Plural Memberships
Can harm a Lodge
I often think that one of the largest mistakes ever made by my Jurisdiction was allowing completely unrestricted plural memberships. If memory serves, this mistake wasn’t repeated by our twin Grand Lodge, the MWPHGL of Washington and Jurisdiction.
I do though find criticizing the idea of plural memberships difficult, because frankly, I hold a lot of them myself. But, I think that Masons hold them for differing reasons and it is only one of these reasons that I think leads to harm.
This is when a man joins all or most of the Lodges in his area, and goes through Chairs in each, in order to “help them out.”
In my experience, having watched men do this for many years now, I think that I must honestly say that it never seems to end up “helping them out.”
I think the problem is one of divided loyalty, divided energy, divided focus, and a removal of a pressing need to succeed.
If we have eight Lodges fairly close to our home, and we are members of each of them, and indeed we are in some stage of moving through the Officer Line in each of them, how can we be loyal to any of them?
How can we have the energy to serve any of them well? Active and involved membership in eight Lodges means that when we are Worshipful Master of one, we can only devote perhaps 15% of the energy to our duties in the East that we should be devoting to them.
If we are in various stages of working to make our mark upon and improve eight Lodges at the same time, how on earth can we keep straight in our heads what our vision is for each of them? Imagine we are Secretary or Treasurer of multiple Lodges at a time, how can we possibly keep everything working properly on different tracks, all while not confusing our own records?
Perhaps most detrimental, if we are a member of eight Lodges, the survival of any one Lodge just won’t be that important to us. If Lodge number two dies, well that still leaves us seven more.
It just doesn’t work. It can’t work.
If a fellow wants to join lots of Lodges because he has moved a lot, but wants to maintain some connection with his old Lodge, that’s great. If he wants to join another Lodge because his work schedule makes it more convenient for him to attend this one instead of that one, well that’s well and good too. Likewise with specialty Lodges, or because he finds a Lodge that better meets his needs at this particular point in his personal Masonic journey.
But to join all or most Lodges in an area, and try to participate as an Officer in each of them isn’t good. It isn’t good for the Mason, but it’s even worse for the Lodges subjected to it. Even worse if the Mason’s reason for doing it is to attain the position of Worshipful Master in as many different Lodges as possible.
But, I don’t think that we can or should blame the Mason who does this.
We should blame ourselves.
If we get a petition for Plural membership from a Brother, and we know that he is a member in a handful of other local Lodges, we should ask ourselves why he is petitioning our Lodge. Even more importantly, we should ask him why he is petitioning our Lodge.
If his answer is to “help it out” we should know that he will never actually be able to help us, because all of his time, energy, and focus will be far too divided and dissipated for him to actually be able to help our Lodge.
I knew, when I left the Grand East that I would likely have around thirty years of Masonry ahead of me, as a Past Grand Master. Thirty years, having already attained the highest possible Masonic Office and the greatest Masonic Honors. I spent a lot of time while moving through the Grand Lodge Officer Line thinking about what I wanted to do in those thirty long years. That’s a long time to be a has been.
I decided that I wanted to spend them actively involved with one of the very best Lodges I could find. A Lodge that truly spoke to me, and my own personal Masonic quest. With that in mind, while traveling throughout my Jurisdiction for years, I kept an eye out for what I felt were the very best Lodges. I settled on five. By my reckoning, five Western Washington Lodges stood head and shoulders above the rest. Five were, and are, in my mind truly superb.
(I’m not trying to diss our fine Eastern Washington Lodges here, but my search was limited to Western Washington as I couldn’t see myself traveling through the Cascade Mountains in winter, in order to attend Lodge.)
Of those five, I chose the one I felt most at home with, and joined it.
Now none of this is to say that anyone else would agree with my ultimate choice, or with my own list of ‘best Lodges.’ This is a personal thing, different from Mason to Mason. These were the ‘best Lodges’ for me and where I am on my own Masonic Journey. Someone else might not like them at all.
But, all of these Lodges have something in common.
They have leaders that work and work and work to make them great.
They don’t have leaders that show up on Stated Meeting night and run the meeting. They have leaders who devote a little or a lot of time each and every day to thinking about how their Lodge can best function, and doing the work necessary to get it done. It is, for these Masons, something they think about and do, every day, for that one Lodge that they hold dear.
Ultimately that is why the man who joins a lot of his area Lodges, and tries to be an active leader in each can not be effective. Because he can only think of, and work on, one Lodge at a time.
If he is Worshipful Master in one Lodge, Secretary in another, Treasurer in a third, and Senior Deacon in number four, he is cheating each of those roles of 75% of the focus, energy, and work that each properly requires. If he’s active in appendant or concordant bodies as well, that percentage grows even worse.
It is his fault, but it is also our own. Why would we elect a Mason Worshipful Master if we know that he is Secretary of the Lodge one town over? Is doing so fair to our own Lodge? Just as importantly, even though he might be asking for it, is it fair to him? Are we not charged to save him from his own folly?
Early in my Masonic career I joined a second lodge to “help out”. That particular lodge was dying, and a number of us from the area joined to try and save it. I was also going through the chairs of my home lodge. I eventually became treasurer because no one else would do it.
Over the next several years, I worked my ass off trying to fix the mess the lodge finances were in. We also labored in navigating a merger with my home lodge, because by the time the two lodges merged there were only three men left in the second lodge to run things, all the other seats were run by brothers from other lodges.
I was perfectly fine being involved in both lodges. I fulfilled my duties in each to the best of my ability. I didn’t find that one interfered with the other, and I think it actually made me a better mason because I was so intimately involved with the management as treasurer while learning the chairs of JD, SD and JW in my home lodge. I conferred degrees in both. I helped organize outside activities in both. All the while holding down a job and a family.
It is possible to be an active and productive member of multiple lodges.
Now, I do agree that there can be some men who join a bunch of lodges or organizations for purely selfish reasons, hunting titles and such. You’re right, they bring nothing to the party. But I’ve also known plenty of men who are members of many lodges and organizations who are active in all of them. Yes, there is a point where you’re not going to be able to be as productive as someone who can devote their time and efforts to just one lodge. But that’s up to those men to decide. It’s their cable tow.
I'd say the same thing is true for members who are int he line at their home Lodge and hold a position in Grand Lodge. Both take a HUGE amount of time, and home Lodges suffer because of this.