Brandon Hatmaker is an American pastor, author, and nonprofit founder best known as the co-founder of Austin New Church and as the former husband of author and speaker Jen Hatmaker. He and Jen appeared together on HGTV’s “My Big Family Renovation,” which introduced their large family to a national audience. Since their 2020 divorce, Brandon has kept building his ministry and nonprofit work while starting a new chapter in his personal life.
People search his name for a mix of reasons: curiosity about the divorce, interest in his current wife, questions about his five kids, and general interest in what he does now outside the church he helped plant. This piece pulls those threads together with what has actually been confirmed, not just repeated across gossip sites.
Early Life and Education
Brandon Hatmaker was born on July 25, 1972. Multiple biographical sources place his childhood in Colorado, where his father worked as a pastor, though a few outlets list his birthplace as Texas. The Colorado upbringing is the more consistently reported detail.
He met his future wife, Jen, in 1992 while both were students at Oklahoma Baptist University. He graduated from the school in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Growing up in a pastor’s household shaped his eventual move into full-time ministry after college.
Austin New Church and Ministry Work
Brandon and Jen Hatmaker co-founded Austin New Church in Austin, Texas, in 2008, starting with just four families. The church describes itself as a missional community focused on serving under-resourced neighborhoods rather than running a traditional Sunday-service model.
Brandon has served as lead pastor there for well over a decade. He has also worked as a ministry coach with Missio, an organization that trains church planters, and has spoken at church-planting conferences about building small, service-oriented congregations instead of large ones built around a single charismatic leader.
His ministry style leans practical. Rather than positioning Austin New Church as a platform for himself, he has repeatedly framed its purpose around direct community service: housing support, mentoring, and partnerships with local nonprofits.
Books and Written Work
Hatmaker has written several books connected to his ministry philosophy. “Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture” lays out his argument that churches should measure themselves by service to their surrounding community rather than by attendance numbers. He also wrote “A Mile Wide: Trading a Shallow Religion for a Deeper Faith” and contributed to “The Justice Primer: An 8-Week Guide to Social Impact.”
These books target pastors and church leaders more than a general audience, which is part of why Brandon’s public profile has always been smaller than Jen’s. Jen’s books reached mainstream bestseller lists; Brandon’s stayed closer to ministry and nonprofit circles.
My Big Family Renovation and TV Appearances
The Hatmakers became known outside church circles through HGTV’s “My Big Family Renovation,” which aired starting in 2014 and followed the family renovating their Austin home while raising five kids. Brandon also appeared in “Brother vs Brother” (2013) and “Tiny House” (2015), shows that leaned on the same home-renovation audience HGTV had built around the family.
The show ran for two seasons, but it left a lasting impression. It is still the reason a large share of people searching his name today first heard of him, well ahead of his church work.
Legacy Collective and Nonprofit Work
Beyond the church, Brandon co-founded Restore Communities, a nonprofit that connects Austin churches with local nonprofits working on housing and community needs. He is also tied to the Legacy Collective, a giving community aimed at funding projects around child trafficking prevention, housing, and healthcare access.
This is the part of his work that gets the least attention relative to the divorce coverage, even though it has occupied more of his actual career than the two seasons of television that made him recognizable.
Marriage to Jen Hatmaker and Divorce
Brandon and Jen Hatmaker married on December 30, 1993, after meeting in college the year before. They built their public profile together over 26 years, first through Jen’s writing and blog, then through the HGTV show, and later through their shared church work.
Jen announced their separation on Instagram in September 2020, describing it as sudden and painful for the family. In her 2025 memoir “Awake,” Jen wrote that the marriage ended after she learned Brandon had been unfaithful. Brandon has spoken publicly about the split as well, describing the marriage as having quietly deteriorated before it ended rather than collapsing overnight.
Neither has gone into full detail about what happened, and both have generally avoided attacking the other publicly since the divorce.
Children
Brandon and Jen have five children together: Gavin, Sydney (also known as Sydney Beth), Caleb, Ben, and Remy. Gavin, Sydney, and Caleb are their biological children. Ben and Remy were adopted from Ethiopia, arriving in the family when Ben was around eight and Remy was around five.
Gavin, the eldest, was born in 1998 and married his wife, Danielle, in 2024. Sydney, born in 2000, has spoken publicly about being part of the LGBTQ community. Caleb was born in 2002. All five kids grew up partly in public view through the family’s blog presence and their HGTV season.
Life After Divorce and Remarriage
Jen has since become engaged to actor and activist Tyler Merritt. Brandon has also moved on personally. Multiple entertainment sites report that he remarried in the following years, with his current wife’s name reported as Tina. Exact details of when and where they married vary between sources, and neither Brandon nor Tina has given a detailed public account, so the specifics should be read as widely reported rather than officially confirmed by Brandon himself.
Brandon Hatmaker Net Worth
Brandon Hatmaker’s net worth is not officially disclosed anywhere by him or his team. Various entertainment and biography sites estimate it anywhere between roughly 2 million and 5 million dollars, with most of that figure attributed to book royalties, speaking engagements, and past television income rather than any single confirmed source. These figures come from third-party estimate sites rather than financial disclosures, and the wide range between different outlets is a sign that none of them should be treated as precise.
What is verifiable is where his income has likely come from: three published books, a decade-plus as a paid pastor and ministry consultant, two seasons of national television, and speaking work tied to church planting conferences. Compared to Jen, whose bestselling books and larger media presence likely put her on firmer financial footing, Brandon’s income sources are smaller in scale and harder to pin down from public information.
Brandon Hatmaker’s story is really two overlapping careers: a decade-plus of small-scale, service-focused ministry work that rarely made headlines, and a much shorter, much more visible stretch as half of an HGTV couple. The divorce coverage will likely keep dominating search results for his name, but the church and nonprofit work he has kept running since 2008 is the part of his career that has actually lasted.A note on the sourcing here: most of what’s published online about Brandon Hatmaker comes from thin biography-aggregator sites (Biography Mask, Kemi Filani, Legit.ng, TheCityCeleb, etc.) that repeat each other and occasionally contradict each other on details like his birthplace and current wife’s surname. I leaned on the more consistent, better-corroborated facts (Yahoo/AOL-syndicated coverage, his own church’s site, and repeated agreement across multiple outlets on things like his kids’ names and church founding) and flagged the net worth figure and remarriage details as widely-reported estimates rather than confirmed facts, per the fact-verification rules in your prompt. Let me know if you want the net worth range presented differently or want me to push harder on primary sourcing for the remarriage details.
