Learning to speak, before we yell....

Masonry has begun to advertise. Go onto youtube.com and you can find advertisements from the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Some Grand Lodges have adopted billboards. The Grand Lodge of New York threw open their doors and had a front page article on the New York Times. My own Grand Lodge and many others have hired public relations officers to "boost our image." The MasoniChip Program has become the primary means by which we get our message out. Individual lodges are creating programs that allow their towns to see our brothers and our good deeds. We have flyers and brochures and websites. We have banners and signs and flags. We have parades and scholarship nights and thank you dinners. We have gone from the "Quiet Fraternity" to the "Screaming at the top of our lungs Fraternity."

Now, I don't believe that being open is a bad thing. I also don't believe that all the aforementioned methods are bad either. However, although we have so many means to spread the word, we have forgotten the most important method communication of them all. Our voice. Most of our brothers have no idea how to talk about the Craft. A simple question like, "What is Freemasonry?" or "What do you do in lodge?" can stump most brothers and ruin a first impression.

Personally, I'm proud to be a mason and I'm not afraid to talk about it. I don't go out there and bang the drum to get people to join, but I do talk about my lodge, my brothers and our brotherhood. If I believe a friend would make a good brother, I invite him to one of my lodge's events that are open to the public. I've never asked someone to join, but I've signed more than a dozen petitions since I joined in 2000. These friends of mine asked me to join because I talked about how much I enjoy myself in lodge and how important Freemasonry is to my life.

If you feel you know how to talk about Freemasonry, give some other brothers a hand talking about the Fraternity. Some brothers are new and are unsure about what to say. Some of our brothers come from a time when no one talked about Freemasonry. Assure them that talking about lodge is not only allowed, but recommended by our Grand Lodges now.

An old proverb states that "you need to learn to walk before you run." We need to learn to talk before we yell.