Parent Compass Radio

Hank Erwin: When the boys were young, I think Andy was six and Jon was about two, they would say, "Daddy, tell us a bedtime story." So I told them stories every night on Woodlawn. Little Jon on the bottom bunk, he said, "Daddy, one day we're going to make a motion picture about this." They would hold on to that dream for 30 years and then finally make the motion picture called Woodlawn.

Host: For the former Alabama State Senator, Hank Erwin, it has actually been his bedtime stories told to his two young sons that have most powerfully changed history. His true stories of Woodlawn football ignited in the boys a desire to become filmmakers. 40 years later, the world now knows Hank's sons as the Erwin Brothers, Andy and Jon, who have gone on to produce and direct 10 faith-based motion pictures, all of which have won Dove Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Christian Film.

These films include Woodlawn, Jesus Revolution, and I Can Only Imagine, which was the highest-grossing independent film of 2018. I Can Only Imagine 2 is in theaters as of March 2026. In February of 2025, House of David, a faith-based television series, came out on Amazon Prime Video, hitting the number-one spot on the platform with 22 million viewers in the first 17 days.

Thank you so much, Hank, for being with us. We're glad you're here. Could you have ever imagined when you were growing up that this would be your life? Or did you just always know God was enormous?

Hank Erwin: Well, that's a great question, Natalie. Delighted to be with you, what an honor to be on your show. When I was growing up, I just dreamed about one day being a professional baseball player. That was my boyhood dream, and I played baseball all the way through college.

The interesting thing about it was I got saved in college. I became a Christian in college. I committed my life to Jesus my sophomore year, and the whole trajectory of my life changed. I found that I had more of my baseball buddies coming to my dorm room asking, "What does God say about my problem?" I thought, "I'm just a brand-new Christian. I don't even know the Bible. I've never even read it." I thought maybe I need to start reading the Bible.

As a result, it began to play in my heart that God was calling me to a ministry. I loved sports, so I thought, well, I can do a sports ministry. So when we graduated from college and I got married to my sweetheart Sheila, we moved to Birmingham to start a sports ministry with high school athletes. That's how we ended up at Woodlawn and were able to experience the legendary story, which is now a motion picture.

So that's how it all started. I went and got a little Bible training at Dallas Seminary and then ended up needing to work my way through college, so I got into radio and television and just stayed there for the last 30 years. Now my boys are making motion pictures, so we followed the grandkids, moved our studios to Nashville, Tennessee, and that's where we live right now. It's an amazing way that the Lord guides your steps, but we have had an amazing adventure. I remember telling Sheila one time, I said, "Sweetheart, we've never had a boring life, that's for sure." It has been an adventure from day one. So we're delighted to say Jesus is the greatest thing that can ever happen to any person anywhere on the planet Earth.

Host: I love it. Tell us about your father, a World War II veteran. We owe a debt to him. A World War II veteran as well as a Medal of Honor recipient.

Hank Erwin: That's true, and I'm pleased that you would cite that story. My father's passed on now, but I was privileged to be able to grow up under his leadership and his example. My father was in World War II. He was out in the Pacific flying with B-29s. He was a radio operator, and he flew about 17 missions over Japan.

On one of those missions, a phosphorus bomb exploded in the plane, and my dad picked it up in his bare hands and carried it through the plane and threw it out the co-pilot's window and saved the entire crew from disaster. He was burned so badly that they didn't think he was going to live, so they rushed him back to a hospital, bandaged him up.

Because his feat was so daring and so unbelievably spectacular—that anybody would pick up a bomb that's burning at 2,000 degrees, pick it up in his bare hands to try to save his crew—they thought this was so extraordinary and so daring that they said, "This kid, we want him to have the Medal of Honor before he dies," because that's what they were expecting him to do at any moment.

So they rushed the Medal of Honor to him on the island of Guam. They gathered around his hospital bed. He was bandaged up from head to toe, and they gently laid it on his chest, the Medal of Honor, saying, "Thank you for what you did to save our lives."

I'm pleased to tell you that Dad survived, came back to Alabama, and lived 57 more years. He spent 40 years taking care of veterans at the Veterans Hospital. The one thing I can tell you about my dad is he was a role model for the ages. I have never seen a man live a life of honor like my father. He was a man that believed in always doing the right thing, always honoring the Lord, always honoring the United States, and always honoring veterans. You can go to YouTube if you want to. There's a video series on the Medal of Honor, and Dad's story's on there. Just type in Red Erwin and it will go right to his story, and you can watch it. You would have loved him. He was a man that loved America, and he's what the Medal of Honor is all about.

