Jerrad Lopes
12 min read ⭑
“I don’t have to solve anything — only the Lord can do that with the local church, community and counseling. All I can do is give words to guys who are feeling something and don’t know how to say it.”
Jerrad Lopes knows from experience that loving your family is a lot easier and more effective when done from a place of healing rather than brokenness. Having grown up without a father while seeking validation in all the wrong places, Jerrad — author, speaker and founder of Dad Tired — soon learned that running a successful ministry wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Something inside had to change. Today, he’s getting painfully honest about that transformation, the crisis that kickstarted it and how he’s now helping other men experience the same change, too. You’ll also read about why he’s constantly on the lookout for ways to slow down and ditch technology, focus on the present, and connect with God, his family and his brothers in the faith.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
The common denominator connecting all my food preferences is time. All the things that I love about food or a good food place seem to be slowing down. I really love slowing down. I’m a California guy, so the first thing that comes to mind is going to Southern California and sitting near the ocean and eating tacos at a taco shop. I would pick that almost every day of the year. That’s my favorite. Why do I love that so much? I think there are multiple elements happening. I’m slowed down. I’m enjoying an overall atmosphere and also some really good food that you can’t get anywhere else.
My favorite restaurant in the world is here in my hometown of Bluffton, South Carolina. There’s a place here called Farm. It’s a farm-to-table place, and everything’s locally sourced. The menu changes almost weekly, so it depends on whatever the chef finds fresh around here. I love it when the food is amazing and healthy, but I also enjoy it because it’s my wife’s and my favorite place for a date night. The music and playlist are perfect. Sometimes you’re nodding your head. Sometimes you’re singing an old throwback. The customer service is perfect because it’s just enough to make you feel welcome but isn’t over the top like Dutch Brothers.
It’s very slow. You’re going to be there at least an hour and a half, maybe two hours, to enjoy your full meal. I keep thinking about time, people and atmosphere. All together, it’s something special. It’s as though God created all these puzzle pieces naturally and then told creative people like these chefs to “have fun” and “see what you can make out of all these puzzle pieces.” They create dishes I would never imagine. I would have never mixed these two ingredients, yet somehow, it’s this burst of flavor, and all of it came from the earth. Nothing is fake or artificial. It feels really spiritual in that the food impacts multiple senses. I’m across the table from the woman who knows me and loves me. I’m eating the ingredients of the earth. There’s music playing. All the senses are being hit, and it’s my favorite place in the world.
Ben Koorengevel; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
The two things that popped into my mind immediately without overthinking it were fishing and running. We live near the water, and I love being on a boat. Again, it goes back to what I was talking about in the answer above about food. Everything slows down. You’re just sitting out there.
I’m a huge fan of doing anything that people could have done at least a hundred or more years ago. If they couldn’t have done it a hundred or more years ago, then I don’t want to do it. And if they could have done it a hundred or more years ago, I want to do it. I’ve been trying to do more of that in my life.
Fishing is one of those. Being on a boat, I find myself talking to God in non-spiritual ways. It doesn’t feel like a “spiritual” moment. Sometimes I feel like I have to talk to God a certain way, but when I’m fishing, I talk to God in a more natural way. I do that when running, too, an activity I hate. I don’t like running at all, but my neighbor is super into running, and he got me into it. At the side of my desk, I’ve got all these medals for races I’ve entered. Everyone gets a medal if you participate. I didn’t win anything. But for some reason, when I go on these runs, I start talking to God in ways that I don’t normally. Those are two non-spiritual things that turned out to be pretty spiritual.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
I’m an affirmation addict. I need people to tell me I’m doing a good job in order to feel valuable and worthy in the world. That has caused me and the people around me great pain. I think the root of it is not having a dad around when I was growing up. My dad bailed when I was 3. So I had nobody to say, “Hey, you’ve got what it takes. You’re doing a good job. I believe in you.” As a result, I focused on areas of my life where I felt like I was valuable — sports, music, leadership — as I got older. In hindsight, I was grasping for something to make me feel powerful or valuable. Women did that for me. For a woman to tell me I was valuable seemed like a drug.
