The stories that forever changed how Jordan works
What Jordan’s decision to work with a co-author can teach you about your own work, why he chose to make a collection of biographies his next book, and the stickiest stories from Five Mere Christians that have changed how he works.
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[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey, friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors or religious professionals but who work as florists, speech therapists, and cable installers? That’s the question we explore every week, and today, I’m posing it to my friend, Kaleigh Cox, the first person I have ever worked with to co-write a book.
The book that dropped yesterday, my brand-new book, Five Mere Christians: Bingeworthy Biographies That Show You How to Glorify God and Your Work. Kaleigh and I sat down to talk about what my decision to work with the coauthor can teach you about your own work today. I shared why I chose to make a collection of biographies my next book, and Kaleigh and I both shared a bunch of the stickiest stories from the lives of Fred Rogers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Hannah More, C. S. Lewis, the founder of Lego, et cetera, that have forever changed how we work.
You’re not going to want to miss this terrific episode with my friend, Kaleigh Cox.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:20.4] JR: Kaleigh Cox, welcome back to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:24.3] KC: Yay, it’s so good to be back.
[0:01:25.8] JR: All right, it’s confession time. We were not totally honest with our audience. We may had to do the podcast back in January 2024. So, I was interviewing you about the job you had at the time, but we neglected to share with our listeners that you and I had been quietly been working together for almost a year at that point, writing Five Mere Christians and we were both giddy to talk about it, but agreed it wasn’t the right time, right?
[0:01:55.1] KC: That’s right, it was very sneaky of us, but I’m so glad I get to come back and talk about it now. I only didn’t talk about it last time because you promised I could come back and talk about it later.
[0:02:04.2] JR: Yeah, and now’s the right time, right? Because we are dropping this episode the day after we release. Our new book, which we co-wrote together, called Five Mere Christians: Bingeworthy Biographies That Show You How to Glorify God in Your Work. I won’t talk about how hard I had to fight for “bingeworthy” in that subtitle.
[0:02:23.6] KC: And we won’t talk about –
[0:02:24.6] JR: But my word, did I fight for it.
[0:02:27.4] KC: Yeah, I was the one who thought it was not great, and then early reactions have proven you right. No big surprise there.
[0:02:34.3] JR: Vindication.
[0:02:35.2] KC: That’s right.
[0:02:36.5] JR: Helped us sell 4,000 units of this thing, all right? Yeah, listen, this is – I’ve been telling everybody, and I can say this ashamedly because I am genuinely not responsible for the vast majority of the writing in this book, concept, sure. This is the best thing I’ve ever made. Ever made. I am obsessed with it. I love this book, I can’t stop – I’ve been talking about it for almost three years.
And so, I figured, “Yeah, let’s celebrate this launch by doing something a little bit different in this episode. So, listeners, bear with us, we’re actually going to flip the mics a little bit. Kaleigh is actually going to interview me for the first half or so of this episode about why I chose this as my next book, how this project came about, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know, maybe some fun stories come up about the messy making of this book.
And then, we’re going to talk about how writing about how the gospel shaped the work of these five men and women changed how we, personally, work today. Does that sound like a plan, Kaleigh?
[0:03:41.3] KC: I love it.
[0:03:41.7] JR: All right, take it away.
[0:03:44.1] KC: All right, Jordan. Well, you know that before I even worked with you, I had read everything you had ever written, and so I know that this was a very different type of book for you. So, can you just tell us where the idea came from for publishing biographies?
[0:03:59.6] JR: Yeah, I get this question a lot with all my books, and honestly, for most books, it’s hard for me to retrace the steps, right? Like, it’s – creativity is very messy, like, I can’t always see exactly how the concept came into being, but this one’s actually pretty clear to me, and honestly, there were bunch of different seeds dating back to probably like, 2020 that kind of all grew together into this vision for biographies of mere Christians from history, that were both extremely entertaining and extremely practical.
I’ll just share a few of those seeds here, I won’t bore our listeners with every single one. So, not a comprehensive list, but a representative one. Number one, I just keep seeing a trend in my YouVersion devotionals, in this podcast, that case studies are stickier than commands, right? So, in books like The Sacredness of Secular Work, or my weekly devotional, like the Word before work, I am telling readers, telling myself, how we can glorify God in our work.
But there’s this quote from Tim Keller that I read years ago that I love. He said, “You never learned anything spiritually valuable by being told. You have to be shown.” By the way, that came from a sermon of his, right? Like, strong words to come from a preacher, and I’ve just seen it in my own stuff. Yes, telling readers how to glorify God in their work, telling our listeners how to glorify God in their work, is valuable.
It has its place, and I’m going to continue to write more of that stuff, but I do think showing is even more powerful, which is why I think this podcast works. This podcast shows you, listener how – what it looks like practically to glorify God in your work by giving you flesh and bone, three-dimensional models of what that looks like in practice. So, that was the first seed, right? Like, I just kept seeing this trend, that case studies are stickier than commands.
Number two, as you know, I kept dreaming out loud on this podcast about who I wanted to interview on the new earth, and like, people laugh every time I say that. Like, I’m only half-joking, right? Like, I can’t wait to interview the founder of Lego, to interview Mr. Rogers, and Hannah More, et cetera, et cetera, and part of the reason is that they are dead. Like, I actually love that because we know that they were faithful to Christ to the end.
They finished the race well. So, that was the second seed. Third seed, I spent years wrestling with my love–hate relationship with biographies, right? Like, I love biographies and memoirs, because they’re inspiring, because they baptize my imagination about what’s possible for God to do through my work, because again, they show me and they show me what it looks like practically to glorify God today, if the biography is the hero of the faith.
But most biographies suck. Like, they are absolutely terrible, they’re way too long, they’re way too boring, they’re way too disconnected from the life of modern readers. There are just very few biographies that are short, binge-worthy, and extremely relevant, and selfishly, I wanted more of them. So, that was the third seed, and then I would say the final seed, kind of the nail on the coffin, was reading two books by James Patterson.
