Do You Want New Brothers or Visitors?
Update Your Lodges Website
In this new age of information and communication there is a relatively easy and amazingly effective way of letting brethren and men interested of becoming brethren know what your lodge is doing and that you are an active and vibrant member of the Masonic community in Connecticut, and best of all it is FREE, its your lodge’s website. Maintaining your lodge’s website and keeping the content up to date is a great tool to attract new members and let the traveling men know what is going on in your lodge. Let me share a little story of a man I know well and how the internet was the biggest tool in his approaching the West Gate of our Brotherhood.
A few years ago there was a certain young man who after watching a History Channel show about the founding fathers of America and after years of reading about Freemasonry in history books and in exciting fictitious novels, decided to research the famed fraternity he knew very little about. Like most men his age he was well acquainted with the Internet and in fact, the single biggest tool for researching anything he was interested in was right in his living room, his computer. The young man did an internet search of Freemasonry which turned up more results than he imagined.
He clicked his way through many websites, some bad, but many more good and eventually ended up at the website of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut, the state in which he resided in. He scrolled through the different informational pages about the brotherhood and saw a link to a list of lodges in Connecticut. Sure enough there was not only one, but two lodges right in the city which he lived in, which amazed him because of in his short 30 or so years of life he had never had any contact with anyone who was a Mason. He clicked on the link for lodge nearest to where he lived and, other than the standard template and an address of the lodge; there was not much on the website. Perhaps they no longer met or existed? His curiosity was piqued never the less, so he hopped in his car to drive past the address from the website.
When he got to his destination he noticed an old sign post with a weather beaten and greened, copper square and compasses on it in front of an old brownstone, church looking building. It sure looked to him like a meeting place of the Order that many of the founding fathers belonged. However it being night time, there was no one there, so he went back home and went back to the computer to do more investigating.
He went to other lodges websites on the list and noticed that some had loads of information about their lodge’s activities with calendars full of events and this thing called a “Message from the East”, which apparently was a monthly update from the leader of the lodge, the Worshipful Master. Yet the majority of the websites had little, if any, updated information, including most of the lodges close to him. He was happy to find out that the brotherhood existed in the state and although the lodges in his city may not meet any more, which he thought because of the empty websites, he decided Freemasonry was something he wanted to be a part of, so he went ahead and filled out the form on the Grand Lodge’s website to become a member.
To make a long story short, after some emails back and forth with many different people the young man met with some Brothers from the other lodge in his city who told him that the lodge that met in that old building indeed still met and existed. After a short talk they gave him a petition to join Freemasonry telling him that he could join whichever lodge he wanted and receive the same Masonry. He went on to petition the lodge that met in that old building and if you haven’t guessed it yet, went on to be the sitting Junior Warden and author of this article you are reading, me.
The reason I told you my story is because as a Brother who came to Freemasonry in Connecticut by way of the World Wide Web I want to make sure that you don’t let a good man slip by because your website is not up to date. You may say, “Hey…you still petitioned your lodge even though their website was not updated” to which I will say that I am probably an exception to the rule. I have heard many stories of guys who after looking up their local lodge and finding the website dated or empty except for the standard template giving up on their decision to join or having second thoughts.
As members of the largest and best fraternal organization in the world we owe it to ourselves to shine our light to all who may knock, or click for that matter. An added bonus of having a great website with updated calendars and news of future events is that Brothers traveling around the state or world can know if they are in the vicinity of your lodge on a meeting night that there is something going on and stop by for a visit. We have had a few such traveling men stop by my lodge, one from as far away as a lodge in Germany and they would have never known that we were there and active without our website. We all should be very thankful that our Grand Lodge provides us with such a powerful and amazing communication tool.
So go on, update your website. If you can’t do it or need a little help there are many Brothers out there willing to help, just ask. Keep it fresh with news and events from your lodge and keep your calendar updated, you never know who will contact you, perhaps a future Junior Warden or a traveling man seeking the friendly confines of a lodge far away from home.
