 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) |
Mike Breen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 13 June 1958 |
| Occupation(s) | Author, speaker, pastor |
| Spouse | Sally Breen |
Mike Breen (born 13 June 1958) was an English church leader, minister and author, now based in the USA. Breen has led missional churches in Europe and the United States.
Breen recalls never having read a book at age 16, due to dyslexia. To enable him to partake in classroom discussions, his school teacher and returned missionary, Mrs. Dearmest, handed him a Living Bible to read. He states this is the first book he read in its entirety and credits it with changing his life. [1]
Breen holds a degree from Cranmer Hall, Durham, a Church of England theological college and is an ordained minister in the Church of England. He started out as a curate in Cambridge in 1984. [2] From 1987, he served as parish priest in Brixton in the inner city of London [3] — "Brixton is like south-central Los-Angeles in many ways". [4] During his time in Brixton, Breen pioneered missional communities as a ministry model. [5] [ full citation needed ] [6]
The Breen family lived in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1991 to 1994. [7]
In 1994, Breen moved to Sheffield, following Robert Warren as senior rector of St Thomas' Church, Crookes, [8] an Anglican-Baptist local ecumenical partnership. As team leader, Breen led St Thomas' to become England's largest church by attendance by the turn of the decade. [9]
While at St Thomas', Breen began The Order of Mission, a Protestant, Charismatic and Evangelical monastic order. As vicar, Breen became the order's "Senior Guardian of The Order of Mission" (TOM). [10]
In 2004, Breen moved to Glendale, Arizona, to serve as a pastor of the Community Church of Joy and taught at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. [11]
In 2006, the Leadership Network approached Breen to lead an initiative into church planting. [12] The European Church Planting Network was established in 2007 with Breen as a senior leader. The ECPN Leadership Community gathered church leaders from all over Europe, with a stated goal of seeing 500 new churches planted across Eastern and Western Europe by the end of 2011. The result of 1,137 significantly exceeded this goal. [13]
From 2008 to 2014, Breen lived at Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where he served as the leader for 3D Movements, an "organic movement of biblical discipleship and missional church" [14] helping established churches and church planters move into a discipling and missional way of being church. [15] 3DM decentralized in 2014, with Jo Saxton eventually becoming Chair of the Board as of June 2018. [16] Breen moved to Greenville, South Carolina, [17] and began working on his PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Breen continued writing for 3DM Publishing, releasing updated editions of Building a Discipling Culture and Family on Mission (with his wife Sally), among others.
In January 2014 Breen spoke in a leadership event to the multi-thousand member North Heights Lutheran Church, which sparked concerns leading to the April 2014 decision of the elder board to remove 3DM completely from the church and publish at length the reasons for their decision. Among those reasons attributed to 3DM were that, "worship attendance has dropped off dramatically," and a corresponding drop in giving. [18] Other churches experienced success through 3DM partnerships, for example Billabong Uniting Church in Western Australia. [19]
In January 2024, the Board of 3DMovements, the non-profit organization that Mike Breen left in 2014, published an important update on their website. The Board of APEX Church in Dayton, Ohio, revealed that Mike Breen had been conducting a sexual affair with a vulnerable member of APEX church for some time. This was independently investigated, and upheld. The investigation also revealed Breen's bullying and intimidating behaviour, and his reluctance to seek reconciliation. [20] Faced with these findings, Mike Breen resigned from leadership of this church. [21]
Breen is married to Sally Breen. The couple have three children. [22]
The Church of the Nazarene is a Christian denomination that emerged in North America from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism. It is headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest denomination in the world aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and is a member of the World Methodist Council.
The Evangelical Mennonite Conference is a conference of Canadian evangelical Mennonite Christians headquartered in Steinbach, Manitoba, with 62 churches from British Columbia to southern Ontario. It includes people with a wide range of cultural and denominational backgrounds.
Church planting is a term referring to the process that results in a new local Christian congregation being established. It should be distinguished from church development, where a new service, worship center or fresh expression is created that is integrated into an already established congregation. For a local church to be planted, it must eventually have a separate life of its own and be able to function without its parent body, even if it continues to stay in relationship denominationally or through being part of a network.
A multi-site church is a specific church congregation which holds services at multiple geographical locations, either within a specific metropolitan area or, increasingly, several such areas.
The cell group is a form of church organization that is used in many Christian churches. Cell groups are generally intended to teach the Bible and personalize Christian fellowship. They are always used in cell churches, but also occur in parachurch organizations and other interdenominational settings, where they are usually referred to as such as Bible study groups. In Methodism, they are known as class meetings and are a means of grace; in Catholicism, they are known as basic ecclesial communities.
Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary (Garrett) is a private seminary and graduate school of theology related to the United Methodist Church and is ecumenical in spirit. It is located in Evanston, Illinois, on the campus of Northwestern University. The seminary offers master's- and doctoral-level degrees, as well as certificate, micro-credentialing, and lifelong learning programs. It has thousands of alumni serving in ministry, education, organizational leadership, and public service throughout the world.
