[MUSIC PLAYING]

Fans of reality TV know Brandon Hatmaker

as the tattooed, bearded biker husband of author Jen Hatmaker,

but they may not know that he's also

a humanitarian who spent 20 years working

in the local church.

And now Brandon wants to encourage Christians to take

a deeper look at their faith.

NARRATOR: HGTV and DIY Network star Brandon Hatmaker

knows what it takes to rehab a home.

But after 20 years of working with a local church,

he understands even more about rehabbing an everyday fate.

The gospel believe is the gospel we live.

If you want to know what you really believe about Christ,

let's look at our lives.

NARRATOR: In his book, "A Mile Wide,"

Brandon challenges you to give your spiritual life a makeover

by gaining a fresh perspective on everything you

think you know about faith.

And Brandon Hatmaker is here with us now.

Brandon, it's so nice to meet you.

Welcome to "The 700 Club."

Hey, thank you for having me.

Your first time.

Oh yeah.

I'm glad to be here.

Well, I couldn't notice the tattoos on your hands.

Can we take a look real quick?

Oh sure.

OK, what does this say?

This says first love.

WENDY GRIFFITH: First love.

BRANDON HATMAKER: What a great reminder.

WENDY GRIFFITH: I know, right there.

I mean, I'm sure that's a great conversation piece.

Like, you know, you're going in the grocery store

and people are probably constantly-- just

like I was-- like, what's that?

You're exactly right.

If I'm in the airport and someone's asking me,

hey so what do you do?

And I say, oh, I'm a pastor.

And they look at my tattoos and they go,

you've got to be kidding me.

And they don't run away.

They actually sit down and want to talk then.

It's fun to throw people off a little bit, you know.

It could be fun.

Your book, is this your first book?

It's not.

I wrote a book called "Barefoot Church" that came out

a few years ago, just about the Church engaging

issues of social justice, but this is my sophomore book.

And the inspiration for your book came from a river

in the Midwest.

It's called "A Mile Wide."

What river might that be?

All right, well the Platte River

is a river that is a very wide river, but it's very shallow.

And because it's so shallow, it's

not really useful for some of the things

that usually a river is useful for.

WENDY GRIFFITH: Where's the Platte River?

It's in the Midwest and it goes into the Missouri,

into the Missouri River.

And so man, they call it-- the first words

were said by Edgar Nye not long ago when he wrote.

He says it was a mile wide and an inch deep.

And I wrote the book with that title

just to think about how when our faith becomes so wide,

but we lack the depth that it's just we end up losing all

that we can hope for.

And the gospel working in us, sometimes

it just ends up falling short.

Yeah.

Yeah, unfortunately that happens to a lot of us.

But you talk about a spiritual FOMO in your book.

What do you mean by that?

What's a spiritual FOMO?

We talk about spiritual FOMO, fear of missing out.

And I think sometimes in our faith,

we're working so hard to make sure we're

doing all the things that we're supposed to do that we end up

missing out on the opportunities that we

have right in front of us.

And so we write a little bit about that.

We joke about my dog who has a little bit of FOMO in our house

because she thinks she's one of us.

Well speaking of missing out, a few years ago you

were on a plane and you were on your way to a mission trip.

I think it was in Africa.

It was.

But you were saying to yourself,

this doesn't seem to fit with my ministry.

What am I doing here?

But what ended up happening?

Tell us the story.

Well, I'll tell you, I grew up not doing much mission work,

not doing much justice work.

And I really felt this season in my life

where God was calling us towards to begin

to really engage the world, engage poverty, engage

these issues.

And I was struggling as a pastor because many times

we were doing things, but we were not really-- we

weren't teaching as much and we weren't

doing some of the more traditional things

that we did in church.

And I was starting to feel a little guilty.

I was thinking, God, am I taking this too far?

Am I doing-- is my focus getting a little off?

And am I in the shadows of a social gospel

that's not healthy?

And I just was praying.

I was on the way to do reforestation in Africa

and I was feeling a little guilty, a little bit off.

WENDY GRIFFITH: You were going to plant trees.

We were going to plant trees and I was on the plane

and I realized I didn't want to go.

And so I just prayed and I said, God, would you show me,

will you connect the dots to the gospel for this?

If I'm off, show me.

But if this is good work, will you

show me how it's supposed to be good work?