So, if you love this book, shoot James Patterson a tweet and thank him. One, I write his autobiography where – which is extraordinary. By the way, if you are interested in ever writing anything. Go read James Patterson’s autobiography. If you can get passed the arrogance of the pride, it’s great. He was basically saying the same thing I was saying about biographies. He’s like, “Biographies are terrible,” and there’s a way to make him read light fiction.
And so, I’m going all in on this genre, and then after reading, I was like, “All right, I want to read what James Patterson is doing with nonfiction.” And so, Karen and I were in London in the fall of 2022, and I think Patterson had just published his biography on Princess Diana and her boys. Now, I don’t really care about Princess Diana that much. I’m a super fan of the crown, but like, whatever, like, I don’t – I’m not super passionate about the royal family. So, like I didn’t –
[0:08:18.6] KC: You didn’t wake up in the middle of the night to watch a royal wedding or –
[0:08:21.8] JR: I did not.
[0:08:22.4] KC: Not that level. It’s no Taylor Swift obsession.
[0:08:25.0] JR: It’s not waking up at midnight to stream midnights, no. I didn’t do that either, for the record. For the record, I’m not that crazy. No, so like, I didn’t care that much, but like, I remember vividly we were on a train. I remember where we were, we were riding the train through Clapham, actually. I don’t think I’ve told you that where Hannah More and William Wilberforce hung out.
And I remember thinking, “I don’t care about this subject, but I cannot stop reading this book,” because of the length of the chapters, because of the cliffhangers after every chapter and I was like, “This is it, this is the format I’ve been looking for.” I had this idea for a collection of biographies for a while, but I’m like, this is the style, this is the format I want to write this thing in, but I had no idea how to write it, right?
Like, I’m not James Patterson, and that’s okay, which, as you know, was kind of the realization that eventually led me to work with you.
[0:09:23.6] KC: Yeah, yeah, and I know, you’ve gotten a lot of questions about that as well, because this is the first book you’ve written with a coauthor. Obviously, I know why you decided to do that, but can you flesh that out a bit more because I think even for someone who is not looking to write a book, there’s real value in what your kind of purpose and motivation was here.
[0:09:46.5] JR: There’s a quote that’s been rolling around my head for about seven years since I’ve read it in Ryan Holiday’s terrific book called Perennial Seller, another book I’d strongly recommend anyone who ever wants to write or create anything, honestly. Ryan says that the best books are either extremely entertaining or extremely practical, and I was arrogant enough, audacious enough, whatever you want to call it, to say, “I think Five Mere Christians can be both.”
To be as helpful as anything I’ve ever written, see Redeeming Your Time, The Sacredness of Secular Work, et cetera, but also as entertaining as anything Emily Henry or Laura Hillenbrand has written. Beach read crushable, you’ve probably heard me say that term a million times over the last year or two, right? Beach read crushable biographies that could compete with Netflix and TikTok.
But again, I knew I didn’t know how to write that, right? Could I have figured it out? Yeah, sure, and maybe on the new earth I would love to figure out how to like, write in that genre, in that medium, but why would I try to figure that out now when there are plenty of other talented writers out there who can do it, and are doing it. So yeah, for the first time in my career, I decided to write with someone.
People ask me all the time, “Oh, who helped you write Redeeming Your Time? Who ghostwrote?” I wrote those, okay? I wrote those books on my own, but this one, I wanted to write with somebody who could achieve that vision of beach read crushable, extremely entertaining, and get live up to the subtitle of this book of bingeworthy biographies, and this is the beauty of the body of Christ, and I think there’s a lesson in here for our listeners, regardless of their work.
I’m good at one thing: creating content, and even more niche and specific than that, I’m really good at writing clear, compelling, linear, practical nonfiction. Not extremely entertaining nonfiction, but God has equipped many-many-many other people, believers and nonbelievers alike, with that gift, right? With that skillset, and so I was really, really pumped to go out and find somebody who God had given that gift to.
You’re one of them, one of a hundred and fifty or so people that went through the process of applying to be my coauthor on this book, and that was really beautiful for me to step back and just appreciate the gifts that I don’t have that God has given to others in abundance.
[0:12:13.6] KC: Yeah, and I think that, right? What – there is the lesson that applies to anyone because no matter what job you hold, and whether it’s your company or your, you know, just an employee or a contributor to a company, it can be so tempting to think that we are responsible for doing everything that our job demands, and when we take every responsibility on ourselves, instead of reaching out and seeking help, either from a coworker or hiring someone or whatever that might look like.
For one thing, we’re not going to do as excellent of work as we would have done in partnership with other people, but we’re also robbing people of the opportunity to do the work God has prepared in advance for them to do and has equipped them to do. So, it’s a much broader application than just finding a coauthor, right? It’s about partnering with people and recognizing that we’re all part of a body and different people have different giftings and –
[0:13:08.8] JR: Yeah, it’s so good. I can’t remember where I read this, but I recently read somebody commenting on Genesis one, and the first commission to fill the earth and to subdue it, and the agency that God gave humanity, and the freedom God gave humanity to figure out the – how they were going to get the job done that God gave them to do, right? And the point this author was making is when we fail to lean on others with different skillsets than our own, or worse, we hire them to do a job.
And then we dictate how that job is done, and don’t rely on their skillsets, we are robbing them of the God-given right and responsibility to lean into our particular God-given skills and exercise those for his glory and the good of others. Does that make any sense?
[0:14:00.1] KC: Yeah, absolutely, and it’s one of those things where we can tell ourselves that we’re doing it, “insert task here” in the service of others, and almost with this, like, martyr complex, when in reality, it’s pride, right? It’s, “I’m going to do all of these on my own.”
[0:14:17.2] JR: And by the way, I’m guilty of this, nine times out of ten. the one time I got this right was hiring you to co-write this book with me, so.
