Your Next Family Devotional – Landon Hawley & Perry Wilson

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FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Your Next Family Devotional

Guests:Landon Hawley and Perry Wilson

From the series:The Road to Kaeluma (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:June 2, 2025

Ann:I think one of my favorite times on vacation is in the car—

Dave:Vacation?

Ann:—road trip with all the kids listening to anything audio—you’re creating the picture in your mind.

Dave:Yeah. Every time she does this, you do this. And often, if you don’t do it—audio—you’ll read something.

Ann:Yeah, that’s probably worse.

Dave:I’m like, “Just read it to yourself”; [Ann’s response] “No, I’m going to read it to the whole family.”

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:So I’m excited.

Ann:I’m excited, too; because we have something brand-new launching.

Dave: Something—

Ann:—that has never happened before.

Dave:Never happened in the history of FamilyLife—a new project that’s launching very, very soon—you’re going to be the first to hear about it. But before we even talk about it, we want you to hear it. So here’s a clip from what’s soon to be released.

[The Road to Kaeluma Clip]

Master Armstrong:Ready! Begin. [Scuffling noises]

Orrick:Someone’s been practicing!

Vera:Ooh! Haven’t noticed. [Scuffling noises]

Master Armstrong:Okay; reset.

Orrick:We’ve done axes all day, Master Armstrong.

Master Armstrong:Well, if that is correct, Orrick; and we will continue with the regimen.

Yannick:Orrick, you should know by now that the strong stunt makes a

strong fighter. Keep your knees bent and your shoulders loose.

Orrick:Good to see you, too, father.

[Aside] He never comes on sword-fighting day, or archery day, or—

Yannick:Orrick, the scion of our clan must be well-versed in every weapon.

Vera:For the record, you can have archery; you couldn’t catch me dead with a bow in my hand. Oh, and I’m ahead in spears!

Orrick:What?!

Master Armstrong:That is correct; in the spear category.

Orrick:We were tied in spears.

Vera:Not after tomorrow.

Orrick:Oh, I forgot! I won’t be at training tomorrow, because you wanted me at the council meeting; right, father?

Yannick:Mmmm; seems as though your time may be better spent here.

However, as it is an important meeting, I suppose you could be in

attendance.

Orrick:Really?

Yannick:It should be exciting! We will be discussing a new cattle tax.

Orrick:Haha; very funny. Fine; we’ll train.

Yannick:No, son; these are important skills to learn if you are to be chief one

day.

Vera:It’s okay, Orrick. I wouldn’t want to keep you from cattle tax day!

Yannick:Come, son. Now, let us be going.

[Studio]

Dave:Okay; I can’t wipe the smile off my face.

Ann:Just the music makes me happy. This is our first audio drama coming out of Cru and the Jesus film.

Dave:Yeah, and FamilyLife! What are you talking about? It’s from Family Life—forget those other people—it’s all FamilyLife; no.

The reason I’m smiling is because there’s nothing like this anymore; everything’s visual; everything’s/I’m not seeing anything in my mind that’s creative.

We’re laughing because we have the co-writers, the co-producers—

Ann:—the creators.

Dave:—co-creators; you name it; you guys did it all—Perry Wilson and

Landon Hawley are with us. Are you guys smiling as well?

Perry:Every single time.

Dave:Really?

Perry:I was just saying that, as I was listening to that in this room—which also happens to be where we recorded everything—it just brings back a lot of memories; so much fun.

Dave:I bet.

Perry:We love this thing.

Landon:Oh, yeah; I’m totally smiling. We’ve been working on this project for what?—close to three years now?

Perry:Yeah.

Dave:Three years?

Landon:—from when we first started Iteration One of Script One—that’s changed so much.

Perry:Script Zero.

Landon: Yeah, it’s fun to hear it now.

Ann:It’s so interesting. I asked you guys: “Did you listen to Adventures of Odyssey, growing up, from Focus on the Family?” Because we did that a lot. When we were on road trips, we were totally into all the—

Dave:It might’ve been on cassette or 8-track. I’m not sure what it was.

Ann:I don’t know either.

Landon:It was a CD.

Ann:Did you do that? Did you do that? Do you remember that or listen to those?

Landon:Oh, totally—I actually had a rule—I was only allowed to listen to three episodes a day, except for Christmas morning. My parents would sleep in and that was the one time I just listened to eight episodes. I’d just be going, going, going.

Perry:You deviant.

Ann:It impacted you guys.

Landon:Oh, totally.

Perry:Oh, boy.

