9/23/26 - 2165: Can a Cartoon Plant Seeds for Eternity?

Jim: This is iWork4Him

Martha: Where faith meets work, and believers unleash their calling.

Jim: Creating quality children's entertainment, it's not a job just anyone can succeed at. I grew up with Road Runner, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny.

Jim: I loved Looney Tunes, Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and so many others. I still enjoy them today because those cartoons had an appeal to the young and the old. Fast-forward to today, and on most kids-centered networks, you'll find heavily influenced woke programming wherever you look. So where do Jesus-following parents turn when they want some entertainment for their kids?

Jim: There are tons of options today, but scrutinizing them is so important. There's tons of options for entertainment, not so many Jesus options available. Butch Hartman and his bride, Julieann, have a part and a passion for children's programming, and have recently released their own app and YouTube channel called The Garden Cartoon.

Jim: Butch comes with a long history of successful children's programming that our millennial listeners will recognize, like Fairly OddParents, and Danny Phantom, to name a few. Some of your favorites were his biggest hits. Butch and Julieann want to bring your kids and grandkids programming that will lift their spirits, leave their identity intact, and teach them truth about our heavenly Father.

Jim: Butch and Julieann are here today to share their story of living out their faith in the children's media world of Hollywood. Butch and Julieann, welcome to iWork4Him.

Butch Hartman: Wow, that's cra- Wow, that was amazing . What an introduction.

Julieann: Thank you.

Butch Hartman: You're hired for our next birthday party.

Jim: As long as I don't have to wear a clown outfit.

Butch Hartman: Yeah, no, this is that's a wonderful introduction. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. We are thrilled to be here. You guys are both incredible just people, and great examples for the Lord.

Butch Hartman: Yeah, we met you several times-

Martha: Yes ...

Butch Hartman: prior to this, and it's just always great to reconnect, so thank you for having us on your show.

Jim: Oh, you bet. We, what we do something special with every first-time guest on our show, is we ask you guys to share your Jesus story. So how did the two of you become followers of Jesus?

Jim: Julieann, you get to go first 'cause ladies first.

Julieann: Yeah. A friend of mine was really working on me a lot, probably for about a year, and just constantly talking about the Lord, and we were married. We had nothing to do with the Lord. And we started having kids, and again, it was all kinda at one time.

Julieann: People were saying like, have you ever thought about having a relationship with Jesus?" We're like, "No, that's not gonna happen." But we also had some friends that had incredible kids that we would visit, and so we would always say "How do you get kids like that?" And they said, "Oh, we take them to church."

Julieann: So with that, so what we used to do actually is we would take them to a church, but we wouldn't go in. We would stay in the kids' room with them.

Butch Hartman: We would take our daughter into the kids room but we were terrified to leave her by herself. So we would stay in there. Yep. But you could still hear the sermon through the speaker.

Julieann: Yeah. But it didn't mean anything to us. No. It was like just hearing blah, blah, blah. Just kinda like-

Butch Hartman: Charlie Brown.

Julieann: Yeah, Charlie Brown. So I went to-

Jim: Not Charlie Brown, his teacher. Let's get that straight.

Julieann: Yeah, the Charlie Brown teacher.

Jim: The Charlie Brown teacher. That's right. His poor teacher, who we never knew her name, and all we know is- wah wah. Exactly. Okay. Sorry, Julieann.

Julieann: Yeah. Yeah, it didn't mean anything. But then a friend of mine was like, "Hey, I'm actually getting an award at this church. I would really love for you to come and see me get the award." So I was like, "Okay." And so I went on a Sunday without Butch and our daughters and I was like, "What is this?"

Julieann: I'd never seen something like this before. It was called the Faith Dome. It was at the time Pastor Frederick K.C. Price. He's, he went on to become Apostle Price. But anyway, I saw something in this church that was incredible, like it was... I'd never seen so many people in a congregation before.

Julieann: It was like 10,000 people and and they were excited and they were just jumping up and down and, for just everything. I saw healing taking place. And I went home and I said, "I don't know what I just saw, but we gotta go." And he was like, "Yeah, I don't need to go. You can just go." And so we didn't.

Julieann: What's funny is that day that I went in my very, very short leather miniskirt and in my high heels. 'Cause why not?

Butch Hartman: Why not go to church like that, right?

Julieann: Because I was dressing up. I didn't know what it was, right? I thought it was a big party. Anyway, so I go there and they put me in the front row and it is televised. The next thing I know I've got this sweet lady coming over to me and putting a cloth down. She put this like a scarf on my legs.