[0:14:25.0] KC: Well, I – I’m jumping ahead here, big reveal, everyone, I now work with Jordan, we’ll talk about that, but as a boss, you are very mindful of this as well. So, I would say, in general, you think about this well. So, before we get into that, I do want to say really quickly, we won’t spend time here on this podcast getting into the nitty-gritty of how you found me and hired me, because most of our listeners probably don’t care.
But there might be some who do, maybe who have always wanted to write a book and would love to work with a coauthor to do it, and you actually just finished yesterday, I think, or this weekend, creating a free course about this. Can you talk about that, and just kind of where our listeners can find it?
[0:15:00.9] JR: Yeah, I record the course, I’m so pumped about it. I’m sharing everything for anyone who wants to write a book 10 times faster and better with an affordable coauthor, including I’m sharing, how I sourced candidates for this role, how I found you, how I found New York Times bestselling authors who are interested in working with me on this project. I share how I structure compensation, you’re going to find out exactly what Kaleigh made, financially, in this book.
We did not hold back any secrets. I’m sharing how to delegate your vision for the book effectively. Yeah, so anyways, we’re not selling this course. I do this almost for every book launch, I do a course like this where you can’t buy it, can’t Google it, you can’t find it. You could only get it for free by ordering my new book. So, if you order Five Mere Christians before 11:59 PM Eastern on May 9th, at FiveMereChristians.com.
Go to FiveMereChristians.com, click the link to buy the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian Book, wherever you want to, and then there’s a form right there. Once you fill it out, you’ll get free access to the course.
[0:16:01.3] KC: Yeah. That’s great.
[0:16:02.6] JR: All right, can we flip the mic?
[0:16:04.1] KC: Let’s do it.
[0:16:05.3] JR: I’m tired of talking.
[0:16:05.9] KC: Bring it on.
[0:16:06.3] JR: I don’t like talking this much.
[0:16:07.2] KC: You’re not used to being in the hot seat.
[0:16:09.1] JR: I am not. All right. So, let me back up. I’ll share a little bit of detail on how I source candidates for this book. So, I did a couple of different ways, I cold emailed about 12 authors who already published, who I really like their stuff, and got their interest, but I also sent out an email to a small segment of my email list. If you’re listening, you may have gotten one of these emails, and these are basically my super-super-super fans, right?
People who open everything, buy every book, et cetera, and it was a very simple email. It’s like, “Hey,” I think the subject line was like, “Want to co-write a book with me?” P.S. The open rate on that email was through the roof, pro tip, right? And it linked to this very simple application that led to, like, this four-stage interview process. Here’s what’s interesting to me, though, Kaleigh, you had never published.
You had never written a full-length book before, and you were like, “Yeah, I could do that.” Well, talk through your thought process and what led you to apply because this is a titch crazy.
[0:17:05.7] KC: Yeah, well, I have to start with a confession, Jordan. I haven’t told you this, but I didn’t realize it was a full book until like the interview, and we’re –
[0:17:12.8] JR: Oh, that’s right because I didn’t tell you.
[0:17:14.9] KC: Well, you were – you said it was like a short biography.
[0:17:18.0] JR: Yeah–yeah.
[0:17:18.6] KC: Maybe around 10,000 words. So, first of all, I thought the odds of me getting this were very slim. So, I didn’t really overthink it that much.
[0:17:25.1] JR: For the record, they were very slim.
[0:17:26.9] KC: Yeah, and so you know, I just wasn’t, but I thought you know, like, best case scenario, if this were to work out, I’ll spend a few Saturdays on this project. So, by the time I understood, “Oh, this is a book,” I was just way too excited to back out, but I will say, I think the whole process, I would describe as a guided drift, which is a phrase I’m borrowing from our book, and it’s how Fred Rogers thought about his career.
And so, to summarize at the idea, and actually, I have a bit of a quote here from one of his biographers, Max King, who is describing that guided drift concept, and he says that, “The drift was allowing one’s self the creative freedom to follow not just your interests, but where life would lead you, allowing the opportunities that come along to spark your creativity, and allowing yourself the freedom to go after them.”
And so, that really is how I have done my entire career is, I’m all in where I’m at, you know, where I am, and then if something interesting comes along, I’ll knock on that door. I’ll see what – I’ll see if, you know, God might open it, and so it was just that. You know, I got this email, like I’ve said, I’ve been – I was a fan of yours for a long time before that email came. I mean, I was in the subset of people who opened all your emails and therefore got the email.
And so, I just thought, “Sure, whatever.” I mean, I think I spent 15 minutes on the application. I was just like, “I will throw my hat in the ring,” and every step of the way, I was just giddy, like, “Man, if I got no farther, it would be so cool that I got to do this little test or if I got no farther, it would be so cool that I got to do a one hour interview with him.” And so, it was just taking the step in front of me and being okay with any outcome, and just enjoying the guided drift.
[0:19:11.0] JR: Yeah, in the words of Princess Anna, you just did the next right thing, you know? That’s it. I remember very vividly, so round three of the interview process, it’s a four-step interview process, round three was a live interview with me. I think of the initial hundred and fifty applicants, I think I did five live interviews, and I remember vividly you’re just confidence in that call. I can’t remember exactly what you said.
But I remember asking you something along the lines of like, “You’ve never done this, right?” Like, I’m talking to, you know, one of the other finalists, it was a New York Times bestselling biographer who had like, you know, eight New York Times Bestselling books under his belt, and I was just like, really direct. I was like, “What makes you think you could do this?” And I don’t remember what you said, but I remember how you said it, and I remember it wasn’t arrogance, and it wasn’t –
[0:20:06.6] KC: I think I remember.
[0:20:07.8] JR: Do you?
[0:20:08.5] KC: I think so. I think I said, “I mean, I could be totally wrong about this, Jordan, but I think God’s calling you to write this book.”
[0:20:14.3] JR: That’s right, that’s exactly what you said, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, what did Jesus do?” But like, but no, I respect it. It wasn’t illusion, it wasn’t arrogance, it was audacity, and like, I value holy audacity so much. In fact, I mean, we talked about this in Five Mere Christians. So, for the listener’s sake, this is five biographies, and then at the end of each of these biographies, I share three ways that you and I, modern mere Christians can glorify God in our work, as seen in the life of “insert person here” Fred Rogers, Fannie Lou Hamer.