This issue came to a head a few years ago. I’d spent my life trying to accomplish things like write books, speak on stages and do big things. I’d accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish, and yet I still felt completely empty inside. I was depressed and empty. I was sad. I was desperate. I was feeding off reviews or what people said about me, and nobody could give me what I was longing for. My wife couldn’t give it to me. Reviews couldn’t give it to me. Numbers couldn’t give it to me. Literally nothing could give it to me. It was like a bucket that had a hole at the bottom. No matter what you put into it, it would not fill up.
It got to a point a couple of years ago when I was at a two-time Super Bowl MVP champion’s house recording a podcast. I left his house, flew down and did a national radio interview. I flew directly from there to the West Coast to speak to thousands of men. I’m saying all this because that was my ideal life. Those were the things I wanted to be doing, and because they happened back to back, I realized that none of it was satisfying. I was so empty and broken. I thought, If all the things I’ve wanted to accomplish are happening this week, and I’m still not happy, nothing will make me happy. I was sitting in a hotel room by myself and started thinking some weird, dark thoughts: It’s better for me not to be here. It would be better for my kids, my wife and everyone around me if I wasn’t here. Nobody really knows me. I’m a fake. I just stand on stages and talk in front of people. This isn’t who I really am. Who I really am is sad and addicted to affirmation. I’m a pathetic person and shouldn’t be here anymore.
By God’s grace, I called a mentor — an older, wiser guy — and told him, “I’m in a hotel room, and I’m convinced that it would be better for me not to be here.” He said, “Let’s get you some help right away,” and so he did. I got shipped off almost immediately to deep, intensive counseling involving two weeks of no phone and no access to the outside world and started to address all the demons and wounds from my childhood that I’d spent my entire life trying to fix. It was the hardest and most healing thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t have any grand ending to that story other than that I’m experiencing the freedom and redemption of being fully known and fully loved for the first time. My wife literally knows everything about me, every single thing, and she’s still stuck around and loves me. That has taught me that, between her and the people closest to me, I don’t have to be impressive to be valuable in the world. Believing that I don’t have to be impressive to be loved has been life-changing for me.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’ve been in ministry for almost 20 years, and I’ve done this men’s ministry through Dad Tired for the last 11. I’m in a fun spot where I get to share everything I just described about my own healing experience and try to help other guys have similar journeys. We’ve changed our mission statement to “strong families begin with healed men,” and that’s what I’m experiencing. I’m a better dad and husband than I was a few years ago because I’m experiencing more healing than I had a few years ago.
Now, I am trying to help men experience the same thing in as many ways as possible. I just watched the “Noah Kahan: Out of Body” documentary on Netflix. In it, he said, “Sometimes people think that because you can talk about a problem, you can solve it or have solved it.” I feel similarly. I’m not a counselor. I’m not pastoring a church. I’m just a podcaster. I’m a mediocre podcaster and author. Yet I feel like I can articulate what some guys are feeling, but they don’t know how to say it out loud. Maybe that’s what the Lord has called me to do. Sometimes I get tripped up, thinking, Well, now I’ve got to solve it for them because I have this platform. In those moments, I have to reel myself in and remember I don’t have to solve anything — only the Lord can do that with the local church, community and counseling. All I can do is give words to guys who are feeling something and don’t know how to say it. Even as I’m saying that right now, I’m reminding myself that this is what the Lord has called me to do. So that’s what I’m up to right now — trying to help give words to things that men are feeling and silently struggling with.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
After sharing in a room full of men, they often come up afterward crying and feeling some big emotional experience. Usually, we’re talking about the gospel — that God knows everything about them and still loves them. The Bible should be one page long, but it’s not; it’s thousands of pages long because instead of bailing on us, he sticks with humanity and redeems it. That’s what he’s doing for them. Guys start to feel that, and then I’m invigorated.
I recently spoke at an army base in Hawaii. It was a room full of some of the toughest, most highly trained guys in the world. I was intimidated because I was a podcaster and these guys were thwarting terrorist attacks. We weren’t even 30 minutes in, and the guys were weeping and comforting each other. I thought, Guys are so hungry for relationships and vulnerability, to experience what they’ve been shoving down their whole lives. So even though this sounds kind of cliché, being in those rooms, I know the Holy Spirit is working.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I’m trying to spend as much of my time doing what people could do a hundred or more years ago. This means using technology as little as possible. I enjoy sitting around a fire with a group of guys who are being honest with each other. I love the sauna, too. I sit in the sauna and suffer for about 30 minutes. And again, running has become more important to me, as well. I have ADD, so I like anything that forces me to be fully present because my brain always wants to wander. In the sauna, for example, during the last five minutes, I am thinking about nothing but those five minutes. The last few miles of a race make me do that. I’m not thinking about anything but what’s in front of me.
