The AMPcast with Aliza Marie Prokop

Episode 15-From Fatherless to Found: Sean Teis’ Story

• Aliza Marie Prokop • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Fatherlessness is one of the most pressing issues facing our culture today, and its impact runs deep. In this episode, Aliza Prokop sits down with Sean Teis—pastor, author, and national speaker—who shares his powerful story of growing up without a father and the questions, anger, and insecurity that followed. He opens up about how godly men stepped in, how he encountered Jesus, and how God began to rewrite his story. Now, Sean is passionate about reaching fatherless children, supporting single moms, and equipping churches to step into the gap. This conversation offers both honest insight into the struggles kids face and a hopeful reminder that God is the perfect Father who can transform any life.

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SPEAKER_04

Good evening. We begin tonight with an issue that continues to affect millions long after the original events have passed. Trauma. Mental health experts say trauma from earlier life experiences often resurfaces years later, influencing emotional responses, physical health, and relationships. While the incidents may be in the past, the body and brain can remain in a heightened state of survival.

SPEAKER_00

I wish I could just forget about what happened to me so long ago. But these memories haunt me.

SPEAKER_05

I know it's over. But it doesn't feel over. I need help, but I'm afraid to open up about my past.

SPEAKER_03

Welcome to the Amp Cast. I'm your host, Aliza Prokop, and today I come to you again from the floor of the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. And I have with me another amazing person that I'm going to interview today. His name is Sean Tice. He's an author, a national speaker, a show host, and you're a pastor. Wow. He's a pastor, and his expertise is on fatherlessness, which is now termed the number one social issue in the United States. He's been evangelizing and discipling fatherless families nationally by spreading awareness, creating these really unique resources, does a lot of speaking and partnering with local churches. Thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me. So my podcast is about trauma. So of course this would be something considered trauma. It fits the bill on there. Can you take us back to how this all got started and how you got into this specifically?

SPEAKER_02

Well it was all birthed out of my my story. I mean, I grew up without a dad. My you want me to share my story about everything now? Absolutely. Yeah, my my dad uh came home when I was about nine months old in a drunken rage and threw my mother and my brother and my sister out of our home in Pennsylvania. Um and he was he's had a history, a past history of abuse, so my mom was nervous what he was gonna do. And so she went over to the neighbor's house, they got the police to show up. Um once the cops came, they demanded my dad hand me over to them, and instead of gently handing me over, he took me and threw me across the room to the cops. Thankfully that cop could catch, he caught me. Um but my dad then packed up his things and went back to his hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, where he he grew up and learned a lot of his bad habits and never came back. And so and my my dad grew up foddless, so he really was just a statistic. It's a cycle. Exactly. And so he he never came back, made us foddless, and we started what I call the foddless journey at that point. And you know, it was hard growing up without a dad, but I was blessed to have mentors apported into my life. I had a grandfather that right away picked up the pieces and became like a dad to me. Uh so from from 10 months old until right before sixth grade, I had him, but then he passed away.

SPEAKER_03

Is that your maternal grandfather?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that was my yes, yeah. So uh we lived with them for a short term, and then I lived with my mom until I was in about second grade. We lived in our own house, and then I moved back in with them from second grade on, and my mom lived in a different house with another guy. And so I basically was abandoned by my dad, and then my my mom moved in with another person, so I had my grandparents help her help and raise me. And so I say all this to say that's what the min the ministry was birthed out of. Um but I was blessed to have mentors, people pouring into my life. I had a youth pastor, youth leaders, um, and then in ninth grade I met this guy named Jim. Um, Jim and Deb, the the this couple, and they became like my second family. Jim became like my dad. Um for 25 years, from when I was 15 until I was about 40. Um, Jim was a father figure to me. There was no blood relation, no marriage relation, just a guy that I started working for, and then he became like my my dad. And then he passed away this past Father's Day. But he was just very instrumental in my life to help me. And so when I was going to Bible college, I had him in my life, I had different people, and I just felt a desire to write a book for fatherless guys. And so I went to Bible college, graduated with my pastoral degree, and I wrote up sort of writing a book. And then I didn't realize it was going to turn into a whole ministry, and so that's why we launched the ministry because of writing the book, and then I wrote one for girls. And when was that?

