How can a lodge ignite the spark of within new candidates, improve membership retention and spread our noble goal and purpose beyond the brothers in our Order? A great way is by developing an inspirational Call-Out Ceremony to provide your lodge with the opportunity to do all of these things and more.
The Call-Out Ceremony is a candidate’s first experience with the Order of the Arrow after their election, and generally the public’s only experience with the Order. Recent surveys among our membership have shown that the Call-Out Ceremony is the most influential of all the Order of the Arrow’s ceremonies. The national Order of the Arrow committee does not dictate a standard Call-Out Ceremony like it does with the other ceremonies, which allows local lodges to innovate and add local customs and traditions into their ceremony.
To help inspire lodges around the nation to innovate and improve their Call-Out Ceremonies, the National Inductions and Ceremonial Events Committee (ICE) is calling on lodges to submit videos of their local Call-Out ceremonies to the NOAC 2018 ICE Staff.
The ICE team will review all entries and select several to be featured as part of the National Call-Out Ceremony Symposium at NOAC. Lodges may upload their videos to a private You Tube channel and submit the link here: https://oa-bsa.org/article/call-out-ceremony-submission-and-symposium
All videos must be submitted by July 13, 2018, to be eligible for consideration to be part of the symposium. This is in no way a competition, but rather an opportunity for your lodge to be showcased during a national discussion.
The National Call-Out Ceremony Symposium will be presented as an afternoon session that dovetails with a morning training led by members of the ICE team. The symposium will feature a round table discussion to address best practices, share ideas, and gain inspiration from lodges across the country. Video submissions of these ceremonies will be utilized to help facilitate the conversation. The goal is to provide lodges with the resources to develop their own unique ceremony or encourage lodges to incorporate new ideas and improve their existing ceremonies. Together we can inspire the next generation of Arrowmen to decide their destiny!
Any questions regarding the National Call-Out Ceremony Symposium should be directed to Lead Trainer Neil Harris and Lead Adviser J.C. Cinelli at @email.