On October 15th, 2011, Masonic lodges all across New England will open their doors to the public in one massive, coordinated event. According to the Metaphysical Freemason blog, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut "will participate and open our doors, display our minutes -- some from the founding of this country-- and invite any who wish to visit into the lodge rooms and antechambers, rooms of reflection and such. Welcome all and mark upon the skein of time our intention for light."Several years ago, the United Grand Lodge of England held a nationwide open house week, during which every lodge was encouraged to have some kind of a public event—tours, dinners, speeches, programs, fund raisers, blood drives, or any other occasion to invite the public in, to hear about Freemasonry, or to see Masons in action in some way. We have no national governing body in the US (world conspiracy mongers, take note), but such an event would be a significant kind of goal to shoot for, and something the Conference of Grand Masters of Masons in North America or the Masonic Service Association might well consider promoting.
Open houses are a very good thing, and it's great that the Grand Lodges of New England have gotten this on the same page. Massachusetts has been doing them for a while now, and New Hampshire began scheduling them on the same day a year or two ago.
ReplyDeleteMy lodge in Massachusetts has seen a lot of new members thanks to the open-houses, worthy Brothers who have stuck around and gotten active in the lodge. Every one of them has said something along the lines of "I've been interested for a long time, but didn't know any Masons and didn't know how to take the first step, so when I heard about the open house I couldn't wait to check it out."
Interestingly, though, we're only having the one open house this year instead of two as in years past. I think the GL of Massachusetts has recognized that retention is the bigger challenge than bringing people in, and is dialing things back a bit.