What Are Freemasons Looking For in New Members?

Two anxieties arrive with almost every enquirer. Either he fears he is not good enough, or he fears he will not fit. Having sat on a great many committees, I can tell you that both anxieties are usually misplaced, and that what a lodge is actually weighing is narrower and more human than candidates imagine.

§What is not being assessed

Let me clear the ground first, because most men waste their preparation on the wrong things.

• Your income. Provided you can meet the dues without hardship, the figure is irrelevant.
• Your education. A committee has never once asked me about a candidate's schooling.
• Your knowledge of Freemasonry. Reading widely is pleasant but proves nothing about character.
• Your social polish. Nervousness is expected and rather in your favour.
• Your profession. A lodge that recruits by occupation is a lodge in decline.

§What is being assessed

Four things, in my experience, and they are discussed in almost every candidate conversation I have taken part in.

1. Consistency. Will he still be here in three years, or is this an enthusiasm?
2. Motive. Did he come for the men and the moral work, or for standing, secrets or business?
3. Discretion. Can he hold a confidence, and does he speak carelessly about other people?
4. Ease. Would the room be better for his presence at a table for two hours?

Note that none of the four can be demonstrated in a single evening, which is precisely why lodges prefer several visits before a petition. The evidence accumulates in small, unglamorous ways, as I described in Your First Visit to a Lodge.

§The signals that count

Candidates always want to know what to do. Here is the honest answer, and none of it involves performance.

• Turn up more than once, and turn up on time.
• Ask about the men rather than about the ritual.
• Remember a name from the previous visit and use it.
• Help clear the table without being asked.
• Send a short thank you note the next morning. Almost nobody does this and it is remembered for years.
• Answer the awkward questions plainly, including about money, faith and any past trouble.
• Bring your partner to a social event if one is offered.

We are not looking for a finished Mason. We are looking for a man who will still be coming when the novelty has worn off.

§The signals that cost men a ballot

In fairness, these should be said aloud too.

• Pressing for the secrets, particularly early and repeatedly.
• Mentioning business opportunity, even lightly, even as a joke.
• Disparaging another organisation, a former employer or an ex-wife at the table.
• Concealing something material that later surfaces. The concealment, not the fact, is what does the damage.
• Enthusiasm that arrives at full volume and then goes silent for two months.

If you would like the questions to ask, the lodge scorecard to compare where you visit, and the plan for your first year once you are in, all of it is set out in The First Step Roadmap.

§Why lodges are more welcoming than they were

It should be said plainly that many jurisdictions have seen decades of declining membership, and Grand Lodges have responded by making enquiry considerably easier. The United Grand Lodge of England and its counterparts now maintain public enquiry forms, and cold approaches are entirely normal. A well run lodge today wants good candidates and knows it must earn them.

That does not lower the bar on character. It does mean the man who assumed he needed an introduction from a relative was wrong, as I discuss in Can Anyone Become a Freemason.

§What happens at the interview

Most jurisdictions send two or three members to meet a candidate, sometimes at his home, sometimes over coffee. Candidates dread this and they should not. It is a conversation, not an examination, and its purpose is as much to inform you as to assess you.

You will be asked why you wish to join, whether you come freely, whether you can meet the dues without hardship, whether your family knows and supports the decision, and whether there is anything in your history the lodge ought to know. If your home is visited, the members are also quietly noting whether your household seems content about the whole affair, because a lodge gains nothing by admitting a man whose wife resents every meeting.

The best preparation is not rehearsal. It is having genuinely thought the answers through beforehand, which is precisely what the self-examination further down this page is for.

§If you are rejected

It happens, it is rarely explained, and it is almost never a verdict on your worth. Most often it is timing, an unresolved question a committee could not settle, or a simple sense that a candidate had not yet made up his own mind. Another lodge, or the same lodge a year later, is a perfectly ordinary outcome.

Before you go anywhere near a ballot, though, it is worth putting yourself through the honest self-examination in 20 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a Freemason. A committee will ask you a version of most of them.