You Have a Calling: Vocation, Work, and the Myths We Believe | Karen Swallow Prior

In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Dan Johnson sits down with author and scholar Karen Swallow Prior to explore one of the most pressing questions of our time: What is my calling? Drawing from her new book, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful, Karen unpacks the difference between calling, vocation, work, and career—and why confusing them can leave us anxious, disillusioned, or stuck.

Together they address common myths (like “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”), examine how Scripture frames calling, and talk honestly about seasons of transition, feeling stuck, and how God uses ordinary faithfulness over time. Whether you’re a college student, mid‑career professional, or simply wondering what’s next, this conversation offers a hopeful and theologically rich path forward.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

1. Defining terms: How Karen distinguishes calling, vocation, work, and career, and why clarity here can be freeing.
2. Big cultural myths about calling: Why “follow your passion” and “do what you love and you’ll never work” set us up for disappointment.
3. Biblical foundations of calling: Our primary calling to Christ, our multiple secondary callings (family, church, community, gifts), and how these fit together.
4. Work before the fall: How Scripture presents work as part of God’s good design—and what it means to be co‑laborers with God in creation.
5. Skills, passions, and reality: Why what you’re good at, what you love, and what pays the bills don’t always overlap—and how to live wisely in that tension.
6. Mobility and rootedness: The opportunities and hidden costs of a mobile life and career, and what we gain by staying put.
7. Feeling stuck in your calling: Practical guidance for Christians who feel trapped, misaligned, or unsure how their current work fits God’s purposes.
8. The church and vocation: How local congregations can better affirm everyday callings—and avoid exploiting people’s desire to serve.
9. Gen Z and discernment: Why endless options create anxiety, how social media amplifies pressure, and why Karen loves the phrase “touch grass.”

📚 Resources Mentioned

1. Book: You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful by Karen Swallow Prior - https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781587436659_you-have-a-calling
2. Previous The UpWords Podcast episode: Women in Evangelical Spaces: Challenges and Triumphs | Karen Swallow Prior - https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2418ca31-e989-4456-9ea3-02ce8eba375d/

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

If I'm called to Christ, then anything that I do, all of my other callings must be in unity with this larger calling on my life. And then if I'm called into a family, that calling has to take priority overall, um, over my work or my passions or my hobbies, even though they can all be brought into some sort of harmony with one another. But, you know, in the real world, we often have to make choices and decisions. And so understanding who we are in Christ, understanding that our gifts come from Him and that our passions can come from Him.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the Academy, Church, and Marketplace. My name is Dan Johnson, and today we are thrilled to welcome back Karen Swallow Pryor to the podcast. Karen is a renowned author, scholar, speaker, and in this episode, we dive into her newest book, You Have a Calling, Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. Together we'll unpack big questions about calling, vocation, and work. What do they mean? How do they differ? And why are so many of us wrestling with them? Karen shares wisdom from decades of teaching and writing and offers practical and theological insights for anyone seeking clarity on their purpose. Whether you're a student, mid-career professional, or simply longing to understand your calling, this conversation is for you. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Upwards Podcast. We're so excited to have Karen Swellow Pryor back with us. This is actually her second podcast on the Upwards Podcast with us. She was here in 2025, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Um, and you can listen and watch that podcast that she did with us. But uh today we are really excited to talk about your newest book, and it is all around calling. So the title is You Have a Calling, Find Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. And so we would love to just jump right in and talk about the book. So welcome to the podcast, Karen.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

It's great to be back. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

So tell us a little bit about some of the central themes of the book. How did this kind of come about? Where did this kind of generate from for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Well, of course, I am drawing on over two decades of teaching college-age students. And so they provide a lot of fodder for my thoughts and my writing. And I taught English, but even as an English professor, I would have lots of conversations with college students about calling and career and work and those things. And but I also, I mean, the book is very much written for them, but also as I've become more of a writer and a speaker and speak to broader audiences, I've also had lots of conversations with mid-career folks who are struggling with some of the same questions that our college-age students are. And so, you know, if there were sort of one or two big ideas that prompted this book, because let's be honest, books about calling and vocation are a dime a dozen. There are lots of them. I had to read a lot of them in my research. But in this particular moment in this time, I think there are a few big myths that are shaping and distorting our perceptions about career and calling. And one of them is that, you know, if you pursue what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Not true. And that if you simply are passionate about something, then that is going to be the work that you do that will make you a lot of money. For some people, very few, that may be true, but for most of us, it's not true. So I was kind of starting with those myths that raise expectations so unrealistically and then lead to a lot of despair and disillusionment when those myths don't turn out to be true. So that was a big part of why I wrote this book. And then I found myself sort of going through my own wrestling with vocation and calling in the process of writing this. So it's really written for just about everyone in every stage of life, but also really for this moment when we're battling particular myths about work and calling and passion.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

