Exploring Their Call and Following God’s Lead
The Exploring Call Retreat played a pivotal role in helping Eunice Do and Roxanne Allen discern their future steps in ministry. The invitation to join the retreat and the community that surrounded them with prayer and stories opened up new possibilities. For the first time this year it is open to men and women. Is God inviting you or someone in your church to discover God’s calling and to follow His lead?
Transcript:
Dawn Taloyo: Well, welcome Mission Friends of the Pacific Northwest Conference. I'm Dawn Taloyo, your Associate Superintendent, and I'm excited today to bring to you two dear friends and previous participants of the Exploring Call Retreat that we've held for the last six years. And this November will be our seventh Exploring Call Retreat. And I just want you to hear their stories of their experience of the retreat—what it's meant for them—and maybe offer that invitation that, you know, maybe God is stirring in you an interest in discerning what your call looks like. So I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves. So I'll start with Roxanne. Tell us about yourself.
Roxanne: Well, hi, Roxanne Allen. I am from Seattle, been with the Emerald City Bible Fellowship Church in southeast Seattle since 2014. And so I've been to the Calling Retreat twice now, so we'll have a chance to share those experiences. But that's me.
Dawn Taloyo: All right. Eunice.
Eunice: And I'm Eunice. I am based in Seattle as well, and I co-pastor a church plant, The Table Seattle, with my husband, Bob. And we have been with the Covenant for four years since our church planting experience.
Dawn Taloyo: Great, welcome! And the first question I want to ask is: What actually drew you to attending the Exploring Call Retreat? What was kind of stirring, or was there a specific question you were asking as you came? Eunice, do you want to share?
Eunice: Sure. For me, what drew me to the retreat was because I had spent 20 years in corporate design while serving alongside my husband in ministry previously in our church context. And I grew up in a church and spiritual family where women faced a clear ceiling in leadership. So even though my theology had changed, those years of formation continued to shape what I could imagine for myself. Financially, pursuing ministry just seemed very impractical, because if Bob, my husband, was already a pastor, it felt reasonable for me to establish a more sustainable career. So it was very difficult for me to even say out loud that I might want to explore a call to ministry. So coming to the retreat carrying all those questions was actually a big step for me.
Dawn Taloyo: Thank you. I share that practical side as well. Roxanne, what about you?
Roxanne: My experience—it was two very different experiences. I went once in November of 2022 and then once in 2025, and my own personal journey was very different in those two seasons of life.
The first time, it was actually just you, Dawn, had invited me because we had just come out of the vitality pathway with our church and was just realizing that there was something just shifting, but I couldn't quite tell what it was. And so, that was the first touchpoint with the calling retreat.
Then the second one was when my youngest daughter was going into school. So I was going from a full-time at-home mom to now having a lot of extra time. And I was spending my time doing a lot of things, but I wasn't feeling like I was really living into a calling at that point. And I had just been on that journey of, "What does that look like?" So I went into the retreat in two very different headspaces, and I came out with two very different results for it as well.
Dawn Taloyo: Great. Well, we'll get to that next. I was just thinking, I love that you mentioned you've been twice, and how I get asked that sometimes: "Can I come again?" And I'm like, "Of course." You know, it's one step in this discernment process; it's not the end-all, you know, and we know that it's just one piece of that journey. So we continue to keep listening and seeing what God does. So, why don't you continue that story, Roxanne? What did it lead to as an outcome of the retreat?
Roxanne: So the first time I went in 2022, I was in a place where I was doing a lot of learning about myself. And what I noticed going into that retreat where everybody else was talking about, "How do I live into this calling and use these giftings that I've already identified, and what are my options?"—it was very contemplative in nature, and I just felt like I didn't really have the same equipment that everybody else had going into it. And that really just kind of jump-started this thought process of: I really need to figure out who I am. I need to figure out not just that I am a child of God, but I am a unique child of God made for a very specific purpose. And I don't understand what that is. Not only do I not really understand what that is, but there are also learned behaviors, things that have grown in my own life that are actually blocking my ability to see what God created me to do.
Before I can really identify and recognize this calling and how I'm to step into it, I need to step back and evaluate what part of me is actually me, and what is learned behaviors? What is from my history, my story? Do I need to do some work there before I can really figure out and be able to recognize this calling that God has put on my life? Leaving the retreat the first time, that was actually the journey that it started me on: self-discovery, self-awareness, and being able to recognize me for who God created me to be, rather than who I had been molded into over my lifetime. So that was what came out of the first calling retreat.
In the second calling retreat, I had three years of becoming more self-aware, of working on my spiritual maturity. And at that point, recognizing that I am understanding some of this calling, some of the things that really make me feel like, This is what makes me tick, this is how I'm hardwired, there was a disconnect between the things that I was doing versus what really gave me life, and there was a dissonance there. I was really struggling to unravel what is my capacity versus what is my calling. I feel like a lot of times we get so distracted and so ingrained in what we're doing that we don't realize that just because we can do it well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's what God has called us to do. It may be more of a tool set for us to be able to live into a calling. But if we focus that as our calling, then we start losing out on what it is that—that life, that joy that can really bubble in our soul. And so I felt like the second time around, there were some tools and activities that we did that were very contemplative in nature that gave me time and space to really start pulling that apart and seeing, Okay, what is it that I'm just doing versus what God has created me to do?
Dawn Taloyo: Wow. Well said. Thank you. Eunice, how about you? What came out of the retreat for you as a next step?
Eunice: I might go back a little bit and then jump right back in. I just also want to say that I remember asking you, Dawn, if I should even take this step to explore a call because I was genuinely afraid. I was afraid of one, like, "What if I'm wrong?" or what if... I was also afraid of how you would respond, too. But that's my own baggage. But I feel like the conversation with you gave me space to verbalize how frightening it might be for me to even take this first step, because I'm a planner; I like knowing where I'm going and how I'm going to get there. But you encouraged me to take one small step in faith and trust that discernment will come along the way.
So going into the retreat with that, I think it was really good for me to hear other people's stories, other women's stories, because it was also the women clergy gathering that was happening at the same time. So I heard women share different paths that have brought them into ministry. Their stories expanded my understanding of what a call could even look like. And I experienced the affirmation of women-of-color clergy, too, within the Covenant. Especially when I met with Nancy during the retreat—Nancy Sugikawa. Having an older Asian sister affirm my call was actually deeply meaningful because of my own history, having been taught that Asian women's limitations come from my own spiritual family. So hearing Nancy affirm my call and pray for me offered a different voice within some of those same cultural and spiritual worlds. It helped me reclaim a sense of possibility for myself within the church.
So it was all of that combined that made me realize maybe I could take a baby step and be okay not knowing all the pieces, because everyone around me is also praying for me and understanding that everyone's journey is different. So I felt more at ease, I think, afterwards in being able to be like, "You know, if I go get my master's degree, it's going to be okay. If I finish it or not, it's okay that I started it." So that gave me the freedom to kind of take that one step.
Dawn Taloyo: That's right. That's what I'm hearing: freedom.
All right, so our Exploring Call Retreat is going to be held November 20th through 22nd in North Bend, Washington, at Rainbow Lodge. It's Exploring Call for All, and registration information will be at the bottom—there's a link for that at the bottom of this video. And for the first time, we're introducing Exploring Call for Youth coming up in February, and that is for high school students, so you can also check that out as well. So, thank you both. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for being here.
Roxanne & Eunice: Thanks, Dawn.