Landon:We were like: “Man, we loved it; we grew up on this stuff. We want to do something like that,” and “Cru needs something like that.” So we’re excited to partner with FamilyLife.

Dave:So what’s the genius of this? What’s your vision?

Perry:We really just wanted to write something creative that tells a compelling story that families can enjoy together. And then, they can unpack those deep spiritual, relational, familial themes together—some things that are hard to talk about, some things that kids are often feeling—but maybe parents don’t know. Opening those things together, through this fantasy world, exploring just really fun and creative concepts.

Dave:Now, obviously, from the clip we just heard, you don’t know what’s going on yet.

Perry:True.

Dave:So help us: what’s the—

Ann:What’s the setting? What’s happening?

Dave:You don’t want to give it away.

Perry:Go ahead, Landon.

Dave:Or do you want to give it away?

Landon:We’ll give a little away; we’ll tease it. We’ll say that The Road to Kaeluma is a five-part audio drama that retells the story of the prodigal son from the perspective of the prodigal son’s son.

Dave:What’s Kaeluma?

Landon:This is a fantasy world; it’s a world we made up. In this world, we’ve got kind of this main kingdom—the kingdom of Kaeluma—with a good king, whom we can maybe guess who that might be. And then, we’ve got a various number of independent clans that are along this western coast. One of them we find out has a strange connection to the kingdom and an estrangement with the king.

It’s the story of this classic evil warlord who comes in and sieges the city. Our main character, Orrick, has got to figure out: “How do we save the city?” And then, as we dive into it more and more, we get to learn a little bit more about: “What’s this kingdom over here? What’s going on with them?”

Perry:That’s who you heard in that clip as well. You hear Orrick and his

friend, Vera, who are our main two characters that we feature; and

Orrick’s father—the chief, Yannick—then comes in there at the end

of the scene.

Landon:He’s the chief of the main clan that we’re in for most of the story.

Dave:How did you guys—who did you recruit to do this?—those voices are pretty fantastic. Who’s the old man? He’s probably not even an old man, [making gruff noises].

Perry:Well, I might happen to be the old man.

Ann:Are you? Oh, wait; let’s hear his voice.

Perry:[Speaking as Master Armstrong] Ready! Begin.

Dave:That’s you?

Perry:That’s me, yeah. Now, we do pitch me down a little bit. That’s the secret.

Landon:We did about—what?—13 voices between the two of us?

Perry:We have a lot of voices that we are.

Landon:So we have to play with our voices.

Ann:Really?! That’s fun.

Perry:When you start as a passion project,—

Dave:You can save some money that way.

Perry:That’s exactly where I was going with that. You start as a passion project—you have a small budget—you can only hire for the parts that really need actors. Yeah, we ended up taking all the side stuff on ourselves pretty much. We hired eight to ten actors, who were all so talented, so great.

Ann:What about the music? The music was pretty epic.

Perry:If you’re familiar with Adventures in Odyssey, like we’ve already mentioned, you’ll recognize some of the music—or the way that John Campbell writes music—because he is the same composer. He is so great; he has knocked it out of the park so far. We’re just excited to see how it all comes together.

Dave:Well, honestly, this is the first I’ve heard. Maybe I shouldn’t say this—they could edit it out—but there have been times, at least in my opinion; and it’s just my limited opinion—that, sometimes, Christian art isn’t excellent. You know what I mean? Sometimes it is; but sometimes, it’s like, “Oh, it’s for God; it can be mediocre.” From what I just heard, you care about excellence; you care about the soundtrack; you care about the voicings; you care about the script. Again, I’ve just heard a little clip; and I’m like, “This is well done.”

Ann:Let’s hear another clip.

Dave:And that honors God, in my opinion; that honors God. No, I don’t want to hear another clip. I want you to respond to that: “Is that important to you guys?”

Landon:Thank you; oh, absolutely. Yeah, there are certain pieces of Christian media that I’m not the biggest fan of, admittedly. I think it’s great to get the example of Jesus, because Jesus told parables. He was a storyteller, and He told good stories that made sense to a cultural context. I’m like, “Man, I want to write stories that grit people. And then, when you dig deeper, you’re like, ‘Wait; there’s something really valuable here.’”

That makes it so much better than a blockbuster movie on one hand, or a piece of Christian media that maybe we don’t appreciate as much—why it doesn’t have to be one or the other—there’s just such a richness to a well-told story, especially when we have Jesus modeling it.

