Try Improving Masonic Relations:

1.  Get a picture and article inserted in local newspapers:

• Installation of officers

• Official visit of the District Deputy Grand High Priest

• Chapter anniversary event

• Presentations of awards, scholarships, recognitions

• Sponsorship of non-Masonic youth programmes, such as scouting or little league

• Community event participation activities

2.  Activity and Events:

• Honour new companions and Past High Priests

• Introduce prospective Freemasons to symbolic lodges and the York Rite

• Confer “Royal Arch Widows Degree” on companions’ ladies

• Confer Capitular degrees in secure outdoor locations for enhanced drama

• Host family educational and entertainment programmes (films, dramatizations, speakers and games)

• Participate in fraternal awards and scholarship events

• Participate as a chapter in community activity opportunities

• Participate as a chapter in lodge, council, commandery installations

• Conduct a Table Chapter meeting (akin to a table lodge) for companions and guests

• Participate as companions in fraternal funeral rites

3.  Earn recognition:

• Assign companions to photograph and write accounts of degrees & activities, and biographies of celebrated and distinguished companions for chapter history and Grand Chapter awards

• Score points earned toward all chapter and companion awards

• Introduce your own programmes and events to earn points for the above.

Try a few ideas and relay your results to the Masonic Relations Committee.

Thank you.

Critique companions after each degree conferral

Assemble candidates at the close of a degree conferral and pose a few easy questions. Our aim is their understanding and retention of the essential lessons the degree conveys. Here are possible questions to pose to brethren following their advancement to the degree of Mark Master Mason:

• Whom do you think the cast in this degree represented?

• What was the setting and what were they doing?

• Did someone in the cast do something wrong?

• In carpentry and masonry, what is meant by an oblong, a square and true work?

• Is there a penalty for rejected work?

• Is there a value from making good work?

• What do you think is meant by a head stone, a corner stone, a key stone?

• What is a “mark” and how is it used?

Compile your own set of questions and employ them at the conclusion of each degree conferral. Informed companions advance your chapter and council. Try it; you will see.