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Generation Zoom
What Youth Orders Can Show Us About Going Virtual

Brother Ian A. Stewart, Grand Lodge of California

Netfl ix parties. Virtual cooking classes. Video SPICE IT UP
game marathons. If you’re looking to maximize your
lodge’s online potential, look to the Masonic youth A two-hour Zoom meeting is a drag, no way around
orders, whose chapters, bethels, and assemblies it. So chapters have made a point of having some
have fl ourished online. “We haven’t stopped being fun during Zooms. Th ings like scavenger hunts and
DeMolay,” says James Banta, the executive director of craft s demonstrations are common in JDI meetings;
the Northern California jurisdiction. “We’re marching DeMolay held a virtual science fair. Banta points to a
forward.” Here, a few tips from the kids: three-hour binge one chapter had of the video game
Among Us. “It’s all about keeping the kids together,”
Banta says.
SIMPLIFY

Meetings and installations can be elaborate aff airs. Permission to reprint the article from "Generation Zoom"
Online, that needs condensing. So both DeMolay and Ian A. Stewart, the California Freemason magazine, Dec/
Job’s Daughters now play prerecorded slideshows in Jan 2021 issue, granted from the California Freemason,
place of opening and closing ceremonies. magazine. Grand Lodge of F&AM of California.

SECURE

Youth order leaders have had to get comfortable with
the limits of digital security—and their own members’
good common sense. Th at means using passwords
and waiting rooms and, for DeMolay, distributing
instructions on “tiling” their own homes, says Don
Peterson, executive offi cer of the Southern California
jurisdiction.

STAY IN TOUCH
Membership organizations including Rainbow for
Girls and others can’t leave their members twisting in
the wind. Th at’s why Job’s Daughters introduced an
online Sisterhood Ceremony, a pre-initiation that new
members can take in order to feel connected to the
bethel in advance of their formal initiation.

BACK TO BASICS

For JDI, one lesson of the Zoom era is that there’s
a lot of back-end work that is frankly better done
online, says Denise Jow, the grand guardian of the
state. Th at includes things like adult council meetings "...left to his own devices, man will use his God-given
and volunteer training sessions. talents to be creative, productive, and prosperous.
Using free will, he will better his own situation and
that of those around him, thereby influencing in a
positive way his own destiny...

Montana Freemason Page 8 March/April 2021 Volume 97 No. 2