Host: So it seems from what you've said, faith really changed the trajectory of your life and your career, or what became important to you. You can talk more about that if you'd like to, but I am fascinated with Explo '72. I hear you were there. So what was it and how did it affect you?

Hank Erwin: You know, that's a great story and a great question because Sheila and I got married in 1972, and we did our honeymoon at Explo '72 in Dallas. Now for the folks who may not be aware of Explo '72, that was the largest ever attempted college youth rally in the world. They had never done this in the United States of America. They had had Woodstock and rock concerts, but nobody had ever tried a Christian rally on the level of Woodstock until Explo '72.

They drew 250,000 young people to Dallas, Texas, for a week of services in the Cotton Bowl with Billy Graham, Johnny Cash, and Bill Bright. Then they had the big rally on Stemmons Freeway in Dallas that was being built; it wasn't even through yet, so they had enough room out there to put 250,000 young people outside in the daytime and have the biggest rally ever for Christian kids in the history of the country.

I was there for that. We had a wonderful week there in Dallas. We were in the Cotton Bowl every night. Billy Graham spoke, Johnny Cash sang, and it was an amazing thing. We found that we had a cause to tell the world about, and that's that Jesus can change your life. When you come to know Him, great things can happen. At the end of the week, 250,000 excited young people left Dallas with a desire to share the gospel with everybody in their neighborhood.

As Billy Graham said the final night, he said, "Now I'm asking every one of you to go home and share the good news of Jesus Christ because in Jesus, we can solve the problems of the world, and the things that we want in the future, we can get them through coming to a relationship with Jesus Christ."

Host: You learned a lot from seminary and you were going to be a potential preacher. What did you learn from that process of seminary, thinking you were going to be a preacher and ended up a TV journalist?

Hank Erwin: Yeah, that's a good question. I really wanted to serve the Lord. I was such a young Christian at the time, such a young believer. I thought, well, I want to really understand the Bible. If I'm going to teach it, if I'm going to preach it, if I'm going to counsel people using the Bible, I want to make sure I understand it.

So I began to ask the question: Where can I go to school that will give me the best training to thoroughly understand the Bible so that when I give the counsel coming from that great book, I'm giving them accurate information? Everybody said Dallas Seminary. If you want to know the Bible, go to Dallas.

I said, "Then that's where we're going to go." So when Sheila and I got married and moved past the days of athletic ministry in Birmingham, we headed toward Dallas, Texas, and lived seven years in Dallas and went to Dallas Seminary and got an unbelievable, fine education, the finest education you can get of understanding the Bible and making sure it's accurate and that you're giving truthful information that is provable, it's got evidence, and it's so credible that people when they put their faith in Jesus know that they're not putting their faith in either a legend or a myth, but they are putting their faith in a living Savior backed up by tons of evidence.

One of the things that a lot of people forget is that the Christian faith is the only faith that has credible evidence so that your faith is not based on just a whim, it's based on a belief system that is really backed up by tons of credible evidence. Meaning this: For example, when you say that we believe in Jesus, a lot of people don't know that the evidence for Jesus coming out of the grave at the resurrection is backed up by tons of evidence over the last 2,000 years that it's absolutely true.

So that means when you put your faith in Jesus, you have a credible faith. You have a faith based on evidence, documents, hard evidence that gives you the encouragement and also the satisfaction that you made a great, correct decision because it's based on evidence, not just a whim of faith. That's why when I was at Dallas, I learned all of that. I can take it back to anywhere in the United States and give people great confidence. When I talk to them about Jesus, they can say for sure, "I put my faith in Christ because there's evidence to prove it's real."

Host: Yes, I've so heard that the Bible is the most accurate book. It's also stood the test of time. It's the answer because He's real. Help us with why did you run for Senator, and what did you feel like you accomplished? You were there from 2002 to 2010.

Hank Erwin: Good question. I did about 30 years in Alabama radio and TV. I guess counting Dallas, it would be about 30 years. I also was a Christian talk show host, and my purpose and my commitment was to always try to give the truth of the matter to my audience from the umpire itself, which is the Bible. I didn't feel like, and I shouldn't do this as a Christian, to say, "You base it on what I think. What I think is the only way." You can't do that.

We've got so many people out there that are telling people, "I know the way, follow me." That's not what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to point them to Jesus and say follow Him, and then in His book, you'll find the way. So I made the decision when I was a talk show host that the Bible was going to become the umpire of the discussion. It was not what I believe because I can just have an opinion.

But if I'm going to tell you what you ought to do, it's got to have some basis of fact in a book that is based on the Scriptures, based on Jesus, and based on the truth of the matter from the people that were there that knew God, that saw God, and wrote it all down in the book. If Jesus is true, the Bible is true, so that became my umpire.

