Calling all builders

“It's a weird time to be a living, human person,” Jen Hatmaker began. The popular author and star of HGTV’s “My Big Family Home Renovation” was a keynote speaker at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing, held April 12-14 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“In a world of deconstructionists, of tearing down and tearing apart, we need more builders. We need more people putting things together and making beautiful new things, so that our world can flourish again.” 

Though Hatmaker calls herself “low-grade Christian famous,” she’s become an influential figure outside Christian circles because of her TV series, top-rated podcast and bestselling books. Her early writing, which she admits was juvenile, centred largely on home life, but since then her themes have gradually become more political – and both won and lost her some fans in the process. In 2008 she and her husband adopted two children from Ethiopia and founded a church focused on serving the poor in Austin, Texas. When Hatmaker spoke in support of same-sex marriage in 2016, Lifeway Christian Stores stopped selling her books, but that didn’t seem to dampen sales of her next book, Of Mess and Moxie, which briefly made #2 on the New York Times Best Sellers’ List last fall.

“An eye for an eye doesn’t work,” she said.  “That’s not the story we want to write with our lives. We want to bring honour to the name of Christ, however that looks.” 

She called on writers to build new spaces, connections and communities. “Our words create worlds, and we need alternative worlds to the one we are watching burn every minute.” 

A few hours before her keynote address, I spoke with Jen Hatmaker on women in leadership, scarcity theology and the definition of Evangelical today.

Christian Courier What do you mean by “We need a thousand women leaders yesterday”?
Hatmaker: I work hand in hand with a lot of men, and in most cases I deeply respect my fellow male pastors, authors, thought leaders. [But] men have historically held the reigns, which has left a lot of other people groups vulnerable, women being one of them. In order for any organization or church to be sincerely robust and thoughtful and just, it needs to be well represented by the people within it. If the people within an organization are diverse and yet the leadership is almost entirely white men, how can we possibly imagine that to be a healthy space? 
There are not enough women in leadership anyway. Not in business, not in entertainment, not in theology and faith spaces, not in literature. We need more women because they represent us; they bring our voices to the table. I cannot think of anything better than to send the next generation of women running into leadership in whatever capacity they are gifted. 

CC: Why do you tell women that “You’re not in competition with other women”? 
Hatmaker: The world pits us against each other; they compare us to one another; they show preference to this one over that one in very public ways, which makes one feel big and the other feel small; and there’s just this subtle narrative I’ve been hearing my entire adult life which is that there are only so many pieces of pie here, and you’d better grab yours. Women receive that message in a lot of ways, but functionally and experientially I’ve not found that to be true at all. 
When I found myself a few years ago just consumed with the success of other people, I realized I can’t live like that. So I started a practice: when I feel like clamping down or withholding praise for another woman, then I will do it! I will cheer. I will bang the drum. I will post three things in a row about somebody one else. And that practice has changed me. Because as I did that simply to combat my own selfishness and fear, it changed me internally accidentally. What I realized was “there is enough.” No matter what we’re told, there is enough to share, and it’s good for women to constantly recognize the gifts and accomplishments of each other. 

CC: You’ve stopped describing yourself as Evangelical. Why?
Hatmaker: Evangelical is an umbrella term that I once comfortably lived under, and it feels like to me that the definition has been a little bit co-opted. It feels that if you were to ask the average person – and perception matters, you can argue the semantics, and say, “that’s not what this really means, this is what it means in the Greek” – but the truth is that the perception of a word matters. What it means to a culture is what it means. And so if you were to ask an average person in our culture now what Evangelical means, it would typically follow the fault lines of party politics: it would look Republican; it would look either overtly or subtly racist; it would look homophobic, nationalist in practice – those would be the bones. And the soft tissue would generally be described as judgemental, elitist, arrogant and even mean-spirited. That’s the definition we would most likely hear. 

I’m not interested in being identified like that anymore. This sounds trite – and I wish it didn’t – I honestly would rather be identified with the ways of Jesus. I mean that sincerely. It’s to his gospel and words and will and way that I would like to be identified. That’s where I would like to find my reflection. So if the word Evangelical has been ruined beyond repair, then it has. It might be what Jesus would call an old wineskin. An old wineskin word that has lost its ability to stretch and is probably a passing relic.

