Allison Arsenault: The Vocation of Discernment

This week, Dr. Patrick Reyes talks to FTE’s own Allison Arsenault. The two discuss her nomadic childhood and how she found deep affirmation and a welcoming community within the walls of Presbyterian churches. Allison has spent a lot of her life discerning her own vocation and now uses her experiences to help others do the same. 

Allison is an experience design manager at FTE, where she works with programs supporting young adults in discernment and grantee partners. She received her Master of Divinity degree from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and is currently a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She also serves on the alumni board of her alma mater, Millsaps College, and on the board of Memorial Drive Ministries. Allison and her husband live with their daughter and two corgis in Atlanta, Georgia.

Rate, review, and subscribe to Sound of the Genuine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

 Patrick Reyes: Welcome to the Sound of the Genuine, FTE’s podcast on how to find meaning and purpose in your lives. I'm your host, Dr. Patrick Reyes. 

Today, I'm excited because you get to meet one of my work colleagues, one of my friends, Allison Arsenault, who is a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church, a program manager here at FTE, putting together our experiences for young adults to help them discern their call to ministry. I'm really excited for you to meet her. 

All right, Allison. I'm grateful you joined us on the Sound of the Genuine. Now I get to work with you day to day. I get to see the gifts and skills and all the dreams you have for what you wanna do with your life. And it's a pleasure to work with you but take me back to what it was like growing up. Tell me about little Allison, you know, who was around you? What were your hopes and dreams?

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, that's a good question. So my childhood, I grew up with, you know, a pretty tight-knit family. I had two parents and two older sisters. I was the youngest of three girls. So my family moved around probably a lot more than the average family might. We kind of referred to ourselves as “corporate nomads.” My dad had a job with a big company that sort of required him to be in different places. So we spent time in Illinois and California and all over southeast Texas. So really we were sort of closest to each other. No big extended family in those communities.

And so whenever we moved to a new place, the first thing my parents would do, obviously, was buy a house and the second thing they would do was find the local Presbyterian Church. Every new place we went, we found ourselves in a PC(USA) congregation. And that was sort of the first place that we found community in a new place.

And I really actually admire my parents a lot. I think it takes a lot of vulnerability, especially for introverts - which they are, to show up in a new place and say, you know, we're here. How can we get engaged and get involved? I think a lot of my memories of my childhood and the community that sort of formed me was Presbyterian Churches around the country.

Patrick Reyes: And tell me a little about those Presbyterian Churches. So you show up this new family, three girls, was it just like a warm embrace? Like given that I'm not Presbyterian, tell me how Presbyterians work. You walk in the doors like, “Oh, thank you, you're here! We're so glad! You know, what do you need?” And tell me about the moving to these new cities and new places.

Allison Arsenault: Yeah. I mean, I think we always moved in the summer, so I found myself in Vacation Bible School right out the gate. And so, you know, really was sort of warmly welcomed into the communities that way. And those churches really, when I think back, were a place that I could be myself or be most myself. It's kind of intimidating to start at a new school or try to make new friends, but I always felt like going to church was like having a built-in community. You saw them every week and for the most part, people were pretty affirming and encouraging.

You know, I always like to say that I was sort of a Sunday school superstar. And so I felt like, you know, maybe I was sort of mediocre at school. I wasn't always great at math or science or things like that, but I sure could memorize all the names of the disciples. And I knew all the stories and Bible verses and things. And so I felt like, in some ways, church is where I excelled and got a lot of affirmation from people, which I think has certainly informed my path in life.

Patrick Reyes: So tell me about these church superpowers that you have. What does that lead to when you're in junior high and high school? You know, you're thinking about what you want to do when you grow up or when you eventually leave your home community, go off to college. Like how does all that inform, inspire you for what's next?

Allison Arsenault: I think my junior high and high school years in church were really formative for me. Maybe not always in positive ways, but I think it sort of took me deeper and made me think about things a lot differently. When I was in eighth grade, I went through confirmation class. So in a lot of mainline Protestant churches, confirmation is sort of when you join the church as an adult or sort of make your own affirmation of faith if you were baptized as an infant.

