Do other lodges have success with an established degree team for your lodge? How do y'all do it? Looking for ideas. We have put ourselves in a position as a lodge to where we can barely support a degree. It is frustrating when you set practice nights and no one shows or they don't show up to practice but drink coffee and chat. Or they only want one certain day of the week. We have our secretary that can do it all, but we rely on him to heavily in my opinion. We have to help him out. We meet once a month and that is not enough to practice anything enough to be proficient at it. I am at multiple lodges and can practice at another lodge but that does not improve the lodge in question. Any help would be awesome!
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I get that the world is fast and memory work is tough to find time for. Being an officer requires you to make certain commitments. You cannot just coast through the line and get the purple apron. In years past, before my time, I was told that if you did not do the MCL as a sitting Senior Deacon, you had a Past Master run against you for the South. I don't know how true those stories are as we've never had a repeat Master since our lodge was chartered in 1881 but that is a pretty serious threat to be made.
Nowadays we rely too much on one man to do the Lectures. I'm about to be installed as a Junior Deacon and I have started working on the MCL. The SD for next year has also started on the MCL. If he does the lecture, it will be the first time in over ten years that a sitting SD has done the work. I was hoping it would fall on me in 2018 but I think my senior is going to get it done before me and good for him.
This is not something that can be healed overnight. The lodge needs new blood and incoming masters to get them involved. Men who are involved early reciprocate by contributing back to the lodge. The guidelines for being an officer should be strict, but revolve around having fun.
My question is, what is the attendance like? Is there any incentive to do good work?
I know that in our past MM degrees, our district had to pull together to get 12 craftsmen. Not because we couldn't muster the men up in our own lodges, but getting 12 guys out that are not officers to a rehearsal was a pita this past year.