Much store has been placed recently on the desire to integrate more closely the Craft and Royal Arch; the launch of the Strategy for Freemasonry 2022 and Beyond was the beginning of the closer integration and harmonisation between the Craft and The Royal Arch.
When the strategy was launched, The Province of Warwickshire was ahead of the game. In November 2020, Warwickshire’s then Grand Superintendent, Philip Hall, was installed as Provincial Grand Master, creating what was colloquially known as a “double-header”. Then, some 18 months later, in May 2022, the responsibility for administrative support for both the Provincial Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Chapter of Warwickshire came together for the first time in many years with the appointment of Derek Lodge as the Provincial Grand Secretary and Provincial Grand Scribe Ezra at the joint Annual Convocation and Provincial Grand Lodge meetings - itself held for the first time on the same day and venue together with a joint Craft and Royal Arch lunch.
The merging of the two administrative systems was going to result in some changes to the Provincial secretariats.
Integration Challenges
The challenge initially was to identify what functions the joint secretariat was required to support, how these functions were to be delivered or managed and who would be responsible for doing so.
Working with the Provinces Royal Arch team, the initial impression was that many of the Royal Arch admin tasks could be absorbed by “mirroring” the process currently used for the equivalent Craft activities: installation returns, reviews of summonses, recording form Ps, etc. Subsequent experience, however, showed that some of these processes were not readily compliant or compatible, so further work was required to bring records up to date and introduce new systems as needed.
Other activities required a more specific and dedicated system for their management, such as the Royal Arch installation and special events system, which is more complex to establish and manage than the Craft system. A method to manage these complexities was established and is now functioning well in Warwickshire.
Alongside these issues the Warwickshire team had to cope with the usual round of enquiries on procedural matters and a re-learning of the application of nuances of the Royal Arch regulations as in the Book of Constitutions provided some entertainment in the early days of integration!
The administrative workload was expected to be increased by approximately 30% and great store was placed upon the scheduled introduction of the Hermes system being able to relieve some of this extra work.
At the time of writing Project 2023 has yet to be implemented and so any potential benefits of the new systems have not materialised. Warwickshire is due to adopt Hermes across the Province in December 2024.
So how did it go?
Well, in the words of Warwickshire’s Provincial Grand Secretary/Scribe Ezra, Bernard Foad, “We survived! The core team involved in the process of integration was the Provincial Grand Secretary/Scribe Ezra, the Provincial Assistant Grand Secretary and the Provincial Assistant Grand Scribe Ezra.
The functions of Registrar, Almoner, Treasurer and Communications also took on the double mantle but were, in the main, able effectively to absorb the Royal Arch elements into their existing processes and procedures.”
By a combination of pragmatic and practical decision-making, two years down the line, Warwickshire is now able to report that it has a workable, integrated approach to running the affairs of the Province.
Pragmatic because there are some matters which will, eventually, be taken over by Project 2023, and so the Warwickshire team felt there was no point in creating new processes or re-inventing the wheel working on the principle of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”!
Practical because Warwickshire’s current Provincial Assistant Secretary and Assistant Scribe Ezra are both flexible enough to be able to support each other in their particular roles but also experienced in the wonders of the Book of Constitutions to be able to give practical advice to the myriad of procedural enquiries.
A culture of “yes if” is very much at the heart of their approach to supporting Lodge Secretaries and Chapter Scribes.
Is everything perfect? Far from it; there is still work to do to ensure that the team are giving the best support they can to the lodges and chapters in Warwickshire.
Bernard Foad confesses,
“We will eventually need to upgrade some of our processes to align with the needs of Project 2023 and the upcoming changes to the Book of Constitutions whilst maintaining the very best support we can to all our lodges and chapters”.
What's next?
The Provincial Grand Master of Warwickshire, Philip Hall, says he is “very keen to ‘blur the lines’ between the two orders at every opportunity” and goes on to say “, so we will continue to hold joint events wherever appropriate”. For the past three years, Warwickshire’s Annual Provincial Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Chapter Convocation meetings have been held on the same day, at the same venue, with one being held in the morning and the other in the afternoon and a joint lunch between meetings.
In addition, this year the Province launched their new website combining Craft and Royal Arch and are currently in the process of merging their social media, an important step in ensuring that Royal Arch is viewed as a central part of every brother’s Masonic journey.
Looking back, Bernard Foad says,
“We have come a long way and learnt many lessons; the key lesson we have taken from this time is to plagiarise the words of another worthy Freemason, Rudyard Kipling, to trust and use those 'Serving Men who have served me well – Who, What, Why, Where, When and How'”.
