New leadership

For years my friends and I have talked and dreamed about becoming leaders in our church and having the opportunity to shape the future of our church. I know the opportunity to be a HELM Leadership Fellow made a huge impact on me, and the opportunities that I have had to grow as a young leader in the life of the church.

This past year I joined the Week of Compassion Advisory Committee, and this spring I served on a committee to call our new Associate Director for Week of Compassion. Even though I have begun to serve in additional leadership roles like this within the church, I must admit that sometimes it feels a little intimidating to sit in on conference calls with regional ministers, national staff, and directors of organizations. They introduce themselves with impressive titles and speak casually about their vast experience in the church. I explain that I'm a graduate student and chronic Disciples intern, but in my mind I'm wondering, "what do I, as a young person not planning on going to seminary, bring to the table?"

However, as the search committee process continued I became more confident, realizing that I did bring something. I began to speak up more in meetings and to trust that there were skills and experiences that had brought me to this place. Connections that I was exposed to as a HELM Leadership Fellow gave me the background and tools that helped me to be an effective young leader in that context.

Recently I was sitting and chatting with a few other former Leadership Fellows who had similar experiences. We had all grown together through college as Leadership Fellows and had gone on to do other work in the church. Some have taken the seminary route and are serving local churches, others have gone to work overseas through Global Ministries and come back to tell the story, and others have moved forward in a call to lay ministry. Looking back at where we had been and where we are now, we realized that we were no longer simply dreaming of becoming leaders in the church. We were in many different contexts looked to as leaders in the life of the church.

I believe that it is no coincidence that so many of the young leaders in the church today have experience as HELM Leadership Fellows. I believe that the connections, the confidence-building, the challenge, and the support provided through the Leadership Fellows program provided us with the very tools that enable us to be seen as leaders in the church today.

A 2005 graduate of Chapman University, Krista Johnson is pursuing her Master's in conflict transformation at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.