For 30 years, we used the Bible as the umpire. We had some amazing shows, we won a lot of awards, and it was an honor to be able to do that role and help people all over the state of Alabama. Then we had a situation where, at the end of about 20-some years on the radio in Alabama, the company suddenly ended my contract. It was one of those moments where this doesn't make sense. Why would you end the contract? It was a business decision.

I always held the position that when something unexpected happens, there's a bigger thing brewing. It came to me out of nowhere, and the voice of the Lord said, "I want you to call the Senator from your district that you've covered for the last 20 years and talk to him about that."

So I gave him a call and I said, "Is it true you're not going to run for Senate anymore?" He said, "No, I'm going to run for Lieutenant Governor." I said, "Well, who's going to take your place? We need to have a family advocate, and that's what you were." He said, "I don't know, we're looking. You got any ideas?" I said, "Well, what about me?" I thought he was going to say, "Well, let me think about it," but he immediately blurted out, "That would be terrific!"

So I said, "Well, if that's the case, let me talk to my wife." So I talked with Sheila, we had a word of prayer, and we came back and said, "Okay, we're going to do it." So we put our hat in the ring for Senate and we won. Then we won a second time, so I was in the Senate for eight years.

I discovered the tremendous joy of being able to say when God closes a window, it's because He's got another one open that He's going to direct you to because He wants to continue your purpose in life, and the next level is here. So this has to close in order that this one can open.

The being let go at the radio station was not anything other than it was the divine will of God. We ended up doing eight years in the Alabama Senate, and I knew exactly why the Lord had put me there. Our state was facing a big quest for gambling to come to Alabama, and there was an attempt by gambling forces in that area. They were going to try to overwhelm and seize Alabama and become the Las Vegas of the East and actually take over all of the major sources of income in the state of Alabama.

The Lord put me there as the roadblock to disrupt this movement that had been building and working in the background to get all of the pieces of the puzzle in place so that they could pull off this thing. Then the Lord got me elected just for the moment to be the roadblock and blocked it and prevented it from ever taking over the state of Alabama.

So Alabama is still a gambling-free state. It is not a gambling state at all. It means that there's more money still in circulation and not going into gambling interests that would have taken that money out of state and sent it somewhere else. So I knew why I was put there, and that was to stop gambling from taking over the state of Alabama, and with God's help, it was very successful. So that's why I was in the Senate, and it was a blessing to be able to say I was there.

Host: Do you think this affected your sons, Jon and Andy? I guess they were young, in their 20s at the time, that you were Senator and what you were doing.

Hank Erwin: You know, it's interesting you say that. My two sons came to me when Jon was 12 years old—he's now 43. When he was 12, he came to me in the living room. This was before I was elected to the Senate. He said, "Dad, we think God's calling us to make motion pictures." This was before that was even a cool idea because motion pictures back then from Christians were very rare, and most of them were very cheap and cheesy.

Jon said, "We think God's calling us to make motion pictures." So I said, "Well, answer the call. Go for it. If God's calling you, go for it." So they went back in their bedroom in our house and got down on their knees in their bedroom in their junior high school days and formed Erwin Brothers Motion Pictures.

I helped them get their first camera and get their first editing system. They took out the camera and started doing little videos around the church. They got really good so that by the time I got to the Senate, they were on the verge of really breaking out and going somewhere. They were getting very good as kids.

So when I was in the Senate, they loved those days in the Senate because it was great for them to be able to see how our government worked. But they still had this call to do motion pictures. They had won awards for documentaries, they had won Dove Awards for music videos, so they were just about ready to break out and start making motion pictures.

I came to the point where I ran for Lieutenant Governor and came up short, so Sheila and I decided to retire after that. It was just at the right time because as soon as we stepped off the stage, they stepped up on the stage and made their first motion picture. It was so well done it made the front pages of the New York Times, and they were off and running in their career.

The timing was unbelievable, providential, that I would serve to do a task the Lord wanted me to do and then I would step off the stage at just the time my boys were stepping onto the stage. It was beautiful to watch and see what the Lord has done since then. They've won 11 Dove Awards for their motion pictures. Every one of them has been A+. Andy, my oldest son, has five A+ movies. He's been graded by CinemaScore, and he's got five A+s in his work. That equals him with Alex Kendrick of the Kendrick Brothers, and both of them are tied for number one for the most A+s of any directors ever in Hollywood history.