Butch Hartman: A modesty cloth.

Julieann: A modesty cloth. But one thing she did do, which no one had ever done, is she put a Bible in my lap. So I could follow along.

Jim: Nice.

Julieann: That was again, that led me to just tell him like, "Look, I'm just gonna go." And I was, I went for a couple weeks, took our daughters, and every Sunday be like, I didn't even ask him anymore because I just knew there was something there for us, but I didn't wanna ask him. And then one Sunday he started getting ready. I'm like, "What are you doing?" He goes, "I'm going with you." And I said, "Okay." So and then that was it. We went and we never left. We were there for 10 years.

Martha: Wow.

Butch Hartman: At the first church.

Julieann: At the very first church.

Butch Hartman: Yeah

Julieann: The Faith Dome in South Central Los Angeles, and it was, it was an hour drive. It was far.

Butch Hartman: And predominantly African American church, So we were these two white folks in this giant, amazing church, and we were like "we're definitely, we're definitely new here."

Julieann: This was... yeah, so there was, at that time, there was maybe about 15 of us.

Jim: Oh, that's fun, though. Wow.

Julieann: Yeah, and our daughters were literally, they were raised in that church. And Butch became an usher at the church.

Butch Hartman: I was the only, I was the only white usher.

Julieann: He was the only white guy. But it was an incredible experience

Martha: So Butch, how about for you? Anything you wanna add there as far as, you were drawn to this church, to this experience. How did that then lead you to following Jesus?

Butch Hartman: Just a real quick backstory, some, some context. We, I was 35 when all this happened. This is in the year 1999, and grew up with no God in the house - unless you hit your finger with a hammer- and you'd say Jesus' name.

Butch Hartman: And we had been, like she said, we wanted our kids to grow up in... we both come from very interesting backgrounds. A lot of chaos in the house going on for both of us as, as children. So we wanted peace in our house, and whatever that took to get, we were willing to do it.

Butch Hartman: Which is why when she suggested going to church at first I was a little bit hesitant only because I didn't know how to handle church. I didn't know what church was all about. I knew church meant rules, and I knew church meant things I wasn't ready to give up, basically. Again, I could say it a lot more articulately now, but I didn't know why I didn't wanna go to church back then.

Martha: Yeah. Sure.

Butch Hartman: Finally ended up going to the church with her. After about four or five months of going, and it was a far away church. It was like an hour drive from our house. First time we went, or I went with her, Pastor Price was talking about giving and tithing, and I'd never heard that before, but for some reason when we left that church that day, something inside me said, "I gotta go back to this church. I gotta keep coming back."

Julieann: But what's interesting is that as we were driving there, he goes, "I hope this guy doesn't ask me for any money." And I'm like "I don't know why he would," 'cause I didn't know, and I said "I I hope he doesn't either." And so anyway, what was crazy was that he stopped one, probably a six-month subject that he was teaching on, and the new subject was the purpose of prosperity. And it was all about tithes and offerings. And I'm like, "Oh, that's it. We're never going back."

Martha: I'm gonna interject this here 'cause I'm gonna put this in the show notes for listeners because you guys actually tell this story on your new show that you have that's called The Marriage Show.

Martha: And you did an episode on money, and I listened to that, and you share a little bit more detail about that. So I love that because a lot of people really actually have had that hesitation "All the church wants is my money, and I don't wanna go because I don't wanna give them my money." And so God really used that in your lives, and I love that.

Butch Hartman: He did. And I just wanna reiterate without going too much into the story, but one of the areas in my life I obviously had a struggle with was giving. I had not learned how to give. I was a worldly guy who keep everything... what, how does Andrew Wommack put it? "You get all you can, can all you get, and you sit on your can." And that's what I was doing.

Jim: What horrible advice that is. That's the worst advice ever.

Butch Hartman: It wasn't advice. No, Andrew didn't give that advice. He says that's the world's advice. The whole secular world tells you to do that. But it was through the tithing and the giving, we actually gave our way out of debt. We gave, we ended up giving - 'cause when you give to God, He gives back way more than you could possibly give. So we learned how to give ourselves out of debt.

Julieann: Yeah, we had to break something because we were so fearful of like- ... I remember the first time the basket came around and we were decided to give it, and Butch took the envelope and threw it in there.

Martha: What's gonna happen, right?