You just alluded to one of those times in your life that you were thinking about calling and what does that look like? Is there another time in your life that you were kind of been thinking about calling or kind of wrestling with that, just in your own professional journey?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Well, you know, I was, I came of age in a time when women were being allowed to do just about anything. Some younger listeners may not know that that was not always the case, or maybe they live in circumstances where that is still the case, where it's not necessarily an assumption. So I went when I was thinking about college and career, I thought about a lot of different things. And for me, the world seemed very open and wide, and I had lots of ideas about what I might do. But I don't think I thought necessarily about calling and vocation in the way that I talk about in this book. And so I really ended up stumbling into my ultimate calling, starting college in a different major, in one that would have been disastrous for everyone, because I started out as a social work major, probably not a good idea. And then I ended up falling in love with English. I always loved English before, but I didn't know it was something that you could actually take seriously. I was didn't come from an academic family. I didn't know about being a professor. And so I just began to study English because I was passionate about it. But I still didn't know what I was going to do. And so for me, the long story of finding my calling was kind of stumbling along with open hand and then accidentally or providentially discovering in my PhD program upon teaching my first freshman composition class that I loved teaching. So I stumbled my way into my calling, and lots of us do. There's really necessary not anything wrong with that necessarily, but in some ways I'm writing this book so that those who are asking those questions have some answers earlier than I had them.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