These are two faith-based directors. My son Jon is coming along right back of them. He diverted away from motion pictures so that he could do his lifelong dream to do a series on King David. So he's got four of those, and he's got a brand-new movie coming out July the 4th called Young George Washington, and he's going to get his fifth, I'm sure, his fifth A+ with that movie. So by the time you get to July the 4th, I think you're going to see three faith-based directors with A+ scores higher than any directors in Hollywood history, all from a faith-based perspective. It's amazing. So all of it has come together and is woven together like a tapestry that is glorifying Jesus, and it's so satisfying.

Host: Oh, it's amazing. I love where you took this from. "Oh, I lost my job of 20 years," but you knew that God doesn't make mistakes. He created you, and the verse says, and this is true of everybody, right? We are God's masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that He's planned in advance for us to do. So what's wonderful is He's given us gifts. He's got things for us to do. We can all know God and make Him known, just like you've been saying. So it's exciting, and we all can be a part. We can all make a difference. We can tell people about movies so that they can know somebody's done the hard work to make the movie, so there's always things that we can do to fulfill our purpose in the Lord like you're saying, even when these things look like, "Oh, this isn't going to work out." No, God is not stressed or worried about it. You need to tell us about the bedtime stories on Woodlawn that you told your boys when they were very young. Andy and Jon, Andy's the older one by four years.

Hank Erwin: That's right, that's a good reminder. I was a speaker at a big banquet last night here in middle Tennessee, and I told what you're asking to them. They loved it. It's a true story. When the boys were young, I think Andy was six and Jon was about two, they slept on a bunk bed in one of the bedrooms in our house. Every night they would say, "Daddy, tell us a bedtime story." I didn't want to tell them King Arthur stories. That was just not my deal.

So I came to them and I said, "Listen, let me tell you about the time when God came down and played football." They said, "Oh boy!" So I started telling them Woodlawn stories of the great things that happened at Woodlawn High School when I worked with their football team as their chaplain for two years in 1973 and 1974. They got so excited they couldn't wait every night to go to bed because they wanted to hear another story because they said, "This is amazing, Daddy, did that really happen?" "Yes, it really happened."

So I told them stories every night on Woodlawn. After about six or seven weeks, little Jon on the bottom bunk, he said, "Daddy, one day we're going to make a motion picture about this." I said, "Well, you go for it, son," not knowing that he would, they would hold on to that dream for 30 years and then finally make the motion picture called Woodlawn. It has been seen all over the United States of America by every major college football team. It's even been shown in the NFL Hall of Fame.

As a result of that movie, that movie has caused 25,000 decisions for Jesus through watching the movie Woodlawn. It started with a bedtime story. It just shows you that bedtime stories told to those young people can lead to amazing dreams come true. So that's how you got the movie Woodlawn, and you can watch it on your telephone right now. Just type it in on Google and say Woodlawn the Movie, and it will pop right up on your telephone, and you can watch it and see why it has led to so many decisions for Jesus. The movie still touches people around the world, and it's so amazing. It started with bedtime stories.

Host: I love that. I watched it some time after it came out in 2015, but a couple of months ago my husband had never seen it, and we happened to fall onto it just randomly. We watched it, and after we watched it, I had been looking online for something about the movie. I had no idea that the person in the movie was you, who was the father of the producers. It's such a fun story to have your boys produce a movie about what happened in your life that you told them about. How old were they when you told them those stories? Do you remember?

Hank Erwin: Well, they were six and two. They slept on that bunk, and so Andy always slept on the top because he was older, so he was six, and Jon was so young we put him on the bottom bunk. Their first movie was called October Baby. They made that in 2010. That was a pro-life movie, very well done, so exciting.

The next one they did was a comedy called Moms' Night Out. If you ask Sheila and me which is our all-time favorite movie that the boys made, we'd say Moms' Night Out. That's our favorite because it's a comedy and it is so funny. Jon wrote the script, and then they both filmed it together. It became a comedy for the ages. It's about home life, growing up kids, and trying to raise kids and the zany things that can happen during the course of the day. So that's our personal favorite.

Then they came along with Woodlawn, and then after that, they came with their breakout movie that took them to the top, and that's called I Can Only Imagine. Since then, they've made a ton of movies. They're now based here in Franklin, Tennessee, with their studio called Kingdom Story Company. It's the company that's producing the new movie called I Can Only Imagine 2. It's in theaters all over the United States, and now it's circulating outside foreign distribution around the world.

Host: So exciting. So I Can Only Imagine, the first one, became the top-grossing independent film in 2018. Why did so many people be impacted, and why did it resonate with people that watched it?

Hank Erwin: I Can Only Imagine was a song written by Bart Millard with the singing group MercyMe. The song became probably the all-time best-selling song in the world when Bart wrote it. It was equal to some of the great hymns that have been written that are in the hymnbooks. This was a song that was written that touched the hearts of people. It was sung all over the world, a lot at funerals with loved ones.