And so I was so excited for confirmation class because my older sisters had gone through it. And being sort of the Sunday school superstar that I was, I was just really excited to learn what it was that we believed, almost like I was being initiated into a cult or something. But I wanted to know what it was that Presbyterians believed. At the time, we were members at a church in southeast Texas, and a lot of the people at that church were formerly Baptist or former Evangelical Christians. You know, they grew up sort of in that type of church. And so, my youth pastor didn't have any formal theological education and her sort of theology was more Baptist in nature. And so I remember going to a confirmation class, the retreat that sort of kicked off things, and my youth pastor tried to explain the concept of predestination to a bunch of 13 year-olds. And the way it came out was sort of this concept of double predestination, where how it was explained was God's already decided if you're going to heaven or if you're going to hell. There's nothing that you can do about it.

Obviously a lot of time and study has reshaped the way that I think about that particular theology but at the time when I was 13, I couldn't really grasp any nuance around that. And it sent me into existential crisis. I kind of had this feeling of, well, what's the point? What's the purpose? If my fate has already been decided, then why am I here?

And I think that those questions, those really deep theological questions I was having at 13 have informed the last 20 years of my life as I have tried to answer those questions of, well, what's the point? What's the purpose? Why am I here? I tried various things on, I would say in those years afterwards I stepped into leadership in many different ways in high school. 

Patrick Reyes: As you are stepping into these things with this big existential question, tell me about the people in your life. Who's around you as you struggle with, am I going to heaven or hell? Like, that's what I hear that question as. Like as you struggle with what does this mean theologically for my life? Yeah. Who's in your circle helping you work through some of these questions?

Allison Arsenault: I was really lucky to have a mom who was in a Master's of Christian Education program at the very time that I was wrestling with these questions. She had been a stay-at-home mom throughout my childhood. And when I was in eighth grade about this same time, she decided that…she felt her own call to work in Christian education. And I think that the program that she was in really sort of opened her eyes, opened her mind, to how to encourage and grow a curious faith in young people. And so she really allowed me space to have those questions. And I think that she sort of knew how to ask the right questions of me as well.

And I think about my dad as well. He's always up for theological debate. And so, I think I really learned from them in the ways that they thought of their faith were influential to me. I was also exposed to other youth and leaders from around my region. So a lot of the leadership that I was able to take on was sort of at the regional level for high school youth.

We had a Presbyterian Youth Connection Council, and part of our work was planning conclaves/retreats every year. We would do two for middle schoolers and two for high schoolers. And so I, in my senior year, stepped up into leadership of those groups and planning of those retreats. And so I think that I got a lot, again, more space to sort of process some of those things with people who had different experiences and different backgrounds and adult leaders who modeled for me what it looked like to have an adult faith.

Patrick Reyes: I mean that sounds like a lot of responsibility. It also sounds like a lot of support. When you start thinking about college, going out, kind of exploring deeper these questions with this formation, where do you end up going? Where do you end up exploring? Tell me a little bit about that transition out of high school and into college.

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, so I would say my transition to college was difficult for me. Everyone in my family had gone to a small private Presbyterian affiliated liberal arts college. And I was a bit of a rebel because I went to a small private Methodist affiliated liberal arts college. So, uh, you know, just kind of diverted there a little bit.

In the later high school years, I had gotten really involved in a Pentecostal Church that a lot of my friends went to. It was really my senior year that I was going every Wednesday night and my faith kind of took on a different life, I would say. You know, was a little bit more black and white about things and sort of lost some of that nuance that I had and it was really just sort of another, I would say, just trying again to grasp on to some firm answers in my life.

So when I went into college, I was a little bit hesitant to explore. I remember telling a friend in my freshman year, “I'm not going to be a religious studies major because I don't wanna lose my faith.” I was really resistant to studying religion academically because I thought it was just going to deconstruct everything that I believed and challenge me - and I just wasn't willing to engage in that. Which is funny to look back on now because I did major in religious studies and I did lose my faith, quote unquote, you know. I was exposed to other religions and found really a lot of beauty and value and truth in other religious traditions. And for a long time in college, I think that I've probably thought of myself as a little bit of Interfaith. You know, maybe that's spiritual, but not religious, but really sort of drawing on stories and rituals and from other traditions that spoke value to me. But I think it was my junior year, I went to Chicago for an Interfaith Youth Core conference sponsored by the religious studies department at Millsaps College, where I was a student. I was with other people of faith from, you know, Muslim tradition and Hindus and Jews and just people who were very deeply rooted in their own tradition. 