You know, I think you do a really good job. You actually have a chapter in the book about defining terms. And so I want to just camp out there for a second. I think that will kind of help kind of focus in on the rest of our conversation. We talk about calling and vocations. We use those terms interchangeably a lot, but they actually are different. So maybe you walk us through calling and vocation. How are they a little bit similar, but really how are they different?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, when I think I say this in the book, I say it a lot when I'm talking about a lot of terms that are that are used a lot because they're so important. And we do have terms that have meanings in different meanings in different contexts. And so when we talk about vocation, we are usually talking, in one context, we're talking about sort of our paid work, but historically, it was often talking about just ministry work, especially before the Reformation. But ironically, even now, Protestants and evangelicals often use that term in the context of ministry only. And calling usually is something that we think of as bigger and more encompassing. I tend to use them interchangeably in this book simply because the point that I'm making about both of them, whether these are rules that we have in the church or outside the church, whether they're paid or unpaid, is that calling comes from outside of ourselves. And both of those words, calling and vocation, come from the same root word that means call. Like there's an outside caller that we answer. And that's sort of the other big idea that I wanted to express in the book because we confuse the things that we want to do internally, our own desires and wishes, with what others ask us to do, because though they don't always overlap. And so again, calling and vocation can have these different meanings, but ultimately they both point to the fact that they come, the invitation comes from outside of ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Let's talk a little bit about work and career. We talk a lot about in the book, which I think is a right statement that you know, not all the time that our calling or vocation is going to line up with our work or our career, which is I think is a big misconception. I don't know exactly where that stems from. I don't know where that actually originated from, but you know, that sometimes our vocation or our calling is outside of the kind of the nine to five time. Sometimes it is within kind of the structure of that. How do you look at work and career and then in that kind of that pot with vocation and calling, you know, if we're mixing it all up, how do we kind of separate those things and think about those things?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, and I think it's helpful here, even though I'm a writer and I prefer words most, sometimes an illustration can be helpful. And so as we talk about these terms, maybe listeners can be thinking of a Venn diagram, you know, with each of these terms in a circle, and then thinking about the way sometimes these things might overlap and then how they might not. And work is really work is a bigger word than in some ways than all the other ones that we've talked about, because we work in a variety of ways. Even when we talk about fun things that we do, we have to work at it, or it requires some kind of work, or we talk about works of art or working a room. And work is a word that applies to all of these situations. And so I actually begin the book with an entire chapter on work because work is bigger and more than the thing that we do to provide income. But it's a particularly American sort of tick that we have that we conflate work with the job that we get paid to do. And also, and I cite this in in the books at some point, it's very a very American thing to do to go to a social gathering or a party or a meeting and be introduced to people. And the first thing that they ask you is, you know, where do you work? What do you do? Other cultures don't do that. And we as Americans do, because we're a very work-oriented culture, you know, guilty as charged. I am that way as well. But just really understanding that that's not how every time and culture and place has been, and it's unique to us, I think gives us a broader perspective of work and it can help us to have a little bit more balanced perspective when it comes to thinking about how much we should or should not have work define our lives and our identity and ourselves. So work is broad. We do it in many ways, whether it's in at home or the thing that we get paid to do or the or the thing that we work at on the weekends just because we love it. But career has a very specific connotation. A career is is just like a it's a job that is going in a direction. It's a job we have or a series of jobs that is careening uh in a direction. Um, and I cite um Elizabeth Gilbert, who talks about this in a little interview, where she says, you know, everyone has to have a means of income. Most of us are not landed gentry. So we have to provide for ourselves or be in a family unit where such provision is there. And so we all have to have some kind of job. And there's nothing wrong with having a job that just provides for you. And she says, but if you have a career, if something becomes a career and you don't love it, get out of it. Like just get a job so that you can actually find the calling that might be outside your career, outside of your job, because a career is very confining. It's a direction, it's a path, and it's something that we get locked into, which might be something good that we want to get locked into, but we have to be careful to not get locked into something that prohibits us from really pursuing our true calling.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah. I'm wondering how you think about skills and passions in relationship to work, career, vocation, calling. You know, I I think we're in a very different kind of work environment now that we've been in in the last couple years. We've had over the last 10 years very ups and downs of kind of the the market and kind of where the kind of work is. Uh we had the the great resignation, you know, happen a while ago. And I was just thinking about all the kind of the new skills that people are kind of getting, thinking about AI, technology, kind of all these kind of different areas, or even passion areas, right, within their work. You know, their job description might have, you know, 80% in one area and 20% in a different area that they're really passionate about, and trying to hone in those skills and develop those to maybe some career opportunities down the line. How does that all form into kind of the vocation calling work career dynamics?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

No, that's a really good question. And again, being a word person, I think there's a lot of power and even sort of an urgency in separating out the terms and understanding. I mean, in a lot of my writing, I when I write about virtue and virtue ethics at the forefront of those discussions is um telos or purpose. And kind of knowing the purpose of the things that we're talking about helps so much. So to go back to job, knowing that we have a job and its purpose is to provide an income and that's its only purpose can be so freeing to know, hey, this isn't a job I love, but it's fulfilling the purpose that I have for it. And then, you know, but maybe we, you know, provision income is not the most important priority for us for whatever reason. And so we really do want to have another purpose that we want to fulfill with our work. And so that might be our passion. And if we can have those aligned, if we can have work and get paid to do something we're passionate about, that's fantastic. I'm all for it. I've been able to do that at times in my life. Some people are able to, some people are not. Most people in his human history have not been able to do that. They didn't even think about passion. They were just trying to survive. We're in a little bit more of a, you know, better state in the modern world in some ways. And so if we think about the different categories like our passion, what we're passionate about, and our skills, our gifts. And of course, most of us want to use those. We want to use our passion, we want to use our skills, the things that we're gifted at. And when those things all align, it's wonderful. And they can be guides to us. The things that we're passionate about can be a guide for us, and the things that we're gifted at can be a guide for us, but always keeping in mind that they don't always line up. And so, for I'll an example, and I I think I put this, it's hard for me to remember what I put in the book and what's just still in my head, but you know, I love teaching, I love school. That's I'm passionate about learning and and helping others to learn. Uh, but for a while in my role as a professor, I also took on the position of department chair. And, you know, that some people love administration. I will say that I was pretty good at it, but I did not love it. I did it as a service to my department. And so I brought the gifts that I have for organization and cutting to the chase to the table and use them. But when I had the opportunity to turn it over to someone else, I did that. And so there there can be things that we're good at that we're not passionate about. There are things that we can we are passionate about that we're not very good at. And maybe we can improve or maybe we don't. But if we recognize that and say, hey, I love this, but I'm not going to put anyone else's life in danger or decrease the quality of their life by doing this thing I'm passionate about but not good at, playing the flute badly is one thing, but doing surgery badly is another thing altogether, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

