What are we working toward as a fraternity? It’s a simple question, but also a complex one— and one that in the past we haven’t necessarily worked on answering.

Over the past year, as the Grand Lodge executive committee began developing a new 2025 Fraternity Plan, we recognized that it was a question that needed to be asked. Since 2005, we’ve developed a series of successful five-year plans to guide the organization’s initiatives and campaigns, but they didn’t pose that basic question about where we’re heading. Our plan needed to envision the end result of our work—the world we hope to see and help bring about. That vision, along with the mission statement describing how we intend to accomplish our goal, would align the 2025 Plan with all subsequent plans and ensure we’re moving purposefully forward toward a common result. We chose the year 2050 as our end date—the bicentennial of the Grand Lodge of California.

In order to develop this vision statement, we asked several hundred lodge leaders to create a cover of Time magazine, dated October 2050, dedicated to Freemasonry. What would the headline say? How would future generations describe Freemasonry in California and the difference it has made in the world? From these extremely creative covers came key themes that formed a unified picture of what we as Masons want to see. I am pleased to announce our vision for 2050: The World in Harmony. Our method for achieving this vision is reflected in our new mission statement: Building peace and understanding through friendship, service, and self-improvement.

Ambitious? Absolutely. But everything we do as Masons must strive to bring us together, to act in harmony. By creating that positive change in the world and acting as an example for others, we can begin to make a difference. We can make the world we envision a reality.

Sincerely and fraternally,

Arthur H. Weiss, Grand Master