Priests Leadership Conference (PLC) is a 4-day leadership training course  for young men of LDS Priest-Venturer age.  It is currently sponsored by a group  of LDS stakes in the Taylorsville area, Salt Lake County, Utah.  PLC had its origins in an experimental course called National LDS Explorer Leadership Conference, presented in 1985-86 at Philmont Ranch, New Mexico, under the sponsorship of the Young Mens General Board of the LDS Church.  This program was an adaptation of an adult LDS Exploring course, Explorer Leadership Institute (ELI), which in turn was developed from the traditional advanced scout leader training course, Wood Badge.  After the successful piloting of this course at Philmont Ranch, starting in 1987 the course began to be offered by the three Utah BSA councils.

In 1988, local leaders of the Olde English Fort BSA District (which had within its boundaries about 50 potential Exploring units in nine Taylorsville and Bennion LDS stakes), under the guidance and direction of an LDS Relationships Committee for the District, began to search for methods to strengthen the application of the "older boy" programs of scouting in its area of coverage. This assessment concluded that the Exploring program, when utilized knowledgeably and expertly, could provide significant tools to assist priests age young men and their leaders and advisors in meeting Aaronic Priesthood goals and purposes. However, as compared to the younger boy levels of scouting, among adult leaders there existed an almost complete absence of understanding of how to use the Exploring program and few Explorer age boys in the area had a vision of the value and attractiveness of the program.  It was concluded that only by a massive amount of training of boys and leaders could the Explorer program become viable.  And since there were almost no successful examples of good Explorer Posts in the area for people to use as models, training would need to be experiential, where participants actually lived the Exploring method for a few days in order to really catch a vision of and learn Exploring.  The approach used for the advanced Exploring leadership courses being offered by the Utah BSA Councils at that time were assessed by the local leaders as meeting this need, with two exceptions.  These were the lack of  capacity of the Council courses to train in the numbers that these local leaders envisioned were needed and that the cost of the Council courses would prohibit many leaders and young men from attending.  These local leaders envisioned the need to train as many as 100 young men and 50 adult leaders yearly within the District area in order to maintain a high level of Exploring knowledge.

As a beginning, the goal was set to sponsor the course for Taylorsville area youth (believing that a youth course would find the most support at the start), holding the cost to the $65-70 range.  This course was offered by Olde English Fort BSA District initially in 1990, and repeated yearly since.

In 1993, several Taylorsville and Bennion LDS stakes assumed sponsorship of the course.  The Church announced that it would not longer participate in  BSA-sponsored training courses containing priesthood-related instruction.  The Council courses for adults and youth in LDS Exploring leadership were canceled.  However a group of Taylorsville and Bennion Stake Presidents, drawing on the precedents of Church-sponsored scout training and programs such as Little  Philmont and stake and area scout camps, sought and received permission from the Area Presidency to continue the PLC as a church-sponsored program.  Since 1993,  the course has been provided by the Taylorsville and Bennion stakes themselves with the Taylorsville Utah West Stake as lead stake.

In 1999, when BSA changed the name of the of their young adult program from Exploring to Venturing, PLC followed that lead, but the course remained essentially the same.

Since 1990, over 400 young men have attended the course.  The Stakes have  also experimented with methods to involve adults leaders as participants and have trained approximately 50 adults either a members of an adult post in the youth course or in a special weekend version of PLC for adults.