Julieann: Yeah. Yeah. And then we passed it, and it was like, "Bye." We did not know what was gonna happen after that because it was really scary to give money away. We were the most selfish actors slash entertainment industry people you would ever wanna meet. It was all about us. We really didn't care about anybody else.

Julieann: And to see this is why only God can change the heart of a person because now we are the complete opposite. And and there was no pill to take, right? It was it was just how the Lord, how he-

Butch Hartman: The gos-pill.

Julieann: Yeah. You could say, the gos-pill.

Jim: I don't know. There's a red pill and a blue pill. I don't know. Okay. So you guys have been married how long then?

Butch Hartman: 30, we were married- at that time we had been married-

Jim: No, now. How long have you been married now?

Butch Hartman: Oh, now it's 34 years.

Jim: 34, I was gonna say, I was gonna make him answer, Julieann, then don't give me any hints just in case he had it wrong.

Butch Hartman: I'm good at that.

Jim: Should I ask him what the date is? Okay. All right but so this was into your marriage already when you started going to church. How did you guys first meet, Butch? Really quick. Really quick.

Butch Hartman: We met doing stand-up comedy, if you can believe that. No kidding. In LA, I was trying everything. I was acting, I was trying music lessons. I took stand-up comedy lessons. We met in a stand-up comedy class, and that's how we met.

Julieann: Because he was talking to me from the audience, if you know what I mean.

Jim: Oh. Yeah. Flirting from the stage. One of those- Oh, I've never seen that done before.

Julieann: I was on the stage. Yeah, on that particular time, I was on the stage, he was in the audience, but we both were doing stand-up, we just didn't know each other yet. And he had yelled something from the audience, and then from there he introduced himself after the show, and it was just God put it together before we even knew the Lord.

Jim: Wow, but that's the way God is. That's phenomenal. Do you guys ever think about doing a little stand-up comedy today? Together you could do some- We

Julieann: do in The Marriage Show.

Jim: Okay. And Martha got to preview that. I didn't get to.

Julieann: But we also are pastors, and we thank God we did stand-up because we're able to do that together at our church as well.

Butch Hartman: Yeah we preach together every Sunday and Wednesday and our years of stand-up prepared us to be in front of an audience. It's really interesting. A lot of people say they wanna preach, and I'll tell you, you don't know that until you actually get up in front of people and you start telling them the words of Jesus and you see their faces.

Butch Hartman: And there's even a scripture in Jeremiah that says, "Don't worry about their faces 'cause I'll be with you." The Lord says this to Jeremiah when he's calling Jeremiah. "I'll put the words in your mouth."

Julieann: "Put the words in your mouth."

Butch Hartman: Yeah. But you gotta really be, whether it's stand-up, whether it's public speaking, whether, no matter what it is, when you're standing in front of people and you wanna tell the gospel to people it's a real, you got something you gotta get over. And the Lord can break that off of you if it's something you choose to do.

Martha: So good.

Jim: So Julieann, here's the question I have. So when you married Butch, did you know that his inner three-year-old was, like- ... out of this world?

Julieann: Honestly, I knew really nothing about cartoons. And so it's been a learning process for me. So I really didn't - I only watched one cartoon growing up. It was three girls, I was one of three girls. We just didn't have the cartoon thing going on.

Butch Hartman: What was it? What was the cartoon?

Julieann: It was Casper.

Jim: The friendly ghost?

Butch Hartman: The friendly ghost.

Julieann: Oh, there you go. Yeah. Of course the Scooby-Doos and all that later, but I really did not even care about cartoons. But what happens as a result of having a husband that likes that kind of stuff is that he's very young in his heart.

Jim: Yeah. He makes money with his inner three. Something that every guy wants to do. "How can I make money with my inner three-year-old?"

Julieann: Yes.

Butch Hartman: Every man. No, seriously, and we tell people all the time, because we counsel people and entrepreneurs and stuff, I always say, "What do you do every day that no one's gotta ask you to do?"

Julieann: Yeah.

Butch Hartman: And "Play basketball. I like to fish." I go, "That's what you should be doing for a living. If you do that for a living, figure it out. The Lord will show you."

Julieann: God'll show it to you.

Butch Hartman: But you'll find it. If you wanna do what you love for a living, you can do it. And people go, "I can't do it." Then that's your first problem. You're saying you can't. So you can if you want to. You guys get to do your podcast. You get to broadcast and stuff. It's a blast. We meet people all the time, "If only I had blank. If only I could do blank." And we're like, "You can do that. It will take effort. It will take some changes, but it can be done." Yes. We've only got one life.

