He’s proofread for a polyethylene producer, crafted copy for Charles Colson and on occasion, made a tomato talk. In everything, Eric Metaxas said, he seeks to glorify God.

The best-selling author of Veggie Tales favorites like “The Pirates Who (Usually) Don’t Do Anything and “Even Fish Slappers Deserve a Second Chance,” will speak at Spring Hill Presbyterian Church’s Festival of Arts and Faith on June 29.

Metaxas, who was hired to write Veggie Tales books and videos in 1999, credits the series with opening the door for many to be more creative.

“…there’s not a trace of false piety, and I think because of that it speaks more effectively of God,” said Metaxas, 40. “I think Veggie Tales comes closer than anything else that I’ve seen out there, certainly in pop culture, to expressing the joy and the creative freedom — even the wackiness that’s at the heart of a relationship with God.”

The Rev. Norman H. McCrummen III, pastor of Spring Hill Presbyterian Church, said he’s tickled Metaxas will be among the festival speakers.

“Eric is one of the most unusual people,…and I mean that in the most complimentary way,” said McCrummen. “He is a man of immense faith and of such sharp intellect. His mind is just brilliant.”

McCrummen, who took a class from Metaxas two years ago at a C.S. Lewis conference at Cambridge University in England, said he called Metaxas and asked him to participate in the Mobile festival.

“I found him such an engaging, bright man,” McCrummen said. “He just captures your attention in a way that you feel like you’ve known him all your life.”

Metaxas, who worked as editor of the college humor magazine the Yale Record, said he once primarily considered himself a fiction or humor writer. But to pay the rent, the 1984 Yale graduate said he worked as a proofreader for Union Carbide in Danbury, Conn.

It was not a good time for Metaxas.

“It was just such an extended, horrible period,” he said. “Things were very, very black for me.”

Then, he said he had a dream, an unconscious encounter in which he said he “immediately knew that God and Jesus were totally real.” Metaxas, who had grown up in the Greek Orthodox church, told God he would stay at Union Carbide until the Almighty moved him.

A couple months later, Metaxas said, he was laid off from his job.

Seven hours later, he found work adapting folk tales for Rabbit Ears Productions, a children’s entertainment company perhaps best known for the stories read by actors for “Rabbit Ears Radio.”

“I eventually did about 20 books for them,” Metaxas said. “I discovered as I was writing these children’s books that I had a very strong affinity for fairy tales and this kind of dreamy writing….It’s like I inadvertently found my métier.”

Today, while Metaxas may be best known for his children’s books, he has had reviews and essays published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. He also spent two years as a writer and editor for Colson, drafting critiques for his syndicated radio program, and is president and host for a monthly discussion series known as Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life.

“…I tend to express myself very eclectically, very broadly,” Metaxas said. “I don’t feel like I have one thing to say.”

In Mobile later this month, Metaxas said his message will be two-fold. First, he said, he plans to address the need he sees for Christians to become more involved in the arts and the media. Second, he said he wants to speak about the importance of strong friendships among men.

Citing New York and Hollywood as points of origin for much of the media Americans consume, Metaxas said a “strange situation” arises in which people of faith don’t find their values reflected in entertainment options.

“I think what needs to happen is the biblical worldview, which is on one level or another subscribed to by 85 percent of Americans, needs to be expressed in something like that percentage in the media that we consume, whether it’s a book or a TV program or a movie.”

Even as he states that Christians should become more engaged, Metaxas points out pitfalls that may await those who express their faith.

“Because serious Christians have had an appropriate concern for the moral decline in the culture, let’s say in the 20th century, they found themselves inadvertently in the role often of moralists. And moralism is fundamentally at odds with the freedom of the gospel, which is ironic. So there’s this real balance: How are you on the one hand trying to take a stand against what you know is bad for the culture and at the same time not be a clucking moralist?”

Finding the balance is very difficult, McCrummen said, noting, “As Christians, our life must be different from the culture, but is it going to be different out of a sort of pharisaic attitude or different because we’re grateful? False piety is the worst kind of witness there is….But genuine holiness is always self-evident and does arise out of love and gratitude.”

McCrummen said he hopes those who attend the upcoming, four-day festival will be inspired by the various artists.

“The arts are a gift from God,” McCrummen said. “It’s evangelism perhaps at its purest, to (use) one’s abilities to express faith.”