These are all things that are part of helping us to find our calling. And they're also things that help us to live a fulfilling life, but assuming that they're all going to line up and all gonna be in the same basket at the at the same time is one of the myths that I'm trying to counter in this book.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

How us kind of move a little bit into some theological and biblical kind of narration around some of the things that we've already been talking about. What are some biblical or theological principles that shaped your understanding of calling as you wrote this book? Like how did the Bible influence or your theology influence kind of how you're looking through the through this lens specifically for the book?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Yeah, that's so I another major point that I make in this book is we also can sometimes have this romantic notion that we all have just like one calling and that you know we either find it or we don't, we miss it completely, and our you know, our lives are are ruined because we have haven't found our calling. Or or I've talked to people who think that only some people have callings and others don't. But the Bible makes clear, first of all, that everyone has a calling. As Christians, our first and primary calling is being called to Christ. Um, and then we also have other callings. And the Bible makes this clear as well, even though it may not always use this language, it's clear that we are called into specific family relationships, into specific communities. We are gifted, as we talked about before, we have certain giftings that we can use in our calling, which again may be in the church or out of the church. It may be something we get paid to do or something that we don't get paid to do. And so the idea is that we we have multiple callings, we have sort of an order or hierarchy of callings as well. Um, and so along with those callings come responsibilities. If I'm called to Christ, then anything that I do, all of my other callings must be in unity with this larger calling on my life. And then if I'm called into a family, that calling has to take priority overall over my work or my passions or my hobbies and so forth, even though they can all be brought into some sort of harmony with one another. But, you know, in the real world, we often have to make choices and decisions. And so understanding who we are in Christ, understanding that our gifts come from him and that our passions can come from him, but also because we live in a fallen world, our passions and desires can be distorted or misdirected. And so again, even those have to be given to the Lord and used to serve him. And even going back to the first chapter that I have on work, I talk theologically about the notion of work and how work was not a result of the fall. Work is something we were created to do. We were actually created to be co-laborers with God in stewarding his good creation. So we are all supposed to work and we are working with him, and that is something that he called us to do as well. So they're just the Bible is just rich with all of these ideas, and hopefully I, you know, brought some of them to life in these pages.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah. What are the big misconceptions? I mean, you named a couple, but big misconceptions that Christians have around calling. I feel like that there's all kinds of misconceptions. Fortunately, our churches don't talk a lot about callings and vocation, a lot of these themes, even career stuff. I mean, you know, there are great organizations out there and the work in faith movement and other places that are helping to kind of bring some of that to light. But what are some other misconceptions that Christians have around work?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, it's the ones that Christians have, I don't think I've mentioned those specifically yet. And I mean, there's a lot of overlap in what the world gets wrong and what the church gets wrong just because we're, you know, part of the culture as well. But I would say a big one, and I do talk about this in the book, is this idea that our callings have to be in order, if they're true callings, they are evidenced by being dramatic and great and big and romantic. And that is not the case at all. Now, you know, there are some people who will go out and change the world and do big things for God. And there is nothing wrong with that. But there is something very wrong with thinking that those are the only callings that matter. And that if we don't have one of those and we don't have a calling or we've missed a calling, greatest callings really are often the ones that are the least dramatic, the most ordinary. Again, those go back to the ones that I talked about as simply being a member of a family, being a husband or wife or sister or brother, or um, a child of someone or a parent to someone. These are actually callings. And they are some of the most ordinary ones, and they are some of the most important ones. So the church, especially in, you know, in recent decades, has put a big emphasis on changing the world and doing big things for God. Um, and uh again, a few of us are supposed to do that, but that's only when God calls us to do that. Most of us are going to fulfill our God-given callings in ways that are are smaller, less noteworthy, less visible, but no less important.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah, one of my favorite authors, along with you, is John Dyer. And John talks a lot about the 20th century church and just the expanse of kind of mobility within it. And he talks about kind of the two big advances in technology that really impacted the church in the 20th century were the automobile and the uh sound system, like the megaphone, the amplifier sound system. And it kind of reminds Reminds me a little bit of, I think, where we're at right now in this day and age is that we have more mobility opportunities than we've ever had in our lives in the world. And we have agency to really kind of take what we know, our passions, abilities, push those into our callings and vocations and see what opportunities open for us. So it's not unheard of for a cross-country move in your mid-career, right? And to doing something different in that way. What does mobility offer us in kind of opportunities? And then where should we be maybe weary of that? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, mobility is an opportunity, it is a blessing. You know, there's no doubt about that. And I think its opportunities are so obvious and so clear that we almost assume that that's all that it is. I love the work of the mid-20th century communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, who famously in his book Understanding Media, talks about how all technology gives us something, extends, but it also takes away. So going back to the automobile, he talks about how the automobile extends the foot. So we don't have to walk. We can make physical progress across the earth with this car that takes the place of our foot. But when we're not using our feet, then we're going faster, we're passing by more people. We build houses that have garages in the front instead of porches in the front. So we don't get to know our neighbors or see our neighbors. All of these things is a great, great classic work. And so what his argument is basically that for every technology that we have, we tend as humans to look at what it gives us and not to look at what it takes away. And so you've you've asked me a question. And I would say what mobility, or at least the easy access to mobility, takes away is roots and the blessings that we get from just staying in one place for a long time. And I'm not saying everyone is supposed to do that, but that's, and I mentioned this briefly in the book, that's actually one thing that I have felt called to over time is to stay where I am. And the relationships and that I've developed in the community where I live, because I've lived here for over 25 years, are things that I would not have if I hadn't been here this long, and things that I wouldn't even know that I'm missing if I had just up and moved, you know, every five or 10 years. And again, there's not that's not wrong, but by staying in a place and by dwelling in the land that the Lord has given us or the home the Lord has given us for a longer time, we're going to get things that we wouldn't even know that we would gain if we left.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