SPEAKER_03

2008. I see that, 2008. Okay. So you also have a website, godismydad.com.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

And a free mobile app.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. If you search for God is my dad on the app on Google Play Store, uh, there's a free app on there that uh fatherless kids, fatherless young adults, single moms, and grandparents and grandkids can find content, videos, and stuff to help them on their journey.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. Okay, so let's back up then to your journey. So when all of this is going on, you mentioned that your father went back to Las Vegas. Do you remember well, you were a baby, so you don't remember all of that. Were you ever told anything? How did it obviously you were, how did it come to pass that you learned all of this information and how was that for you finding it out?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, my mom was open about sharing things with me. Um and she she hated my dad, and so she would talk you know negatively about him all the time. Which he was it was a terrible guy, so I mean it was kind of, you know, it it fit and it was fine. Um but yeah, I I would hear all this stuff about him, and and I didn't know a lot about him, but I knew that he left, and I knew he threw me to the cops, and I knew these different things happened, and and honestly, I didn't really care that much because I had my grandfather for all those years. Yes. And so that kind of filled the gap and helped me out. And I thought of my grandfather. Then once he died, that's when it really set in when I was in those tween years, 11, almost 12 years old.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And so how did it manifest? You're 11, 12, were there things that happened? Because people who have trauma have certain benchmarks and certain things. What did you notice about yourself?

SPEAKER_02

I had anger issues. I could I'd get angry pretty quick. I mean, I I I wasn't one of those kids that was like punching holes through the wall, but I was I was just I was angry. I would get you know in scuffles at school or um, you know, be disrespectful and different stuff like that. Um I you know, I struggled with that. I also struggled a long time with inferiority where I felt like I had a inferiority complex. And I found that a lot of fatherless kids deal with that because they see kids that have dads and then they don't feel like they're as good as What's wrong with me?

SPEAKER_03

Why can't I have a dad? And like things at school, the events at school, was that sort of tough?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I knew that because I went to a Christian school and back then, I mean a lot of the kids had dads, the Christian school I went to. Um we were blessed to be able to go there, and I was I'm thankful for it, but most of the families were intact. And you know, they probably there was probably a lot of problems at home in some of these families. Oh, there is. But I didn't realize that. I just saw that they had a dad and he would take them hunting and he would take them out and work on the car, he knew how to work on the house, and I I wasn't learning a lot of those things because I didn't have anybody in my life to teach me those things. That's right. And so yeah, it was it was a struggle with those.

SPEAKER_03

So after your grandfather passed, what was life like then for you? Who did you latch on to? Who did you have? Did you go it alone? Like tell me what happened at that point.

SPEAKER_02

Well, after my grandfather died, I struggled for about a year and a half. Um just I think I just I don't really remember a lot of it, but I just remember, you know, kind of being a mess as a tween. But then when I was um seventh grade, it was January, there was a new youth pastor that came to our our church, and he was the church was associated with the school, and so he became our Bible teacher. And I just remember him and his wife, they'd had just adopted five kids, and they they took an interest in my sister and I that were growing up with FODLUS because they had a heart for that, and they just started inviting us to go do things with them and just spend time with them. And it was all healthy, it was just a healthy environment. Um we'd go on um camping trips or things like that and just spend time with them, and it was it was a great experience. I mean, honestly, they they were just trying to mentor us in different areas and and trying to encourage us, and they they helped me out a lot for about a year and a half. It was it lasted. Then he became a senior pastor of the church, had different mentors. One guy took me hunting that was in our our church, he would take me out deer hunting, and um he would just spend time with me and do that, and he was that was all he would do. It was it was great. Uh still friends with that guy to this day. Oh, you really? Oh yeah, and then this other guy named Rob, he was uh hit his house, had an open door policy at their house where you could just show up and and they had Oreos and Doritos, you could eat at their own. Yeah, they would just let us show up. They had little kids and we could just hang out with their family, and they were just really just a cool family that were involved in our youth group. And so I had them, but then like I said, Jim and Deb, but I met them when I was 15 and they became like my second family.

SPEAKER_03

Like your second family. So this is something that you see now. So that's is that why you became a pastor? Because you saw those people poured into your life and you want to do that for others?