They were able to recall their own holy scripture or their own texts and they were able to recall stories from their traditions and heroes that they held from their traditions that pointed them toward the work of service and work toward justice. I was really inspired by that, but also really embarrassed and ashamed because I felt that I didn't know my own tradition as well as they knew theirs.

And so I think that that started me down this path of trying to reconstruct my own faith and trying to find how Christianity spoke to the issues of justice that I cared deeply about, how Christianity pointed me towards service, what Christianity had to say about interfaith work and loving one's neighbor.

And that was a really formative experience for me. So while I would say I did sort of lose my faith, I found a lot of meaning in putting things back together. 

Patrick Reyes: Well, tell me about that reconstruction. What does that look like in living your daily life? Especially given that, you know, if I heard the first part of your story, there's such a firm grounding with your mom, with these Presbyterian Churches, your existential crisis, is all grounding you in a tradition. You have this moment of deconstruction, what does reconstruction look like given those pieces?

Allison Arsenault: I think it was a lot of asking myself, what about my tradition do I find personally valuable and meaningful? You know, I think I had been able previously to identify the things that may have been valuable or meaningful to my family or to the people around me, but how did I redefine that in terms that I could believe in, I guess. Or, you know, how could I come to terms with those questions? I think it was sort of giving into that rootedness a little bit, trying to recognize that this has been an important story to people for thousands and thousands of years. Clearly it means something and it's important. I remember in the last years of college, I read a lot of Liberation Theology and that is really what pointed me toward Christianity and social justice coexisting.

And so I think that that academic study was actually really important for what I was thinking and what I was doing. And later I would go on to do a young adult volunteer year with the PC(USA) and that was also a big part of my sort of reconstruction process because I was able to see the ways in which the church was important, both for people in their daily lives and the ways in which the church was important for people on the margins as well.

Patrick Reyes: The pieces are coming together. I am curious about…so many young adults come outta college, you know, ready. They've done this sort of work to do this reconstruction or they're in the process of reconstructing, but then turning it into a career, you know, putting food on your own table. What do you do with this? What do you do next after you leave college?

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, so that's a great question. I'll share another anecdote from when I was in college that sort of got me to this point as well. Between my sophomore and junior years, I spent a month in South Africa. It was sort of a missions trip, but it was also mostly just an experience of accompaniment with people in a rural and remote village in South Africa.

And when I got back - I think I returned on a Friday and on Monday I started an internship at an art gallery in downtown Houston. Art history was my other major in addition to religious studies. I thought, here I've gone from a community and a place of extreme poverty, to a place of extreme wealth. And I had a really hard time reconciling those experiences and also determining what it was I wanted for my own life. And I had a lot of those questions about, well how do I make a living or make a life or a career out of doing work that supports and lifts up people in poverty?

I was really lucky that someone suggested the YAV program to me. So, I was a young adult volunteer for a year in Nashville where I worked with an organization called Conexion Americas that did support for immigrants in the Nashville community. It was a great way to work in nonprofits and sort of see Christians at work, both as volunteers and as community organizers and running nonprofit organizations. And for some reason during that year I got the idea that my best next step was going to be going to seminary. And so yeah, that's what I did then.

Patrick Reyes: You're a corporate nomad, so you've been a lot of places. You have to now pick where you're gonna go to study, to have another existential theological crisis. You know, as you think about seminary, where were you exploring and was it back into your Presbyterian roots or were you kind of expansive in your search?

Allison Arsenault: There were sort of two things going on at once. During my YAV year in Nashville, I was also applying to master's programs in art history, and someone mentioned to me, a program that I could sort of combine the study of art and religion and that was a program I applied to and was accepted to and was really excited to be a part of. But I kind of had this nagging feeling that I wanted an MDiv. After a couple years, I kind of applied in two rounds and wasn't really sure what I wanted out of my MDiv, but ultimately, I wanted to go to seminary in a place that I didn't wanna feel trapped.