Perry:This guy was the quality-control arm, as well as the head writer and the director; but he also was always the one to seek as close to perfection as we could find. I’m more of a producer side; I co-wrote with him, but I was always the one pushing, like, “Okay, we got to meet this deadline.” He was always—because of your level of—you needed it to reach this certain level of quality to even be interested in making it.

Dave:I tell you what: parents care about that.

Ann:—and so do their kids!

Dave:When you play it for their kids, especially if it’s not good, their kids are like, “Okay, Mom and Dad, cheesy; dumb. I don’t want to hear it tomorrow night.”

Ann:Kids are the hardest audience.

Landon:And that was actually something we talked about. We made a pretty distinct choice that we didn’t want to write down to our audience. We’re like, “I think kids are smarter than we’re giving credit for. Let’s write a story that might be—

Dave:Well, let’s talk about that; because you guys know this better than anybody. The art can be excellent, but everything lives by the story. If it’s still not a great story, it doesn’t matter; the art needs to matter.

What’s the inspiration behind the story? I don’t even know what the story is yet. I know—prodigal son—but there’s got to be an origin to that: why the prodigal son?

Ann:Well, why don’t you give a brief overview of what the prodigal son’s about, for those who don’t know.

Dave:Are you saying, “Go into preacher mode”?

Ann:No, not that deep; just a brief overview.

Dave:Time me: see if I can do it in one minute or less. A father with two sons; the youngest comes, and says, “I want the inheritance now.” And again, preacher mode would be: “He’s basically saying, ‘I’d rather you be dead. I want to live my life.’” Father gives it to him; he goes off, and basically spends it; and wastes his life in Vegas—I think it says in the Greek—the wild women and ends up at the very bottom, eating pig slop—a Jewish man—pig slop.

This is a story—Jesus’ details are incredible—to show how low he’s come; to the point, where he is like, “I’m at the bottom. I’m going to go back to my father and beg to be, not his son again, but just a hired hand on the land”; thinking that, “He’ll never accept me.”

The beauty of this story is, as the son’s coming back—the prodigal—the father’s waiting by the mailbox, is what I always say. He’s been waiting for days or months—whatever it is—and comes running—a Jewish man, pulling up his outer garment, to run to his son—what a beautiful/it’s the picture of the father’s love for a son.

Ann:—which was unheard of; a Jewish man wouldn’t run.

Dave:No—the graphic detail—the details Jesus gives are so beautiful.

And there’s this other piece of the story everybody sort of misses: the older brother, who didn’t go off in wayward living. He’s home the whole time. He’s jealous; and he’s mad that the son, who didn’t live the way his father wanted him to live, is getting the robe, the meal,—

Ann:—the ring.

Dave:He doesn’t get to come back as a hired hand. He is a fully-loved son, all the way back; and the older brother’s jealous of this. And then, we’re both in this story.

Landon:The fattened calf; he gets the fattened calf. And all of that’s getting taken out of his inheritance. The younger brother has [spent] all his, so he’s rightfully upset.

Dave:So based on—I didn’t do it in a minute—maybe, two minutes.

Landon:No, that’s good; really close.

Dave:I probably missed so many details. I bet I preached 30 times, in 30 years, probably every year. It’s like: “What an unbelievable—

Ann:—”picture of the gospel.”

Dave:—”picture of the grace of God.” You guys are creating an audio drama based on that. Why that story?

Landon:When I often tell my testimony, I often use the lens of the prodigal son. Now, about a couple years ago, when I was reading through it, I wrote down in the margins of Luke 15: “Man, I think I’m both of these sons in the worst way.”

I think I grew up thinking that what a relationship with God looked like was just begrudging obedience, like the older brother. I realized—and we learned a lot from Tim Keller in this whole process—Tim talks about both of the brothers don’t really want the father; they just want the father’s stuff. I was a “pretty good religious kid” in air quotes—I wanted what that gave me—my parents gave me kudos; teachers/people gave me kudos. It wasn’t until high school when I started to look at the things of the world; and my heart was split between: “I want to do kingdom things, but I want to do my own thing as well,”—and that’s where younger brother came in. And same thing: I just wanted approval, pleasure—you name it—and live that way.

My journey back is learning: “Man, I want to just truly seek the Father rather than what He can give me.” I think that’s been the big thing because—and this was a cool little note from Keller—the younger son, when he comes back, says, “I’ll work as a hired hand for you.” He’s not saying, “I’m going to be your slave; I’m going to do all this.” But he’s like, “No, I can pay you back. I’m just going to work for you until I can pay you back.” That’s what I do when I sin, and I’m at my lowest; I’m like, “Alright, get back on the horse; start obeying God again; and then, I’ll be okay. Then, I’ll be good with Him.”