SPEAKER_02

Is that kind of how I think that, yeah, I think Pastor Dave, the guy that was my youth pastor, inspired me. Like I thought that that's a cool job. Are you a youth pastor? I was a youth pastor, but that's what I that's what I went to school for to be. I went to a school of pastoral theology, couldn't do all the positions, but I thought, you know, I'd like to be a youth pastor. That was my my dream to kind of work with teenagers. Where'd you go to school at? Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, Florida. It's a small school. It's now called Trinity College of Jacksonville, but it's uh it was just like 400 students, just a small school, but it it worked out for me. It was a great spot.

SPEAKER_03

So now that you have been around it, you're you're grown and and you're you've got beautiful kids and you do all of these things, we're talking about an epidemic being, you know, the number one social issue. Tell me about that. What do you see? Because you're seeing it, so tell me what I know what I see in my practice, what do you see?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, uh faudlessness is is getting worse. Yes. The issue is growing. Um, you know, the statistics out there are pretty devastating. You know, there's a higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, poor education performance, teen pregnancy, criminality, um, mental issues with with fodlessness. What we're we found though, as we've done research over the years, is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services used to just make the statistics, they would just kind of throw them out there, it seemed like. And it almost seems like they're kind of not put publishing it as public, I guess you might. I wonder why that is. I don't know, but a lot of the statistics you see out there are, you know, out there older and outdated. Um there's so many issues coming from that. Even issues such as like homosexuality. Uh there was a guy named uh Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, and he was a well-known psychologist in California, and he was quoted as saying his whole practice was helping homosexuals become heterosexual again. They'd go to him and say, I don't want to have these feelings for men, I don't want to have these feelings in my life anymore, I'd like to be straight. And they he they would go to him and work with him, and he's he's quoted as saying, I've worked with thousands of homosexuals. I've never seen a homosexual who had a loving, respectful relationship with their father. And so even issues like that, that they come from, you know, with with the issue of file assist because they didn't have a a good dad in their life to help them on their journey. And that's coming from him, he was a psychologist. Yeah. But there's all kinds of studies out there with, you know, with with these things.

SPEAKER_03

And so, do you directly work with any kids now or in any pastoral tell me what you do now? Because, I mean, it's changing by the by the year. I mean, it it seems like there's so much divisiveness and so much anger and so much hate, and then of course we have our phones, and that isn't helping. So, do you still work with kids in a church or do you do most of your time traveling? Tell me what it looks like for you.

SPEAKER_02

I was a youth pastor up until 2018. Okay. And I've had this ministry since 2008. Most of it was in the side for with books and digital media. And then in 2019, my family and I went full time. We lived in an RV, traveled the country, speaking in churches. Yeah, it was it was a cool experience. It was it was pretty crazy. We did that for three years. We lived lived on the road and did that travel. We were in over 200 churches just speaking about the issue and working through it. Before that, I was a youth pastor and I was mentoring kids and working with them, but then on the road, it was just a whole different experience. And then in 2021, the end of 2021, December, we moved to Las Vegas and did a project, and we started working with at-risk kids, doing Bible clubs and at-risk communities. Most of the kids were foddless, sort of mentoring some of the kids out there. Then we launched a single mom, our first single mom network. That's cool because I have a lot of them too in my practice, and they they feel forgotten. Exactly. That's what we found with it. Well, we launched our first one in Las Vegas, and what it became was just a support group every week. Uh we do it, do them through the school year, and so we they meet from August until about May. Oh, that's good. And so then take summers off, and then what we found is that is we can disciple that single mom. The kids have a better chance of being discipled in their home. And we've saw major improvements with these single moms for our first pilot group in Las Vegas. And it wasn't just church ladies that were coming to it. We put it out on Facebook and we had around 30 ladies connect from the city of Las Vegas. Some of them were driving 30 minutes across town. Yeah, because there's churches, they weren't even part of the church, they just found it through Facebook and wanted to be part of that. So that's one of the ways that we are still doing that. We have about 20 churches work that are 20 churches and ministries that are running single mom ministries. My wife teaches one in uh Pennsylvania, she leads the group there at our church. And right now I'm a part-time family pastor as well, so I'm kind of overseeing all the families, whether they're from a fatherless or motherless or whatever situation they face.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, because some churches, I know they all have great intentions, but sometimes things fall through the cracks. And I think in at least where I live, there's in the churches that I've attended, I haven't found anything for fatherlessness. Yes. Or single mother. There just isn't.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

And and I think that this is something that's kind of overlooked sometimes. Maybe not in the areas that you're in, but in more rural areas where I'm from, it's not something that's as easy for my clients to find. So And that's why we created the app. That's what I wanted to ask you about. Tell me how that so is that for the practitioner like me, or is that for the mom? That's for either.

