Hey everybody welcome to the Mir Christians podcast. I'm Jordan Rayner. How does

the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't

pastors or religious professionals but who work as chemists and gardeners and

college professors? That's the question we explore every

week and today I'm posing it to my friend Alan Arnold. He's the executive producer of

content at Wild at Heart, a ministry founded by former

podcast guest John Eldridge.

Alan is also an author of some extraordinary books for Christian professionals, including one I recently

devoured and loved called The Story of With.

Before the work he's doing now, Alan served as the head of Thomas Nelson's fiction division,

where he oversaw the launch of more than 500 novels.

Alan I sat down recently to talk about what does it look like practically day to day to do your work with God and not just for Him.

We talked about the far better alternative to looking for open and closed doors as you make decisions

and we talked about how to be crazy busy without yourself feeling crazy. I think you guys are going to love this

conversation with my friend Alan Arnd. Alan Arnold. Alan Arnold, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Jordan, great to be with you.

So we connected for the first time a couple months ago and I got to hear a little bit of your story that I'd love for you to share with our listeners because it's fascinating to me. You spent a pretty long time running the fiction division at Thomas Nelson, and I love the story about how you came into that role pretty suddenly. Can you share that?

Absolutely. So my background has been in story in various ways from ad agencies and major ad campaigns,

30 second stories to the publishing world.

And while I was at Thomas Nelson, which is one of the world's largest

Christian publishing houses, it was founded in 1798, is in. I didn't know that. A lot of people

didn't know that probably but it was started over 200 years ago in Scotland area

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