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HELMdisciples.org > About HELM > HELM and Campus News

We are all ministers.
We just minister in different ways.

November 25, 2008
Contact: Brad Lyons, Director of Communications
(314) 991-3000 - blyons@helmdisciples.org

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) cherishes each member as a minister, even if we aren’t called into ordained ministry. So how do we live into that calling?

The Leadership Fellows Program acknowledges the variety of callings and helps students explore their calls to other forms of ministry. The eighth HELM Leadership Fellows Conference, held in November in St. Louis, focused on the breadth of ministry, examining the different ways ministry takes place. Three guests, all ministers, helped students look at other forms of ministry:

  • Kaki Friscas-Warren, currently director of GivingMatters.com, part of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, has founded several social work agencies in the Nashville area. She explained how she identified the needs of the community when starting a new project and also how she realized when she was up for the challenge.

  • Jose Morales, Jr., Associate Pastor of Iglesia del Pueblo Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Hammond, Ind., told about his misgivings in agreeing to start Hope Center of Northwest Indiana with virtually no background in nonprofit management, explaining how having a good mentor and surrounding himself with people who knew about outreach helped Hope Center get off the ground.

  • Rebecca Bowman Woods, news editor for DisciplesWorld magazine, used her communication skills as the foundation for producing her documentary “Beyond Borders,” which took her to the Arizona desert to examine the true toll of immigration policies.

“I know that preachers and ministers make a huge difference in the church, but they are not the only people,” said Alexis Westerhausen, a Culver-Stockton College sophomore from Virden, Ill. “It is important to remember that the people make up the church, and they have a great influence on our denomination as well. At this conference, we were able to hear the ‘people’s’ stories.”

Kiersten Hawes, a first-year Spelman College student from Horn Lake, Miss., found her fellow students to be a great resource, too. “This conference helped clarify many questions that I was unsure about regarding ministry in my life plan. The HELM Fellows are an amazing group of people who I am really proud to be a part of.” What is leadership, anyway?
Kaki Friscas-Warren (right) explains her work with a variety of Nashville social work agencies as Allison Enari and Arrington Foster listen.
The conference opened with a discussion on the nature of leadership, using as a starting point an interview with Ronald Heifetz, author of the acclaimed “Leadership without Easy Answers.” Having a common definition of leadership provided a solid foundation not only for the conference but for the projects that last throughout the academic year. Leadership traits that caught the students’ attention were:

  • The difference between leadership and authority;

  • Leadership pushes for adaptive change rather than technical fixes;

  • Leaders need to be able to face failure and learn from it;

  • Good leaders learn what a community’s challenges are, then create a solution to that individual challenge;

  • Conflict can be good;

  • Leaders are indeed made, not born;

  • Leadership and vision are not always one and the same – often it takes one person to have the vision and a different person to carry it out.
“Leaders in the church, it may be said, can hold on to what brings them joy and effectively lead outside of the church walls: two tasks which the HELM program has tried to instill in each of us,” said Tom Calvert-Rosenberger, a first-year student at TCU from Bloomington, Indiana.

Two consistent benefits of the conference are the community among students and the chance to take a break.

“Separated from the hustle of our normal lives at school, we are given the opportunity to take a weekend to reflect on the commitment we have made to our faith journeys and church,” said Merillat Pittman, a junior at TCU from Broken Arrow, Okla. “Inspired by the words of our speakers, we each return to our communities with a renewed sense of direction and purpose.”
TCU senior Esther Lee talks about her unique sense of call with Jose Morales.


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Higher Education & Leadership Ministries
of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)