.
I believe in helping a brother when he is in need. But I also believe in the saying, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime."
We should whisper good counsel in a Brother's ear. Can we change his behavior? Perhaps, but then, perhaps not.
I don't believe the lodge should continually support a Brother who chooses not to act in his own best interest either.
Perhaps part of the counter-balance that The Craft might offer to civil society, is teaching financial literacy as part of Lodge training when you bring in new candidates? If someone doesn't know how to make best use of the help they're given then everybody loses. This is why financial operations of all kinds, from bank tellers to hedge funds, have guardrails and rules and they follow the discipline of that craft. And money management, deployment, and accumulation, is indeed, a craft that one can learn and practice. Perhaps as importantly, if Masons become better at financial management personally, that will improve the financial health of their families and their closest networks. The two positions that almost nobody wants in a Lodge, are Secretary and Treasurer, for good reason.There's a lot of personal liability, duty, and responsibility that comes with it, and failure can be catastrophic for the Lodge as a whole.
How to do that? Well, if a Lodge's charter permits, it might start a small savings club, then an investment club, then perhaps something else. If the day is split into three 8 hour segments, each ot be used for it's own service and developmental purposes, then sure financial literacy and acuity is also a three-parter: charity, investment, and living expenses.
As the evil forces of the tech bros and Ai try to shove out human beings, the demand for individual tradesmen and craftsmen, I think, will grow in response. Middle management will die. But we will move toward the Trades because stuff will still need to be fixed and maintained. We also need trade schools for small farmers and micro farmers. People still gotta eat. And Trades mean Guilds and Master Craftsmen.
When I was a little girl, my parents were big believers in guiding us to work on what they perceived as our "weaknesses," and also to further develop our strengths. I think they thought of it kind of as strength training, where, if you're weaker on one side of a muscle group, you do a couple of more reps for that side each set until you bring yourself up to being more evenly strong.
As a result, for a time, I became more focused on "fixing" what I thought were my "weaknesses."
Then I joined the Marine Corps (and eventually moved over to the Air Force). What the Marine Corps taught me was, the way I'd been doing things was not how you became an elite warrior. You became an elite warrior as part of an larger organic whole creature, called the rifle squad, the platoon, the company, the battalion, The Fleet, etc. Each Marine had strengths and not-so-strengths-*yet* . So if I was slow on the run but was pretty good at the push ups, flexed arm hang, and academics, then another Marine who was fast on the run would coach me, and I'd coach her on what I was strong at. But, when we need to actually *move* fast and accomplish a mission, (get stuff done), each of us put together our strengths. I was fast at taping the floor, she was strong at lifting the racks when we mopped on Field Day. The whole was much greater than the sum of the parts. And we became United States Marines and earned our EGA. And, as Women Marines (WMs, now simply Marines per The Commandant's direction) we became the extremely very very few and the proud. Rare as hen's teeth then and now.
I'll venture to guess this works in Lodge as well. Someone's better at ritual, someone else is better at administration, someone else naturally has the spiritual leadership of a chaplain. So I'll offer to you the idea that I think you're spot on: If someone doesn't know how to make best use of the help they're given then everybody loses. But, each Mason can combine their strengths with the strengths of others and make the Lodge much more whole.
Financial acumen is taught - it's not natural to anyone. You may think it is *if* you had the benefit of watching your parents and grandparents deploy finances - not spend and save - *deploy* - and you grew up in an environment that was not afraid of money nor did that family culture think of it as anything more than a life skill and an important tool. There was a lot of osmosis that many take as being "natural."
I woke up this morning thinking about how the Lodges in the 18th century used their Lodges to discuss and develop the morality and ethics and philosophical thought of The Enlightenment and then thought a lot about how this could be applied in civil society to make it better. And then I wondered if part of the reason for dwindling numbers is because The Craft has not yet trimmed it's sails to begin to address and plan for how civil society, beginning with each Mason, will bring a balm for and an amelioration for, the perils of modern times. How will The Craft become a counter-balance to what we're seeing today?