And then, Hannah More’s chapter, this poet who, no big deal, abolished the slave trade in her lifetime, just randomly showed up at the biggest celebrity’s house in the world and like, broke into his backyard, which I freaking love, I pointed this takeaway, like, I think mere Christians glorify God by living with that uncommon audacity, right? We take big swings, and it’s not self-confidence, and this is the nuance that’s really important.
It’s not, “I can do awesome things because I am awesome, and I am enough.” It is, “I can do awesome things because I have an awesome God living in me, dwelling in me, and working through me to accomplish His purposes in the world.” And that’s what I saw in you in that interview. Again, not self-confidence, but a holy God sourced confidence. I am curious, though, like, as you were writing Hannah More’s story, did that bolster your conviction around this thing and cultivate in you even more audacity for your future work?
[0:21:54.6] KC: Yeah. So, I think, first of all, that that audacity stemmed from is just walking with Jesus a long time, and seeing failures or closed doors work out for the glory of God in my own good, and so I don’t think I’ve shared. I don’t think I shared the story in my first interview here, but when I was a freshman in college, I got this invitation to apply for a summer internship at this really big church that I attended and was a member of.
And it would have been a really cool way to spend my summer, and it was like a personal invitation, “Hey, so and so mentioned your name, we think you could be a good fit.” And I went and did the interview and thought, like, “Oh, this is where God is leading me, you know? This is what I’m going to do this summer.” And then they called me and I didn’t get it, and I was so mad, like, I was mad because the rejection stung, and I was like, “Really?”
Just mad at God, “Why would You even put this invitation in my inbox if you were just going to let me be rejected?” And so, as a result, I just said yes to the very next invitation that came, without prayer. Just the very next thing that came to my inbox about that summer was leading this one-week trip for incoming freshmen, and I was like, “Fine, God, like, You don’t want me to work for the church, then I’m just going to do this trip.”
And that is where I met my husband, and so you know, I can look back on that and see how God – I would have never even accepted the invitation to lead that trip if I hadn’t been angry about the closed door, and then that’s where I met Grant, and so ever since then, really, I’ve been – I mean, it still stings to be rejected but I’m always like, “Okay, even if this is a closed door, God is going to do something here,” and it’s made me more audacious.
What I loved about Hannah More and the freedom I found in her was that she was audacious about that next right thing that you were saying a minute ago, that she, she didn’t have, I don't think, this like overarching vision for all, everything she wanted to accomplish in her life. I think that evolved over time, and so I can relate to that, where, by nature, I’m, I guess, audacious or ambitious, but I’ve never had a clear, like, five-year, 10-year, 15-year plan.
And Hannah More, her particular brand of audacity gave me freedom that I don’t have to string all of these steps together, you know, and try to orchestrate the bigger story. I can just be audacious about the thing right in front of me, and trust that God’s going to write the bigger story out of it and take me where I need to go, and another story I had not planned on telling, but when I was in my 20s, I started freelancing as a copywriter.
That’s kind of where my writing background sort of started, at least, professionally. I had a sticky note, a digital sticky note, of like, five reasons I was going to freelance, and I put it there so that I could remind myself in kind of the slower seasons why I was freelancing, and the one I remember most was that I wanted to practice and develop the skill of wiring, so that if one day, God might allow me to use that more explicitly in “Kingdom-related work.”
Of course, my understanding of that has changed, but that I would have the skillset to bring to it, and so, I don't know, I’m kind of rambling here, Jordan, but just this idea that, you know, even then, it was just, “I’m going to be audacious about getting good at copywriting and getting good at writing persuasively and in an engaging way for all sorts of businesses and trust that if God wants me to take that skillset into a different, more kingdom specific field later, He will orchestrate that.” That’s somewhere in there, I answer your question.
[0:25:25.5] JR: No, you did. You did, for sure. As you know, I’m already working on the next book even though we just dropped Five Mere Christians yesterday, when this episode drops, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea, audacity because most – I don’t think most Christian’s goals reflect a belief that the creator God is working in and through Him to accomplish His purposes in the world.
There was this Annie Dillard quote, let me see if I – Yeah, here it is. Annie Dillard said, “On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke, or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?” Right? And I think, and I’ve been thinking a lot practically about, “Okay, how do you baptize your imagination about what’s possible for God to do, and in through your work as a mere Christian?”
And this is a huge reason why I love biographies, right? Ones that don’t suck, and ones that are actually entertaining, right? Because I think biographies are a silver bullet to that end. Yeah, and yes, these biographies are practical, they’re super practical at the end, but maybe more valuable than that, I just think they’re incredibly inspiring because here’s the deal: The exact same Holy Spirit who empowered Hannah More to abolish slavery as a single woman in the 1700s is at working here today.
The same exact Holy Spirit who led Fannie Lou Hamer to basically pave the way for African-Americans having the right to vote in the United States is at work in you, believer. The same Holy Spirit that led Ole Kirk Christiansen to get off the floor after his Lego factory burnt down three times, he lost his wife and child, and create the most impactful toy brand of all time is at work in you, today. Believer, right?
And so, I don't know, that’s why I love biography. It’s one of the many reasons why I love biography. Did you feel that as you were writing this?
[0:27:47.8] KC: Yes. In fact, Fannie Lou Hamer, in particular, you know, I wrote her story in the middle of winter, and so I would get up, I worked full-time while I was doing this, and so I would get up at five and write this before the work day, and in the winter, I’m – first of all, I’m just not someone who hops out of bed at the first alarm naturally, and so you know, add that to it’s cold, it’s dark and my bed was really cozy, it was hard to get up at five AM, and her story was heavy, you know?