Martha: And it and it is your mission field, and that's the thing we talk about on iWork4Him all the time is God equipped you with certain passions, desires, giftings for the work that you are doing, and that is your mission field. So what you said, you guys, you tried stand-up comedy. You did all these things. How then did you become passionate about children's entertainment?

Butch Hartman: I've been doing that, I was doing that even before stand-up comedy. I actually, I grew up in Michigan and had a real love for cartoons ever since I was a little kid, ever since I was very young.

Julieann: I think it was his way of escape.

Butch Hartman: Yeah, there was, again, I guess a lot of chaos going on in my house growing up.

Jim: What was your favorite, what was your favorite cartoon growing up?

Julieann: That you didn't create.

Butch Hartman: Oh, man. I did love Bugs Bunny. I loved Speed Racer. I loved Speed Racer ... the Flintstones. I loved Super Friends. I loved all kinds of fun - all those. I did like Scooby-Doo and a bunch of those cartoons. All the Hanna Barbera- you guys are old enough to remember. It was on Saturday morning you'd watch all the cartoons. And and then about 11:00 the bad cartoons would come on and your mom and dad told you to get out of the house and go play.

Julieann: That's right.

Butch Hartman: And so I just, I loved all those cartoons. I loved to draw. And growing up in Michigan, I would look at all these TV shows, like even live action TV shows, and I'd see the sunny California people there, and I'm stuck in the snow in Michigan going, "How do I get there?" And had no idea, but then a friend of mine as I got older, I was a sophomore in high school, friend of mine from Michigan who was also drawing said there's this school in California called California Institute of the Arts and they teach animation.

Butch Hartman: I said, "Give me that pamphlet." There was no internet back then. So I got the pamphlet, I look, I look at the portfolio requirements. I had to build my portfolio. As an 18-year-old kid in school, in high school, I'm building my portfolio. So we graduate high school in June of '83. I'd applied to the college and by September of '83 I got accepted, and I was on my way to California and I never looked back.

Butch Hartman: And then I realize I'm at college now to be an animator. Once I was out here I started making connections. I started getting jobs in the industry. A little job here, a little job there, and that's kinda how I started my career.

Martha: And you have had so many great projects in your career, but today we really wanna talk about the one that's right behind you on the banner, and it is your latest project, The Garden Cartoon. So tell us about that.

Butch Hartman: Oh, thank you for asking. Yeah, this one came, and I just wanna thank my wife for this- because she backs it 1,000%.

Julieann: And we work together on that.

Butch Hartman: We do, yeah. But we did, I did 20 years at Nickelodeon where I created four big shows for them. And it was while I was at Nickelodeon, we got saved. Our church story happened right at the start of my Nickelodeon career. So I'm working there as a saved guy, but I couldn't do a Christian cartoon there. I was doing my regular cartoons, which were really a blast to do. But I was developing The Garden kind of on my own, 'cause I wanted to do a show about, I wanna teach kids the Bible, 'cause I never learned the Bible as a kid. I thought it'd be cool to do a cartoon to teach kids the Bible, but in a fun way that's not boring.

Butch Hartman: It doesn't preach to them, helps them sing songs. And so I started developing this. We self-funded seven episodes on our own. And by the time I was out of Nickelodeon, we had these seven episodes, and the Lord said, "Now I can finally use you." And I thought, "Now you can use me? I thought you were using me." He's like no, I've built you up to be a household name. Now I can put you out there to do this show."

Butch Hartman: And so we started going to these different groups that were outside of Hollywood, a lot of high-level Christian entrepreneur groups, and I ended up pitching The Garden kind of accidentally one day, off the cuff, and a lot of people said they would wanna support it. So we got a lot of support for it financially, and were able to begin funding it and making it a real show.

Jim: Give us an example of how The Garden lifts up and encourages kids. Give a, give an example. Like one scene for us, just one scene. Julieann, you tell us one scene, the one that you love.

Julieann: What I love is that all of our songs actually have a scripture in it, and the song is about the scripture. So when the kids are just doing everyday life and they're singing songs because they've memorized the songs, and they're memorizing the address of the scripture and what the scripture is.

Butch Hartman: Beautiful. Yeah.

Julieann: "Give and it shall be given to you." That's one.