So that song became an endearing classic to people all over the world. Millions of people played it when their loved ones passed on. It was a song that gave people hope, and it's a song that caused you to look forward to heaven and what you're going to see when you arrive and how you're going to see Jesus for the first time. It was a song that captured the imagination of Christians all over the world.

But nobody had ever told the backstory of how this song got even written. That's when the boys were invited to come in and do that movie on the backstory of how this famous song was written. So people had already been touched for years with that song, and they knew the message, they knew the title. So when they saw a movie was going to tell the backstory, they came in droves to see it.

Not only just to see the story, but it was so well made. It was a beautiful movie, and the people loved it. They kept coming back and coming back three and four and five times to see it, and they'd bring their friends back because they wanted them to enjoy it too. So it became a monster hit for Lionsgate. Lionsgate financed the filming of it, and the boys did it; they did it ahead of schedule and came in under budget, so Lionsgate loved that. But they were just floored by the return of the investment because it made something like $87 million.

Everybody in Hollywood sat up and said, "Who are these guys?" Then secondly, that tells us there is a ton of people out there who want faith-based product, and they're showing us by these numbers that we've got to start making some faith-based type movies. We're losing an audience here we didn't even know was out there. So that's what that movie proved—that there is a solid faith-based audience that is yearning for Hollywood or even independents to make quality movies that they can go see and enjoy and take their kids to.

Host: We must talk about Jesus Revolution.

Hank Erwin: That's an interesting story. When the boys were filming Woodlawn, the story happened in 1973. Jon was filming a scene during a break. He noticed on the coffee table was the famous Time Magazine with the psychedelic picture of Jesus on the front cover. It caught his attention, and he picked it up and looked at it.

He told me, he said, "I asked a question: How does Jesus end up on the cover of Time Magazine, and it's based back in the '70s?" He started flipping through the magazine and he read the article, and he said, "I didn't know this. I didn't know that there was a Jesus Revolution. I got to make a movie about this."

So he went back and started making the plans. It took him about seven years to get the plans fulfilled and get the script written, get it approved. He became friends with Greg Laurie, who was the famous preacher on the West Coast and also a product of the Jesus Revolution. They worked together, and Greg was a consultant, and they made the motion picture Jesus Revolution.

When they put it up on the movie theater screen, it was an amazing accomplishment because it specifically brought the name Jesus to worldwide attention through a movie. I never thought personally that Hollywood would green-light it because it was specifically targeting Jesus. It was amazing that they said do it.

They gave full support to it, and they put it up. They thought maybe it was going to make just a few million dollars to pay everybody back, and it ended up not only making over $50 million for a bonus, but it also brought out millions of people who were affected by the Jesus Revolution. Many of the ones that came out of California in the late '60s that were there in the Jesus Revolution that came out of Southern California and Chuck Smith and all of the Calvary Chapels, it brought back the scrapbook for all of these people to be able to go back and see their roots in a movie.

It just was so exciting for those people to see what they came through and how they experienced it, the joy it brought with them, and it just gave them a breath of fresh air. The whole country embraced it as a movie that reminded them of their youth. So it was a huge success, and Jesus Revolution continues to be one of the favorites that's watched on Amazon Prime and all of the streamers online.

Host: I think people found it interesting, too, that the hippie pastor was played by Jonathan Roumie, who's Jesus in The Chosen, and then you had Kelsey Grammer of Frasier playing the pastor, Chuck Smith. I Can Only Imagine 2, as you mentioned, is out right now, and people can find it and watch it. Tell us, what's the hope?

Hank Erwin: It's a great movie. Matter of fact, I Can Only Imagine 2, I personally think is better than the original because it tells a brand-new story that was not known until this movie. Bart Millard, who is the lead singer for MercyMe, had also carried a story after the original I Can Only Imagine, and it was the story of how the second most famous song called "Even If" was written and why it was written at all.

It told the story of how Bart's young son developed stage one diabetes, and for the rest of his life, they had to do the daily drill of insulin and making sure that the youngster was cared for properly so that he wouldn't have a serious sickness. It tells that story so compellingly, and then it ends with a tremendous crescendo at the end of singing the song "Even If."

In other words, they had been praying that the Lord would heal their son, but they couldn't understand why he was sick. Then a substitute lead acting singer, Tim Timmons, comes along out of nowhere to open for MercyMe in their tours, and he is the one that wrote the early version of the song "Even If" because Tim had cancer. They didn't know about it, and Tim was living day to day, not knowing if he would even make the finish of the tour.

