By Paul R. Swanson, 32° KCCH
Note, This article was published in The Florida Mason, Above and Beyond, Fall 2024 Vol 3, Issue 2 page 19
With just over one hundred surveys from Florida Masonic District 7 compiled in the lodge as well as through SASE mailings, what do we know that we did not know before?
Executive summary:
- More Fellowship, less of the boring business meetings
- More personal betterment divesting of vices and superfluidities
- More Self-improvement in leadership and organizational skills
- More inclusive family events, selling the family on the fraternity
We learned that what brought most members to discover and join our fraternity was friends and family. This path of membership was highest just after WWII and has been steadily dropping since the 1964 social shift from “we” to an “I, me, mine” mentality documented in the book Bowling Alone byRobert D Putnam and further expanded in his follow-up book, The Upswing.
I see no “we;” I hear no “we” and I speak no “we,” I only hear “I, me, and mine.” This reflects our society currently and it impacts our fraternity when seeking new members.
Fraternal, civic, and veterans groups returned to popularity from the roaring 1920s to the 1950s when one of several books commenting on society like Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, challenged the value of the “we society” and proposed the libertarian concept of “rugged individualism”, a term coined years earlier by Herbert Hoover and espoused by Mason and actor John Wayne after he defeated fellow mason and actor Roy Rogers in the market of making western movies. Art follows reality and John Wayne saw the tea leaves pattern better than Rogers did and prospered for his insight.
The consequences of the radical shift in society towards the “me” mentality are the biggest source of the membership issues we see today.
Robert D Putnam says that fraternal groups cannot continue to operate as they used to if they want to survive. I agree. The answer lies in the Marines’ motto, we must improvise, adapt, and overcome our issues or we will fall by the wayside.
The surveys we conducted reflect what recent past surveys of ten thousand brothers have already identified in 2019, that Masonry in general is not providing what the current membership wants, nor what the younger petitioners want.
What do they want? We asked and they replied. They want more fellowship. They want esoteric Masonic learning. They want self-improvement opportunities and programs. They want more family events with their brothers.
They do not like the boring meetings of opening, paying the bills, and the usual sick and distressed conversations, followed by closing the lodge. They want fewer meetings and more family events, with a few options for charity engagements.
The bottom line is that our members who participated in the survey want their lodge experience to be a family experience where possible and to be mentally stimulating rather than the same old boring routine.
The answer to this issue is to start meeting our membership’s expectations with programs of self-improvement. The already available podcasts and videos are mostly free and number enough to keep any lodge busy for many years. This is a simple solution that is not going to burden the individual lodges with an excessive cost and should be a good return on time well spent for each member who participates.
There are also books, but that runs into the adage, “Masons don’t read,” something that is not historically true but in large part is true of our members today. If material is beyond a slogan or a tweet in length, it is more effort than many are willing to read.
Masonry reflects society as a rule and our surveys reflect this. “I” thinking is observed by members wanting services from a group, but only if it is free of cost or any participation burdens from them.
Many members do not want to participate in anything the lodge is doing. They are happy with inactivity. They will not even return surveys with a SASE when asked to by their WM. Over a hundred members who were mailed a survey with a SASE for the reply at one lodge simply ignored their WM call to return the survey! Remember, “You can’t not communicate.” Even if you do not respond, you are communicating.
The 80/20 rule is extremely hard to overcome, where only 20% of the members do the work and 80% of the members are knife & fork members, expecting an unburdened experience with little or no cost to them in money or work.
Masonry is a “we” group ideally, not a group made up of isolated individuals who will not work as a team.
Being a Mason is bucking the social trend of “me, me, me” that has structured our society for several decades and with no identifiable end in sight. Everything masons traditionally do is group-oriented, with committees, lodge chair progressions together year by year, degrees put on by a team, and family activities in the form of youth groups and associated groups like the Scottish Rite.
There is the potential for individual stress in a society ruled by selfishness when you join a group that promotes fraternity! New members need reasons to offset bucking social patterns, and rewards for their time away from their families.
The rewards are a fraternity that is making good men better!
Fraternity is defined as, the state or feeling of friendship and mutual support within a group: the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Friendship and mutual support are “we” concepts, not the “me” concepts that our society at present is promoting.
The surveys did not resolve two things.
1. They did not address whether the membership is willing to share the burdens of cost and work to get the things they say they want.
2. It also does not resolve how much self-improvement and personal betterment they expect or want. I suspect the answers will vary by individual lodge.
Bio:
Paul R Swanson retired from the USN, where he joined Freemasonry while serving as a Navy recruiter in Iowa in 1990. He has been a Shriner in Virginia as he traveled the country for military service. Currently, he is the sitting Chaplain in Madison Lodge #11, and the Facebook and Newsletter Editor for the Valley of Tallahassee Scottish Rite. He is the chairman of the membership committee in Masonic District 7. He is also the author of the book, The Empowered Volunteer Rebuilds America: One Fraternal, Civic and Veterans Group at a Time. It is available in electric format from Amazon for $3. He is also a Six Sigma Green Belt as well as a certified Lean Practitioner, which is where the idea of the empowered volunteer evolved into reality.