You know, I think that there are a lot of seminaries that build great community life where you can live in a dorm, or really, have your existence in that seminary world. And I think that that is really valuable and sometimes I wish I'd had that. But I wanted to go somewhere where I wasn't in an ivory tower, where I could actually live out and experience the things that I was learning in the world. So I knew I wanted to be in a big city and I knew I wanted to be at a major university because I wanted to be able to take classes in other disciplines if I felt like they were going to be relevant to my life and ministry.

So that's eventually how I ended up at Emory, Candler School of Theology, a Methodist Seminary. So I do like to say I'm Methodist educated but Presbyterian formed. And, yeah Candler was a good spot for me and I got my MDiv there in in 2015.

Patrick Reyes: What were you exploring at Candler? Was it to be a pastor? I mean, you have this art history background too, like I know the MDiv is changing a lot and I think a lot of folks who are going to the seminary are thinking more expansively about their vocation. But what was your…what was your sense while you're there, what you wanted to do with this Masters of Divinity degree?

Allison Arsenault: I had no idea what I wanted to do with my Master of Divinity degree. I just felt pulled to it, you know? I think it's hard to explain. I couldn't tell people why I wanted to do this, I just felt compelled to do it, nonetheless. I did start out in my first years at Candler in the ordination process for the PCUSA. I did feel that pastoral ministry was something that interested me but I was pretty adamant that I didn't wanna work in a church - which I think is a pretty common sentiment among young people. But I ran into a lot of resistance with that idea. So I did my internship in the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life at Emory with inter-religious groups.

So sort of bringing back some of that experience that I had had in college. And I was met with a lot of resistance about my hesitance to work in a church and to work in interfaith groups. And so eventually I did leave the ordination process while I was in seminary. I said, you know, if you're not going to support me, I think, in this work that I'm feeling called to, and if ordination doesn't match up with what I'm feeling called to, then it's not for me.

So I did have a lot of, I guess, angst about the practicality of my degree when I was in seminary. And so what that kind of ended up looking like was I took jobs in fundraising when I was in seminary at non-profit organizations around the city. You know, maybe fundraising is the thing that I'm gonna do after this. And it will be a good degree and I will have learned, but I'm not going to use it necessarily.

Patrick Reyes: What comes next? We're to 2015, you know. What are you…with the interfaith commitments, doing this fundraising background, you got an MDiv in hand, you got the strong foundation, Presbyterian but formed by Methodist or what? You know, like what are, what are you doing Allison? What are you doing with your life in 2015? 

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, those were the questions I was asking myself definitely in 2015. I, you know, had interviewed for a job at a campus ministry on the other side of the country doing interfaith work, and I thought, this job is perfect for me. This is exactly what I wanna do.

But I was also two years into a relationship with my now husband and he had just gotten his first job post grad school, and it took a long time to find. And so, he and I had a lot of really serious conversations and I was in a lot of therapy around decision making at this point. I was terrified of making the wrong decision and eventually I said, I am really attracted to this job on the other side of the country, and moving doesn't scare me because I've done it before.

But at that point, what I really wanted was community rootedness and to start a family. And so I knew that we were probably about to get engaged and I knew that Atlanta was a place where I felt strong and connected and like I would have the support and resources I needed to thrive. And so I ended up taking a job outta seminary at Lutheran Services of Georgia, which encompasses a lot of different services. But I went into fundraising and event planning and it was actually a really good first job out of seminary because I got to work with pastors and mission committees around events that we did, like the Hunger Walk with the food bank and other sorts of things. So for a few years after seminary, I worked in fundraising and I was lucky that my first job was sort of ministry adjacent - that I got to work with people who worked in ministry.

Patrick Reyes: Okay. So you, you're doing this fundraising and now you've been at FTE for a couple years. As you think about vocational discernment…I mean, to this point, a lot of vocational discernment, you're a master at it cuz you've been doing it your entire life since 13. You have an existential crisis about going to heaven or not, and now are kind of living this life into vocation. As you think about what you're up to now, tell me what does that look like now that you're on the other side of this discernment.

