BipolarBrave Awards Exclusive Interview: Pastor Brad Hoefs

This is the last post of a series of interviews for May, celebrating and raising awareness for mental health. The series showcases those who won or placed in the annual BipolarBrave Mental Health and Faith Awards I host each year through the BipolarBrave blog.

Pastor Brad Hoefs of Fresh Hope for Mental Health tied for third place for blog in the BipolarBrave awards this year. His

3rd place organization bipolarbrave award 2024 image

ministry earned third place in the organization category, and his Fresh Hope for Mental Health Podcast won in the broadcast category. I have had the delight and honor of working with Pastor Brad in the past, being a guest on his podcast, attending a Fresh Hope gala, and contributing blog posts and articles for his blog.

Today, Pastor Brad serves as the founder and CEO of Fresh Hope for Mental Health. He is an ordained Pastor and Member of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations and pastoring since 1985. He founded Fresh Hope in 2009, authored Fresh Hope: Living Well in Spite of a Mental Health Diagnosis. He is married to his college sweetheart, Donna, has two adult married children and three grandchildren. He’s also been a guest speaker for conferences such as Thrive and Cultivate Summit, Disability and the Church Conference, Church and Mental Health Summit, and others.

I am pleased to know Pastor Brad and proud to call him friend. Pastor Brad graciously agreed to let me interview him for the BipolarBrave blog to speak to his accomplishments and efforts in the faith and mental health movement. I’m grateful for him and the work he has faithfully followed the Lord in over the years.

Why did you start your ministry?

I had attended other support groups and then relapsed because I knew I didn’t know enough about bipolar disorder and I had made a mistake with my medicine that I didn’t mean to make. When I went to the support group afterward I ended up getting worse because everyone was venting and complaining. If you don’t have recovery directions in support groups you end up getting sicker and so I didn’t attend. I mentioned it to my doctor and he recommended I start my own support group, so I did.

The podcast was started once we had a few groups started. I figured people wanted to hear from me about certain things. I started interviewing people I came across and it grew from there. The podcast process interested me in how it worked. It’s 9 years old or maybe older.

In a few sentences, share your ministry’s measurable achievements.

We’re in 20 different countries and 6 languages. People from over 30 countries attend in person or online and everything is bilingual, in English and Spanish. We estimate that in 2023 we offered over 536,000 hope-filled touches. We have roughly 190 ongoing support groups which fluctuate in number because now we have short-term and long-term groups. Recently we started a “Healing the Heart Wounds of Ministry” for clergy and their spouses. That has received good traction in Houston with a grant for working there for church leadership. As for podcast numbers, the podcast syndicator redid their interface dashboard to keep track of numbers but it’s over 300,000 downloads.

What are your future plans for your ministry? Anything noteworthy to give us a heads-up about?

We have Hope Coaching and what we see now is the need for churches to embed Hope Coaching into their ministries, so we’ll be working on that. For one church we have over 200 hope coaches trained and even trained the junior high students there. We are working on implementing teen groups. The current program involves hosting an 8-week group with a curriculum where they can meet and discuss things.

Another item is a curriculum I’ve written called Living Free. I did it in the local jail while teaching the guys and leading them. It will be more for living emotional spiritual and mental health balance in one’s life. It will deal with addictions, and emotional age, and will include a non-incarcerated curriculum.

“Refocusing Widows” has also been continuing, and we plan to add one for widowers. It’s a program for helping widows discover who they are, being emotionally whole, and healing to find out their purpose after the loss of their spouse.

Trauma is a major focus for us now. With the recent tornadoes in Elkhorn, Nebraska, we’ve been contributing to a Processing Together method and offering that to the neighbors in Omaha. We’re also thinking of things for children to include art therapy.