She’s – this was not like a fun one to write, and so, but I would wake up and that alarm would go off, and I would regularly have just this mental image of her sitting on a couch in my office with like her arms crossed, and her eyebrows raised. Like, “All right, well, whenever you’re ready, get out of bed. Like, I’m in here waiting, come tell my story.” And I would just, I’d feel this sense of like, “Man, she, the stuff she did, you know, in her work.”
And her career out of surrender to the Lord and the stuff she endured, and my job is just to help tell that story, like I’m going to get my butt out of bed, and go do what God’s given me to do, and so yeah, just – they became this real people who inspired me. Like, I wanted to be more like them, and I wanted not just in telling their stories but in my own work to work the way they did, and to glorify God the way they did.
[0:29:05.4] JR: That’s good, you buried the lead, though, you see dead people. Is that –
[0:29:09.8] KC: Thank you for that, Jordan.
[0:29:12.4] JR: So, you just publicly shared out of – okay, cool, cool, cool.
[0:29:14.7] KC: This is not like a supernatural thing. It was just like a thought in my head that got me to get up.
[0:29:20.3] JR: Sure, sure, sure, sure, the contacting grant –
[0:29:23.2] KC: She wasn’t like in the corner, like you know, a shadowy corner.
[0:29:28.7] JR: Oh, I love it. All right, hey, you just hit on this, and I just want to dig deeper here. You said that writing these stories about how the gospel influenced the work of these five mere Christians influenced how you work today. Be specific, how? Like, what’s one or two ways that these stories have significantly influenced the way you work as onto the Lord?
[0:29:54.0] KC: Yeah. So, this is actually a good example of what you said earlier when you’re saying one of the reasons you wrote this was that case studies are stickier than command. So, not long before I started working with you, I had read your book, Redeeming Your Time, and I had read John Mark Comer’s book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and before those books, I was very – I very much had what John Mark Comer calls hurry sickness.
Like, I was very stressed and spread thin, and so those books kind of were a launching pad for me to understand healthier principles, and practices for really just working out of pace that glorified God, but we live in a culture that constantly pulls you back to that type of pace, right? And glorifies it even, and so learning the story of Fred Rogers, someone who was in very high demand all of the time.
And how he still lived at such a counter-cultural pace that people caught it, like Fred time, and said, “Time slowed down when you are with Him.” Those stories, those quotes that people said about him or the stories they relayed about the impact his presence had on their lives, that is what comes to mind when I feel that pull towards hurry, towards working after my family is in bed, you know, or pull towards over-committing, or whatever the case may –
Pull towards jumping into my workday without a quiet time, like the principles I learned, because you taught them, and John Mark Comer taught them to me, but I stick with them because I have this picture in my head of Fred Rogers, the life he lived, the impact he lived because he lived out those principles. That’s what motivated me to stay the course.
[0:31:46.5] JR: Yes, this is so good. It’s so good. I didn’t know you were going to say this, I love this. Do you find, and I will not take offense to this, that you remember the image and example of Fred’s pace more than my or John Mark’s exposition of how to live said pace?
[0:32:08.0] KC: Absolutely.
[0:32:09.4] JR: That’s the point.
[0:32:10.2] KC: I mean, even know I’ve read both of those books at least twice each, and I would have to go back and flip through them to tell you line by line, like actual practices and principled, but I can tell you all sorts of stories where Fred Rogers lived them out, and that’s my bottom line.
[0:32:25.8] JR: Yes, and that’s exactly right, and like that’s why I love this genre. That’s why I audaciously want to help reinvent the genre of biography because I, too, I think in stories, we all think in stories, right? There’s plenty of science that backs this up, right? And stories are so much more memorable than just, frankly, sterile exposition, even the best sterile exposition. By the way, I’m criticizing myself here.
Like, I write fairly sterile exposition, but the stories, yeah, just bring it to life in a new way. All right, I’m going to pressure you, is there any? Is there anything else? So, you mentioned Fred Rogers, as I mean, you’re hurrying less after writing this story. Is there any other way in which your work has changed after writing these stories?
[0:33:17.3] KC: I would say one of the takeaways we had from Ole Kirk Christiansen, the founder of Lego, about the value of doing excellent work, and the ministry of doing excellent work, again, something I’ve heard, read, you’re writing on for years, and I’ve heard you talk about, but there’s a story in the book where his son, and I can so relate to this, his son is like, “We could get this toy.”
It was toy ducks, this was back before they got into plastic. “So, we could get these toy ducks out a lot faster if we did two coats of varnish instead of three.” And so, he just does it, and sends them out, and then, like, brags about it, I guess. His dad is like, “You know, this is going so much faster.”
[0:33:58.8] JR: Look at all this money I’m saving us.
[0:33:59.7] KC: Yeah, saving us all this time, and Ole Kirk told him like, “You got to go get those ducks back, and add the third coat.” Like, and I think about those three coats all the time when I am tempted to be like, “Good enough, get it out. Good enough, get it out.” Like, slow down, read it out loud again, ask someone else to proofread it. You know, just slow down, do it with excellence, and I think of those, those three ducks. That’s what comes to mind.
[0:34:29.0] JR: No, I love it.
[0:34:29.5] KC: Or the three coats of paint.
[0:34:29.7] JR: I think about that story all the time, and I love that he called them back because he could have been like, “Hey, on the next batch, make sure you put three coats of varnish.” He’s like, “No, no, no, we’re going to stop the trucks, we’re going to take it back.” I –
[0:34:42.1] KC: Wait, wait, wait, I have another one.
[0:34:43.4] JR: Yeah, please.
[0:34:43.9] KC: I want to bring up Hannah More, because I wanted to talk about this earlier when we talked about her being audacious, and I just got focused on something else we were saying, but she was really audacious, right? And she went after this like big asks from famous people, but Jordan, when you look at the like arc of her life, she ended up becoming like family to these people.
I mean, she was there when they were on their death bed, she moved in to some, like, moved in, and became like family to some of them, and so that’s another one I just wanted to call out here because we don’t, in the book so you get this for free, listeners, but you know, that she did make these audacious asks of people, but she saw them as people.
[0:35:23.3] JR: Yeah, that’s good.
