   FREEMASONRY IN THE NEXT CENTURY

How Can Today's Lodge Prepare For Tomorrow 's Mason?

by Robert G. Davis, MPS

Berton Braley, in his poem "A Banjo at
Armageddon" said:
The best verse hasn't been rhymed yet
The best house hasn't been planned
The highest peak hasn't been climbed yet
The mightiest rivers aren't spanned;
Don't worry and fret, faint hearted,
The chances have just begun
For the best Jobs haven't been started,
The best work hasn't been done.

Brethren, the real work in Freemasonry
still lies ahead of us. If we're going to
write the history of Freemasonry in the
future, we're going to have to do it now.
My task today is to give you a vision
about tomorrow--to toss out a few ideas
about how our system of Freemasonry
and tomorrow's thinking, right-living
American male can be drawing their
values from the same source of light.

Sounds like a tough task--how are we
going to get good men, in large numbers,
in the 21 st century, to buy into a 300 year
old institution?

We're going to have to start by finding
out who our prospective Masons are. Be-
cause the membership that will ulti-
mately cause the fraternity to thrive have
not yet become Masons.

Let me now take you into the future a
few years and show you how one Lodge
apparently made it all happen the way we
only dream about today.

This speech was delivered at a corner-
stone laying at a Masonic Temple some-
where in America in the year 2035. The
occasion was the relocation and dedica-
tion of the Lodge's original cornerstone
which had previously been laid in 1993
when the Lodge was first chartered.

The orator gave the following remarks:
Brethren and Ladies:

It seems fitting for me to reflect back for
a few moments on the history of our
wonderful Masonic Lodge as we dedicate
this new Temple to the Grand Architect
of the Universe. Since few of us have been
in the fraternity for longer than 30 years,
we really can't know for sure how it all
happened, but in looking through the
materials unveiled by the opening of our
cornerstone, I can conclude we are the
children of some very forward-thinking
Masons.

From what I have been able to gather,
Freemasonry in the last half of the 20th
century was very much on the decline. It
had lost more than half its members by
the century's end.

The typical Lodge had low attendance,
low dues, no resources, and low member
interest. The adopted work wasn't really
performed. It was parroted in kind of a
ritualistic trance--by a few devoted
brethren who seemed to move only from
the neck up and who communicated little
and understood less about what they were
doing or why they were doing it. It was a
pitiful thing.

But sometime, in the l990's, this all
changed. A few brethren with some real
vision began doing some important
things. They started surveying adult
males all over America--from both
within and without the fraternity.

Finding out who these men were, what
they were like, and what they wanted out
of organizations they joined.

The Masons also collected other
national surveys conducted by other
companies, identifying the demographic
characteristics of American men. They
perhaps didn't realize it then, but they
started finding out about us.

They discovered the men in the 21st
century who would become Masons
would be college educated, with many of
us holding advanced degrees beyond the
bachelors level. We would be over 35
when entering the fraternity. We would
be middle to high income folks and have
families of 2 or less children. And we
would start our families in our late 20's
and early 30's.

There's other stuffthey found out about
us. For the most part, we are the sons of
educated parents. Over 72 % of us came
from single parent households. We read
less, but still, we have more access to
information. And we process and accept
information differently than did our
fathers and grandfathers. This is very
important.

You see, they were practical men. They
looked for facts. They didn't spend much
time with information. If it was a fact, it
was okay by them.

Of course, that's all changed. We don't
see it that way anymore. We are more
interested in truth--not fact. We receive
much information. But, we don't imme-
diately accept it. We tend to store it as
being useful. And when we receive
enough of it to verify its truth, we accept
it as being relevant.

That's how the Masonic Ritual became
so significant to us "right-thinking "
Americans. But that's the end of the
story. In 1993 we weren't there yet. It
didn't happen over night.

What did happen was this.

Our Lodge was chartered in 1993 be-
cause we wanted to do things differently.
We wanted to make a difference and we
wanted men who could make a difference
to become part of us.

The first thing we did was raise our
dues. It cost a man $300 to join our Lodge
and our members paid $30 a month. That
did several things for us almost immedi-
ately: (l) it gave us enough money to buy
into the needs of our community (2) it
gave us a perception of value to those who
were curious about joining, and (3) it
gave us enough income to subsidize the
dues of our brothers who couldn't pay the
full amount. The main thing it did was
give us resources and a respected public
image.

Then we started making real Masons
out of our Masons. We created a
complete Masonic Education Course,
beginning with audio and videotapes for
our friends and their families. We took
every candidate and their wives through
a progressive multi-media production on
Masonic history, heritage, symbolism,
and ritual, and philanthropy, with new
information introduced at each step of the
Masonic journey. We reinforced our
adopted ritual with meaningful tests of
proficiency, and taught our initiates the
meaning and value of brotherhood and
fraternity. And we developed a continu-
ing Masonic Education Institute for any
Master Mason who wanted to learn more
about Masonry. Men started becoming
attached to the fraternity--deeply at-
tached.

Then we made an even more important
discovery. We adopted a public mission
and we discovered the needs of educa-
tion. It was a natural for us, since educa-
tion is what Freemasonry has always
stood for. The administrators, teachers
parents, and kids then discovered us.

We became the most important private
partner to public education in our com-
munity. We adopted schools, honored
teachers, purchased supplies, developed
a series of teaching aids using audio cas-
settes; we sponsored intense teaching
workshops for reading teachers, we
offered childrens books on tape,
developed school libraries, held cultural
literacy competitions, sponsored puppet
theaters, sent kids to art institutes, and
sent others to college.

