Leadership Training Library Celebration

Alicia and I attended a dinner celebration this evening for a project we recently finished. It's a project in which many members of the team have participated called Leadership Training Library. Like any impactful work, it has taken great amounts of dedication and has been met with plenty of resistance. It has challenged relationships, required sacrifice and built faith and testimony of those who participated. This mix of positive and negative is not uncommon for projects of this magnitude. My work last year with LDS.org was similar and I had the same mix of positive and negative emotion about it at the similar celebration last year.

Tonight I was impressed with some comments made by one of the speakers. Elder Christensen, a ecclesiastical leader for the Church mentioned that this project was notable and should be instructive for further work for three reasons:

• It was visual - Many members in the Church cannot access materials and really understand them by reading. This product provides training in a visual format.
• It was authentic - This product captured real experiences of members who were called to lead. In many cases these members felt the inspiration of the Spirit while the camera was rolling. That lead to a real feeling in the product that could not be staged.
• It was transforming - This project required a greater level of commitment and because of that, it motivated its participants to be prayerful and trust in God for his help to accomplish difficult or impossible tasks. As a result of that, the team was transformed into a more faithful group. This is a mark of a good project in the Church.

I have been blessed to have an involvement and a close position of observation and learning in this project.