Listening In

Irish singer and songwriter Keith Getty is best known for the hymn 'In Christ Alone,' which he co-wrote with Stuart Townend. But he began his career as a flute and saxophone player, and an arranger for Sir James Galway, Michael W. Smith, and many others. Today, with his wife Kristyn, he tours the world from a base in Nashville, though he still keeps a home in Ireland where he lives a portion of the year.Since Keith Getty was on Listening In last, he has had sold out performances in Carnegie Hall for his Christmas tour, and a PBS Christmas special seen by nearly 50-million people worldwide.

Jerry Boykin is a retired Lieutenant General in the United States Army and is currently the executive vice president at the Family Research Council. Aaron and Melissa Klein owned the bakery Sweetcakes by Melissa, a shop that gay activists ultimately drove out of business because Aaron and Melissa refused to participate in the celebration of a gay wedding. Everett Piper is the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, but he has become well-known in the past year for his active speechmaking and editorial writing on cultural issues. An article he wrote for the school's web-site called 'This is Not a Daycare, It's a University,' struck a cultural chord and propelled Piper onto many national news programs.

Cary Summers is the president of the Museum of the Bible and has been in that role for five years. Before that, he was the President and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, best known to many as the operator of Silver Dollar City and other family-friendly entertainment venues. Summers has also served in executive roles with Abercrombie and Fitch and Bass Pro Shops.

Andrew Peterson is a singer, songwriter, novelist, and movie producer. Peterson's latest project is an animated film series based on his four-volume Wingfeather Saga. He launched a Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign to fund the first phase of the project, hoping to raise $110,000. He ended up raising more than $150,000, and development is already underway. In this episode, Peterson also discusses his latest album, 'The Burning Edge of Dawn,' which he says was born out of a dark season in his life.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is one of the largest political rallies in the nation. It is an annual event that occurs in or near Washington DC and is hosted by the American Conservative Union.But as CPAC has grown, it has attracted controversy and division. Many social conservatives ' conservatives who are pro-life and in favor of the traditional family ' have become increasingly critical of CPAC over the years, in part because the American Conservative Union has welcomed more pro-homosexual groups, such as the Log Cabin Republicans.But there's no doubt that CPAC has become a required stop for presidential candidates, and a key marketplace for political consultants, fund-raisers, and the media. In this somewhat unusual edition of 'Listening In,' hear some of these factions speak in their own words.

Cyrus Nowrasteh is the director of the new movie 'The Young Messiah,' a movie that dramatizes the life of Jesus as a young boy. Cyrus Nowrasteh and his wife Betsy, who co-wrote the screenplay, based their work on Anne Rice's novel 'Christ The Lord.' It is risky territory, but most Christian critics say he mostly pulls it off. WORLD Magazine's Emily Belz reviewed the film, and she wrote: 'Nowrasteh handles the theological elements of this imagined story with care. Nothing contradicts Jesus' full deity or his full humanity, and the movie presents the gospel without being preachy.'

David and Kim Kuo were in some ways a Washington power couple. But then tragedy struck. David and Kim were driving home from an event when suddenly David had a seizure. Amazingly, they both survived the wreck that followed, but it was the beginning of the end of his Washington career. He had a large and malignant brain tumor. The two eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina with their two children, and battled the cancer together. He died in 2013, and since his death, Kim has become an outspoken advocate for life ' speaking and writing against euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Andrew Belle is a singer-songwriter who has built an audience through constant touring, an active online community, commercial and television licensing of his songs, and popularity on streaming services. His song 'Sky's Still Blue' was made famous by a Microsoft commercial, and his song 'In My Veins' appeared several times on the program 'Gray's Anatomy.'

In this week's episode of Listening In, hear conversations with actors and producers involved in a new film called Risen, about the resurrection of Jesus including Joseph Fiennes, the movie's star.

In this week's episode, Warren Smith talks with Jim Daly with Focus on the Family and feminist-turned-Christian writer Sue Ellen Browder. Browder worked as a writer for Cosmopolitan, but following a conversion to Catholicism, Browder took five years to write her personal memoir and the untold story of the women's movement called Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement. Daly helped organize Evangelicals for Life and was among the speakers for the March for Life event held in Washington, D.C. this year.

Wayne Grudem is a teacher, author, and speaker, but he also worked to translate the Bible into the English Standard Version and created the best-selling ESV Study Bible. His systematic theology, first published in 1995, weighs in at over 1200 pages. It is not the sort of book that typically makes best-seller lists, but it has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has been enormously influential in the evangelical church. His book 'Politics According to the Bible' has been likewise influential.

Ron Sider is an author and evangelical elder statesman. Sider's 1977 book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" elevated him to a national and international stage. Its challenging call for Christians to both declare a biblical gospel and demonstrate compassionate care for the poor as part of the gospel message resonated with a generation of young evangelicals. Sider went on to form Evangelicals for Social Action, which championed social causes. To date, he has written more than 30 books.

Bobby Conway is a pastor and author, but millions of people know him as The One Minute Apologist. Over the past decade, Conway has uploaded more than 600 short videos to YouTube, offering short, sharp answers to questions such as "Is Jesus God?" and "If God is good, all-powerful, and loving, why would he allow evil in the world?"The One Minute Apologist is just one aspect of Bobby Conway's interesting journey. He's a recovering alcoholic who is remarkably transparent about his spiritual journey, including confessions about depression and doubt. It is that transparency that, in part, has turned the church he pastors Life Fellowship, into one of Charlotte's fastest-growing churches.

George Gilder is an economist, futurist, venture capitalist, and author. His 1981 book 'Wealth and Poverty' has been one of the most influential books on economics of the past 50 years, having a major influence on President Ronald Reagan and his economic team. Gilder has made and lost fortunes personally as a venture capitalist. He has made the case for the importance of Israel as a secure and prosperous nation in the middle east, and how the security of Israel is intimately tied to the security and prosperity of the United States. George Gilder is also a co-founder of The Discovery Institute, which promotes Intelligent Design. Lately, he has been a passionate advocate of BitCoin, a form of internet currency that uses the passage of time as its basis of value.

Ken Barun served President Reagan in the White House and helped found the Ronald McDonald House Charities and built it into one of the largest and most innovative charities in the world. But for the first 25 years of his life there was very little evidence of these abilities. He spent nearly a decade as a drug addict, was in and out of school, and was on his second marriage before he got clean and sober. Because Ken Barun is the number two man at one of the nation's largest Christian ministries, reporting directly to Franklin Graham, it might be tempting to think that Barun met Jesus then, and his life turned around. But his story is a lot more complicated ' a lot more real ' than that, and that's also what makes it interesting.