"What do you do when you feel like God's calling you, but you're not sure you want to go into ministry?"

Near the end of a workshop on discerning a call to ministry, Krista Johnson's question caused a few nervous chuckles from a group of 35 college students identified as future leaders for the church. It's a question many of them are wrestling with as they try to identify their callings in life, whether it is ministry or social work or accounting.

These students, all participants in the Division of Higher Education Leadership Fellows Program and the Phillips University Legacy Scholars Program, came to St. Louis in mid-November to examine how they can improve their leadership skills and the roles they will play in re-energizing the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Both scholarship programs focus on helping students develop their own skills. Several smaller workshops centered on how to identify a student's individual leadership strengths and weaknesses. Phillips Scholar Kristin Wharry, a junior at Texas Christian University from Austin, Texas, plans to use the conference to help her in leadership roles on campus.

"(The conference) gave me more perspective into different types of leadership skills, knowing and seeing how the different personalities come together, working together," she said.

The conference brought some of the rising stars in the denomination to interact with students. Two key speakers - General Minister and President Richard Hamm and Eric Cole, pastor of Shalom Community Christian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina - concentrated on the link between new church starts and diversity.

"I'm thinking a lot about what Eric said - how he made the transition from his church to the inter-generational and inter-cultural church," Wharry said. "I want to know how we can make that (effort) bigger. I was thinking about what Dick said about building churches, that a majority of them are either (diverse) like Shalom or are Hispanic, that a majority are not all white. It makes me think about where the church is going."

Holly McKissick, pastor of Olathe, Kansas' St. Andrew Christian Church, spoke on discerning the call. Her story of changing majors and colleges struck a chord with many students.

"I really loved meeting Holly," said Johnson, a sophomore public relations major at Ball State University from Greenwood, Indiana. "She was once at a point where I'm at now. She was going to Washington because she thought she wanted to be a lobbyist, and she thought about ministry."

Another DHE Leadership Fellow found himself contemplating his own call to ministry.

"When we had the 'trying to discern the call' session, that really helped me." DHE Leadership Fellow Steven Mason is a junior music business major at Drake University from Lincoln, Nebraska who feels his call is in lay ministry. "This is the thing that's been lacking - how do you discern? I feel I have the abilities. It seems usually people feel a big call. I haven't felt a strong urge."

However, he appreciated hearing that college isn't binding, the "end-all everything. This weekend definitely was something to get me excited about finding more opportunities about leading in the church."

Phillips Scholar Cameron Wallace, a junior business major at Texas Christian University from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, gained a better sense of the Disciples church as a whole.

"Honestly, we all have an internal view of our own church. I had no idea Disciples churches were shrinking. I learned where we're trying to go, the future of the denomination."

Additional workshop leaders at the conference were Lynchburg College chaplain Grant Azdell; Jeri Sias, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso; Santiago Piņon, a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School; and DHE President Dennis Landon. While different students learned different things from the conference, one common memory was the sense of spontaneous community formed by the students at the conference.

"I was really surprised at how quickly we could form a bond," Mason said. "The fact that we had a little bit of time helped us feel comfortable sharing our spiritual lives and challenges."

That bond continued even after the conference ended. Many students traveled to St. Louis alone since most campuses have only one program participant. After the conference, though, while waiting for their departing flights, many students tracked each other down in the airport terminal and continued the discussions.

Once she returned to Indianapolis, Johnson told her mother she had been thinking about ministry. "(My mom) said 'Yeah, but three days before that, you said you were really excited about public relations. Maybe that's just where you are.' I think she's right. All I know is that right now, I'm really excited about ministry."