By Andy Hale
This week on the CBF Podcast Conversation, we welcome Dr. Karen Swallow Prior—writer, literary scholar, and cultural commentator—to explore the deeply human journey of vocation. Karen’s latest book, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful, dismantles one of the most persuasive modern myths: that calling means finding your passion and monetizing it. “The idea that you must find your passion and then make a living doing it is a modern invention,” she writes. “It’s also a lie.” In our conversation, Karen shares how vocation isn’t manufactured by hustle or personal branding but discovered—a response to God’s voice, the needs of others, and the slow formation of virtue.
Karen invites us to imagine calling not as a career path but a way of becoming. Discerning that path requires tools like truth, goodness, and beauty—what she calls the “marks of God’s calling.” As she reminds us, calling is confirmed in community, sustained through habits of virtue, and strengthened by patience: “Patience is not passivity. It is the long obedience of staying when others flee.” Whether you feel stuck, uncertain, or like you’ve missed your moment, this episode offers a hopeful reframing—“Failure is not the opposite of calling. It’s part of it.” Join us for a conversation that encourages us to embrace freedom—not the freedom to do whatever we want, but to become who we were created to be. You can watch the podcast video here.
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Sponsorship
This podcast is presented by:
- Baylor’s Garland School of Social Work: Social workers can be found addressing the full scope of the human experience in churches, schools, prisons, government agencies, senior living centers, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies.
- Baptist Seminary of Kentucky: BSK equips leaders through their Homegrown Initiative, offering ministry leaders training and growth that fits into their busy schedules.
- The Gardner-Webb School of Divinity: The Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity aims to equip, nurture, encourage, and support men and women for their very best service in the Kingdom of God.
- The Center for Congregational Health: Strengthening congregations through consulting, leadership coaching, and intentional ministry.
- The Baptist House of Studies at Union Presbyterian Seminary: Exists by God’s grace to educate, inspire, and support generations of bold, faithful servant leaders as they seek actively to participate in God’s mission in the world.
- Community Transformation Center: Through educational opportunities, community conversations, and research initiatives in collaboration with universities and local leaders, PBACTC is at the forefront of integrating spiritual care into holistic community development.
- Creation Justice Ministries: Creation Justice Ministries equips churches to turn conviction into faithful action with Scripture-based resources, worship guides, and community support to pursue environmental justice and care for God’s creation.
- Dawnings: Through prayerful discernment, storytelling, and collaborative visioning, Dawnings helps churches rediscover their calling and imagine their next chapter—guided by trained facilitators and grounded in God’s ongoing story.
- Congregational Ministries Team of CBF Global: Through coaching, resources, and collaborative support, CBF’s Congregational Ministries Team helps churches and ministers cultivate the five traits of thriving—Rooted Relationships, Compelling Clarity, Holy Tenacity, Strategic Agility, and Dynamic Collaboration—for faithful and flourishing ministry.
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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina. He’s also served as CBF’s Church Start Specialist, the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton, and the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. Follow on Twitter @haleandy.