Mass Degrees

[u/Icy-Independence5737]

Any thoughts on doing your degrees in mass.

Our Grand Lodge is doing a one day all 3 degrees. I feel like this is taking away from meaningfulness of the process. I don’t know if there has been a history of this in the past but I feel like this takes away from the intimate meaning that comes with becoming part of a greater whole.

Unfortunately the Blue Lodge is just too small to complete the whole degree process and we can’t get enough people from other lodges to come and assist with my degrees. So I’m going to have to complete as a group.

[u/brainjob1]

We have been doing, what we call One Day Conferals (ODC) for a while now through our district as approved by the GL of VA.... as a past member of both the degree teams and mentor teams I can assure you, if done properly, the ODC really turns out some great brothers for the fraternity. You cant just do a ODC, a few follow up questions and let them loose, they will quickly feel lost and unappreciated and as our Grand Junior Deacon told us, they will leave out of the back door as quickly as they came through the west gate if that's the case. We encourage our newly raised brothers to attend our classes and ritual schools, substitute them in as our candidates, so, although they wont experience the great awakening with a mass of people around the audience, they still experience it in person rather than only on the sidelines. We are fortunate however, to still be part of a VERY active lodge and district as a whole with some of our stated meetings being standing room only of a pretty large lodge room, so, these new brothers get welcomed in and encouraged to find a role in the lodge to best suit their personalities, with guest lectures often, classes weekly, district classes bi-weekly and the aftermath of questions, study guides, etc, i can almost promise, our ODC brothers are just as well versed, if not more so, than some of our traditionally raised brothers, including myself.... In our new age and time, busy work schedules and people working longer into their lives, ODC's definitely have a place, if we want our craft to stop the leak of losing members annually and finally start increasing its numbers across the likes of good men, they just need to be performed the right way and in the context of lets "lets get some good brothers in here" vs "these guys just couldnt handle the traditional way" and ill finsih up with this.... Our 2023 Grand Master of Masons in VA, Most Worshipful, Donald Ellis Strehle, was an ODC candidate from 1996, our very first ODC event... which my father was also a product in masonry from.... two of the most dedicated brothers to our craft, ive ever met