Too many meetings? - Part 2

The initial question that I proposed, "do we have too many meetings?", is intentionally a simplistic question. Answering this simplistic question will in no way describe the problems that Masonic lodges are facing. It does not propose a solution to these problems. Nor does it suggest what alternatives a lodge may have to remedy the opinions of meeting-weary and exhausted brothers.

However, this simplistic question serves a purpose. At times, a simplistic question needs to be asked to allow for further probing questions to be formulated. When the source of an issue is not readily apparent, it is sometimes beneficial to pose an open-ended question with the expressed objective of generating further inquiry and to develop ideas. This was precisely the intention of my proposal. I don’t have an answer to if we have too many meetings. However, I do have some further questions.

Are our meetings fulfilling and exciting? If a brother feels that we have too many meetings, perhaps he’s not enjoying himself at the meetings that are being held. Will having fewer meetings make the meetings we do have more interesting? Some brothers hold the old axiom, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, to be true and that meeting less will naturally make the meetings that we do have more meaningful. Other brothers counter that if someone doesn’t enjoy 20 meetings, he won’t enjoy 10 meetings. It’s not quantity; it’s quality, according the counterargument.

What are the aspects of a Masonic lodge meeting that makes a brother want to attend? Is it possible for a lodge with a diverse membership to implement a schedule of events that will be pleasing to all brothers? Some brothers enjoy ritual, while others enjoy fellowship. Some brothers enjoy family events, while others enjoy brothers-only events. Some brothers enjoy presentations, while others enjoy interactive activities. It is impossible to please everyone all of the time.

When a brother states that he would attend more meetings if they weren’t as frequent, is he being sincere? Is this just an excuse for not attending? If the lodge meets less frequently, would he continue his same level of inactivity? Brothers have many different reasons why they do not attend meetings; work, family, personality conflicts, boredom, sickness, etc. A brother may just be using the time commitment of lodge as an excuse.

Do we have a membership problem or do we have a problem with our membership? Is having 10-15 brothers at a stated communication and 20-25 brothers at a degree a failure? How many brothers should attend a stated communication or a degree for it to be considered a success? My lodge has approximately 150 members. If only 15 members show up for a meeting, that means we have a 10% turn out. Is this a problem? Should Masonry be an organization where nearly all the brothers of a lodge are present for all of its meetings? Or should Masonry be more passive, where the important aspect of the Fraternity is that a brother lives our excellent tenants, rather than spending most of his time at lodge meetings? If you have 20 members at a meeting and enjoy yourself and feel fulfilled, isn’t this a success?

These are just a few of the questions that have come to mind regarding the “problem” of too many meetings. If more questions on this subject come to mind, please post them in the comments section below. With this set of questions as a suitable foundation, a more thorough analysis of my lodge’s meeting frequency can be performed. In my next post, I will attempt to analyze the meeting situation of my lodge as an example. It is important to note that the purpose of this series of posts is not to solve the “problem” of too many meetings for all lodges. The important aspect of this series is to assist brothers to analyze if their lodge has a problem and how to develop a suitable solution. My forth and final post on this subject will be a proposal that I hope to present to my lodge in the early fall.

Best of Both Worlds

Editorial Note: This is the final part of the Masonic Renaissance's four part series on Masonic recruitment. I must apologize for the long period of time between the third and forth parts of this series. My usual vocation has greatly needed my attention, which has not allowed me to properly apply the lesson of the 24 inch gauge. I hope to rededicate myself to this blog in the coming months and continue my mission of proposing ideas to strengthen our great fraternity for the future.

In the previous three posts of this blog, the topic of Masonic Recruitment was discussed and analyzed. General definitions for different forms of recruitment were proposed in the first post. In the second post, an analysis of the "quality vs. quantity" debate was performed. The third article focused on reconciling a position that supported both quality and quantity. In this post, an application of various programs will be proposed that will support a healthy growth in our fraternity, both in terms of membership numbers and in the substance of its character.

Let us not put the horse before the cart. Focusing on quality must come before focusing on quantity. We can not expect to strengthen the craft, while over-inflating it with poor quality members. First and foremost, we must protect the West Gate. Quite simply, we have men joining our Fraternity that should never have been made Masons. We must enact a fair amount of quality control. To do this, we must discover that which has been lost, the blackball. If you don't feel that someone is ready to join your lodge, blackball them! We do not need to let in everyone who knocks at our door. Many American Masons believe that this view point is horrible. They believe this because we have spent years being afraid of losing members and we have shied away from using quality control. If you don't believe someone is ready, then they are not ready. Plain and simple.

