I received an email this week from another chapter in our area. I was being asked to open my church to the chapter for an upcoming initiation night. It seems the church they had used previously had a new pastor and the chapter was no longer welcome to use the space.

As a former High Phi, I know how having the right space is a benefit to the execution of the Ritual. Our church just happens to have a great space for exemplification, too, so that doesn’t hurt. My chapter, Phi-Delta, has used the space here and will for the foreseeable future. So, at the first request, my mind was leaning to the affirmative.

Until I continued to read, and the requesting chapter’s High Phi said, “We’d need it from 9PM until 5AM the next day.”

Excuse me? How many are you initiating, 50?

I simply can’t imagine a chapter needing to reserve space for eight hours to initiate an average number of men. I would love to have the chapter here, but I can’t be here until 5AM Sunday morning and then be ready for worship at 9:30AM. Frankly, it sounds to me like there is a lot of wasted time in the process of that chapter’s initiation work if they need that much time. My chapter knows that it is a bug-aboo to me to stand around, run on “Lambda Time,” or (the greatest offense) spend three hours doing “one final rehearsal” on the night of initiation.

So, I wait to hear back from the chapter’s High Phi, or possibly the High Pi, about whether or not they want to work with me and me with them. In the meanwhile, I offer this advice to all chapters. Know the Ritual well. Do an excellent job in Fraternity Education for our Associates, and be efficient, but not hurried, in the exemplification. I assure you, the time saved in the Ritual room will be well-spent in post-initiation brotherhood!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 11:37 am and is filed under Chapter, Fraternity Education, Ritualism . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.