WEC International is an interdenominational mission agency of evangelical tradition which focuses on evangelism, discipleship and church planting, through music and the arts, serving addicts and vulnerable children, through Christian education, missionary and church leadership training, medical and development work, Bible translation, literacy and media production, in order to help local Christians share the gospel cross-culturally. WEC emphasises the importance of shared life in a local church as a vital expression of Christian life. WEC prioritises the planting of churches among indigenous people groups and unreached people groups, who have little or no access to the Christian gospel.
Victory Christian Fellowship of the Philippines, Inc., commonly known as Victory, is an evangelical multi-site church based in Taguig, Philippines. It is a member of Every Nation Churches.
Union School of Theology is a Reformed educational institution in Bryntirion in Bridgend, South Wales. The School is part of the wider Christian ministry of Union which also involves church planting and the production of theological resources.
Fresh Expressions is an international, cross-denominational, creative movement of Christians working alongside existing congregations to cultivate new forms of church for those who have never been involved in church or who have left the church. The purpose of Fresh Expressions isn't to get people to attend a traditional or typical form of church on Sunday mornings. The purpose of Fresh Expressions is to connect with people, especially those who would never enter a church building, to form new faith communities in places where people are already gathering in contemporary culture. "Fresh Expressions are places where the people of God communicate the love of God in new and compelling ways."
"[A] Fresh Expression is a form of church for our changing culture established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church" – FX Denominational Partners, 2006
Kathleen Baskin-Ball was an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. She was ordained as deacon and probationary member of the North Texas Conference in 1983 and as elder and full member of the North Texas Conference in 1988. She received national recognition for her preaching, especially to youth. She was a keynote speaker at Youth2007, the international youth conference of the UMC. She was also recognized regionally as the first female minister in North Texas to demonstrate high membership and worship attendance growth while serving as senior pastor of a large church. She had a notable career record of growth in membership, worship attendance, and people joining by profession of faith. Baskin-Ball died on December 2, 2008, after two years' illness with cancer.
Misión Carismática Internacional is an evangelical megachurch, in Bogotá, Colombia, its part of the neo-charismatic movement. It operates under a pyramidal and cellular model.
Rev. Pilipo Miriye was the first Evangelical missionary from Papua New Guinea to the country of Nigeria. Under his ministry, Miriye was involved with his missionary colleagues in founding the Wesley International Bible College in 1989 in the Imo State of Nigeria. The College was later moved to Lagos, Nigeria and renamed the West African Theological Seminary (WATS).
A Missional community is a group of people, about the size of an extended family, who are united through Christian community around a common service and witness to a particular neighborhood or network of relationships. The Missional Community doesn't exist for anything less than making disciples of Jesus among these networks or neighborhoods. The participants of missional communities find their primary identity of “church” within the missional community, rather than a larger worship service or small group. In essence, this group of people becomes a close-knit spiritual family on mission together.
Acts 29 is a global family of church planting churches that adheres to Calvinist theology. It derives its name from the Book of Acts in the New Testament, which has 28 chapters, making Acts 29 the "next chapter" in the history of the church. A number of other Christian organizations also use the phrase "Acts 29" in their respective names.
Floyd Timothy Cunningham is an American historian and ordained minister, who has been a global missionary in the Philippines for the Church of the Nazarene since 1983, who served as the fifth president of Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary from July 1, 2008, until April 3, 2013. Cunningham serves currently as Distinguished Professor of the History of Christianity at APNTS, and is the author of Holiness Abroad: Nazarene Missions in Asia, the editor and co-author of Our Watchword & Song: The Centennial History of the Church of the Nazarene, and the author of dozens of articles in academic journals and magazines. Cunningham is a Life member of the Philippine National Historical Society, a member of the American Society of Church History, the Wesleyan Theological Society, and the American Historical Association since 1980.
Stephen A. Hayner was an American Presbyterian minister who was the president of Columbia Theological Seminary, a professor, an author, and the former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) is a non-geographical diocese of the Anglican Church in North America. Formed as a diocese in 2013, C4SO originated as the West Coast church planting initiative in the Anglican Mission in the Americas but today has member churches across the United States. Founded by Todd Hunter, who was a leader in the North American Pentecostal movement before he became Anglican, the C4SO diocese embodies charismatic and "post-evangelical" streams within the Anglican tradition. By attendance and membership, the diocese is one of the largest in the ACNA.
Jeffery Tribble is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and a professor of ministry with research interests in Practical Theology, Congregational Studies and Leadership, Ethnography, Evangelism and Church Planting, Black Church Studies, and Urban Church Ministry. Academics and professionals in these fields consider him a renowned thought leader. Tribble's experience in pastoral ministry allows for his work to bridge the gap between academic research and practical church leadership.
John Hirt OAM is an Australian pastor, educator, and one of the leaders of the radical discipleship movement in Australia.