In my experiences with Prince Hall lodges, I have seen that they use the blackball quite liberally, because they do not want to degrade the fraternity. However, they balance this with informing their rejected applicants that although they have been denied now, they can reapply later, once they are more mature. Typically, these applicants do reapply and many become Masons eventually. Mainstream Masonry has become so afraid that a rejected candidate will not only be turned away forever, but also they will discourage other men from joining the fraternity. If a rejection is handled properly, it can be turned into a positive experience.

If a man approaches you about Masonry, do not sign his petition unless you feel he is ready. We commonly accept so many substandard members because many of us lack the backbone to look a man in the eyes and tell him that he needs to improve himself. It is our duty as Masons to keep the foundation of our Fraternity strong, not to let in poor quality men because we were afraid of how it would make us look. Men want to join Masonry because it is special and our hallowed halls are filled with men of substance and morality. By guarding the West Gate and only accepting men of quality, we make the fraternity more attractive. This attractive appearance will reap untold benefits in the future.

This proposed view requires that the investigation committee become vastly more important and their responsibilities correspondingly increase. No longer can the committee meet the candidate for a half hour and simply say, "he seems like an ok guy." In my lodge, we have instituted a sweeping change for the investigation committee. The committee must contact the references that the candidate lists and talk to them about the candidate's moral character. Our committee now also runs a police background check with the permission of the candidate. If this permission is not granted, then the investigation committee must report negatively. Meeting the candidate at home and in the presence of his significant other is critically important. Large amounts of information about a man can be gleaned by viewing his home environment. Finally, my lodge now requires the candidate to write a one to two page essay on why he wants to become a Mason. This essay is read aloud in lodge prior to the vote and allows the membership to get a glimpse of his motivations, thoughts and feelings.

The next step to achieve quality and quantity is increasing the standards of Masonic Education. Ritual will only tell us what our principles are. Brothers teach us how to apply these principles to our lives. More is learned about being a Mason in a brother's living room talking about what Masonry means to him, than can be learned during ritual. Being an apprentice means that you are learning from a master. We must focus on learning through an apprenticeship system. There should be more lodges of instruction, mentors, one-on-one nights and study. Entered Apprentices should not be passed to Fellowcraft until he can act like a man among equals. He must be able to show that he knows his craft inside and out. To be raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason, he must show that he can be a Master of his craft. Advancement must be a time consuming process. It can't happen in a day or a week or a month. We must extend this process, so that we're creating true Masters of the craft, not just Master Masons in name only.

Once these safeguards for our quality are in place, we can then work on getting men to join. Masonry is a personal organization. Recruitment should therefore be approached in a personal manner. TV commercials and billboards to attract members is not a positive approach. I propose that Grand Lodges should not spend time, money and energy on large scale advertising campaigns. Instead they should promote teaching our brothers how to talk about the fraternity with their friends and family. Men join Masonry because it offers them a different experience then the typical 21st century organization. Men join Masonry because the romantic view of the warrior monk or the enlightened scholar is attractive. Men join Masonry because of the stories they hear from a brother's lips or the excitement they see in a brother's eye. Our brothers need to know how to talk about the lodge. Programs should be instituted on the local level that instructs our members on how to talk about Masonry and personally spread our message. Every member of our craft is a recruitment billboard. Make sure they are billboards you want people to see.

Our brothers should also have events that they can invite prospective members to, so they can introduce them to other brothers in the lodge. Masonry should be an active organization, that allows non-members to participate. Prospective candidates can be invited to our picnics, day trips, dinners, etc. Masons meet non-masons at more than "Mason/non-Mason Nights." Make sure that your events display the character of your lodge and of your members. Actions speak far greater than words.

In contrast to the standard Grand Lodge sponsored recruitment, I do support Grand Lodge sponsored public education. I believe that we need to make an effort to publicize our existence and our principles. Grand Lodge sponsored open house programs are extremely positive. These events allow the public to meet our brothers and see our buildings. These types of events turn public perception away from images of darkly dressed cronies doing secret rituals and turns the perception into "these are the guys we can count on to help build and guide our community." Furthermore, we should not feel shame in producing historical and informational material for the public to view. We have a long and illustrious history, which is intertwined with our communities and our country. Masonic history is the history of the world and the history of America. It should be shared, studied and celebrated.

However, I do not believe that we need to swing the doors of our lodges open and share our secrets. Part of the enticement to becoming a Mason is our secrets. Putting those out in the open wouldn't solve anything. Some brothers promote a general openness when it comes to our ritualistic teachings. I must advise against this path. Men knock on the door of Masonry because we have something special to teach them. If these lessons are exposed in a non-ceremonial fashion, then the gravity of these moral lessons will be diminished.