He was the one that laid the foundation for the song, and Bart finished the song, sang it at the end, and it brings tears to your eyes. If you want to see a movie that will bring tears to your eyes but joy to your heart, you got to see I Can Only Imagine 2. When you come out of the theater, you'll be singing the song.

Host: House of David is a faith-based television series that was on Amazon Prime Video and went crazy. Number one on the platform with 22 million viewers in 17 days. But what is the reason for that series? Why was it made?

Hank Erwin: Another good question. When Jon was 16, I took him to the Holy Land with me. I took him along, and we went to the Holy Land to film a little travel video documentary on my trip to the Holy Land. I let Jon be the cameraman. So Jon went with me, and he was in heaven on earth because the Holy Land is the ultimate treasure of video anywhere, to be able to video the places where Jesus walked.

While we were doing that trip and that tour, he learned a lot about King David, and he really fell in love not only with Jesus but the story of King David. He vowed in his heart one day, "I'm going to tell his story because I'm just finding out the grandeur of his story by coming to Israel."

So he held on to that dream for 25 years. It took a number of the movies that they did together before Jon said the time is now. So he decided to break away from making theatrical motion pictures, and he started a second company to develop video series material. He got the company going and then negotiated with Amazon Prime to finance it. They liked the idea, and they sent him to do the project.

They went to Athens, Greece, to shoot the first season. Little did they know the first season was so amazing it did hit number one in the world. Everybody just loved it. It became the number-one series on Amazon Prime, first ever a faith-based series became number one. Never happened before. Faith-based series becomes number one in the world. How do you explain that?

The people loved it every way. Matter of fact, it became the number-one series in Israel of all places. So it was an amazing time. They gathered up a cast that was remarkable, skilled, and fit the roles perfectly. The young man that played David, Michael Iskander, is a believer in Jesus, loves the Lord, wanted to represent David in a very faithful way, and he did a terrific job.

Even Goliath is born again. Martyn Ford plays Goliath, and we met him in Athens, Greece, a year ago. The guy is like marble. He's 6'8", 300 pounds, not an ounce of fat on him; he's just pure marble. But in person, he is the most gentle British actor I've ever met, and he wants it known that he serves Jesus playing Goliath of all people.

So they had a tremendous cast, they did a tremendous project. They filmed even the second season. People were clamoring for the second season, and it is a binge-watch thing when you get a chance to watch it. When you start watching it, you can't put it down, you can't turn it off because it is so compelling.

Jon wrote the scripts, and I said, "The writing is fascinating. How did you come up with the ideas of reading between the lines?" because the ideas that you're proposing are possible, are logical, are understandable. He just said this is what the Lord showed our team to do. As a result, they put together a very plausible unknown backstory that really resonated with the viewers.

I can tell you this: They're getting ready to go back to shoot the third season of House of David, and it should come out probably either about Christmas time or first of 2027. But to all of those fans of the House of David, just hang on. The third season is coming, and you'll get a chance to binge on that season three and find out more about the rise of King David. I love that they have kept it faithful to the Scripture when they are using the Scripture, too. It's very important.

Host: Help us with this big picture of the power of film to do good versus bad and how it can bless people's hearts and lives and families.

Hank Erwin: Yeah, when I was doing ministry work, I might get a chance to teach Sunday School to young people once every Sunday for maybe 45 minutes. Every once in a while, I would preach. The boys were young, maybe 14, 16, something like that. I remember Jon coming to me and he said, "Dad, you don't understand this. But you may preach to these kids one hour a week on the Bible. But truly, it needs to be understood they learn life every Friday night in the movie theater. That's where they learn about life."

Jon said, "Dad, we've just got to be there." You have missionaries that go to India, missionaries that go to Africa. There's got to be some missionaries that go to the movie theater because that's where the kids are. They're learning life there, and look at what they're getting.

So Jon said, "That's our calling. We're not wanting to be famous, we just want to be missionaries to the movie theater." I've never been more proud of them because they haven't wavered from that mission. They could make a ton of money if they would just start making horror flicks or some type of secular stuff that blows up buildings and all of that stuff.

But no, they have found their mission and their purpose, and that is to be missionaries to the movie theaters to tell true stories about how Jesus makes a difference and how He brings hope to your life. It's the young people, 35 and under especially, junior high through high school and college, that's where the bulk of the audience is.

If we're going to try to give that group a hope, then we're going to have to turn out product that speaks to their age and speaks to their needs and leaves them with an alternative, a positive alternative to life that comes through Christ. You know, the average teenager's going to see horror stuff, they're going to see pornography stuff. I mean, that's what the theaters are turning out right now.

