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Meeting Time?

WMGarro

Registered User
Greetings everyone, my name is Garrett. I am new to the forum but not to masonry.

However I would like to conduct a quick survey if it is permitted in this section.

I am my lodge's worshipful master for 2020 and I would like to move our regular stated meetings to the first or second Saturday of the month. My question is....

What are the Pros and Cons of having a regular stated meeting on a Saturday?
 

Horeblodge#93mason

Registered User
I would love to have stated meetings on Saturdays! We currently do the second Tuesday, but it's can be stressful because my job does not have a fixed schedule. I always make it because I start early on lodge days, but many of my brothers dont have the luxury. Having weekend meetings will afford many more people the freedom to attend, I feel.
 

WMGarro

Registered User
I would love to have stated meetings on Saturdays! We currently do the second Tuesday, but it's can be stressful because my job does not have a fixed schedule. I always make it because I start early on lodge days, but many of my brothers dont have the luxury. Having weekend meetings will afford many more people the freedom to attend, I feel.

I agree. I think Saturday is an idea day. I work 2nd shift and I have to either call into work or schedule a vacation day to attend lodge. We have our meetings every 4th Tuesday and Saturdays would great.

One of the problems now is that we have 44 members of our lodge, majority of them are elderly and we only have about 12 active members who show up on a regular basis. And even then to get then we have a couple of members who just cannot make it cause of school programs and such. I am also afraid that if I move our meetings to a Saturday, we will start getting a lot of Saturday problems, such as, the family wanted to go out and eat, summer sports are on Saturdays where I leave, or the wife wanted to do date night that Saturday.
 

TheThumbPuppy

Registered User
I'm probably in a minority here, but I would love it if meetings were held during the day, rather than in the evening.

Saturday evening may be a big deal for some. It depends on your brethren and their spouses. Do you have some way to take a poll with your regular brethren and their spouses?

I don't have much experience, but my gut feeling is that by changing the meeting day to a Saturday evening, in the short term you may loose more regular brethren than gain new ones. In the long term it may be the other way round, but I wouldn't expect it to be a quick win.

Whatever you decide, you'll never please everybody.
 

Horeblodge#93mason

Registered User
One positive to holding lodge in the early afternoon is people may not be in such a hurry to leave because it wouldn't be extremely late. That is another area we struggle with is times when we do segree work on our stated meeting nights. Last stated I had to do 2 EA degrees and then we conducted our stated. It was almost 11 before we left and quite a few of us leave very early for work. I had to leave my house at 2:30 the next morning
 

Brother JC

Moderating Staff
Staff Member
Many towns have a “daylight” for all the reasons stated. Not sure I’ve seen a Saturday one myself, though.
 

Bloke

Premium Member
Greetings everyone, my name is Garrett. I am new to the forum but not to masonry.

However I would like to conduct a quick survey if it is permitted in this section.

I am my lodge's worshipful master for 2020 and I would like to move our regular stated meetings to the first or second Saturday of the month. My question is....

What are the Pros and Cons of having a regular stated meeting on a Saturday?
I am a member of a Saturday Night Lodge. We generally tyle at 6:30 pm
Pros
  • Allows for an earlier start which is great when families are there - esp as we have young kids of members attending
  • You can sleep in on Sunday when we go late.
  • For the younger members and being in a city, they often go out afterwards as a group
  • For professionals in today's society - Sat is often the only day they will not get caught at work
  • Allows for an extra rehearsal just before the meeting
  • When we go away on a trip - it is already on the regular lodge meeting night (we meet Monthly).
  • Great for Installations when we generally tyle at 3 pm
Cons
  • Gets messy over long weekends
  • Can get in the way of family time
  • A lot of other social stuff, like weddings and family dinners are held on Saturday and conflict
  • As members lives change, esp once they get married and have kids, they often look for a more suitable lodge on a weeknight, and often we've been training them up to take office. It is not good for our lodge, but facilitating the move is good for the Craft.
  • Makes it hard sometimes to dine at restaurants when we so choose, because Sat is one of their busiest nights
  • Often because the men who join because they are very busy Mon to Fri, can only rehearse on a weekend (we rehearse Sunday morning) which means two weekends have something masonic on it every month...
 

Keith C

Registered User
We have a Saturday Night Moon Lodge in our district. They meet on the Saturday nearest to the Full Moon Each month The Ahiman Rezon in PA dictates that all Stated Meetings start at 7:00pm. A few "day lodges" have a dispensation to meet otherwise, but it takes a request to the RWGM and a REAL good reason to not meet at 7:00 regularly. (Moving a single meeting time can be handled through the DDGM.)
 

Thomas Stright

Premium Member
What are the Pros and Cons of having a regular stated meeting on a Saturday?

Con to me would be I wouldn't attend on a Saturday.
We have several functions now that fall on Saturdays that I don't really like attending.
weekends are short enough
 

Bloke

Premium Member
We have a Saturday Night Moon Lodge in our district. They meet on the Saturday nearest to the Full Moon Each month The Ahiman Rezon in PA dictates that all Stated Meetings start at 7:00pm. A few "day lodges" have a dispensation to meet otherwise, but it takes a request to the RWGM and a REAL good reason to not meet at 7:00 regularly. (Moving a single meeting time can be handled through the DDGM.)
How interesting, that meetings start at 7 pm. We have evening Lodges here starting at 6,6:15,6:30,7,7:30, 8 pm and sometimes even later (because they have dinner first). For me, while it makes visiting tricky, lodges need flexibility to start at a time which suits the members of the lodge.. My own lodges adjust the start time by 30 minutes earlier when we have a lot on.. because dinner is such an important part of the meeting, we don't want to be eating at 10 pm for a regular meeting..
 
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