We'll be back to our conversation with Karen Swallow Pryor in just a moment. But first, a quick reminder if you're enjoying the Upwards podcast, please be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. It helps others find these conversations. And don't forget to check out Karen's new book, You Have a Calling, available wherever books are sold. It's a thoughtful guide for navigating vocation and purpose in today's world. You can find a link to her previous episode with us in the show notes. Now let's return to our discussion on calling vocation and the myths that are often misunderstood around our work. You know, I think a lot of us struggle with vocation. I think Christians maybe struggle a little bit more. I don't know exactly why that is. And so, question around kind of that struggle. How can Christians, you know, specifically reconcile their vocation, calling, and career? Do you have a story that of someone or a scenario of someone that has kind of helped kind of navigate some of that? I know you share a little bit even in your own in the book about some of your own passions and journey and and calling around your love for animals, right? And but that's outside of doing some of the other things that you do. Maybe there's there's a story that could kind of weave some of those things together that we might might be helpful for us.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Well, I do mention this in my book, but I think maybe one, and I'm sure there are many more that I'll think of later. But the example that I have is of my late mother, who, you know, obviously much older and so did not grow up in a time where women were, you know, expected to go to college and have a career and those things. And so she um, you know, married, had her family, raised her children, but she and my dad moved a fair amount. And so wherever they moved and whatever church that they would join, she would always teach in the Sunday school class. She loved teaching Sunday school and she did it wherever they lived, for however long they lived, whatever church they were going to. But the thing is, she went to when she was a child, she attended a one-room schoolhouse in Maine, like a literal, it's still standing, a what literal one room schoolhouse in Maine. And when she was in the upper grade school there, she helped teach the younger students. So it was not until in her 80s that she looked back when she was no longer able to teach Sunday school in person, but would make lessons and mail them out uh to places across the world and to family members. And so she was still teaching and she realized going back to grade school that she had been called to be a teacher. And she never thought, she didn't think about it. It wasn't a career, she wasn't getting paid, it was a calling, but she didn't even recognize it as a calling until near the end. And so I think sometimes that's something to realize that when we're just being faithful and we're doing the things that the Lord has put in front of us, we may not know what the significance or purpose or outcome of those things will be. But in hindsight, and imagine like in the sight of eternity, when we have eternal eyes, what we'll be able to see that the Lord was doing through us in all of all of these things, this path that we're making, that sometimes we just we don't see the path until we get near the end and we turn and look around and see that path that we've made that's behind us. I think our own lives can be that way, even when we're a little bit more conscious and intentional and self-aware as we tend to be in in the modern age. And yet, even our own self-awareness can fall short. We aren't as smart as we think we are about ourselves. And so we need to be open to surprises and open to seeing things um turn out differently than we expected.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Yeah. I want to jump back into the calling dynamic for a second. Is there a framework that you've thought about that's helpful for someone that feels really stuck in their calling? I think when we feel really stuck in our calling, it can be really debilitating for some people. Um, they just don't know what to do. They don't know how to reconcile, they don't even know, like, how do I even start thinking about what does this look like? Can you walk us through a little bit of a framework for people that are really stuck maybe in their calling that are listening today?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

