Brethren and Companions,

You may already be familiar with Building Together. If not, it may well be just the support your Lodge or Chapter is looking for to help it flourish.

Over recent months, Building Together  has been carefully developed to bring harmony between the Craft’s Members’ Pathway and the Royal Arch’s Archway. The result is a single, coherent collection of guidance designed to benefit both Lodges and Chapters alike.

It is important to emphasise that Building Together  is not something being “done to” a Lodge or Chapter, nor is it a requirement being imposed by UGLE, SGC, or the Province of East Lancashire towards.. Instead, it offers a rich resource of practical ideas—drawn from the real experiences and successes of Lodges and Chapters in recent years—to support member engagement, enhance the enjoyment and planning of meetings, reduce losses, and encourage steady growth.

The entire Province of East Lancashire Senior Team, are fully supportive of this initiative. At the same time, Lodges and Chapters that have found success with the existing Members’ Pathway or Archway materials should feel no obligation to stop using them immediately. You are simply encouraged to begin adopting the new *Building Together* materials—many of which will feel reassuringly familiar—over the next year or so.

Together, in the true spirit of harmony and brotherhood, we can continue to help our Lodges and Chapters thrive.

The Shape Hub contains material covering two main themes, short (mostly two sides of A4 maximum) documents that give tried and tested ways that Lodges and Chapters can:

Review their Lodge/Chapter, including developing a Lodge/Chapter Profile that will help them understand what a good target audience for potential Initiates/Exaltees or Joining Members might be.
Develop a Membership Action Plan to galvanize the Lodge/Chapter into action in growing the membership.

The Attract Hub is for Lodges only and contains useful materials that Lodges can use to attract non-Masons to consider becoming Freemasons.

It then includes guidance on how to make the interview useful for both parties and a positive experience for the potential candidate.

The Attract Hub is of most interest to the Lodge Membership Officer and Secretary, but other members may be able to support.

The Continue Hub, which is for Chapters to use, fulfils a similar function to Attract, but notes that the pool for potential Exaltees is not the public but members of the Craft.

This Hub supports Chapters to work with Lodges to attract potential Exaltees, good advice on managing the interview process, and guidance on managing a Craft Mason’s expectations to ensure the Exaltation and membership of a Chapter is a positive one.

Please note that all Companions should bear in mind that success means bringing a new Exaltee into the right Chapter for them, which works in terms of time/day, ethos, and costs, not necessarily the Chapter of which a Companion happens to be a member, or the Chapter to which the Lodge normally feeds into.

The Continue Hub is of most interest to the person fulfilling the role of Membership Officer in the Chapter, as well as the ScribeE, and all other members. All Royal Arch Companions are expected to be an ambassador for the Royal Arch in their Craft Lodges, not just the Royal Arch Representative.

Once one has attracted a new member into a Lodge or Chapter, it is necessary to support them. The Engage Hub contains lots of useful information that Lodges and Chapters can use to ensure that the new member has an interesting and fulfilling experience. The Hub also contains material to support Masons throughout their time in the Lodge or Chapter, including:

• Excellent advice on Mentoring.
• Opportunities to find out more about playing your part in the Lodge or Chapter.
• Resources to learn more about the history and traditions of Freemasonry.
• Guidance for Lodges on supporting candidates towards Exaltation.
• Supporting a candidate to leave the Lodge or Chapter and help them find one that suits them better, perhaps due to a house move to another locality.

The Lodge or Chapter Mentor and Almoner take the lead on Engage matters, but every personal mentor, the Secretary/ScribeE, DC, and other members should play their part in making the Lodge or Chapter engaging to their members.

The final part of the Hub looks at how signs of dissatisfaction can be spotted early, and how Lodges and Chapters can support the Mason, hopefully averting a potential resignation or exclusion.

The Respond Hub supports Lodges and Chapters to handle a resignation and ideally resolve the issue, guiding a resigning member to cancel their resignation or assist them to join a Lodge or Chapter at which they would be a better fit.

The Respond Hub also contains guidance to a Lodge or Chapter which might want to change its ways of working radically, to make it more attractive and engaging to potential and current members.

The Lodge and Chapter Almoner and Secretary/ScribeE would take the lead here, with input from the DC and all members on the Alternative Futures element.