This is a very difficult situation that we find ourselves in. To me the best decision would be to trim the fat in the GL's expenses, but this takes very disciplined leadership. I'm not saying that our GL officers are not the right people for the job, but I don't know if they are. In fact, I don't know anything about our GL line, because we run our elections of officers like it is a popularity contest instead of a true election of men who are best fit for the job. I think we have had some great men as leaders over the years, but we have also had some men who were lacking in leadership. Could you imagine if we voted for our President of the U.S. the way we vote for GL officers...we would end up with Miley Cyrus as President. Since I was raised as a MM, I have always been against the way we pick our leadership. I believe that the men running for office should be allowed to express to us how they plan to fix our problems, what their ideas are for the future, and what masonry means to them. I wish they were able to recognize supporters, and not financial supporters, but men who support their beliefs in the way they feel masonry should be headed. And the reason for this is because they might recognize someone that you know in masonry and that you respect for their beliefs in the craft.
I know I'm pulling away from the subject, but my lodge went through some tough times and if we hadn't had the outstanding leadership that we had at the time, we might have had to demise. Instead our leadership took charge and pulled us through and now we are doing better than ever. The problems we faced were not small problems, infact we were facing bankruptcy. We were losing $200 every month and we had very little money in our account. We tried everything to turn our situation around, but nothing worked. We started bringing in new members on a regular basis, but we were losing just as many to death. The only solution to our problem was selling the building, but no one wanted to see that happen. Long story short, it took a lot of time and effort from our WM, officers, and many other masons, some who weren't even members of our lodge to finally make it happen and we were able to get out of a building that was bring us down. After the sell, many thought we would fall apart and disappear, but we didn't. We came back stronger than ever. More members attend our meetings than ever before, we have more petitions than ever before, we have more money than ever before, we do more charity work than ever before, and for the first time in the history of our lodge we received the Van Gaurd Award...All because we had great leadership...and we did it all without a building of our own.
If our GL leaders cannot figure out a way to solve our problem, then I will gladly pay my share, but I believe that our leaders should first look at every option, and let us know what their finding were, before they raise our per capita.