CC: Do you see the same thing happening to the word Christian? 
Hatmaker: That’s a great question. In some parts of the world, for sure. It’s interesting as students of the gospel to be paying attention, because we only need to look over to Europe, or over to Canada, to see a post-Christian world. It is very possible that the word Christian will lose its shared definition and thus its power, in which case we need to be flexible enough to throw out the remains of language that keeps people from Jesus or his people. If that means an overhaul or a different descriptor, then it does. Language shifts; Jesus does not. Rather than being afraid of that, I think there’s a grace and humility in recognizing that some of that language is tainted. We’re not abandoning our faith if we abandon our words. It’s not the same thing. We can still be deeply faithful and deeply love God and neighbour and just package it differently.

CC: How can we restore the word “Christian” or “Evangelical”?
Hatmaker: The Gospel is actually not super complicated. It’s not easy to live out, but it’s not complicated. I think Jesus gave us our best hint when the teacher of the law says, “What’s the most important thing to do to bring people into the church?” He says, “Let’s just strip it down like this – love God, and love people.” Everything else you do should have a direct uplink to one of those two things. Direct. Not – “well, it’s loving because of this and this.” No. It should feel directly loving to people or directly loving to God. And that is how he says people will know we follow Jesus. That’s it. And honestly that’s enough. The love of God and the love of people is as compelling as it has always been. When people feel known and loved, that is the whole Gospel. 

CC: Where do you think Christians need to step up our game?  
Hatmaker: It’s an interesting time to be alive. A very strange time. To see language keeping people down and out. And words do matter – words turn into policy and church doctrine and environment. It’s my personal belief, that just as a Christ-follower, we don’t get to opt out. It’s not godly to stand by and watch racism and misogyny and abuse and nationalism and homophobia and Islamophobia reign free, unchecked, uncorrected. It’s funny because people talk a lot about Nazi Germany and the extermination of six million Jews, and it’s so easy to say, “I wouldn’t have stood there and watched six million people exterminated,” but are you standing by right now, when words that harm people are flourishing, in some cases encouraged by spiritual leaders? 
My platform is big, so my advocacy has a certain look to it. But all of us are influencers – to the people we live by, to our children, our coworkers. Everybody has some influence. So I don’t think we get to sit silently by because we’re afraid of conflict or criticism. 
As people in maligned categories are flattened in their seats by hatred, by lies, I cannot in good conscience let them suffer alone when it’s within my power and within my faith to stand by them, to side with them, to call evil, evil. And so I think that’s all of our marching orders. I know it’s hard. I’m under no delusions. It’s lonely.
But it’s right. 

CC: When you spoke in support of same-sex marriage, Lifeway Christian Stores pulled your books. You’ve described the season afterward as dark and heavy with grief – but also worth it. How so?  
Hatmaker: The gifts are too numerous to name. I wish I could go back and hold my own hand, and tell that to myself in those very dark and lonely months. Let me show you some letters you’ll receive, literally people pulling back from the brink of suicide; let me show you the letters from their parents, their sisters, their brothers. Our life has become so wonderfully expansive because we’ve now aligned ourselves with that community, we’ve become a safe space, and there aren’t enough safe communities for gay people and the people that love them, and so when you show yourself to be an ally, just get ready because people are so hungry to be pastored and loved and ministered to and to find healing and acceptance. 
That work that has now found its way into our life has been so meaningful and profound, to say nothing of how many gay believers we’ve met who are brilliant and talented and using their gifts in wonderful ways to build the kingdom. I don’t have any regrets. If anything, I wish I’d done it sooner.

CC: To quote Barbara Brown Taylor, what is saving your life right now?
Hatmaker: My little friend tribe. Life is hard. Our work is hard. We go into difficult and challenging spaces. We need some comic relief. Some of our friends just need to be funny.

CC: How can parents of teens respect their wishes for space and privacy while still being open? 
Hatmaker: It’s tricky. Now we’re not talking about three year olds who don’t have a Twitter account; we’re talking about seniors in high school who are paying attention. They do not love being the subject of your material, I’m told. So it makes transparency difficult, at least in a public place. What’s really important for moms and dads of teens is that they at least have a private place [to talk], with people they can respect – some in the trenches with them and some ahead of them. 

I can’t tell you how many of my friends go to my mom and say, “please talk to us about this teen thing.” That’s out of the public eye and doesn’t run the risk of embarrassing our kids or splashing their failures around or their rottenness. No matter what we have gone through, somebody else has gone through it or they’re going through it. Community is just as important if not more so in parenting teens than with littles.