The Eagle Scout Project and the Law of Consecration

Most people think of the Eagle Scout project as a requirement to complete.

Plan it. Get it approved. Lead the volunteers. Finish the work. Check the box.

But spend a few minutes thinking about what the requirement actually asks our youth to do – and something deeper emerges.

The Eagle Scout Service Project is the opportunity for a Scout to demonstrate leadership of others while performing a project for the benefit of their community. It MUST benefit an organization other than Scouting America, and it cannot be performed for an individual or a business.

Read that again.

It has to benefit someone else. It cannot benefit the Scout. It cannot benefit your organization. It must be given away – freely, completely- to a community or institution that NEEDS something you can provide.

In Latter-day Saint theology, we have a name for that principle. We call it consecration.

The law of consecration, at its core, is about giving what you have – your time, your effort, your resources, your leadership – to build something that benefits the kingdom, the community, the people around you. Not for personal gain. Not for recognition. Because you made a covenant to give.

An Eagle Scout project isn’t a covenant. But it is a rehearsal for one.

A 15-year-old who spends months planning a trail restoration project, who recruits and leads volunteers, who pushes through permit problems and bad weather and tired helpers, who finishes – that youth has practiced something sacred. They’ve experienced what it feels like to give genuinely and significantly to something outside themselves.

That’s not a small thing.

The Eagle charge asks a new Eagle Scout to keep their covenants with the same diligence they exercised in progressing through rank advancement and fulfilling the Eagle requirements. That language is intentional. Because the people writing that charge understood something: habits built in Scouting (the habits of service, of follow-through, of giving without receiving) are the same habits discipleship requires.

The Eagle project doesn’t teach the law of consecration. But if you’re a Latter-day Saint leader helping a youth through it, you have the opportunity to name what’s actually happening.

Tell them. Not in a Sunday School way. In a campfire way. In a real, honest, “do you understand what you just did?” way.

Because they did something holy. And they may not know it yet.