We wonder why there is so much turmoil in American homes nowadays. It's because that's what they're being trained on. The young people are not being trained in their family, they're being trained by Hollywood. They're reproducing what they are being told, and by the movies, the movies are teaching them their version of what a normal life is.

Most of the Hollywood stuff is not normal, it's perverted, but it is portrayed as normal. So when the kids come home from their time at the movie theater and they get back into their home, their home they would say is boring. "That's glamorous what we see on Friday night, that's what we want to have." You've got to teach the young people, no, that is not a way that is normal. That is the way that leads to disaster and misery, and Hollywood shows that with stories every day of movie actors in crisis and movie theaters going under because they're portraying the glory in a perverted line. So that's why we've got to be there.

Host: The heartbeat and the calling behind the Parent Compass series that you of course are on right now—the Lord said in prayer exactly what you were talking about: that He wanted to be presented to parents, children, and families, that He's the answer and He has all the answers no matter everyday life or tremendous difficulty. He wants to be there and pull us through, bring us comfort, and there is inexplicable glorious joy in our salvation. He wants to give us peace beyond all comprehension and love that knows no bounds. So we have the privilege of watching good things that we walk away from encouraged, empowered, uplifted, and God will guide us to make the right choices so we don't have as many problems. Lots of times, a lot of the things that we choose are actually what brings us a lot of the heartache. So it's wonderful that these movies are coming out and the TV series as well and people are learning about God. What would be your advice as a parent and a grandparent?

Hank Erwin: Well, several things I would say, and these are things we taught our boys. First of all, I took responsibility for our house. I took personal responsibility for everything that happened in our house because I felt like the Lord might not judge me for what's happening in Europe or what would be happening in the Middle East, but He would be judging me for how I cared for His family that I was responsible for.

So in wanting to serve Him and love Him and represent Him well, I took personal responsibility for my house. Sheila was the perfect partner to work with me to make our house very special. We put up the first thing we did, we put up a sign, a little calligraphy type painting on the wall of our house, and it simply said, "The purpose of our house is to know Him and to make Him known."

The reason we did that is because we wanted everybody to know what our house was all about. When they walked in the door, it showed them exactly on the wall what we were dedicated to doing. I taught my boys this is our purpose for this house. That means we only do those things that please the Lord. If it doesn't fit under that banner of "To know Him and to make Him known," we don't do it.

I remember one time when Andy was nine years old, he came to me and said, "Dad, I want to play Pee-Wee football. Can I play Pee-Wee football?" I said, "Well, this is the purpose of our house: to know Him and to make Him known. If you can tell me how playing Pee-Wee football will fit in that purpose, then we'll go from there. But if you don't know how to fit that into what our purpose is..."

The reason is we're going to have to put money into it, buy equipment, we're going to have to travel, we're also going to have to go to practices every day; it's going to take time and effort. So the question is, is this something that would fit into the purpose that would be glorifying to the Lord? Would it be edifying to people around us? Would it push our house forward or would it be a distraction?

I said he said, "Well, I don't know." I said, "Well, you go pray about it and report back to me what the Lord tells you." So he dashed off and for about a day or so he was gone praying, and he came back to me and says, "I got it." I said, "What is it?" He said, "I can try out for the football team. If I make the team, then I can use that position to witness to all of my teammates and try to lead them to the Lord."

I said, "Well, you got a point there. You're trying to make Jesus known, which is in our purpose statement here, and it is glorifying to the Lord. I think you got something, so yeah, that's the purpose of what you're going to try to do. Let's go for it."

So he went and tried out for the nine-year-old Pee-Wee team. He made the team, and he just started witnessing to everyone of his teammates at nine years old. They elected him to be the chaplain of their football team, and he led about nine of his players to the Lord as a nine-year-old. They had the best season they had had in 10 years at that level, and it was a remarkable year.

It was an exciting year to see our son excel at using football as an opportunity to tell people about Jesus. So that's the first thing I would tell every parent. A lot of kids don't know why you do the things that you do around the house. They don't need to ask that question. You need to tell them. You need to show them the purpose of your home.

If you don't know the purpose of your home as a parent, then the first problem is that's what you've got to do first: go back and get down on your knees and say, "Lord, what's the purpose of our house? We've never asked You that." You've got to get a purpose so that there can be stability in the house.

Otherwise, the school down the street is going to define what your house is supposed to be like, or it could be a gang in the neighborhood that says this is what you do, this is the way you should do your house. All of a sudden, if you don't have a purpose, then somebody's going to come into that vacuum and seize it and declare what your house is supposed to be all about. As a result, we had the most joyful time in life raising our two boys and seeing life from Jesus' perspective. A lot of it was coming from the fact that we did two things: Not only did we come to Christ personally, but we established our home on a definite purpose, and that is to know Him and to make Him known.