[0:35:24.1] KC: And she pursued relationship with them, and when they stopped being useful to her, she was still committed to their good. I mean –
[0:35:31.7] JR: Yeah.
[0:35:32.2] KC: You know, when the – now, I wasn’t prepared to tell the story, so I can’t say the same, but when the actor, the famous actor, died –
[0:35:38.4] JR: David Garrick.
[0:35:39.3] KC: Yeah, and it actually was no longer in her interest really to align herself with his widow, that was her dear friend, and she lived with her, and I don’t know, just it was when you look at her life, this was not what we often see in our culture, which is like, “How can I use successful people to get ahead?” But it’s, you know, God has given this person influence that can make my work more impactful.
I hope I can, you know, connect with them about that, but also this is a human being, and there’s someone here that I can love, and get to know, and serve, and so anyway, that was a total side tangent, not even a practical take away in the book, but something I think about a lot.
[0:36:18.1] JR: It’s – that’s really good. There were, as you know, many “takeaways” that we had to cut. We could have easily pointed these seven practical takeaways from each of these bios. We chose three, I can’t remember exactly why, but we did. That’s a really good one, and by the way, this guy, David Garrick, was basically the Taylor Swift of his time. He’s the most famous actor in the world.
And Hannah More, who comes from a pretty poor family, just like goes to London, and is like, “Oh, this guy is not responding to my letters. I’m going to stalk him,” basically, I mean, not in a creepy way, kind of in a creepy way. She shows up at his house, like knocks on the door, nobody’s there. So, she like, lets herself into his back garden at his house, and long story short, he reads her play.
She was a playwright at the time, and like loved it, and introduced her to everybody in London. She moves in with him and his wife, and becomes best friends, but yeah, serves them past the point in which they were helpful to her. I’ll point to one more thing, this may be the most significant way that these stories have helped me apply the gospel more deeply to my work. Going back to Fred, Fred’s example, I think about constantly about how he –
There’s all these stories in Fred’s life that are unbelievable, unbelievable of the otherworldly kindness and compassion he shows to others, even at the height of his fame, right? I’m thinking about the story, Fred is in his apartment in New York, looks across the stress, sees a guy get mugged, he drops what he’s doing, walks across the street, hands the victim a hundred dollar bill, and says, “I just want you to know that you are seen and you are loved.” Like, walks away.
It’s like, other time, my kids still talk about this story all the time, where Fred took time out of his busy day production on the set of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, to visit with a family who were big fans of his, and the kid had never spoken a word in his life. Fred starts just talking and visiting with this kid, and the kid starts talking in complete sentences, and like the dad, like can’t keep the camera straight because he’s like losing his mind with tears.
But I remember reading, I get really choked up reading these stories because it’s so convicting to me. Fred was so much busier than I am, so much busier than I am, so much more in demand than I am, and yet he lived at a pace that allowed him to extend his extraordinary love to others, and I think it is because, and I point this out in the book, he took so much time to be filled up with the love that his Heavenly Father had for him.
I think I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, I can’t remember, so in case I haven’t, I’ll share it here. Fred, every day around lunch, when he was in production, would go to his office, and sit there in quiet, and there was a sign hanging on his wall. It’s the Song of Solomon, I think it’s 2:16, “My beloved is mine and I am His.” It was a Hebrew rendering of that verse, and I thought, I think about that picture so much as a reminder of how badly I need to experience the love of God.
If I had any hope of sharing the love of God with those that I encounter, my kids, my listeners of the show, whatever, that I actually had a replica of the sign made. I’m looking at it right now, it hangs above my door, and every 20 minutes or so, per my eye doctor’s instructions, I look away from my screen, look 20 feet away at that sign, and remind myself of the love I had in God. So, anyways, listener, hopefully we’re convincing you that these biographies, any biographies of Christ followers, can give you stories that stick in your brain.
Like, probably stories you’ve heard on this podcast, right? Of what it looks like practically for the gospel to influence the work that you’re doing as a mere Christian. Hey, before we go, Kaleigh, I got to touch on this; you alluded to it earlier. Not only did this book change how you and I work, it also changed what you actually do for a living. You are no longer just my coauthor on Five Mere Christians; as of January 1st, 2025, you are also my full-time VP of marketing.
And I’d love to hear you riff on this for a minute about what role writing this book played in cultivating your excitement and energy about helping every mere Christian listening apply the gospel more deeply into their work.
[0:41:03.2] KC: Yeah. Well, I mean, when you look at the impact of any one of these five people, it’s wild what God was able to do through their work. I like to even just look at them as a whole. These are just five people, who did not know each other, who didn’t live in the same time or in the same place, or do the same type of work, and through five different people who were surrendering their careers to God, He redeemed forms of media.
Like television, and what were basically magazines. With Hannah More, He ministered to people who were scared or grieving, or sick. He made the world more just with Fannie Lou Hamer. He made the world more joyful with Ole Kirk Christiansen. Basically, through these people, He made our world a little bit more like heaven, effects that we still experience and feel to this day.
And so, my hope, I’m VP of marketing, so my job is to help get not just this book, but anything you write, Jordan, out into the world, and to more Christians. So, my hope is that the work I do plays this small role in helping more Christians baptize their imaginations and understand what kind of potential their lives and their work hold, because if just five more people caught this vision, I mean, how much, you know, could we bring the kingdom to earth? So, that’s my hope and my prayer.
[0:42:26.1] JR: It’s really good. We didn’t touch on Lewis. How is this possible?
[0:42:31.6] KC: Yeah, that’s a great point, and I have so much I could say about Lewis.
[0:42:35.9] JR: Listeners were following one thing, what’s your biggest takeaway from C.S. Lewis, who is the fifth in our lineup of five? Is it the joy scene at Magnum Lounge?
[0:42:46.0] KC: No, but do you want to tell that because it is a great scene?
[0:42:47.8] JR: It’s a great scene, so –
[0:42:50.0] KC: And I think that this comes out like a week before the, what is it? A hundred and something anniversary of this ceremony.