Butch Hartman: Yeah. For example, we have one where Lenny and Lucy - move your head for one second. Okay. Yeah, there's Lucy the lamb. So Lenny and Lucy are on the, they're on the beach at Licorice Lagoon, and they're having a great time, and then this pirate shows up, and his name is Captain Snappy. He's an alligator. So Snappy shows up and he wants, "Arr, mateys." He wants to find this treasure.

Butch Hartman: So they're like, "Oh," they're excited. They go to find the treasure with Captain Snappy. But then at the end of the episode, Captain Snappy wants all the treasure for himself. And they're like, "You should be giving this treasure. We all split it. We all helped find it." And so they teach Snappy how to give.

Butch Hartman: And the song is, "If you wanna be my first mate, go read Luke 6:38. It's all about giving, and that's pretty great." And so it's like, "Given it shall be given to you." It's like a little pirate dance that they do. And it's really fun. And so stuff like that where a kid can learn the scripture as he rhymes it or she rhymes it, and it really teaches, what the meaning of the scripture is.

Butch Hartman: And at the end of the episode, they end up giving the treasure to their chicken friend Randy, who's trying to build a new chicken coop, and they give him the treasure and stuff, so it's really cool.

Julieann: But that's what I love, is that, Schoolhouse Rock! obviously was a big thing for us, our generation. And that's how probably I graduated high school.

Jim: That's how I learned conjunctions, that's for sure.

Martha: Yes.

Julieann: It's like you're playing in your head so that's why we really felt like we needed to put songs in that have the scripture so that they memorize and they can sing the songs for their whole life.

Julieann: It's like-

Martha: Exactly ...

Julieann: in any show you start playing the theme song to something, everybody wants to sing. One of the songs on Fairly OddParents was My Shiny Teeth and Me. Oh my gosh, we've been at colleges where you've got thousands of kids singing My Shiny Teeth and Me. So we thought what if we did that with scripture and, with a catchy tune, and that's what we've done. So we have 46 songs that we have, that he's written.

Butch Hartman: Yeah. And we've got a song in every episode. Some episodes have two songs.

Julieann: Yeah.

Butch Hartman: And we even have some other songs that aren't in episodes, just random songs, but we really know that music plays a huge, huge role.

Martha: It does. So I'm gonna just let our listeners know, we'll put the links in the show notes for how they can find the show, because there's several different ways. You guys have an app, there's a YouTube channel. We'll put all of that out there for The Garden. And I know that if anybody's like me, you're getting excited because to have something... I was just watching my grandson this morning for a little while. What do I do? I sing the Sunday school songs that I know because he loves to hear me sing, and that's what my memory brings to mind.

Martha: So how great and exciting it will be for the next generation to be singing scripture that they will then sing to their kids and go on and on? So Julieann, I wanna know, how do you fit into the process of this project specifically? What's your role then?

Julieann: I handle - so he handles all the creative, I handle everything else, from contracts to payroll, the money-

Butch Hartman: All the boring stuff that I could never do. Jim, the boring stuff. Come on.

Julieann: Yeah.

Butch Hartman: Jim knows.

Julieann: And we, that's, you have to learn to work together with that. 'Cause obviously Butch is very creative and in his creative mind, the budget is, "there is no limit," right?

Butch Hartman: Exactly.

Martha: But again, in your show you just did on The Marriage Show, you talk about the money and how God, you said at one point, Julieann, you're like, I wanna do the money in our family and keep track of everything." So God was preparing you for bigger projects and bigger responsibility in that way. And it is a gift when you can work with your spouse and do that in a way that you complement each other and have that, that end goal together, which has to be so exciting.

Julieann: Amen, yes. It really is. And we're doing it together.

Jim: Yeah. And as a married couple, you find those sweet spots where who's really good at this, who's really good at that. Martha and I have split the bookkeeping duties over our last 40 years. Sometimes she's done it, sometimes I've done it.

Martha: And lots of other things. Laundry.

Jim: Laundry. Yeah, we split the laundry. I actually don't mind doing laundry. I actually like doing laundry. It's when we lived in Florida, when I had to fold towels seven different ways depending on the cabinet. That I'm still going to counseling for.

Martha: But like we had a car dealership, and so there was a point where I did all the title work, I did all the paper- he was out selling the cars, meeting the customers. So you do, it's great to have a project where you're both passionate about it, but it can bring different aspects to the table, knowing that it is, you have a wonderful goal, and you guys now have all of these episodes available.

Martha: Now you were saying, Butch, that even back at Nickelodeon, God had this idea stirring in your mind. So does that mean that there's other cartoons stirring inside of you that you're already starting to work on?