Ann:Muster it up.

Landon:And that’s not how it works. I think I wanted to write that into the story for kids—and have parents and kids be able to have that dialogue of understanding—because the father just runs out to him—both sons—he comes out of the party; he talks to older son; he runs out to the younger son, like, “Man, He loves us so much.” And that’s just something that’s really, really impactful to me.

Perry:Yeah, we both—I think the story of the prodigal son connects to me as well—I think I always, when I read the story, found myself as the one who wanted to try to be good. I grew up in a Christian home, but it wasn’t really until college that I started to grasp the concept of relationship with Christ. I was all about the legalism; I was like, “I want to look good. I want people’s parents to be proud of my parents for how they raised their kid,”—those things like that.

Dave:Your parents are on staff, right?

Perry:That’s true. Yeah, they still are.

Dave:So you’re, from Day One, your entire life, your parents are in full-time vocational Christian ministry.

Perry:Yeah.

Dave:Was that a pressure?

Perry:Yeah, these are things that help connect to the story we wrote as well. But yeah, it’s definitely felt pressure, as being one of the oldest, to set a good example. That’s like, when I would hear the prodigal son story, growing up, I’m like, “I’m kind of like the older brother because if I’m seeing the younger brother go off, I’m like, ‘Well, I better be twice as good now; because I don’t want people looking at—

Ann:—”’because he wrecked our reputation.’”

Perry:That’s right, exactly. That kind of leads to a lot of just feeling like you got to keep everything inside. What’s on the outside needs to look perfect, because Christians are so “perfect.” So yeah, it does really connect—thinking about the older son is probably watching the younger son run off and spend everything—and be like, “How could he do this to us? I’m going to fix it” or something.

Dave:You were that guy.

Perry:Yeah, yeah.

Dave:What about Tim Keller’s sermon? Was there something that you remember getting from those sermons that said, not only changed your life and understanding of that story of the prodigal, but ended up being inside of this audio drama?

Landon:What I think spoke, and still speaks to me, is he talks about—not only do we have to repent of the very clear and blatant sin that we do—but we have to repent of the sinful reasons we do righteous things, talking about the older brother. Man that hit me; there are so many times, where I’m doing a good work; and I’m thinking, “Doing pretty good, God. You’re owing me.” Maybe, that’s a little bit—but in my mind, there’s pride—and I think I’ve gotten better at catching myself, being like, “Landon, what is the motivation for why you’re doing this? Is it because you are just overflowing from the love that God’s given you, or are you doing it because of any other reason?”—and that’s wrong.

Jesus leaves the older brother on a cliffhanger, and so we wanted to model that in ours. We really did lean into the older brother. We actually started by making him kind of villainous; and then, we’re like, “We should explore the struggle.” It was really powerful when the actor was recording. He was doing the whole scene; and you could feel the years of: “I have worked hard for you, and I’m not getting what’s mine.” He was in tears after it was over. I just remember we cut, and we all just kind of sat there. We were like, “Let’s sit in that for a minute.” That was cool, as a writer, to get—

Dave:I was going to say, “Who wrote that? That’s good writing.”

Perry:I believe we both wrote that scene. I think I wrote an iteration of the scene, where the father goes out to speak to the son—and like most of our scenes—I give to Landon; Landon rewrites a little bit; and then, we come back; and then, we fine tune. It was definitely both of us kind of tag teaming on that one.

Dave:Perry, did you feel like, when you heard even Keller talk about the older brother, did you identify in a way you hadn’t?

Perry:Totally, totally. It’s just the idea of—when he says that both brothers want the father’s stuff, not just—if someone, is maybe not super familiar with the story of the prodigal son, reads it, they’re probably going to look at the older brother as “the good guy” and the younger brother as the unrighteous one. Really, that’s not the point, especially when considering who the parable is being told to in the Bible. It’s like thinking about: “Wait a second; you’re telling me that I was just as bad? I wanted the same thing as the one who went off and made shame of himself, and I just wanted the stuff of the father? I wanted the accolades.”

Even in writing and producing in doing this audio drama, it’s a good gut-check for us; because there’s times when we’re like, “Oh, we want it to be so good. We want people to give us a recognition of making something awesome,”—and all these things. It’s always a good gut-check of being like, “But what was the heart when we started it?” When we started it, we didn’t think we were going to get a budget. We didn’t think it was going to have any kind of high quality at all, that we were just going to do something for passion.