[0:42:56.1] JR: Oh, really? That’s exactly right, wow, oh my gosh, look at you remembering all the facts and figures of Five Mere Christians. So, yeah, I would argue that the search for joy was the dominant theme of Lewis’s life, right? And he, for many years, saw the depart from Christ in all the usual and some unusual places, alcohol abuse, sadism, masochism, which we had a cup on the book, that is an interesting chapter in Lewis’s life. This alleged –
[0:43:22.6] KC: Like, you haven’t said that on the podcast before.
[0:43:24.0] JR: I haven’t said that on the podcast, this alleged affair that he had with his dead best friend’s mom for most of his 20s, and maybe most relatably, his career. I share this in a devotion of the word before that came up Monday, but it bears repeating here. So, in 1925, Lewis actually really had a slow start to his career. He had a lot of professional disappointments, but eventually, he landed his dream job.
He wanted to be this fellow in Tudor in English literature in Magdalen College in Oxford, and so he gets the job, and they have this like, super posh induction ceremony, exactly what you would imagine, an induction ceremony would look like, in this 500-year-old college, and there’s this great scene where Lewis kneels before the president of the college, and the president of the college looks him in the eye, and says, “I wish you joy.”
And then Lewis, the story goes, rises. He proceeds around the room, he stops in front of each of his new coworkers, who echoes the exact same refrain, “I wish you joy. I wish you joy. I wish you joy.” And I promise you, because oh, I could so relate to this, in that moment, C.S. Lewis likely believed that he had found joy in the ultimate. He had achieved his vocational dreams, right?
But by God’s grace, he came to learn that when I think all of us eventually come to learn as Christ followers, which is that even a dream job will eventually turn into a nightmare if it is done without Christ, right? It is only by remaining in Christ’s love that our joy is made complete, see John 15, and so I think about that story a lot to remind me of the truth that, “Okay, great, we signed another big book deal. That’s amazing.”
But I glorify God by looking to Christ and not the book deal, not the success of Five Mere Christians, not the success of this podcast, for my ultimate joy. I think that’s my biggest takeaway from his life.
[0:45:26.1] KC: It’s so good, and such a clear scene of him going around that room, and hearing that, where these words echoing, and what I’m sure was this hollowed hall.
[0:45:34.4] JR: Oh yeah. Yeah.
[0:45:34.9] KC: The scene for me that I love is the one we opened with, where there’s like a barman getting ready to hand a beer to Lewis.
[0:45:43.0] JR: By the way, this is true. We didn’t make up a single thing in this book.
[0:45:45.4] KC: That’s right, that’s right.
[0:45:45.8] JR: This is a real scene. Yeah, tell the scene.
[0:45:47.9] KC: Yeah. So, it’s you know, World War II, there’s this quiet pub, someone had left the radio on, but it’s moved on to like, programming in another language. No one is really listening to it; it’s just background noise, and this guy is sitting at the bar, some kind of Army employee, and he’s sitting at the bar. Everyone is kind of dejected, there’s been the blitz, it’s just not a good time in England.
And so, he goes to hand him a beer, and C.S. Lewis’s voice comes on the radio, and cuts through just the din, the noise, and says something like, “You know, you’ve heard it said that’s not fair, you know, give,” and he starts to talk about where do we get the concept of fairness. He is kind of laying the foundation for an argument for God, right? And it was so compelling that the bartender freezes with the beer in his hand.
The whole group of soldiers who have been drinking, I mean, this scene is wild, stopped, and listened to C.S. Lewis’s entire address.
[0:46:51.3] JR: It was like 20 minutes, the beer is still in midair.
[0:46:54.8] KC: His beer is hovering over the bar, and then when it ends, the guy puts the beer down, and you know, the night continues on, but it – from then, that was his first address on the radio, from then the audience grew and grew and grew week after week after week as word spread about this professor and author. Again, we think of C.S. Lewis as like, this apologist, but he was not.
[0:47:19.0] JR: He was not.
[0:47:19.8] KC: Yeah, he was a professor and a writer, and so just this idea that someone took the audacious, you know, opportunity in front of them, the invitation to come and sit down, and he prepared well, he gave a great address, and just that mental image of it interrupting that scene and capturing people’s attention is just so powerful, and such reminder that we’re all equipped and positioned because we are mere Christians to share the gospel in a way that captures people attention like that.
[0:47:51.6] JR: And that I think is the point, by the way, real quick note on the beer, I find this story extremely hard to believe that the soldier didn’t reach across, and grab the beer, but like, we fact check this every which way. Our publisher fact-checked this; we have a report of this story, but here’s the beauty of it, again, Lewis today is remembered primarily as a Christian apologist. He was not, he was a mere Christian as an English professor.
And I think that’s why these soldiers were captivated because they heard in him someone relatable, somebody who had a past, and while he didn’t talk about his affair on the air, he didn’t talk about blowing up and screaming at his father, this regret that he took to the grave that we talked about in the book, he didn’t talk about these things. You just knew listening to Lewis on air that this guy is not a religious professional.
This guy is a mere Christian, and so I’m going to lean in and hear what he has to say, and if that doesn’t preach to this audience of mere Christians right now, I don’t know what will. All right, Kaleigh, it would not be an episode of the Mere Christians Podcast if we didn’t round this out with the same four questions we ask every guest. This first one, we did not ask; we were not asking when you were on the show first, and I don’t think we ever asked you. What job do you want to do on the new Earth?
[0:49:10.2] KC: When you first posed this question, where I heard it, it was in The Sacredness of Secular Work.
[0:49:15.3] JR: Yeah, yeah.
[0:49:15.7] KC: Workbook and –
[0:49:16.9] JR: Where do you see yourself in five million years, you know?
[0:49:18.5] KC: Yeah, and I wrote about it was like in a workbook, so I wrote about that I would love to like interview people, and tell their stories, and then it was maybe three – two months later that I got the email from you, and got to write this book, so that’s kind of wild. So, I’m going to stick with that answer, but say you know, one thing that you and I have lamented is that we can only feature people who have reached some level of acclaim because we have to have enough records to go off of to write a full true story, a detailed story.