SPEAKER_02

Any, yeah, I mean, even for a mentor that is like, I don't know what to say to this kid. Yes. They can watch the video with him and then talk about it. And so we designed it where the kid can just have the app on their iPad, their phone, whatever, they can download that, they can watch watch videos. We have videos from me, a lot of them are discipleship videos from me, evangelistic videos, and then we have videos from uh different Christian influencers like Stephen Kendrick, the producer of War Room Courageous Facing the Giants. He's on there. We have um we have a show called Let's Talk About Fodderlessness. We're actually about to rebrand it to God as my dad. But on that show, we had Gary Chapman, we had um uh we had Trey Burton, he was he was with the Philadelphia Eagles. Um he he grew up fodderless, sharing his story. So we have all kinds of content on there to to inspire the fodderless to overcome or to help single moms or to help grandparents raising grandkids. There's a ton of content. There's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. There's a lot. I have clients that are grandparents raising their grandchildren all over again, and they're having to navigate what to because a lot of times the the parents have addiction issues, right? And so the grandparent wants the child to h have a relationship with the father or the mother, but they're kind of the gatekeeper and they're afraid of how much uh you know autonomy to give them. So I wonder if that would even be something for them, you know, that they would be able to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we have we have a whole section for grandparents raising grandkids on our app. So they can just click on grandparents, yeah. That section, and there's videos on there. And they're from my perspective of because my grandfather passed away, my grandmother, she passed away in 2020. But but I they're from from the perspective from a pastor of someone that was raised by their grandparents and what they did good and what they you know could have done better with. I'm actually speaking at the Legacy Coalition Grandparenting Summit in Texas on about four weeks in San Frisco, Texas. So if they're around if if the listeners if this is before then, um but they have some I think they're gonna have some resources for grandparents raising grandkids. I'm doing a s I'm doing a uh breakout session on it's called How to Parent Well as a Grandparent, and it's four grandparents that are raising their grandkids, and I'm talking about what my grandparents did good and bad.

SPEAKER_03

So can you give us a few tidbits? What did they do good, do right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I always knew one of the things was my my grandparents always made me feel special and I knew that I was valued by them. You weren't a burden. Yes. And and I remember my grandfather telling people when I would go walk around with him, like at the mall or something, he'd see an old friend, and he'd say, This is a good boy. He's a good, you know, he's he's my you know, I'm like seven, eight years old, and he like this he was proud of me. And it just speaking those words of um affirmation, giving me confidence, those things were amazing. And then there was, I mean, there's so many ways they took care of me, but just those those little things like that, it changes a kid's life.

SPEAKER_03

It does. Because that narrative inside their head from the trauma is I'm not worth it. It may not audibly be there, and it may not be something they acknowledge, but it's kind of a loop. I'm not worth it, I'm not good enough, why am I alone? I must have done something. And again, that goes back to one of the earlier episodes I had where I said it's not your fault. The trauma isn't your fault. Do you find that that's accurate? Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's not your fault at all. Yeah. I had to own that as well. You know, because I had this birth dad that lived in Vegas and I'm like, why does this guy not want a relationship with me?

SPEAKER_03

Did he ever try to reach out?

SPEAKER_02

Uh there was a couple times where he sent us a couple Christmas presents, you know, occasionally. I remember getting a uh $100 from him one time one Christmas. Uh another time I remember getting some some VHS tapes. That's kind of dangerous. Okay, I was gonna say, wait a minute, how old are you? I'm older than you for sure. I'm 41. Okay, 57. So But I mean he he reached out a few times, I think, but I think it was more because my brother was kind of pursuing a relationship with him. My brother was six years older than me. Okay. And so I kind of threw that, but he never really won a relationship with me. I was kind of more of a a burden, I think, to you know, to him.

SPEAKER_03

So what would you say to the people that are listening and the ones that feel like they there's something wrong with them or they miss the boat, or it's too late, or I don't I don't have a dad, nobody cares. Like what would you we have all the pad answers, well God loves you and all that, but sometimes that just goes right over their heads. Yeah. You know, everybody's gonna say that to me. What would you say to someone who's really hurting and feels very, very alone with this?

