A letter from the Presiding Bishopric dated 20 July 2005 stated: "A Church record-keeping training course is now available and can be accessed in the 'Serving in the Church' area of
www.lds.org. Priesthood leaders, clerks, and stake auditors should review the lessons that apply to their callings."
Both the financial and membership audits have a requirement that leaders and clerks "have reviewed the applicable training lessons." Whenever we conduct such audits in our stake, this is one of the hardest questions to answer accurately because:
- The question needs to be answered by several people who are not present at the audit
- It's not clear to anyone what the "applicable" lessons are
- There is no record of who took any lessons
Because of these problems, auditors usually get a vague answer such as "I'm pretty sure everyone has taken the training" or "Hmm. I don't know. You'll have to ask the other clerks." In many cases, it's clear that clerks and leaders aren't sure where to even find the training. (It's on lds.org under Serving in the Church > Melchizedek Priesthood, or it is accessible on administrative computers through MLS.)
To help resolve some of these issues, I am preparing a training matrix for my stake to use at both the ward and stake level. It lists all the training lessons, and for each lesson lists:
- The date the lesson was last updated
- The approximate time to complete the lesson
- Each calling that the lesson applies to (both required lessons and optional lessons that could be helpful)
I plan to use the matrix as the basis for a training log that wards and the stake can fill out listing each person who should take lessons (by name and by calling), the lessons they should take, and the date the training was completed. Armed with this record, it should be simple for an auditor to quickly scan the list and see if the required training has actually been completed.
I would appreciate any feedback regarding this idea, and the particular matrix (which I have attached to this post). In particular, do the required and optional lessons for each calling look correct?