Recently one of my favorite Seattle Lodges held a retreat. They traveled down to a beautiful waterfront city in Oregon, where they rented a couple of houses right next to each other, and spent the weekend together.
While there they watched a Fellowcraft Degree conferred by the local Lodge, and conferred one of their own on the following evening.
By all accounts, it was a splendid event!
All of that got me thinking about my own, Centralia Lodge.
We used too, over a number of Worshipful Masters terms, regularly hold a retreat or two a year.
We would rent a large waterfront house owned by the Rainbow Girls on the Puget Sound, and spend a weekend together. We always called it camping, but it wasn’t nearly so rustic as all of that!
These were amazingly successful events. Each and every time.
We would eat a lot, drink a lot, do a bit of work around the facility, and play. Swimming in the Sound when the weather was good, harvesting and smoking oysters on the beach. Studying the Masonic Code, practicing ritual a bit, and playing lots of games. There might have even been a bit of Tarot reading thrown in by a Brother whom we nicknamed ‘The Redneck Swami.’
It was a heck of a lot of fun.
But we also learned some things. Like the Masonic Code, which isn’t nearly so dull when one goes through it with others. And the ritual, practiced outside, in the backyard while the BBQ smoked.
And we also developed some things. Like the Outdoor Torchlight Fellowcraft Degree that is still a regular thing each summer, all these years later.
Finally, we gained membership.
The invitation list was important.
We invited our Lodge members of course. We invited members of nearby Lodges who were regular visitors to our Lodge. And we invited non-Masonic friends, men whom we thought could become excellent members of our Lodge. Never too many of these non-Masons, just one or two per trip.
But those guys got exposed to Freemasonic Brotherhood at its finest, and most of them ended up becoming Freemasons.
The whole thing never ended up costing very much. The Lodge would front the rental costs, and the cost for the mountains of food we made, and after the event those costs were figured up and each Mason was asked to pay his share.
We greatly enhanced the bonds of Brotherhood on these retreats, getting to know our Brothers quite well. And we grew our Lodge. All with minimal effort, and minimal cost.
Eventually, we elected a Worshipful Master who couldn’t be bothered to host these retreats, and he was followed by a string of Masters who didn’t bring them back. A lot of newer Masons faded away, and our retention rates fell significantly as the Lodge retreated back to not much more than one long, dull, business meeting a month. These Master’s apparently never saw the connection between events outside the Lodge and rates of retention. Or, they just didn’t care.
Either way, the difference was, and remains to this day, stark.
It seems to me, based on my own experiences, that one of the most effective ways to build a solid esprit de corps and to bring the men the Lodge wants to have into its fold is the yearly or twice yearly Lodge retreat.
More Lodges should hold them.
Go somewhere cool, have fun, get to know each other better. Those things are fundamental to Masonic Brotherhood.
That picture reminds me of somewhere…haha. We were sad you weren’t able to make it. It was really quite a special event.
"We would rent a large waterfront house owned by the Rainbow Girls on the Puget Sound..."
Is this the place along Hood Canal? Do you have a website or link for more information?