Update Your Lodges Website
In this new age of information and communication there is a relatively easy and amazingly effective way of letting brethren and men interested of becoming brethren know what your lodge is doing and that you are an active and vibrant member of the Masonic community in Connecticut, and best of all it is FREE, its your lodge’s website. Maintaining your lodge’s website and keeping the content up to date is a great tool to attract new members and let the traveling men know what is going on in your lodge. Let me share a little story of a man I know well and how the internet was the biggest tool in his approaching the West Gate of our Brotherhood.
A few years ago there was a certain young man who after watching a History Channel show about the founding fathers of America and after years of reading about Freemasonry in history books and in exciting fictitious novels, decided to research the famed fraternity he knew very little about. Like most men his age he was well acquainted with the Internet and in fact, the single biggest tool for researching anything he was interested in was right in his living room, his computer. The young man did an internet search of Freemasonry which turned up more results than he imagined.
He clicked his way through many websites, some bad, but many more good and eventually ended up at the website of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut, the state in which he resided in. He scrolled through the different informational pages about the brotherhood and saw a link to a list of lodges in Connecticut. Sure enough there was not only one, but two lodges right in the city which he lived in, which amazed him because of in his short 30 or so years of life he had never had any contact with anyone who was a Mason. He clicked on the link for lodge nearest to where he lived and, other than the standard template and an address of the lodge; there was not much on the website. Perhaps they no longer met or existed? His curiosity was piqued never the less, so he hopped in his car to drive past the address from the website.
When he got to his destination he noticed an old sign post with a weather beaten and greened, copper square and compasses on it in front of an old brownstone, church looking building. It sure looked to him like a meeting place of the Order that many of the founding fathers belonged. However it being night time, there was no one there, so he went back home and went back to the computer to do more investigating.
He went to other lodges websites on the list and noticed that some had loads of information about their lodge’s activities with calendars full of events and this thing called a “Message from the East”, which apparently was a monthly update from the leader of the lodge, the Worshipful Master. Yet the majority of the websites had little, if any, updated information, including most of the lodges close to him. He was happy to find out that the brotherhood existed in the state and although the lodges in his city may not meet any more, which he thought because of the empty websites, he decided Freemasonry was something he wanted to be a part of, so he went ahead and filled out the form on the Grand Lodge’s website to become a member.
To make a long story short, after some emails back and forth with many different people the young man met with some Brothers from the other lodge in his city who told him that the lodge that met in that old building indeed still met and existed. After a short talk they gave him a petition to join Freemasonry telling him that he could join whichever lodge he wanted and receive the same Masonry. He went on to petition the lodge that met in that old building and if you haven’t guessed it yet, went on to be the sitting Junior Warden and author of this article you are reading, me.
The reason I told you my story is because as a Brother who came to Freemasonry in Connecticut by way of the World Wide Web I want to make sure that you don’t let a good man slip by because your website is not up to date. You may say, “Hey…you still petitioned your lodge even though their website was not updated” to which I will say that I am probably an exception to the rule. I have heard many stories of guys who after looking up their local lodge and finding the website dated or empty except for the standard template giving up on their decision to join or having second thoughts.
As members of the largest and best fraternal organization in the world we owe it to ourselves to shine our light to all who may knock, or click for that matter. An added bonus of having a great website with updated calendars and news of future events is that Brothers traveling around the state or world can know if they are in the vicinity of your lodge on a meeting night that there is something going on and stop by for a visit. We have had a few such traveling men stop by my lodge, one from as far away as a lodge in Germany and they would have never known that we were there and active without our website. We all should be very thankful that our Grand Lodge provides us with such a powerful and amazing communication tool.
So go on, update your website. If you can’t do it or need a little help there are many Brothers out there willing to help, just ask. Keep it fresh with news and events from your lodge and keep your calendar updated, you never know who will contact you, perhaps a future Junior Warden or a traveling man seeking the friendly confines of a lodge far away from home.
2 comments:
Gee. I never heard from Tom when my article ran....
Seriously Brother, great work and great article.
Congratulations!
Traveling Man
Nobody called me when mine ran, either. Hell, once I didn't even get the issue.
Grrr.
Post a Comment