You decide to stay grounded in Atlanta. You are doing the things that you said you were doing. What does discernment look like now?

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, you know, the way that I got to FTE I would say is I felt like I wasn't able to bring my full self to the jobs that I was working, and I wasn't able to explore the questions that I was holding in the jobs where I was working.

And so, I found myself at FTE about four years ago now, and it really felt like the culmination of a lot of different vocational discernment. But I think as we know, vocational discernment is a lifelong process. And so I find myself now thinking I can bring my full self to the table here. And a lot of my own discernment in life has been around this question of, “Okay, who am I? Sort of in my deepest part of myself who am I?” 

And then the questions I asked were, you know, what do I have to offer? What are the gifts and skills that I bring? And what has God equipped me with and what has God, given to me? And then I think the third question I sort of asked in my vocational discernment is, where can I best offer myself?

And I felt very much so called to the work of FTE because I felt that the gifts and experiences I was bringing could be offered here in a deep way. And so I think that those are the three questions that I still hold as I think about my own discernment going forward: “Who am I, what do I have to bring, and where do I best offer myself?” And so, you know, I'm having those conversations with a lot of different people at a lot of different times. I am in the ordination process again, I reentered that process in 2020 and that was sort of a big scary thing for me to step back into and say, okay, maybe I got it wrong the first time and maybe I wasn't thinking clearly about this the first time.

But, my ultimate hope is that I can be ordained to work with people who are asking the same kinds of questions that have plagued me for the last 20 years; to work with people who are also thinking about what God calls us to and thinking about their purpose and meaning in life. I did a year of clinical pastoral education in the middle there and I really worked that year to sort of define what I thought my own call and vocation was. And what I came up with was that my call was to work with people so that they could reconcile to themselves, to others, and to God. And so I think any work that I am doing that supports the redemption of people in their own lives and their spiritual life and their interpersonal lives is the kind of work that I wanna be doing.

And I certainly see that every day in the young adults we work with at FTE and the partners we work with, as well as sort of creating a space for them to think deeply and ask those hard questions.

Patrick Reyes: I love the way you phrased that - the reconciling oneself and to God - you know, that sort of work. You know, I ask every guest…this is my last question I ask every guest that comes on the Sound of the Genuine this question - around how much of your vocation comes from like a sense of self, sense of personal call or connection to the divine -  something that's happening that's happening here just in you - and how much is informed by the community? And I'm going all the way back to the beginning of your story with the corporate nomad, those Presbyterian churches that brought you in, those youth groups, the regional gatherings, the communities and nonprofits you've served. How much of your vocation comes from that sense of self and that broader sense of community?

Allison Arsenault: Yes/And! I think it's really hard to distinguish between those. I certainly feel that some of my call, some comes from me and I think most comes from God. I do certainly feel a sense that my community invested in me, and part of my call is to reinvest back into those communities, particularly in the Presbyterian Church.

And I think too about my parents, you know, in saying that they certainly have formed me quite a bit and have always seen this call for me as well. And so I think the community calls us. Our family calls us. God calls us. We call ourselves into what we do. And often the work of vocational discernment is trying to distinguish those voices.

It's not always clear which voices we're hearing or which voices to pay attention to. And so I think that a lot of my discernment has been, “am I doing this for me or am I doing this for other people, or am I doing this for God?” And so I think really over the last few years, I've been able to filter out the less important voices and maybe center the more important voices.

Patrick Reyes: Allison, thank you so much for being on the Sound of the Genuine. It's a gift to work alongside you and be a part of discernment and I know that,your gifts for discernment have helped me figure a lot out. So grateful, grateful, grateful for you for sharing your life. Thank you for being on the Sound of the Genuine.

Allison Arsenault: Yeah, thanks, Patrick. 

Patrick Reyes: I want to thank you for listening to the Sound of the Genuine and Allison's story. It is a privilege and honor to work with her. I hope you find people and team members in your life that you can work alongside like I have here at FTE. Speaking of which, I need to thank my executive producer, Elsie Barnhart for putting this and all of our stories on the Sound of the Genuine together. And @siryalibeats for his music. We hope this podcast and our many resources a fteleaders.org can help you find the Sound of the Genuine in you.