And so, I want to get to the new earth and do interviews of people whose names we have completely lost to history, but whose work was seen and valued by God in His kingdom, and tell those stories on the new earth to the glory of God.
[0:50:00.2] JR: That’s really good, I love it. Which books are you recommending and giving away to friends most frequently?
[0:50:06.2] KC: Okay, also, I used to never give away books until I heard you ask this question every week, and then I thought, “Should I?” I mean, I read a lot.
[0:50:10.9] JR: Good idea.
[0:50:12.2] KC: Should I be giving away books? That’s a nice thought. So, I made that a New Year’s resolution to give away just one book a year.
[0:50:16.8] JR: Did you really?
[0:50:17.4] KC: A month, yeah.
[0:50:18.4] JR: That’s funny.
[0:50:18.9] KC: And pretty much I have given away a bunch of your books, but to avoid being too Jordan Raynor promotional here, one more – one I gave away very recently that wasn’t yours was Scatter by Andrew Scott.
[0:50:30.5] JR: So good.
[0:50:30.9] KC: Which I also learned about on this podcast, but I have talked about that one a lot, even beyond the one I gave away. I’m not even someone who feels called to move overseas, but reading about his vision for missions has really impacted how my husband and I have talked about even where in the United States we want to live, and how we view our work and our purpose in the kingdom, and so highly, highly recommend Scatter.
[0:50:56.2] JR: It’s really – it’s a great book. Who do you want to hear on this podcast? Now you have some influence over this, right? But if you had to pick one name, who is it?
[0:51:03.3] KC: Okay, Stacy Hill. I didn’t think I got her permission to say this, but she is a mentor of mine, she goes to my church, she and her husband, I mean, everyone adores Stacy Hill, she’s got a teaching gig, she’s full of wisdom, and has just walked with Jesus a long time, very humble, and when she and her husband were younger, had young kids, they were in missions overseas.
I can’t remember what country, but they were overseas, but God kept like just absurdly blessing the window washing business they had created back in Columbia that they had left behind, and overtime, it became clear to them that God was calling them to come back and run this window washing business, which they still do to this day, and they are leaders at our church. Like I said, a lot of people respect them and look up to them.
They’ve had the ability to mentor a lot of college aged guys who come and work for this window washing business, you know, over their breaks, and things like that, and so I would just love to hear her come on, and talk about that whole story, and how she glorifies God through her window washing business.
[0:52:02.1] JR: You’ve been holding out on me.
[0:52:03.1] KC: I know I haven’t told you.
[0:52:03.6] JR: You’ve never shared this name with me.
[0:52:05.1] KC: I – okay, so Jordan, you asked me this question last time I was on the show, and I thought I’ve got to save one because he’s having me back.
[0:52:12.9] JR: All right, reach out to Stacy, I’d love to have her on.
[0:52:15.8] KC: I will. I will.
[0:52:16.9] JR: All right, what’s one final thing you want to say or reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[0:52:21.5] KC: Okay, in our takeaway chapter for Hannah More, because clearly, one of my favorites, because we’ve talked about her a lot, we quote a biographer that said, “You know, it’s true that we could always use another William Wilberforce who changed the world through politics, but what we need far more is another Hannah More.” And I would add to that, another Fred Rogers, another Fannie Lou Hamer, another Ole Kirk Christiansen, another C.S. Lewis.
And so, I would plead with our listeners to wake up tomorrow morning, seek God and His word, ask Him, “God, what would You have me to do with You today for the glory of God, and the good of others?” Keep that conversation going throughout the day as you face challenges or opportunities, or decisions in your day, in your work. Then wake up the next day and do it again, and then the next day, and then the next day.
And the next day because if every believer who listens to this podcast or who reads this book would just do that, walk with God, and surrender their lives and their careers to Him, as we’ve seen in the lives of these five mere Christians, it would change the world.
[0:53:20.3] JR: That’s so good, so good. Kaleigh, I can say this really genuinely, more meaningfully because I have been in the trenches working alongside you seriously now for, oh my gosh, almost two years, I want to commend you. You are an exceptionally talented person, you are a five-talent servant, and you’re not bearing those talents; you are stewarding those talents exceptionally well for the glory of God and the good of others.
Thank you for your phenomenal work on this book, for helping me show our listeners what it looks like practically to glorify God in their daily work, and for not just writing the book, but for doing it for living out these principles personally as you do your work. Guys, Kaleigh is exceptional. I hesitate to share her LinkedIn with you, don’t you dare poach her, but you can find Kaleigh Cox on LinkedIn, and of course, you could pick up Five Mere Christians wherever books are sold.
We got a ton of preorder bonuses, actually now post-order bonuses since we’re dropping this the day after the book releases. They could pick up before May 9th at FiveMereChristians.com. Kaleigh, thanks for being here, and thanks for making this great book with me.
[0:54:42.9] KC: Jordan, the honor is all mine. Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:54:47.5] JR: My friend, Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church, bestselling author of The Circle Maker, and a bunch of other books, said this: “If you’re looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, Five Mere Christians is it.” And I could not have pulled that off without Kaleigh Cox, as I shared in this episode.
Hey, if you want to learn how you might leverage a coauthor to quickly publish your first book, I’ve created a new online course to walk you through exactly how I did it. It’s called How to Write a Book 10x Faster and Better with an Affordable Coauthor. Yes, that’s the longest title of a course of all time, but here’s the kicker: you can’t buy this course. The only way to get it is to get it for free after you order Five Mere Christians before 11:59 PM on May 9th, okay?
So, here’s what you do: Go to FiveMereChristians.com, you can get a link to the book right there from Amazon, Christian Book, Barnes & Noble, whatever. So, order the book, then come back to that link, fill out the form, and you’ll get free access to the course. Thank you, guys, so much for listening. I’ll see you next week.
[END]