That's such a good question. And I would say, again, going back to part of the definition of terms, one thing that I didn't mention before. And this is this is part of, you know, our rich um heritage in Protestant theology, and which is what I'm most familiar with, is that the whole purpose of calling is to serve our neighbors. And so we are in our calling, the purpose of it is not to fulfill our own passions, although sometimes that can happen. It is not to make us feel good about ourselves or satisfied. It is to serve our neighbors. Now, we can take the most satisfaction and joy in that when we feel like we are using our gifts and using our abilities and hopefully getting some joy in it from it out along the way. But recognizing that we're there, our calling is to serve our neighbors first and foremost. And we want to serve our neighbors the best that we can. If we're feeling a lack of contentment or feeling stuck in that calling, then I think we need to, you know, I mean, the thing that I know best to do is to bring it before the Lord. And he can sometimes in the very same calling, new ways of serving or can open up, or we sometimes I've had this experience also where he changes my perspective. Nothing changes except me because he changes my heart and perspective, or when he knows that we are seeking, he can provide other opportunities that come along the way, you know, so that we can make a change. But another thing to think about is again, sometimes it does come down to words and semantics. When I had a 25-year or more vocation as a college professor, um, and then that ended a couple of years ago. And so I am no longer a college professor. Now, I could say that my calling as a college professor ended, and it did. I still teach in, you know, in in um temporary appointments. So in that way it didn't, but just sort of being a full-time academic ended. But on the other hand, if I understand my calling to be teaching, then it hasn't ended because I am still continuing to teach through my writing and my speaking. And so sometimes just getting our mind around it and saying, maybe I'm just seeing things wrong, or could see them, you know, you know, sort of narrow, you know, just sort of tighten up the perspective, just make the lens a little clearer so that we can understand, you know, what are we really doing our calling, or are we actually right now just fulfilling a job or fulfilling a need? And then again, bringing it before the Lord because we do have callings. And it may be that our primary calling is something that we're already doing all along, and this other thing that we're discontent in is actually serving that larger calling.

unknown 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

So it's not a framework, it's not a formula. As a teacher, I'm always I'm always saying, like, ask questions, ask good questions.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. How can our local churches help us better with calling and vocation? I I'm just thinking, like, if you had an edict toward toward the local church, and you were like, hey, here are some things the local church can really help us do. I think our local churches, and not all, but uh some of our local churches have a deficiency when we talk about these things. And it's a very big part of our lives. So what would you say to kind of the local church to passionately maybe prod them a little bit in this area?