Butch Hartman: What do you think?

Julieann: Oh, are you kidding? Just give him a weekend with a sketch pad and he's got another show. No, we've got, we've got 10 shows right now on what we call a slate. So there's all 10 different shows from preschool to the, a little bit like the-

Butch Hartman: A little older audience ...

Julieann: older audience. Yeah. Yeah, so-

Jim: What's older, like 60-year-olds, older?

Butch Hartman: No. Not that old. No, I'm joking.

Julieann: You'll enjoy them, though.

Butch Hartman: No, I'm joking. You'll enjoy them. No, but- like we're talking like Simpsons level, like maybe a little bit 18 to 24. We have shows for kids zero to two, six to 11 all kinds of fun. And some are straight up Bible teaching shows, some are just straight up family shows. Because, as we all know here on, on the show there's a million kids that will never walk into a church, but they will look at the cell phone. They'll watch a screen.

Butch Hartman: So what do I put on that screen? What can we put on that screen in order to feel like we've actually been able to touch their hearts? I used to watch talk shows back when I was a kid. You'd see these big actors come on and they'd say, "Hey," the, the host would say to the actor, "Can your kids see this movie?" And the actor would say, "Oh no, my kids can't see this movie. I'm embarrassed to give my kids this movie." And I would always think, why would you wanna make a movie-

Julieann: No ...

Butch Hartman: that you're embarrassed to show your kids? It doesn't - no amount of money to me, this is only me saying this- ... no amount of money to me is worth something like that. I have, and by the way, we're not perfect either. We're not always gonna do the, the exactly the right thing. We wanna make sure we try our best, but we wanna-

Jim: Your mom called. She told us that ahead of time.

Julieann: Trust me, thank God there was no internet when we were in our 20s. We'd be in big trouble.

Butch Hartman: We wanna do the best we can to put the best product out there that we can and show people that, look, 'cause we, as pastors too, we deal with a lot of adults that have gone through trauma as kids. And so why wait till they're adults to deal with the trauma?

Butch Hartman: Why don't we just give them stuff now they can watch that won't provide any trauma? Why can't we give them something that'll help them enjoy their childhood a little bit more? Maybe there's a message in here where a little bit of a message can get in their heart, whereas they're older, it comes through at that time of trouble and it can maybe help them at that time.

Jim: All right. So you're working together. You spend all the time, a lot of time together, all day long, kinda like we do.

Julieann: And at night.

Jim: And at night. And that's good- And at night ... 'cause at night you usually, a marriage, it's important to actually spend nights together as well.

Butch Hartman: It is. That is one aspect, yeah, that does help. Yeah.

Jim: It is. It's just part of living. Talking about marriage is another thing. Encouraging people on marriage is another thing. Talk to us about this project you're working on that's your podcast called The Marriage - it is, it's called The Marriage Show, correct?

Martha: Correct.

Butch Hartman: Called The Marriage Show.

Julieann: Yes. That- Believe it or not, that name was approved.

Jim: It's a very simple idea.

Julieann: Yeah. So-

Jim: What's it about then?

Butch Hartman: It's about welding.

Julieann: Welding. We were speaking at a healing conference, and this is about five years ago. And so the night before, we were gonna be talking about it, 'cause we have a whole healing ministry, and so we were talking, we were going over our notes, and so I was like, "Boy, sweetie, the Lord is really, has put a, he's derailed this message and told me we need to talk about healing marriages."

Butch Hartman: Which by the way very few people talk about, that I've heard anyway.

Julieann: Yeah. So so he was like, "Okay, what are you thinking?" I'm like, "I don't know. Let's just pray about it." So we did, and we came up with a whole other teaching, and at the end of it, we did-

Butch Hartman: So we went, we did the teaching.

Julieann: Yeah. At the end of it, we had we did an altar call of "If your marriage needs prayer, like healing, please come down. Let us pray for you." There was 3,000 people at this event, and I would say probably 2,500 ran down the stairs.

Butch Hartman: It was crazy. The whole audience- ...

Julieann: crying ...

Butch Hartman: the whole audience emptied and they came towards the stage.

Julieann: Yeah, and here we are going, "How are we gonna- how are we gonna pray for everybody?"

Butch Hartman: We're the only ones up there.

Julieann: Yeah. There's no wa- and so they started asking people, "Can someone come and help?"