Yesterday, I was juggling in the living room. My 15-year-old son got hacky sacks, which reminded me of my middle school days. I was so focused on juggling those hacky sacks I couldn’t think about anything else. To an ADD brain, a beautiful meditation practice is anything that forces me to be fully present in whatever thing I’m doing, right there, because my brain wants to go elsewhere.
Ever since I did that intensive therapy, I make sure I have at least one minute of complete silence every day. Nothing going on. No noise whatsoever. In a very busy and distracting world, it’s been really fun to have those moments. The sauna does that, too, when there’s zero noise. I’ve started encouraging my 15-year-old son to start doing that. He’s going through his own rite-of-passage journey to block out sections of his day, even if they’re short, to be in complete silence. He started at one minute, and now he’s up to 15 minutes.
If you want to hear the voice of God, you have to give him space to speak. My whole day can be loud, so I make sure to create silence at various points in my day to try to hear from the Lord.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
There are a few books that have really shaped my thinking over the last five years. One is the “Liturgy of the Ordinary” by Tish Harrison Warren. I enjoyed that one. One of the clearest examples from that book is that every time you make your bed, you’re reminding yourself that God takes messy things and makes them beautiful. Reframing your whole day with liturgical thinking allows non-spiritual things to become spiritual.
“Fathered by God” by John Eldredge. I originally read it because I was preparing for an interview with John. As a guy who didn’t have a dad growing up, I was in my backyard, mowing the lawn and weeping, because it was hitting on those father wounds. It was really good.
“Hunt, Gather, Parent” is a completely non-spiritual but massively helpful parenting book. Oh, it was so good. It looks at how we in the West think we’ve nailed parenting, even though we’ve only been doing it a few hundred years, while the rest of the world has been doing it for thousands of years. It then examines these ancient parenting practices. It was extremely insightful.
Lastly, one thing we’ve done every single year for the last four years is a family camp called WinShape. They’re owned by Chick-fil-A. It’s a week without your phone while you stay by a lake with your kids, and they get all your attention. There are fireflies. Everything about it feels as though they could have been doing this hundreds of years ago. It’s a very, very sweet time. That’s become a sacred tradition in our family, and we absolutely love it.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
Since I came home from intensive therapy, I took everything off my phone. My goal was to eliminate everything that could give me artificial dopamine, so I don’t have any social media. I don’t have any news apps on my phone. There’s nothing there that I get excited about. I will say the one exception is that my iPhone gives me photo memories every day, and that’s probably the only dopamine hit I get. I wake up and look at the photo memories. It’s like looking at the faithfulness of God from 10 years ago or more. But other than that, I have no apps. I have no technology. It has been wonderful.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
This would be more of a dream. Ten years ago, when I started online men’s ministry stuff, I imagined it being big. I was dreaming about the next Promise Keepers-type of thing with thousands and thousands of guys.
Now, though, I feel like the Lord keeps shrinking my heart. What I’m excited about is six guys sitting in the living room. My dream is that we would own a home, an actual house, for ministry. We would bring six guys in at a time and work through their stories, their pain, their childhood, the lies they’re believing and spend four or five days with them. We would help them work through their stories and then send them home a little bit more healed. That’s the stuff I’m dreaming about and feel like God is leading us to in the next chapter.
This world needs more men who are done pretending, living for others’ admiration and finding security in a million other things besides God. Who are ready to let Jesus be their everything. Jerrad dreams about helping men experience this kind of healing, but he also knows this transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Jesus himself spent three long years teaching and healing and changing 12 men from all different walks of life. There were plenty of setbacks, but Jesus didn’t give up on them — and he won’t give up on us, either.
Jerrad Lopes is a Christian author, speaker and the founder of Dad Tired. As a father of four, he knows firsthand that living as a leader in your home is a weighty calling. He is passionate about equipping men and fostering community where, together, men can live out the gospel. He and his wife, Leila, live in South Carolina with their four children.