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Well, I would first of all say just stop thinking about and naming calling as something that's done only in like a full-time job in the church, right? So if your paycheck comes from the church, that's one thing. But that to call that full-time ministry, I think is where our thinking gets skewed because we're all supposed to be in full-time ministry, right? Regardless of where our paycheck comes from. And so to think about all of the members of the church being members of the body that have different roles and that our calling is not limited to where our paycheck comes from, that's a big thing because the language itself distorts the way that we think about calling. I've spoken to so many because I, you know, because I was um at a religious university, a Christian university, and then at a teaching at a seminary. So many young people, including myself for a while, even going back longer, had this idea, this wrong-headed idea that if you really love and want to serve the Lord, you do that only in quote unquote ministry and full-time ministry. Certainly, we need people to be working in the church and for church organizations, but those are not the only places to minister. And so just thinking about the language and the and the framing to begin with, and then being more intentional and conscientious about helping people find their callings by using the correct language, using open language about that, and recognizing when people are wanting to serve, wanting to use their gifts, calling out in people, naming in them things that they are gifted at, things that they may be able to do that they may not even think of. I mean, going back to when I was a very young adult, uh, and my pastor asked me to take this role in speaking that I just would never have dreamed that I could do. And he called that out in me and and and got me along that way. So doing that, naming what people can do well and what you see them being able to do well and to serve. And then one final sort of flip side of all this is not confusing calling with being a doormat or free labor. There is there are times when the church, because we are people who know we are to serve and to love and to give sacrificially, that can be exploited, not necessarily intentionally, but it can be exploited such that people think that their calling is to do this thing that no one else will do and it's and not get paid for it or not get paid well for it or to get overworked. That's not the same thing as calling. And the church needs to guard against exploiting our God-given calling to serve and to give and not let that gift be and that calling be misused.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Yeah. Well, we have a time for a few more questions. I want to flip the script a little bit here and talk about Gen Z. I know that you are passionate about educating kind of the next generation, and you've done that for your career and your vocational call in that. I do think Gen Z is kind of, we say this about every generation. Gen Z is a unique kind of generation coming into the workforce. What unique challenges do you see Gen Z facing when it comes to discerning their calling, maybe compared to other generations, as you're kind of working with kind of some of those younger folks that are just kind of entering careers?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yeah, I think I think one opportunity and challenge at the same time for them is that they are in this world where every option, every opportunity, every possible thing that could be is out there. You know, you get images of this on TikTok and social media of people doing this and doing that. And so like the world is so wide open that that can be paralyzing, right? Because there are so many choices and opportunities. It's it's a very different problem from say a hundred years ago, you either your choice was to work in the factory where your dad worked, or your choice was to, you know, to go into the military or just stay home. I mean, the choices were so limited, you know, that and now it's the opposite. And so to have a more real to just know that just because you see something out there does not mean that that is for you. And just because you see someone else succeeding at something or looking happy about doing something does not mean that's what you should do. And with all of that, those sort of visions and dreams and ephemeral images out there, one of the phrases that I love, I think it comes from Gen Z. It's it's you know, it's a slang term that I love phrase that I love. It's touch grass.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

I love that. There's so much wisdom in that, like because we're surrounded by so much that's not real or that is blown up and distorted, that touching grass, in other words, like looking at the world around you that's outside your actual neighbors in front of you, looking in the eyes of your classmate and having a conversation instead of looking at the phone. You know, we we all do that, but just take a break from that and speak with someone one-on-one, look in their eyes, see the person that maybe everyone is overlooking and ignoring. Like look at the real physical world around you and see what opportunities you might have to serve, to use your gifts, to develop your passions. Those real things that are in front of you are going to guide you so much better than the things that are being played on YouTube and TikTok and Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Yeah, I think that it's interesting what I think with Gen Z, you know, they're very purpose-driven. They have really purposeful things behind a lot of what they do, and causality is really important to them, you know, aligning their, you know, giving to things that they're passionate about outside of the local church and some other places. But yet they're also very anxious. You know, I think that the duality of those two things is kind of a very interesting mix. How would you speak to their longing for meaning and stability in a rapidly changing world? We talked about the mobility piece already. We talked about some technology opportunities. You just talked about touching grass, which I think is a good way to even push into this. How would you speak into their longing for meaning and stability in kind of the world that they're entering into into the workforce?

