Lodge Inquiries
How do we find a balance?
In any Lodge, existing members pass to the undiscovered country, while new men from the community inquire about becoming Masons. It’s a cycle of life that’s been a part of our Lodges for as long as Lodges have existed.
But, I think most of us can agree that on the whole, Freemasonry doesn’t handle these inquiries as well as we could. That in turn impacts Lodge membership in a negative way.
Just yesterday I was out shopping with my oldest daughter. She was looking to buy a cowboy hat and wanted my advice.
A fellow walked up to me and asked me about becoming a Mason. From time to time this happens to me, because I am generally outfitted with Masonic stuff from head to toe. Yesterday it was the polo shirt that caught this fellow’s attention.
Now, what can I say, my first impression was really good!
Why? Well, because he had an awfully nice hat on his head, and the new hat he was searching for was going to be one of the good ones from the ‘top shelf.’ A guy in a quality cowboy hat can never be all bad!
Here’s the thing though.
He had actually inquired months ago. He sent an email inquiry to the Lodge closest to his home, but had never received any sort of response.
Undoubtedly, that is bad.
I explained to him that I was sorry for his being ignored, and offered the excuse that our Craft isn’t nearly as organized as it should be. But, in my heart, I know that there is no excuse.
If someone contacts our Lodge, we need to reply. Ideally we need to reply within 24 hours. And, honestly, no Lodge has any legitimate excuse for not doing so.
And if we didn’t ignore so many inquiries, we would have stronger Lodges today.
—Here’s a little secret, just between you and me. My Grand Lodge tracks all of the inquiries it receives and then sends to the Lodges in the area in which the inquirer lives. It keeps track of what happened to each inquiry, and makes a report. Sometimes those reports make their way to me. They are always sad to read. Sad because far too many inquiries are never responded to by the Lodges that receive them.—
So, far too often, Lodges ignore the inquiries they receive, and then wonder why so few men sit in Lodge.
But it can go the other way too.
I hear Masons spouting nonsense in the other direction.
Things like:
‘We have to try to make contact with every inquirer six or seven or eight times! We have to keep their number handy and keep reaching out every few months forever!’
To my way of looking at it that’s almost as absurd as ignoring inquiries.
We should respond to all inquiries, and we should do so quickly. But, we should try two or three times. If a man doesn’t reciprocate contact after two or three times, let’s face it, he isn’t interested, and he should be dropped from the inquiry contact list.
I hate to bring up my mother again, but this is in perfect keeping with advice I heard from her as a pimply faced, awkward, weird and dorky teenager. Her advice went something like this:
‘Ask a girl out, if she says that she can’t because her family has plans that evening, assume that her family does have plans. Wait a bit and ask her again, if this time she has plans with her friends, so can’t, well that’s just her way of saying no. Don’t ask her again.’
Good advice. No woman has ever accused me of being a creeper; because my mother taught me to take a hint.
And this is perfectly applicable to inquirers. If they don’t reciprocate after we try two or three times, well, obviously they aren’t really interested. We should take the hint.
Another odd thing I hear from time to time goes something like this:
‘We have to text the inquirers. Young men aren’t comfortable talking on the phone, so we have to meet them where they are via text.’
That’s a good bit of nonsense too, in my opinion.
My view is that the best way for us to reach out to an inquirer is the same way he reached out to us. If he called, we should call him back. If he emailed, we should email him back. If he texted, we should text him back. I don’t know, that just seems like plain old common sense to me.
And let me tell ya, if there is a man out there so socially awkward that he can’t bring himself to talk on the phone, he wouldn’t make a good Mason anyway. Not while in that state. Maybe later, when the working world has toughened him up a bit.
These are the thoughts running through my head today, having met the inquirer while mutually shopping for Cowboy hats, and spending quite a bit of time with him on the phone today.
If first impressions hold, he just might make a great Mason for my Lodge. Too damn bad for the neighboring Lodge that ignored him.
The key, in my mind is balance. We need to find a balance between ignoring inquiries, and bugging inquirers to the point that they regret ever reaching out to us.
What do you think?
What is the right balance?
How should our Lodges handle these things to best effect?
Let’s chat about it…
If you’re looking for more from me, everything I wrote last week is gathered on my LinkTree.
In New York, we instituted a program for tracking potential candidates, and we just could never untangle the accountability part. People still went uncontacted, and some became Masons and were never noted in the system. The lesson is that the best system in the world doesn't work if people won't use it -- and it's never a substitute for doing the actual work in general.
BTW, your thing about contacting people in like medium is spot on! We need to be comfortable with how OTHER people communicate.
Very similar to my lodges experience. recently we installed a new very proactive recruitment committee and we now have 10 new EAs.