Membership in 2019 was nearly flat at 46,443. Compared with 53 years of contraction, that counts as a big deal. And a closer look at the numbers shows that the generation-long downward trends are petering out. Last year, 40 percent of lodges initiated more Entered Apprentices than they did the year prior. Three of the nine divisions gained members. A quarter of all lodges stayed flat or gained members. That remained true regardless of geography.

And that’s expected to continue in 2020, spurred on by a new restoration program in which suspended members may be brought back into good standing for a $100 fee.

Outreach efforts have shown that two-thirds of the close to 25,000 members suspended for nonpayment of dues never knew they’d been suspended. Of those who did, nearly two-thirds couldn’t afford to pay their back dues. More than a quarter had lost touch with their lodge, and 9 percent incorrectly assumed they’d paid up. All in all, four out of five suspended members said they wished to be restored to good standing. By reactivating these would-be Masons, the fraternity has the opportunity to inject fresh energy and ideas into its lodges.

Conservative estimates suggest that if just 5 percent of suspended members are restored, the fraternity would post its first overall membership gain since Bro. Lyndon Johnson was president. It’s true, this isn’t your grandfather’s fraternity—at least in terms of numbers. But for the first time in a long time, it’s poised for growth.

And perhaps all those granddads have a role in that, too. “This is very much about relationships between fathers and sons, grandfathers and sons,” Burger says. “I seldom talk to anyone about Masonry where they don’t say, ‘My grandfather was a Mason, and I’ve always wondered what that was about.’ A lot of these young men in their thirties are interested in it—interested in expanding their daily lives to have more personal communication and up-front conversations with people.”

By executing the 2020 plan, the fraternity has done the hard, back-end work to ensure that when those thirtysomethings come knocking, they’ll stick around.

In the short term, that means closing out the 2020 Fraternity Plan by continuing to provide—and expand on—Grand Lodge services to members and lodges. Chief among those is the expected rollout of iMember 2.0, which will centralize and simplify things like dues processing, communication, and other vital information. An upgraded lodge app is expected to debut in the spring. New forms of leadership training at retreats are in the works.

Beyond that, Grand Master John E. Trauner has proposed several of his own initiatives to support existing members, including launching a sister-lodge program to pair rural and urban lodges, introducing an obligation-renewal ceremony, and of course the suspended-member reinstatement campaign.

But ultimately, the great driver of this change will be the lodges themselves. Lodges are where members actually experience Freemasonry. It’s where they interact with the ritual, with each other, and with their community. It’s in each lodge that Masons push the fraternity to be its best. And often, that requires finding their own answers to complex questions. Finding their own doorstop.

For Burger, the next phase of lodge life involves a fresh coat of paint—literally and symbolically. “It’s not only an investment in our building. It’s in the life of the organization,” he says. “It’s our public face.”

When workers climbed up to inspect the wooden square and compass on the Pacific Grove lodge building, they found that it was brittle to the touch, ready to collapse. Rather than simply paint over it, the lodge voted to put funds toward a brand-new square and compass sign. “These things are the outward reflection of who we are inside,” Burger says. “So if they’re in disrepair, how does that reflect on us?”

Now the new sign is up and gleaming for passers-by to see and inquire about. “Now I see it, and I couldn’t be prouder to be a Mason,” he says.