It’s always good to think back to that story—the prodigal son—and be like, “We’re doing this because we had that vision to connect with people over the story that people that grew up thinking that—feeling the same way as us, probably still do—and really, all the Father wants is just that relationship. We don’t have to act, or perform, or be scared to measure up.”

Dave:Is that sort of your hope—as writers, producers—of a person who’s really never heard or not familiar with the prodigal story from the Bible—and maybe, they still aren’t—but they hear your audio drama; what are you hoping happens?

Landon:Yeah, hoping that families listen to this together; because there’s so much parent-and-child dynamics. I think, if I had been able to listen to this, as a younger kid, I would’ve been able to maybe strip back some of the legalism that I adopted. So yeah, we want families to listen to this together. Go listen; and then, have discussions about it. And we have resources where you can do that.

Perry:It’s a great discipleship tool is what we think it is. Those families that, maybe their child doesn’t have a great understanding of this concept of the story, and the way it can connect to all of us. But you put it in a world like this, with relatable characters, who by the time you get to the meat of the prodigal son, they’ve already come to know and love our characters, hopefully, through a few episodes. So then, you see these themes interacted; it’s so much easier to connect, especially for a kid, versus words on a page, thinking of how kids learn these days. That’s why technology is the way it is, aimed at kids.

Ann:Well, I can tell you how I envision it. Just because our family’s grown, I’ve seen how audio dramas affect a great story; a great movie affects us. It goes deep into the heart; and it moves us emotionally, spiritually. I’m imagining a family listening; and I could imagine a parent saying, “I really relate to”—whether it be the older brother; the brother that goes off and does his own thing—but wouldn’t it be sweet for a parent to share a little piece of their testimony? And then, even ask their kids: “Who do you relate to the most and why is that?”; and then, reiterate—here, this is me going into mom mode!

Landon:Yeah.

Ann:Then, I imagine the parent teaching, discipling, pouring into their

kids: “I want you to know, no matter what you do or where you go, I

will always be here, watching for you; chasing after you; wanting

you to come back home and come to the Father. But no matter

what you do, I’m always going to be waiting.” That’s the part to me,

that man, those stories drop deep into our hearts; and then, it

moves us to action. I know that that’s going to happen for families,

you guys.

Dave:Yeah, one of the most powerful truths I think— and maybe, I got this from Tim Keller; I don’t know—when you look at that Luke 15 passage, this is the third of three stories about the same topic. Obviously, Jesus—it’s the only time He did this; He’s driving home a point; three times, same point—He’s like, “They’re missing something.” What did they miss? He’s with tax collectors and sinners; and He’s thinking, “Yeah! That’s who I am. That’s why I love them.” And they’re [Pharisees] like, “That’s despicable”; and He’s like, “Let me tell you three stories…”

So the hope would be—man, if a parent is teaching that to their son or daughter, like Ann was saying—at the end of this discussion—and it won’t be a one-time day; it’ll be several discussions—it’ll be like: “You will understand the love of the Father,” and “You’ll understand the love of your father—your earthly father—and mother right here.”

We’re going to get to hear one more clip. But let me tell you this: if you want it, you can get it at FamilyLife.com/RoadTrip. You don’t have to go on a road trip to listen to it, but that’s our slash/free.

Ann:—for free.

Dave:Yeah, it’s free—FamilyLife.com/RoadTrip—you’re going to get to hear the whole thing.

Here’s another clip; set it up for us.

Perry:Well, this clip: we kind of foreshadowed, early in the episode, that there is an evil villain who kind of comes into the story, early on, and provides that pressure to the village of Bahar, which is where our main character lives. This is his introduction; this is a piece from his introductory monologue, where he kind of lays out: “I’m here; this is what you got to do, or you’re going to be destroyed.” Here’s the clip.

[The Road to Kaeluma Clip]

Villain:Of course, if you choose to reject my proposal, there will be consequences. My kingdom’s expansion is like a wildfire that cannot be contained. Give your heart to me, and enjoy the luxuries of the kingdom of Saffron, or be swept up and destroyed. The choice is yours. What will it be?—war, surrender, or famine?

[Fearful cries from people]

Orrick:What is that?!

Villain: And to you, most honorable Chief Yannick, I eagerly await your decision. [Hoofbeats riding off]

[Studio]

Dave:I’m a little scared right now; I’ve just got to tell you.

Ann:I’m not; I’m like in.

Dave:That was powerful.

Ann:You can get all five episodes at FamilyLife.com/RoadTrip, and you’re going to want to do that.

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