Programme For Membership Officers And Mentors Gets Underway At Keynsham.
Around 25 of the Province’s Lodge & Chapter Membership Officers and Mentors met at Keynsham Masonic Hall on the evening of Tuesday 29th October, the first of a programme of meetings arranged by Provincial Mentor, Ray Conneely, to enable pragmatic discussion and impart important updates and information to assist them in their extremely important roles.
The meeting was opened by Assistant PGM, Tony Guthrie, who acknowledged the vital part that membership officers and mentors play in delivering and maintaining successful implementation of the Members’ Pathway in our Lodges. This will, in turn, pave the way for Membership Challenge success.
Former Provincial Membership Officer, now Assistant PGM, Barrie Palmer, then gave an update on the progress of Somerset’s current Provincial Digital Marketing Campaign, conducted via Facebook, and then explained the ideal path to be taken by prospective candidates from their initial point of contact, through the Area Membership Officers whose task it is to unite successful candidates with suitable Lodges. It is from this point that Lodge Membership Officers and Mentors should take the lead in assisting and supporting new Brethren to settle in, understand and enjoy their Freemasonry.
Ray Conneely then explained how UGLE’s revamped online educational repositories, ‘Solomon’, ‘Archway’ and The Members’ Pathway can now be easily accessed by our membership from the ‘resources tab of our Provincial website. The Members’ Pathway and Archway, its equivalent for Royal Arch Chapter members, have both been updated and are now very user-friendly and intuitive.
Ray then used a live link to our Provincial website in order to demonstrate how straightforward it is to access and navigate Solomon, The Members’ Pathway and Archway (links shown below) all of which contain excellent educational content for the benefit of ALL members, not just newer Brethren!
The Q&A session led to many forthright questions and views being aired and discussed which, in turn, highlighted not only the importance of their own roles, but also the common themes that exist which can help, or hinder, the progress of thriving, happy Lodges.
The discussions continued whilst enjoying a fine buffet supper prepared by the catering team at the Hall.
All active Freemasons should consider themselves Membership Officers and Lodge Mentors, and act accordingly as such, remembering that many of our new Brethren have referred themselves as candidates for Freemasonry, rather than being personally introduced by an existing member who is already known to them. We should all reflect on our own ‘day one, week one’ in Freemasonry and what it was like for us!
The next meeting is scheduled for 7pm on Tuesday 12th November at Bridgwater Masonic Hall and is open to all Lodge Membership Officers and Lodge and Chapter Mentors, including Personal Mentors. If you haven’t responded to your personal invitation yet, please do so as soon as possible to Ray Conneely at ray@conneely.net in order to assist with catering requirements.
https://b.ugle.org.uk/membership/members-pathway