SPEAKER_02

I would say that you don't have to feel that way. Um God does love you, God will be your dad through Jesus Christ. And so first the first part is uh realizing that that Jesus died on the cross for you and he cares about you and he wants a relationship with you and you just have to accept him as your savior. And through that, he shares his dad with you. He shares the Heavenly Father will be your dad through Jesus Christ. And so owning that, understanding that, believing that, uh, the Bible says, when my mother and my father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. That it's saying there that when your dad or mom's gone, whenever they're not in your life, God will fill that void for you. He wants to help you, he wants to guide you. And maybe you think, well, I need somebody on this on this earth, I need somebody to fill the gap. Well, just pray and ask God to give you a mentor, pray and ask God to help you find somebody. It says in James 1.27, it says pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the Fodderless and Widows in their affliction and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. It tells us that it is a pure religious practice for us to reach out to the fatherless. And so if you pray and ask God for a mentor, maybe God will burden somebody's heart to practice pure religion and spend time with you or spend time with your kids or your grandkids. And so just pray, but I'm I'm telling you, I speaking from experience, if you cling to God, you hold on to God, he will transform your life. And the way to do that is reading God's Word. And it's so easy today getting on the Bible app. Uh like I said, we have devotionals on the on the UVersion Bible app. On your app, you have devotions. Well we have devotionals on our app, but also on the UVersion Bible app. We're one of the content partners. And so there's all kinds of content on there where you can just go and read the word of God. God will speak to you through his word. You talk to him through prayer. Those are the ways you can grow in your relationship with God, and it works.

SPEAKER_03

It does, it does. And it's nice to know you're not alone. Yes. Isolation is the worst, especially with something like this, because you feel like, well, it's just me. Everybody else has a dad, everybody else has this but me. So yeah, that's great to hear. So tell people how they can get your information and where to find out any websites. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02

You can go to godasmydad.com, that's where our all our resources are. We're also on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, we're on YouTube. Search for God is my dad on those those uh channels, and then also the Bible web, we'd love to connect with you on there as well.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. So do you have like daily reading or do you have a video? I've looked on there and there's some really cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we have all kinds of stuff. So if you're a church wanting to start a single mom ministry, we have stuff on there for that. Uh if you're a uh a therapist, you're looking for some resources to kind of figure out you know, fodderlessness. We're trying to get in with more therapists and stuff like that too. But also if you're going to Fodless, we have all kinds of content. Most of it's inside our app, uh, but download the the app from the app on Google Play Store and you can find our content.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. It says you're working to launch at least one single mom community group in every county.

SPEAKER_02

That's that's our that's the big goal. Yeah, I said we have like 20 some, so we got a long way to go. Amazing. We'd like to have a couple thousand, honestly. That's that's awesome. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I don't know how much time we have left, but I want to thank you for being here. And especially, you know, as busy as you are, it sounds like heck, you lived in an RV for what, three years? I'm looking to get one, and I'm thinking that'd be cool. After the third year, it's probably not so cool anymore.

SPEAKER_02

No, it wasn't. We were ready to be done.

SPEAKER_03

You're ready to be that was a nice check that box. So thank you. That's gonna be it from the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. This is Elisa Pro Cop with the AMPCAS. Thank you again very much, Sean Tice. Thanks for having us. Check him out. You can give us a share if you know someone that's fatherless and is experiencing that pain. Share this with them. Not only just what we're talking about today, but let them listen to this podcast and then they're going to find out hey, there's a link. Hey, there's an app, hey, there's somebody else that's gone through this, hey, I'm not by myself. Share it with them. Or a single mom. Give us a like and a review. Greatly, greatly appreciated. And you You can reach me at www.ampcounseling.com. This is the AmpCast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you again next time. Have a good week.

SPEAKER_06

You've been listening to the Amp Cast with Elisa Marie ProCop. To find out more, go to Ampcounseling.com. You can discover more information about all our services that we offer. Be sure to follow our social media platforms using the icons at the bottom of the page. Don't forget to check out our show notes for today's episode, where we will have links and contact info for today's guests. Well, that's all the time we have for this episode. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next time for another edition of the Amp Cast with Eliza Marie Pro Cop Dealing and Healing from Trauma.