Next, Brandon Hatmaker challenged his ex-wife’s assertion that “we were pastors” when he cheated on her. He had “stepped down from church staff in 2015,” he clarified, and preached his final sermon in 2017. That distinction is “VERY important to me,” wrote Hatmaker. “If I have any shred of dignity that remains, it was that I had stepped down from church leadership literally years prior to my affair.”
Brandon spent most of his adult life serving in the church, he said, with “decades of proud and truthful and beautiful moments and memories filled with joy and purpose.” But by 2020, he had “become a very broken and lost man who had given up.” Due to various life challenges and traumas, Brandon became depressed, sad, and “couldn’t personally see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Although Brandon still struggles to “find my place” in the church, he said he loves it and has hope for it. “There are so many true and genuine church leaders out there,” he assured readers, in the wake of recent high-profile deconstructions. He explained:
To be clear, I didn’t lose my faith. But I lost my anchor. I was in a tormented season where I couldn’t say with confidence that I felt God was with me. To be honest, I went through a season where I was mad at him. I’m not mad at him anymore, but I certainly can’t claim I know exactly how he works, and I’m trying to find my way back. As you can imagine, it’s tough finding a safe place to do that with the last name Hatmaker.
For the past few years, Jen Hatmaker has stayed away from the church. “I’m still a big fan of Jesus, but I guess I don’t like many of his folks,” she recently said. “The organized religion part of faith is not serving me right now.”
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Brandon Hatmaker ‘Felt Invisible’ in His Marriage
In his Sept. 22 Substack post, former pastor Brandon Hatmaker also rejected the notion that he had been “cold and uncaring” and didn’t fight to save his marriage to Jen. (The couple married when Brandon was 21 and Jen was 19.)
Although Brandon had sought counseling for three years before his affair, he said he “felt invisible in my marriage” and “kept spiraling until there was no lower place to go.” He continued, “I didn’t fall out of love overnight…And I privately mourned the death of our marriage years before our divorce.”
Brandon shared a text message he had sent Jen, asking whether reconciliation was possible. When Jen rejected that attempt, Brandon explained, “that closed the book for me.”
After his affair was exposed, Brandon spent one month in a residential treatment center for extensive counseling. “I had completely lost myself,” he wrote, insisting that infidelity is “not who I truly am.” Although Brandon now realizes it was “right” for him and Jen to get divorced, he noted in hindsight, “You can do the right thing the wrong way.”
As for whether he “wanted to be caught,” Brandon said it’s possible he “didn’t have the courage to end [his marriage to Jen] myself.” All he remembers is “the pain I caused and the extreme relief I felt to be exposed.”
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Regarding the timing of his relationship with now-wife Tina, Brandon clarified she isn’t the woman he had the affair with, and she played no role in his split with Jen. “Tina and I had never met until after the divorce was filed,” wrote Brandon, who got engaged to Tina in July 2022 and married her that December.