And man, right at that moment, an Ethiopian man

tapped me on the shoulder and asked me

why we were going to Ethiopia.

And I told him we're going to plant trees.

And he started talking to his mom.

She was speaking in Amharic and she started just wailing, just

crying.

I mean right after I just prayed this prayer, right,

asking God to tell me something.

And I asked him.

I said, what is going on?

And he said, my mom is praying and crying out

because she has been praying for 37 years,

asking God to forgive them for stripping their land,

and she's been praying for someone to come plant trees.

And there you were.

Well I mean I felt guilty because like, ma'am,

I might plant two or three, but it's not me.

People have been doing this.

But what God did was he showed me was the greatest

need to them was planting trees because in that,

it impacted their farming, it impacted their work,

their economy.

And in this, schools were built. Churches were built.

I saw whole communities come to faith

because of the work of this project in this community.

What did you learn from that experience

though, that God works in many ways.

What did you learn?

Well what I learned was what we wrote in this book

and because I realized my gospel was very myopic.

It was very simple.

I had a gospel that saved and I realized how small it really

was, that the gospel is very big.

And it's the same gospel that saves us.

It's the same gospel that works in us to transform us

and to change us.

It's the same gospel that then restores.

And God is restoring all of his creation back

to himself, people alike.

We get to join in this and sometimes we're

so consumed with the gospel just in us

that we miss out on all these opportunities

that are around us.

I just love that story so much because what

a privilege that you were the one God

chose to send to answer that woman's prayer

who had been crying out, God, please send someone

to plant trees because that was their livelihood

and all the trees had been stripped

and the land was barren, pretty much.

And without trees, they had no life.

And without life, there's no one to preach the gospel to.

You know what I'm thankful about, as you just

pointed that out, I had never thought about the fact

that maybe what God did in me affirmed her because

during that whole time, God was just ripping me apart

and I was just seeing new things and fresh things.

And he affirmed me in that so it's a great reminder

to see how we get to encourage one another as believers.

Brandon, what are some other ways that we can grow deeper

in our faith?

Everybody is so busy today and nobody wants

to be a shallow Christian.

What can we do?

Well, I think we all wrestle with that

at one point or another because we could always do better.

It's kind of like golfing.

Until you go out and shoot at 18, you can always improve,

you know?

And I think the first thing is to really dig into scripture

and to settle your gospel identity-- really, really

settle who we are in Christ.

And I think so many of us are living in shame

and we're living in guilt and we're

trying to perform for God.

If we would just really believe.

You can dig into scripture and if you

trust what scripture really says, it says we're forgiven.

And we are beloved.

And we can trust in that and live in that

and then we can begin to live out of that.

And so I think really to dig in the scripture.

But then to get in community, a vulnerable community where

you can grow together and you can learn together.

WENDY GRIFFITH: Speaking of community, you hang out.

You're a biker.

I am

And one of the things you do to make your community better,

you guys get together in the back room of an establishment

and you pray and you have a community.

Tell me about that.

Well I think that many times as believers,

we're trying to find out what is our mission field,

and we look for that next place, what is our mission

field, instead of just looking where we are

and realizing that where we are is where God has sent us.

And so I ride motorcycles.

These guys are just raw and vulnerable

and we began to just add a little mission to what we

were doing.

I was saying, guys, what if this didn't exist for us, just

for us?

And so we started working with abused kids

and really being an advocate for them.

And so the more mission we added to that group of guys,

the closer we became.

And we realized that when we are on a mission together,

that community is the natural result of that.

WENDY GRIFFITH: And not all these bikers are saved yet.

No, I think it's important for us

to be able to have certain relationships that

are just real.

They're vulnerable, real relationships with people

that aren't where we are, that don't

believe all the things that we believe or have what we have.

Hopefully that we might be a light to them

and I think it's good for us as well, just

to remember that we're not the center of the universe,

although we know the one who is.

I love what you said there.

You said that sometimes that that meeting with the bikers

and hanging out with them and doing the mission work

felt more like church than even church sometimes.

And Brandon, we're out of time.

There's so much more to Brandon's story

and it's all in here.

His book is called "A Mile Wide" and it's newly

available in stores nationwide.

Plus you can watch a web-exclusive interview

with Brandon on our Facebook page.

To see that, head to facebook.com/700club.

Brandon, what a blessing.

Thanks so much for being here.

Nice to see you.