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New pre ordeal ceremony?


Oldscout448

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Well, I just got back from my 27th (I think) ordeal. My first in 8 years or so, the coffee was worse than I remembered, But it was very good to talk with some old friends, make some new ones, and hear the legend again. While there I heard that there is a rumor that the entire friday night ceremony is to by revamped. Now the rumor may be just a rumor, but it was done once before in 1977 I think.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

I was offered the high paying job of coaching the ceremonies team and would hate to see the team spend days working on a part just to discard it

Oldscout

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I haven't heard anything regarding changing the Pre-Ordeal. There are wheels moving to revamp the Brotherhood ceremony. A draft version was presented at each Section Conclave this year for review and feedback from each Lodge. If approved at the National OA Meeting in December it will be optional to use in 2014 and mandatory starting in 2015.

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I'm so sorry about the coffee. If it's any consolation, I'll keep an eye out for a ceremony team leader, and run a serving through my espresso pot for him in your name (er, alias). :) Change is always afoot. Sometimes it's at the council level, sometimes it's at the camp level, and sometimes ist's at the national level.

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I'm so sorry about the coffee. If it's any consolation, I'll keep an eye out for a ceremony team leader, and run a serving through my espresso pot for him in your name (er, alias). :) Change is always afoot. Sometimes it's at the council level, sometimes it's at the camp level, and sometimes ist's at the national level.
The brotherhood, hmm well there is one part I have wanted to change for a long time. Still it will be hard memorizing a entirely new ceremony at my age. Guess I should have gone to the conclave, but I have things I keep putting first ( read job, wife, kids, church) I might be able to get a copy from the lodge, but in the past sending them requests has been like throwing bottles with notes into the ocean, some times a reply- mostly just the sound of waves.

 

qwaze your offer of a symbolic espresso is gratefully accepted

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I attended the National Planning meeting in December. The proposed Brotherhood ceremony was approved with changes. From there it goes to the BSA side for approval, branding, etc. The new ceremony is supposed to be available this summer. The script will only be online for download and yes, it will be password protected. I can ask around about Pre-Ordeal, but I haven't heard anything changing with that ceremony. I am longtime OA friends with a couple of the guys that did the rewrite.

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So it seems that the Pre is not to be changed, I'm glad, it works well much better than it was in the old days. Tokala, can you say how much the Brotherhood well change? 20%? 50%?

I am planning with working with the team over the summer. It would be nice to know if there is any point in spending time on the Brotherhood?

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Oldscout448, the new Brotherhood ceremony is a completely different script. The tests remain the same, but how they are explained and presented to the candidates is new. I saw the proposed ceremony at the 2012 Planning Meeting and again at our Section meet. I do know that the folks involved took input seriously. I'm just not sure how much will be changed by the time it is released. Lodges have the option to continue with the current cermony through 2014. In 2015, Lodges will be required to use the new ceremony. I'm not sure how they can enforce that without having ceremonial police attend Lodge functions.

 

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True, but a lot of us don't make it to Conclaves. We just focus on serving the local bunch of scouts. I'll never forget the surprised look on the faces of chapter team in 1982 when someone from the lodge team showed up at the spring Ordeal, for the first time in 12 years. Or the shocked look when he told them they had been doing an obsolete Pre ordeal ceremony for the last 4 years

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I attended the National Planning meeting in December. The proposed Brotherhood ceremony was approved with changes. From there it goes to the BSA side for approval, branding, etc. The new ceremony is supposed to be available this summer. The script will only be online for download and yes, it will be password protected. I can ask around about Pre-Ordeal, but I haven't heard anything changing with that ceremony. I am longtime OA friends with a couple of the guys that did the rewrite.
I'm surprised to hear this. I saw the new ceremony at conclave and it received mostly negative feedback from all the people I visited with about it. Perhaps the feedback was different from the other conclaves or the powers that be decided to go ahead and do what they wanted to regardless.
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  • 4 weeks later...

Update; at the chapter meeting last Tuesday I was informer that the Ordeal and Pre have been updated in some "minor" ways. The brotherhood is totally changed. The kicker is they want the team to learn them by the spring Ordeal. That is 10 weeks away guys, and as of right now no one on the ceremonies team has a copy. Well we have our first meeting tomorrow, should be fun!

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There has been no announcement of altering the Pre-Ordeal or Ordeal ceremony in any way. The New Brotherhood Ceremony was not finalized at the 2013 OA National Planning Meeting and is undergoing more review and adjustment. Last I heard was to expect the new script to be available in May at the earliest, and Lodges wouldn't be required to use it until 2015. We were told this at our last Section Council of Chiefs meeting.

 

Are the "minor" changes you were informed of differences in the ceremony script itself?

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