The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the mere Christians podcast was called the call to mastery

Now if you love mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each

conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode.

Hey everyone, welcome to the call to mastery. I'm Jordan Rayner. Hey I hope you guys had a

terrific resurrection Sunday this past Easter and if Easter wasn't enough inspiration for you to go and create new things in light of

who you are in Christ. I hope this episode will provide you with some motivation to do

so. That's right today we're talking about how the Gospel and the

resurrection of Christ gives us the courage to create with Andy Lepo, the

legendary editor who spent 40 years as an editor and publisher in InterVarsity Press, one of the top

Christian publishing houses. Andy has edited some of my all-time favorite authors

including Andy Krauch and NT, right Wright who both of whom you've heard

me talk about numerous times on the called mastery. So Andy's also a successful author

in his own right whose books have sold more than 750,000 copies. Trust me, that is a mind-poggling

number of books. Andy recently published a book called Write Better, a lifelong editor on Craft, Art, and

spirituality which was chosen by Christianity today as the best book of 2020 in the culture and arts category. So Andy and I recently

sat down, we talked about this new book, we talked about how the gospel gives us the courage

to create and to stop creating. We also talked about the wisdom of taking all of your

vacation at the same time. Andy talked about how for years, decades he would take three, four four weeks of vacation all in one big chunk.

And we also talked about the idle of individualism and the impact that that can have on our

work. That might have been my favorite part of this conversation so without further

ado please enjoy this conversation with literary legend Andy LaPoe. All right, Andy Lepo, thank you so much for joining me. So Andy, you've been in publishing for more than 40 years now. I'm really curious how you started in this industry

going back 40 years. How did you break into this space? What did that look like

...