Although volumes can be written on how best to implement a system of Masonic Recruitment that would maximize both quality and quantity, I have offered a fairly general solution that I have witnessed operating in my lodge and in others. To summarize, here is an outline of the general process I have proposed:

1. Protect the West Gate
1. Do not accept candidates that are unprepared or unworthy
2. Strengthen the investigation committee
2. Focus on Masonic Education
1. Form a mentorship program
2. Demand proficiency before advancement
3. Teach our members how to talk about Masonry
1. Become an individual spokesman for Masonry
   
4. Have events that introduce your lodge to the community

Although this outline seems short and simple. It is not. This process will take time, dedication, flexibility, creativity and thoroughness. The membership problem within Masonry cannot be solved with an edict, a program, an event or the voice of a lone brother. It can only be solved through teamwork and cooperation.

Finally, enjoy yourself! If it's not fun then why do it? Enjoyment and excitement are contagious. Find that niche within Masonry that you love and communicate that love. Masonry is and always will be about people. People want to be part of something that is meaningful to them, so show the world why Masonry is meaningful to you. In the words of MW Brother Charles Fowler, Past GM of CT 2006, "Make Masonry Meaningful." If all of our members could follow this maxim, we'll never have to worry about quality or quantity.

Quality vs Quanity - A False Choice

In part, the following post will discuss the subject of Masonic Recruitment. For many brothers, this is a touchy subject, but I would like all readers to approach this post with an open mind. Although I won't go fully into depth on the subject of recruitment during this post, I will say that I am in favor of a limited form of Masonic recruitment. As defined in my previous post "Much Ado About Recruitment", I support passive strong recruitment. Personally, I don't believe that McMasonry is a good idea. We as Masons should not be jamming petitions into people's hands or asking every Bob, Joe and Harry to become Masons. However, I do believe that a Mason who knows of a man that he feels would make a good Mason, should talk to him about the lodge. Talking is not the same thing as asking and recruiting is not the same thing as pandering. However, even before we can begin a limited form of recruitment we need to increase our standards, our investigation processes and our methods of Masonic Education. I believe that more men should know who we are, but it needs to be more difficult to join.

I have made several attempts to broach the subject of Masonic recruitment with the members of my lodge. These talks have focused on learning how to talk with non-Masons about Masonry and inviting non-Masons to public lodge events. For the most part, these discussions are very positive and I believe that some of my brothers have taken my advice to heart. However, I do occasionally hear the argument that we don't need quantity, we need quality. Although I completely agree that the fraternity needs quality far more then it needs quantity, this response still really makes me upset. My reaction is not based upon a disagreement with the brother over the validity of actively recruiting (even in the reduced method that I promote). My reaction is towards a rebuttal that I feel is unjustified, continually repeated without thought, potentially dangerous for the future of Masonry and an obvious deference of responsibility for the dismal state of modern Masonry. "We need quality, not quantity" is a sure fire way to get me pink in the face.

So, why does this anger me so much? I am upset that brothers will rely on this poor argument to justify stagnation. I have found that the brothers who use this argument have typically done nothing to increase the level of quality we want in prospective members. Furthermore, this argument is an example of a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy is method used in debate that is dependent upon flawed logic. A false choice, otherwise known as a false dilemma, is a specific logical fallacy, whereby an argument is made that forces a decision to be made between one choice or another. Typically, the two choices are presented as being mutually exclusive, while in reality, there may be a middle ground or compromise that breaks this dichotomy. An example of a false choice is "either you're with us or against us."

When a brother cites "We need quality not quantity," they are really saying that these two states are mutually exclusive. In other words, if we choose to have quantity, we will not have quality. Furthermore, the converse is proposed to be true. If we choose to have quality, we can not have quantity. To me, this is utter hogwash!

To gain quality members, we need to display the positive attributes of our fraternity. The most positive attribute of our fraternity is the character and actions of our brother. If we don't have many Masons in this world, then we can't display our fine attributes and therefore it becomes difficult to gain quality members. Quite simply, to gain quality we need to be shown as a quality organization. But, to be shown as a quality organization, we need active members to show off this quality. It's a catch-22. To gain quality, we need a quantity of active quality brothers.

Another argument for a direct correlation between quality and quantity is that quality members are typically pulled from a pool of diverse members. This is otherwise known as the shotgun effect. This theory proposes that out of a certain population of new members, you will naturally get active members and non-active members. To clarify, I would prefer that all men who join the fraternity are of the highest quality and will become highly active, but that is not always the case. No matter how hard we try, we will always suffer from a shotgun effect. Some brothers find something they enjoy in Masonry and become active, while some brothers do not. However, the more members that we get in general, the more quality members we will receive. Unfortunately, the converse is also true, the more members that we get in general, the more poor quality members we will receive. To control this effect, quality control must be implemented, which would limit the number of poor quality members. However, to support a growth in the fraternity, the pool of prospective members must correspondingly increase. Therefore, once again, to increase quality, quantity must also increase. In this case, the quantity of prospective members must grow.

