Who could love listening to the ceremonial "Reading of Minutes Not Already Read and Approved"? Me! I love listening to the minutes, and I'll be happy to explain why!
How do we know so much about when our founding masonic fathers were initiated, passed, and raised? How do we know so much about their "home" lodges? How do we know so much about the various ceremonies, processions, and feasts their lodges held? Well, obviously there was some amount of public press reporting on these affairs, but there also came various times where academics, historians, and curious masons gained valuable insight from their particular formal lodge histories which themselves take much of their factual information from summaries of their accumulated meeting minutes. This is why we publish formal histories - to provide insight and factual information regarding the activities of our lodges and our members in a form that is authoritative, accurate, and available for historical research.
When we take upon ourselves this duty of "reading the minutes of not already read and approved", we are laboring together with equal interest in the success of the lodge to review the actions and statements made at previous meetings to ensure the historical record is correct. The Law Book of our Grand Jurisdiction requires the Worshipful Master to decide upon the correctness of the minutes and to order the correction of any error at the very first Stated Meeting after discovery. This therefore is a very specific obligation of the presiding Worshipful Master - ensuring the historical record of the lodge is complete and correct. As members, it is our obligation to participate and assist the Worshipful Master by hearing those minutes and advising him when we hear errors or if we identify omissions. We labor together to ensure the history of our lodge is complete and accurate - not perhaps for our own use tomorrow, but for the eventual use by masonic historians and researchers in the future.
In 2020 I wrote and article titled "If Your Masonry is Based on Stated Meetings, Perhaps You're Doing it Wrong!" and I addressed this same question of reading the minutes at that time as well. I believe we are adding a level of "artificial stress" to the matter of our Stated Meetings. Lodges have ritual to do, ritual practice to conduct, social events, educational programs, and various other activities that bring our members together at the lodge. A Stated Meeting is merely one opportunity every month to stop, review our finances and historical records, read and ballot on petitions, and tend to the business and future of the lodge. It can be made to be (or seem) like some arduous and demanding task, or it can be seen as a social experience where we gather with our brothers and meet - without the pressure of memorizing and practicing ritual or instructing candidates - for the sole purpose of addressing the needs of the lodge itself.
In my mind (yes, my personal opinion, this is an "opinion piece" after all) the way a Stated Meeting is viewed by the members is shaped by the senior members and mentors of the lodge. If they constantly talk about them as wasteful, horrendous, and torturous gatherings that serve no value, then that is how our new members will come to view them and then - believe it or not - those new members will stop coming - a particular danger for lodges that may only hold one gathering per month.
A Stated Meeting is what we make it, and making sure that our historical record is accurate is just one of our various obligations attached! We may or may not write our lodge history this year or next, but perhaps some brother in the future will take the time and initiative to produce the official record of our lodge and it is up to us to ensure that record is complete! Is ten minutes out of one night each month really too much time to commit to verifying our historical record? In fact, it is specifically because it will likely be at some distant time that a brother tackles our lodge history that we owe him today the courtesy of capturing the activities and events of our day in such a way that they are easily understood years in the future when those who were present and who participated are gone.
P.S. And for those who might believe that the meeting minutes of the lodge serve no immediate purpose or use, I would invite you to volunteer for your next lodge Audit Committee where you might find yourself chasing an expenditure or an un-catagorized sum of money through the minutes to determine its origin and purpose! I would be willing to bet that those brothers who have served (and who may frequently serve) on their lodge Audit Committee listen to the minutes from a far different perspective than brothers who have not!
For those who might like to read my original article from 2020, you can use these links to find either the online or downloadable version:
Travel on my brothers and please, travel safely!
-BroBill
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