Host: You are doing something right now that is on your hat. You are behind the Great American Prayer Revival known as GAP26. Tell us what it is and how we can get involved.

Hank Erwin: Well, that's great. GAP26 was a massive success. We have just wrapped it up and finished it. This has been a year-long project that we started over a year ago here in Nashville. It was the attempt to kick-start the first national revival in American history in all 50 states at the same time.

Now that has never happened in American history. In 250 years of American history, there never has been a national revival. Now there've been pockets of revival here and there, but it's never happened in all 50 states at the same time. The Lord just dropped it in our laps. We are a group of retired guys that met for prayer, and we just said, "Lord, is there anything we can do?" We were watching TV just like you guys do, and we saw all of the chaos and all of the riots and all of the stuff that was going on out in the streets of America. We said, "That's not the America that we grew up with. We don't want that. Is there anything we can do?"

The Lord gave us the idea: Start a revival. When people get saved and people get right with God, crime goes down, hope returns, happy homes return. People get excited about the Lord. They start seeing going to work and quitting sin, and then the community settles down and great things happen. Just through a revival. You don't have to raise taxes, you don't have to put the National Guard on the streets. If you get them excited about Jesus, they self-discipline themselves and they quit sin.

So get a revival going if that's what you want to do. So a group of about eight of us made that commitment here in Nashville, and we started the effort called the Great American Prayer Revival, GAP26. I went to nearly all 50 states recruiting and talking about the need for revival in America, and it resonated all over America. It was awesome. People said, "That's what we need. That's it. This is what America needs."

So we set it up for the Great American Prayer Revival to happen in March of 2026. We started a year ago, and we just finished and wrapped it up. We did four nights of live streaming from Nashville, Tennessee, showing how revival is affecting America by what we had built in 50 states. We told stories, we heard testimonies, we had special guests. It's four nights, two hours a night, eight total hours of video showing revival not only in churches but with young people, with men, with families. It was beautiful. It was a massive success.

We just wrapped it up, and I'm delighted to tell you you can now watch the reruns. They're so well done that you can watch them in your own home right now. Just go to the website gap-event.org. That's G-A-P-dash-event-dot-O-R-G. You can click on the watch button and you can see the wonderful things that happened during the days of the Great American Prayer Revival. It set off stories all over the United States that the media didn't decide to cover. Only in our video do you see what God did behind the scenes that the media doesn't have a clue about.

But it was beautiful prayer meetings all over the United States. Especially you've got to watch the Monday night program that we did on revival among Gen Z young people. That was a showstopper. Two hours we turned the whole event over to the whole program over to young people and just let them run with it, and it was unbelievable broadcasting. These young people that we featured on that program were so excited about Jesus and so exciting to watch. It was breathtaking video.

I had a funny time backstage when I went to our normal every night anchors and I said, "If these guys keep doing what they're doing out there, you're fired. I'm going to keep them," and we had a big laugh because they were showing the passion and the love of Jesus among young people. It was breathtaking. So watch the Monday night program that is now on our streamer station under gap-event.org and look for that program and get your young people to watch it.

Revival is here in young people all over the United States of America. They're going to change America, and it's so exciting. So the long story short is GAP26 is now complete, and it was a massive success all over the United States of America. Now we're on to the next level, which will be probably 2028, and that's going to be called Gap the World. You're going to see some amazing things with that. Great things are always available for people who are available to serve the Lord Jesus. This may be just your time as well.

Host: I agree, and prayer is the key. That's the key to all our families and our homes, just critical to revive prayer as well as our hearts for Jesus. Love that it's going all the way from Gen Z on to all the generations. We see it now in today's time. Bible sales have increased and Bible reading's increased. It's a joyful time. It definitely leads to good. We're so grateful to you for being here, Hank. We're grateful that you aren't retiring. I noticed there's no retirement in the Bible when I read it, anyway, and it doesn't seem like you're retiring. You just keep on, and all of us have things we can do where we can love our neighbors, love the people we see, give them a smile, tell them about the goodness of God. We thank you so much for everything you put your hand to and how you're making a difference in the world. We thank you for being here, Hank. Really appreciate it.

Hank Erwin: Natalie, thank you so much for the honor of being on your podcast. I'm proud of you. You're using it to serve the Lord and make Him known. I want you to keep it up and be a blessing to everybody that hears your voice.

Host: Thanks a million. God bless.

Hank Erwin: God bless you.