2020 GRAND LODGE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE JOURNEY THE LENGTH OF THE LIGHT to be not only important to our jurisdiction, but to Masonry throughout the continent.
By Alan L. Gordon, Deputy Grand Master
T
his year, the Grand Lodge Leadership Conference was held over three virtual sessions on August 18, August 25, and August 29th.
The elected line of Grand Lodge officers were assigned topics based on their specific interests and talents. The topics consisted of the following:
Initially, we thought the Conference would be a significant challenge this year due to social distancing requirements. After cancelling the Bolger Center, which had been our Conference home for many years, we turned to an outside production company to work behind the scenes and coordinate the complex vision of moving groups of attendees to various plenary and breakout groups. It had never been the vision for this year to have a keynote speaker. Instead, we had always intended to hold more focused breakout sessions which would engage the brethren and provide them with productive ideas to help them to lead their respective lodges in the new
1. Practicing Freemasonry in a Post COVID World 2. Dealing with Difficult Masonic Issues 3. Budgeting for Lodge Activities During Times of Crises 4. Developing a Strategic Plan for Your Lodge 5. Review of Grand Lodge Code and Bylaws RWB Alan L. Gordon
reality of COVID-19. Drawing from our experiences at the annual Conference of Grand Masters of North America, topics were selected which were considered
6. Proper Selection of Candidates for Your Lodge 7. Effective Communication 8. Education and Mentoring 9. Minding the Age Gap – Retaining Older Member while Engaging Younger Members 10. Building Consensus Within the Lodge Many of these topics were assigned 45 minutes to present and were held in concurrent breakout sessions. On the evening of the first session, there were 84 brethren in attendance. The discussion was lively as we presented some of the challenges and limitations to re-opening our lodges in the future. There were many great ideas posted in the chat room which are now being explored for the future.
RWB Adam Tager runs his breakout session
14 | THE VOICE OF FREEMASONRY ISSUE 3, 2020
We then allowed the brethren to choose the topic in which they were most interested in their breakout session. The advantage to this format is that if someone wants to move from one breakout group to another, they are free to do so. In observing the