No, we didn't sponsor a little league
softball team--we furnished the season's
prize and awards for all the teams--trips
to cultural centers, the Omniplex, the
planetarium, science fairs, museums, art
studios. Oh, yes, we also sent our schools'
best scholars to Washington each year.

We became so involved in education we
established an Adult Continuing Educa-
tion curriculum held each Monday eve-
ning through September and October--
at the Lodge, of course. We taught
courses in the Classics, Comparative Re-
ligion, Philosophy, Ethics. We offered
classes in video photography, production
and editing. We even offered lessons on
acting. And, of course, the public could
enroll in our course on Freemasonry.

In the fraternity, we began also to
develop our own leaders. Our Lodge of-
ficers enrolled in a special curriculum
teaching leadership skills and techniques,
Lodge management, membership
development, and Masonic Communica-
tion. We developed self-instructional pro-
grams, and created an Institute for
Leadership Development. Sponsored by
the fraternity, we offered it to businesses,
corporations, community leaders, and
foundations for a fee. And, of course, we
had another leadership skills develop-
ment program for high school juniors and
seniors.

Our Lodge became our most important
asset. Our dining hall was used for con-
ferences, stated meeting dinners, and
family entertainment during our busi-
ness meetings. While we met in the
Lodge room, our wives attended pro-
grams on such topics as investing and
financial management, consumer affairs,
child development psychology, develop-
ing thinking skills in children, etc.

The TV room and children's lounge
had a video library, a computer center,
and a small sta~e for plays and music.

The library offered many books on Ma-
sonry, writing tables, reading nooks, and
books on tape for our elderly members.

The parlor has always been a favorite
room for committee meetings, discus-
sions, brainstorming, or relaxing.

The two Lodge rooms have been used
extensively. While the officers are plan-
ning new projects, developing fundrais-
ing ideas, seeing on-going programs
through to completion, receiving com-
mittee reports, etc. in one room, the ritual
team is usually conferring the degrees in
the other. Frankly, the officers have been
too busy to worry with the ritual for some
15 years now. So, they leave that task to
the brethren who are skilled in the ritual
and love performing it.

And oh, how our ritual has improved
since we realized that ritual and theater
are the same thing. After all, the oldest
known ritual, the Passion Play at Aby-
dos, was also the oldest known theater.

Our teams developed the degrees in such
a way that they gave the full theatrical
value to the words, movements, and ges-
tures of the ritual. A fully controlled light-
ing system allows the setting of hundreds
of different moods in the room, a state of
the art sound system, and recorded music
has allowed the Lodge to return to our
18th century tradition of interweaving
the ritual with music.

Every ritualist knows the meaning of
every word he says--and gives value to
the meanings in hls voice as he speaks the
lines.

You see, our Lodge was determined to
make the presentation of the ritual and
teaching of the Lodge as effective as
possible.

Both of the Ritual Lodge rooms feature
a control booth in the West wall, con-
cealed by a grill work in the architectural
design of the Lodge room so it is not
distracting. From here, the sound, light-
ing and the projection of slides and film
are all controlled, so that no distraction
takes place in the Lodge room itself.

In the larger room, we went even
further in using technology which cor-
porations had used in their meeting
rooms for decades. As you know, most of
the wall behind the Master's chair in the
East is actually a front/rear projection
screen. During openings, closing, and
other times not involved with the degrees,
the projectors throw an image which is
simply a continuation of the architecture
of the rest of the room, so that it appears
to be a wall like all the others. But during
the degree work, the entire wall changes
with scenery slides to represent an area
outside Jerusalem, a sea coast, the build-
ing of King Solomon's temple, or any-
thing else that may be needed. Slides used
to illustrate the lectures appear in a
smaller section of that wall, to provide the
sharpest possible image and greatest
color saturation.

All the seating along the sides of that
room is on low platforms resting on
casters and locked into place. It takes only
ten minutes to unlock all of those, remove
the altar, and swing the seating into the
room to convert it to a comfortable lec-
ture hall for speeches, Masonic education
programs, guest lecturers, etc.

Men now covet the opportunity to be a
Lodge ritualist. That's why we have
several teams for each degree. And every-
one gets to work since we are now confer-
ring degrees at least two nights each
week.

Finally, when the Masonic Temple
added a room to be used as our Commu-
nity Resource Center, the public really
found out about us. We are a designated
nutrition site for our community, offering
noon meals during the week. We screen
pre-schoolers for speech, hearing, and
eye problems once each month. We offer
an employment referral service to our
members, and host a free community
health fair twice a year. Our Community
Resource Center is available to the civic
clubs, and has become a real center of
community activity over the last ten
years.

So, brethren and ladies, as we stand
together today dedicating this new Ma-
sonic edifice, we do so because we realize
we needed more space, more in-
structional rooms, another Lodge room,
an expanded resource center, all in a lo-
cation situated in the center of the com-
munity's growth area. But, more impor-
tantly, we recognize we are here because
those who came before us were men of
vision. They gave us a new start for the
21st century. They taught us how to be
Masons, and they brought us to under-
stand the nature of relevancy.

Being valuable to ourselves because of
our values and sharing our values with
our community because we are valuable
to it.

Today, our task is the same as that of our
brethren of the l990's. Just as their task
was the same as the brethren of the 1800 's
and the 1700's. It has always been true of
Masonry that we must ever move for-
ward, or die.

We are here today to create the Ma-
sonry for tomorrow's Mason.


Philalethes, December, 1990
