Grand Master's Message
Most Worshipful Grand Master Dennis Ing, Grand Master of Masons of the State of Hawaii for 2008
Most Worshipful Sirs, Worshipful Sirs, distinguished guests, Brethren, friends and family, my remarks will be brief.
In May of next year, we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of this Grand Lodge. Like many other grand jurisdictions, we find ourselves dwindling in membership and (because members furnish our income) dwindling in funds.
One of the main reasons we visit other jurisdictions and the Grand Masters’ Conference is to get a perspective of who we are. Make no mistake about it, we are a small jurisdiction, and, yes, a poor jurisdiction. Sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed at how small we are – there are Lodges who have more members than all of our eleven constituent Lodges combined. But being small and poor, makes the job of the Grand Master and the Grand Lodge officers that much more important, and it makes our job that much more challenging.
It is indeed time for us to lay aside the honors and the accolades – though I am grateful for this honor and for your accolades. It is time for us to get down to the serious business of properly running this Grand Lodge.
I am pleased to say that you have elected some wonderful teammates for me – your Deputy Grand Master Marty Alexander, your Sr. Grand Warden Charlie Wegener, and the newest of the
Pillars, your Jr. Grand Warden Monty Glover. They are intelligent, knowledgeable, skillful and enthusiastic. We are all friends. We see eye-to-eye on most things. We will work together as a team to make this Grand Lodge what it should be.
Our appointed officers are also skilled and enthusiastic, each chosen because he will approach his assignments with commitment and zeal. All of them will serve on important committees, and all of them have taken their jobs not for honor, but because they are dedicated to supporting this Grand Lodge.
One of our primary goals during this term will be to finish our long-range strategic plan – an important element which our Grand Orator reminded us this morning has been missing from our organization. The name of our plan, the “Five Paddles of Progress”, comes from Washington State’s “Eight Pillars of Progress”. But the plan itself will be somewhat different from Washington’s, and I assure you that we will henceforth not be working on projects that belong to “my term” or “my year”, but on projects that will be part of our long-range plan, projects that may span several terms and several years.
The focus of this term will be two-fold: first, to grow and retain our membership, and second, to endeavor to remove the distance between the Grand Lodge and our constituent Lodges – physically and psychologically. Next February we will hold what I hope will be the largest “Fast Class” held in Hawaii since 1996, when my dad, Bennett Ing, as Grand Master introduced the One-Day Class to Hawaii.
We also hope to assist our Lodges in keeping new members interested in Lodge activities and in retrieving old members who may have strayed away from the Lodge.
Toward that end, we are planning less out-of-state travel, and more inter-island travel – so that all of our Lodges – especially our Brethren on neighbor islands – can share ideas and programs. One of the first things I intend to do is to make this Grand Jurisdiction computer literate. We will organize and sponsor computer classes for our Lodges – in internet access, Word and Excel. First, because it is time for all of our Lodges to have a common database for our members. Second, because the Internet has proven to be the greatest source of membership recruitment. Third, because communication is the key, and computers enable us to communicate easily and fast. Yes, we must bring our jurisdiction into the 21st Century.
We will have a monthly newsletter in addition to our quarterly bulletin, so that our Lodges will know what the Grand Master and the Executive Committee are doing, and what they are planning to do, what they have spent and what they intend to spend. “Transparency” will be the byword of our Grand Lodge.
We are planning leadership conferences, in order to equip our Lodges with the means to employ modern techniques of management, administration, recruitment and retention. We will bring speakers from another jurisdiction, and offer participation in the California Grand Lodge’s online leadership training program.
Finally, my slogan for this year is “Out of the Box”. While we must not abandon tradition and our ancient usages and customs, we must begin to think “out of the box”, to conceive of new ways to accomplish the difficult tasks ahead, and we must be bold enough to try them. The old ways seem not to be working as well in this fast-paced world. For example, I’ve appointed eleven Inspectors this year – one for each Lodge – and on Oahu they will rotate every four months. I think this will be advantageous both to the Inspectors and to the Lodges, who will be able to avail themselves of the expertise and personality that a particular Inspector may have.
We will try more online communication and conferencing, and yes, more online publicity. We will try advertising and partnering, and we will take another look at the definition of “recruiting”.
Our plans are ambitious and challenging. But with your support, the support of our team of elected and appointed officers, and with the assistance of our Great Architect, I am looking forward to a successful outcome. We are on our way. We are “out of the box”.
Thank you for your confidence in me, and thank you for all the good wishes you have given me today.