Butch Hartman: My plan is always to do a global prayer. And you always say, 'no, we're gonna pray individually for everybody." We need to pray like, global prayer.

Julieann: But it was crazy because from just the first one, I'm like, "Okay, what can we pray for?" "He's beat me for 38 years." What? What?

Butch Hartman: Not me, the couple.

Julieann: No, I'm saying the couple.

Martha: Yeah.

Julieann: I was like, "Oh my" and my flesh-

Butch Hartman: And the man's standing right there.

Julieann: Yeah. And he's crying, and she's crying. And my flesh wanted to say, "Why did you stay?" But of course, that's not... wasn't right for me to say. So and then from that to "I've cheated on him for the last 10 years." And I'm like, "And he knows it?" "Yes. Just crazy stories. "We don't sleep together anymore. We have two separate rooms. We're basically just roommates." "I spent all the money, and now we have nothing. We're living, we're homeless." Story after story.

Julieann: So I was like, " Okay. There, we gotta do something. At least something that we can do." Very small. And then that's when we started doing a thing called Heartbeat. And from there, it just wasn't enough. And then, but, and what's kinda interesting is back in 2005, the Lord gave me a vision for a show called, not called The Marriage Show, but what it looks like now where we would talk about relationships, and we would have a band, and we would, it would be fun but also very meaningful. And that was, and I've been searching, what is that show, what is that show, literally since 2005. And in 2025 is when He said, "Green light, go."

Martha: That's so good ... and you are so right. There are not enough people speaking truth into marriage from a biblical perspective, and there's a true need for it. And you saw that tangibly in that moment where the majority of the crowd came forward and said "you've you've pricked something in us that needs healing." And so listeners, I just wanna take a moment right now and say if you have issues in your own marriage, there are resources out there. One simple resource that we can put out there is your new The Marriage Show.

Martha: And it just, I, we thank you for being obedient, and also waiting on God's timing, because that is very hard to do when you know that He has a plan, but you haven't, it's not the right time.

Butch Hartman: We had to have some more marriage experience before we could actually put it together.

Martha: There you go.

Butch Hartman: Yeah.

Martha: There you go.

Jim: So here's my question. So you guys say you, you preach on Sundays. You're pastors on Sundays. So if I go to your church, am I gonna hear a sermon on marriage?

Butch Hartman: Sometimes you might-

Julieann: Oh, we weave it in ...

Butch Hartman: we weave it in. For sure. Yeah, we weave it in. We're always looking for the- we're looking for messages, obviously, that can encompass mostly everybody. But absolutely. Because we preach from who we are. Everybody does. Look, we're a married couple. She's got the female point of view; I have the male point of view. We have the couple's point of view. We have- we're parents as well. So w- we have very young peo-

Julieann: Grandparents too ...

Butch Hartman: and grandparents now too. Yes. So we have younger people in our church. We have a lot of older folks. So a lot of people really appreciate the marriage thing. And we really are grateful because, honestly it's so ironic, not ironic but it's a great thing, 'cause we come from homes that were broken. My parents were divorced when I was nine.

Julieann: Me too.

Butch Hartman: And and her parents were divorced as well. So divorce, unfortunately, does occur. And it's one of those things that we hope doesn't occur. I know there's ways around it a lot of times. We're never condoning staying in an abusive situation, ever. But there's times where sometimes an argument can be diffused if you just die to yourself a little bit. And if you just say, "I'm sorry." If you just say, "Look you're right." Even if you're right, say the other person's right, 'cause it'll stop a lot of nonsense. Jesus wants us to put the other person first 100% of the time.

Julieann: There's a lot of resources out there for marriages now- ... that we never, nobody had access to back in our day. Because we struggled. Our first eight years we weren't saved, and we fought all the time. All the time. We even had, I call it my room inside my closet, where I would say - we didn't wanna fight in front of our kids - so I'd say "get in the closet." So we could, so that we could yell at each other so the kids couldn't hear. We didn't know how to communicate.

Martha: Your transparency and your authenticity are very valuable in that arena because you've lived it out. You're not saying, " we're this perfect couple that's always had it together." But God has worked miracles in your life.

Martha: So I'd like to talk just for a minute about your, the bigger picture workplace that you guys are in, which is Hollywood. How are you guys living out your faith in that environment?

Butch Hartman: It's interesting. She worked on the Jeopardy! show for 14 years, non-Christian though, and I worked at Nickelodeon for 20 as a Christian.