My educational background is in physics and mathematics, so please bare with me a moment while I use a graphical representation of our membership to summarize the situation our membership is in. In the following graph, the x axis represents the quality of our membership. Quality in this representation can range from 0 (the worst possible quality Mason) to 1 (the best possible quality Mason). The y axis represents the number of brothers in the fraternity. This graph represents the quality vs quantity distribution of our current membership.

In this model, we have very few truly high quality members and very few truly low quality members. The largest portion of our brothers are of medium quality. In our current situation, we practice little to no quality control and little to no quantity control. This evaluation is simplistic at best and is open to interpretation. However, I am using this representation of our current membership as a baseline for future possibilities, where the comparison to the baseline is more important than the baseline itself. (Note to the Math buffs out there. This is a standard Gaussian Distribution with a height of .25, a center peak position of .5 and a standard deviation of .17)

Now, one possible recruitment method is the shotgun effect. In this approach, the fraternity would simply instate quantity control and no further quality control. Here, I define quantity control as knowingly implementing processes to control the level of the membership. In this case, the fraternity is attempting to increase its membership. This approach is characterized by one day classes, large scale advertisements and openly asking potential members to join the fraternity. In my previous article "Much Ado about Recruitment", this would be defined as Active Strong Recruitment.

In this model, the hope is that more quality members will be gained by simply increasing the pool of brothers. This may be true, but the adverse is also true. We will gain more poor quality brothers as well. Overall, the median quality level stays the same. This model is represented in the following graph by the red function with the blue function as our original baseline. (Note to the Math buffs out there. This is a standard Gaussian Distribution with a height of .5, a center peak position of .5 and a standard deviation of .17)


The next possible recruitment method is implementing quality control, but not seeking to increase the membership. This is the method that is proposed when brothers state that we need quality, not quantity. In this model, the standards of membership are raised and poor quality candidates are denied membership. The effect of this model is that we will have less members, but the members we do have will be of high quality. (Note to the Math buffs out there. This is a standard Gaussian Distribution with a height of .25, a center peak position of .75 and a standard deviation of .1)

Heretofore, we have reviewed three possible recruitment models for the Masonic Fraternity. The first model is our current state, where neither the quality nor quantity of our membership is increased. The first model is obviously flawed because this model has failed for the past fifty years. There are very few brothers that feel that this is a good solution.

The second model is promoted by several Grand Lodges in the United States. This model proposes that the membership difficulties will be solved by making it easier to become a Mason. I have often referred to this model as the "Field of Dreams" model, because it promotes a "build it and they will come" mentality. However, it is also flawed, because it will bump our numbers in the short run, but the Fraternity will lack in overall quality members. In essence, this would return us to our post-WWII membership situation, which would correspondingly suffer the same fate. This model would only prolong the inevitable demise of the fraternity. The success of the "Field of Dreams" model is only a dream.

The third model is typically promoted by Traditional Observance Organizations and European Style Masonry. This model proposes that the membership difficulties will be solved by making it more difficult to become a Mason. Commonly, this school of thought supports that all men must seek to join without any interference by the Craft. They interpret the "free will and accord" clause as meaning that Masonry isn't allowed to promote itself to potential members in any form. Although I believe that this is a better option than the previous two models, it is also flawed. The Masonic Service Association of North America recently conducted a survey that showed that the majority of Americans are completely oblivious to the existence of Masonry. This means that there are good men out there that do not know that Masonry exists. How can we expect good men to knock on our door, when they don't know there is a door to knock on? This model will eventually suffer from a lack of critical mass to support making new men interested about the fraternity.

I will now hypothesize a forth option. This model proposes that Masonry can have both quality and quantity at the same time. This means that we can have more members, who are of a high quality. This can be accomplished by limited recruitment, while implementing strong quality control. The following graph represents this model of the fraternity. (Note to the Math buffs out there. This is a standard Gaussian Distribution with a height of .5, a center peak position of .75 and a standard deviation of .1)

This "best of both worlds" model is possible. It will take hard work, dedication and creativity from the fraternity to achieve it, but it can be done. In my next post, I will give my proposal on how Masonry can achieve both an increase in active membership and an increase in the quality of its members. In the meantime, please give me feedback on the models that I have proposed in the comments section.