Looking to strengthen membership in 2027? We’re relaunching Building Together to help you do just that

Growing and sustaining membership in Freemasonry is just like growing a tree. It needs foresight, planning, and nurturing. And just like a tree, whilst the best time to start growing a Lodge was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now.

That’s why, even though it’s just autumn 2026, we’re relaunching Building Together to help you grow your membership.

Now’s the time to create the conditions to get more new members in 2027, as well as keeping the ones you already have – which is why we’re re-launching the Building Together initiative.

As well as revised directions to the comprehensive Building Together guide that you’ll find on our web site, we’re highlighting why it’s important.

Building Together has the power to help you bring in more people to Freemasonry. It’s up to you to unleash it! It has all the answers you could possibly want to help you attract new members to share our enjoyment in Freemasonry, and to secure its future for years to come. But it won’t happen by accident. Not to put too fine a point on it, you and your fellow members will have to take the bull by the horns and do something about it. Form a membership team for your centre, and start your 2027 membership drive now!

The Building Together pages on the Provincial web site have been revamped to streamline the guide offered by UGLE, offering faster routes in to fund the information you need. Find it at this link.

Why Building Together?

That’s a good question. How do you explain Building Together? It’s a tough ask – but the answer’s a simple one. Don’t try. Now there’s a bold statement, if ever there was one. But here’s why we need it: The elevator pitch for Building Together should be about what it doesn’t say, not what it does.

When it comes to addressing the Membership Challenge, Building Together is a robust, thorough, and powerful mechanism explaining the ‘how’; exactly what it’s been developed to address. It’s much weaker on the ‘why’. For your Lodge that will be brought into sharp focus early in the new year when we share details of how your membership has changed since the Membership Challenge was launched in 2022 – not necessarily your perceived position, but the actual ‘state of play’. Along with those numbers, this elevator pitch focuses on why you need Building Together; it’ll take just a couple of minutes to read…

We all belong to a Lodge.  That’s a fundamental and obvious truth – but let’s dig into it. Think about the words. We belong to a Lodge. It doesn’t belong to us. The life-enhancing benefit of ‘belonging’ is something we’re in danger of taking for granted.

But true belonging comes with responsibilities. All we are allowed to do is hold the steering wheel for a while before it’s someone else’s turn. It’s a responsibility to keep the Lodge on the straight and narrow, and to ensure it doesn’t crash into a ditch. The continuity of shared commitment has helped Albion Lodge Number 9 reach its 275^th anniversary, which it’ll celebrate in October this year – it’s been passed on, pure and unsullied, as each member received it.

The people who need to hear this message are those who don’t turn up. Sure, some have good reason; but others can’t be bothered, or have gone on holiday, and left the steering wheel duties to someone else. Or they come, but don’t want to take an active part in our ceremonies. They want to sit in the back and be taken along for the ride. What a shame that is for the Unit they joined, its past, and its future.

We can all think of examples of initiating the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and not nurturing the ones we have. Better to have no ceremony than to bring the wrong person into Freemasonry. Building Together gives us all the help we need to pick the right people to take their turn at the steering wheel and contribute to the Membership Challenge, and show us how to look after them once they’re here.

The ‘why’ we need it is the value of belonging, which is tough to measure – but you’d miss it if it weren’t there. As Joni Mitchell sang in Big Yellow Taxi: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Chris Jones, who opted for being alone on his round Britain walk for the Freemasons’ Charity, took the idea further. In his blog he wrote: “Do any of us truly realise how important it is to belong? Belong to a family, a community, a club? I certainly never did, I never really thought about it, but spending so much time on my own on this challenge, walking into and experiencing other peoples ‘belonging’, to then say goodbye and walk away, alone, has made me realise just how important it is.

“It’s made me realise just how much I took for granted the really important stuff, the people I love more than anything in the world, my family; the people that tolerate me and allow me to spend time with them within this incredible fraternity of Freemasons.

“It’s all about people. People are everything. Realising this very obvious fact has helped me to understand how incredibly fortunate I am and I know that whatever I’m doing in the future, wherever I go, I do belong.”

And that’s why the ‘belonging’ delivered by Building Together is so important to Freemasons like you today and all of Freemasonry for tomorrow.

So now you know why, open the Building Together box and unlock the answers!

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