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, I mean, the anxiety, I mean, it's real. And I think the anxiety comes from this sense of increased responsibility. There's a phrase that um that you express in different ways, but you're accountable for what you see. And we see so much in the world. There's almost nothing that goes on in the world that we aren't seeing and feeling anxious about because there's nothing that we feel we can do about it. And so that anxiety is definitely inherent in living in this time and this place. And so it's not anyone's fault necessarily. It's not, we're not, we shouldn't blame ourselves because of this anxiety, but we can also recognize that it's part of the nature that we of the world that we live in, and we don't have to take responsibility. We aren't supposed to take responsibility for every pain that we see and every opportunity that might be put in front of us, and that the purpose and the we aren't going to, we're not going to miss the boat, we're not going to miss God's boat if we turn down, you know, take turn A instead of turn B or turn left instead of and turn right. That in God's economy, if we are striving to serve Him, to serve others, to be faithful in all of our callings, the purpose and meaning are already there. And if we can't see it, it will emerge as we go along our way. So the purpose and meaning are inherent in being human, in being called, and in pursuing the thing that we can pursue right in front of us and to know that God will use it all. If we make a mistake along the way, like we take a job that makes us miserable and doesn't use our gifts, we're still going to learn something and we still, there's still opportunities in front of us that not only the world itself may bring, but God Himself will intervene and bring when we're pursuing Him. And so the anxiety can be tempered, I think, with kind of an openness and open-handedness and open-heartedness to know that it will come together in some perhaps unexpected ways. But just by simply knowing we have a purpose and wanting to fulfill it, we're already doing it.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

You know, I I think for a lot of people when they're entering into college years, university years, I think previous generations, it was a place of discovering yourself. We we would, you know, often hear people kind of talk through this was, and I think it was a lot about some of the themes that we talked about here about calling and vocation and finding your passions and your gifting and and all of that. The university and college world has changed drastically over the last maybe decade and has become very more much more transactional, right? So students are coming to get a degree to then to go into the workforce for a specific area. They need credentials to do that. And so you don't have students coming in looking for kind of the discovering of their giftedness or their passions or new trying new things necessarily. Students do change majors, uh, obviously, and that in that kind of thing. But we've lost that in kind of the university dynamic and colleges. How do we gain that back in those settings? How do we move from kind of the transactional dynamic that we are and maybe take a step back around and helping people, especially young people, have a discoverability around who they are?

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yeah, boy, I wish I had the I have answers, but I wish I had the magic wand to make it happen. Yeah. Um, yeah, this is this is not something the students and young people have done. This is something that the culture has done uh to them. And right, they don't even necessarily know that there was a time when you went to college to just simply learn and discover the world and yourself. So again, if there's any formula I have, it is to for everything to step back and ask about the purpose. And so, you know, what is your purpose for going to college? And if the purpose is simply, you know, what which it has been for a couple of generations, at the instruction of parents and guidance counselors and other people, it has been to get a high-paying job. If that is the purpose, then you need to explore some math and make sure that that, you know, you're not graduating with more debt than you'll be able to pay off and so forth. If that is the purpose, know that that's a purpose and do the smartest thing to fulfill that purpose. But if the purpose is something else, if the purpose is to learn and to be a certain kind of person, as opposed to get. A certain kind of job, then make the most of that. But so often we push other, you know, our young people and push ourselves into doing things because we are trying to follow a formula instead of asking, what are we trying to do? Why are we doing it? And is this the best way to do it? And so I would just I don't think there's anything we might face or any decision we have to make that isn't going to be well served by asking why are we doing this? And is this the best way to fulfill this purpose? And as educators, I hope that we would do that as parents and people making decisions about how much money to borrow and which courses of study to take. I hope that we will ask those questions and help others to ask those questions. And that's that's something that the church can step in and help families and young people with as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Well, I think that's a great benediction for our time together. Karen, thank you so much for being on the podcast. The book is You Have a Calling, Finding Your Vacation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. It is a great read, and I would encourage everyone to go pick up a copy. Uh super helpful resource. Thank you for all your time and attention and creating it for us.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Thank you for letting me talk about it for a few minutes today.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Absolutely. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Upwards Podcast. We hope Karen's insights have encouraged you to think deeply about your own calling and how it aligns with your faith in daily life. If you'd like to learn more, grab a copy of her book, You Have a Calling, Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. And explore the resources linked in our show notes. Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss a future conversation that will help you live faithfully in the Academy, Church, and Marketplace. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.