As the new president of what as then Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho) in 1971, sitting in the first meeting he had ever observed with the church's Board of Education, he watched as an academic with a research background in group decision-making. He initially viewed their discussion as "the strangest encounter.

"Here you have the prophets of God, and they are disagreeing in a way you never see in business," when participants most often defer to the chairman. "I thought revelation would come to them all and they would all see things in the same way. It was not like anything I had ever seen in studying small groups in business."

After a while, the men began to find points of agreement, and he believed he'd seen a "miracle in unity" occur. Waiting for then-church President Harold B. Lee to announce a consensus decision, he was startled to hear him table the discussion after noting he felt "someone in the room who is not yet settled."

Afterward, he observed a member of the Quorum of the Twelve approached President Lee and thank him. With emotion stirred at the memory, President Eyring said he remembers thinking, "We're in another kind of thing here. This (church) is what it claims to be, the true Church of Jesus Christ. Revelation is real here, even in what you call the business side" of church operations.

"President Lee taught me a great lesson" in dialogue, "that we can be open, direct and talk about differences in a way you can't anywhere else. No one is trying to win or make our arguments dominate. We just want to do and to say what is right."

President Eyring is the latest in a triad of Harvard-trained leaders called to serve in key positions by President Gordon B. Hinckley. Presidents recently named at church-owned BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii are both Harvard Business School graduates.

Elder Cook, a Stanford-educated attorney, emphasized it would be "a great mistake" for church members or observers "to think there is an educational or occupational requirement to serve in the church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"If you look at all the people who are serving from all walks of life and all kinds of backgrounds, you have people who love the Lord and are spiritually mature. There is no educational or occupational requirement of any kind."

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; nwarburtone@desnews.com

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