Butch Hartman: And there were a lot of times just dealing with... 'Cause I'd work in writers' rooms with Hollywood writers and, again, my walk was the way it was. At the beginning I was still very secular. I would love Jesus, but I was still cursing.

Julieann: You wouldn't tell anybody.

Butch Hartman: Wouldn't tell anybody. Terrified to tell anybody. Then when I'd tell people, you'd get a look, you'd get mocked, or you'd get left out of the conversation. And those are things you learn how to deal with slowly because you realize that, look, I know the Lord's turning me. He's... You go from glory to glory. I'm going to this other level that I'm not gonna be able to bring these people with me on because, quite frankly, the road with Christ is a different road.

Butch Hartman: It's the narrow path that leads to salvation, and it's a very - it's a path that's awesome to be on, but there's challenges. And when you're walking in a way the world isn't walking, they either embrace you or they reject you very quickly. And, in Hollywood though, but I had my shows going and they were going very well, so I had a lot of people I was employing. Nickelodeon really needed me and I love Nickelodeon. I had a great time there.

Julieann: Yeah.

Butch Hartman: Never any real bad situations happen, but I would just, I would learn - look, I could tell this person about the gospel but not this person. Or I can't go and just start... I would thank God in meetings and you'd see the reaction from people. Okay, better not do that out loud anymore. Stuff like that. But after a while, people would come to me privately if they needed prayer. They started knowing who they could come to and things like that.

Julieann: And we were just learning. Again we didn't know what was right, what was wrong. Did we say this? Did we not say that? I would, I had a pastor that I would just call. He was one of the associate pastors. I'm like, "Can you say this out in...?" again, we knew nothing. I was 37. I knew nothing about this. And I was learning myself, and I'm trying to, and we're trying to now figure out, how do you teach kids this?

Julieann: I never knew about VeggieTales. I never knew about any of that stuff. And 'cause you, if you don't look for it, you don't, you don't, you won't find it. But we really, what we do now though is we know that people are influenced more than ever before by entertainment. More than ever because we don't have to go home and watch the TV. We can watch this now anywhere at any time. Anywhere, 24/7.

Julieann: And so now we wanna leave a legacy of entertainment that is uplifting, that is encouraging, that is going to help somebody in their life. So what we have right now with Butch being the household name that he is from Nickelodeon and all his shows, the fruit that we see from that is any place where there is a Gen Z, or even millennials too. "Butch Hartman, you made my life. you made my childhood. You changed my life."

Julieann: Over and over. We do Comic-Cons 'cause he loves being with his audience. "You changed my life. You made my childhood. Oh, my gosh, I don't know what I would've done if I didn't have your shows." So now this is something that we've experienced, nobody else has, but we know that with our content now, we're gonna have the same thing happen.

Julieann: And we're probably going to be in heaven someday when we decide to go, that there's gonna be people coming in saying, "If it wasn't for that song, if it wasn't for that show, I would not be here right now." That's the fruit we're looking for. The, the people that give their life to Jesus because they watched a show that showed them how much Jesus loved them.

Butch Hartman: One last thing I'll say, I've been approached a lot as I was coming up in Hollywood "Hey, you wanna make, do you wanna make an adult show? What, you wanna make a show about sex or what all the... You wanna make a dirty, filthy show?" That type of thing. And I just would always say, "No, I can't do that. I'm just, I'm not, that's not who I am."

Julieann: Yeah.

Butch Hartman: "I'm not gonna make that type of thing." And so I'll make like a G plus or PG rated show. That's about as high as I'll go. But you really have to start taking this into account 'cause a ton of work goes into any show. Any TV show. Any cartoon, any song.

Butch Hartman: When people go, "Oh, I didn't know that was in there," there is a... That's a lie, 'cause they take so long to make and so many approvals have to happen, and everything is very purposeful in just about every show. Again- ... we're not perfect. Hopefully we've got as many good things in there as we can. But a lot of these big Hollywood studios will say, "Wow, I didn't know that was even in there." It's like, "Dude, that-"

Julieann: "How did you..." yes.

Butch Hartman: "You've been making that thing for five years." Yeah, that doesn't happen. You knew that was in there."

Jim: Everybody, you can check out what Butch and Julieann are working on, The Garden. You can get it on YouTube. There's an app. Check it out. All the links will be in the show notes. Butch and Julieann Hartman, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today.

Julieann: Thank you.

Butch Hartman: Guys, we're grateful. Thank you.

Martha: You bet.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, and our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.