Mike Breen (pastor)

Mike Breen
Born 13 June 1958
Occupation Author, speaker, pastor
Spouse(s) Sally Breen
Children Beccy, Libby, Sam

Mike Breen (born 13 June 1958) is an English church leader, minister, author and entrepreneur. Breen has been an innovator in leading missional churches throughout Europe and the United States.

Biography

Early life

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 read it all and his life changed.[1]

Education and ministry

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] — a "tough parish in the east end of London. 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]

The Breen family lived in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1991 to 1994.[6]

In 1994, Breen moved to Sheffield, following Robert Warren as senior rector of St. Thomas' Church, Crookes,[7] 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.[8]

While at St Thomas', Breen begun 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).[9]

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.[10]

In 2006, the Leadership Network approached Breen to lead an initiative into church planting.[11] 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.[12]

From 2008 to 2014, Breen lived at Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where he serves as the leader for 3D Movements, an "organic movement of biblical discipleship and missional church"[13] helping established churches and church planters move into a discipling and missional way of being church.[14] 3DM decentralized in 2014, with Jo Saxton eventually becoming Chair of the Board as of June 2018.[15] Breen moved to Greenville, South Carolina,[16] and began working on his Ph.D. at Trinity Seminary. 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 publishing 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.[17] Other churches experienced success through 3DM partnerships, for example Billabong Uniting Church in Western Australia.[18]

Marriage and children

Breen is married to Sally Breen. The couple have three children, Beccy, Libby and Sam.[19]

Notable contributions

Published works

Breen's books have been translated into Spanish, German, and Norwegian.

  • Breen, Mike (1992). Growing the smaller church. City: Harpercollins/STL. Marshall Pickering. ISBN 0-551-02372-4.
  • Breen, Mike (1993). Outside in : reaching un-churched young people today. London: Scripture Union Publishing. ISBN 0-86201-811-0.
  • Breen, Mike (1997). The body beautiful : Spiritual Health and Fitness for You and Your Church. Crowborough: Monarch. ISBN 1-85424-296-2.
  • Breen, Mike (2002). The apostle's notebook. Eastbourne, England: Kingsway Communications, Ltd. ISBN 1-84291-007-8.
  • Mallon, Norman; Breen, Mike (2003). Calling a city back to God. Eastbourne, England: Kingsway Communications, Ltd. ISBN 1-84291-116-3.
  • Breen, Mike; Kallestad, Walt (2005). The Passionate Church : The Art Of Life-Changing Discipleship. Colorado Springs, CO: Nexgen (Cook Communications Ministries). ISBN 0-7814-4227-3.
  • Breen, Mike; Kallestad, Walt (2005). A passionate life. Colorado Springs, CO: Nexgen (Cook Communications Ministries). ISBN 0-7814-4269-9.
  • Breen, Mike; Kallestad, Walt (2005). A passionate life devotional : God's Invitation to a Meaningful Life (Life Shapes). Colorado Springs, CO: Honor Books. ISBN 1-56292-722-1.
  • Breen, Mike; Kallestad, Walt (2005). A passionate life : devotional for women : God's answer to your deepest longings. Colorado Springs, CO: Honor Books. ISBN 1-56292-721-3.
  • Breen, Mike (2005). The circle : choosing to learn from life. Colorado Springs, CO: NexGen (Cook Communications Ministries). ISBN 0-7814-4296-6.
  • Breen, Mike (2006). The Triangle : Balancing the relationships of life. Colorado Springs, CO: NexGen (Cook Communications Ministries). ISBN 0-7814-4369-5.
  • Breen, Mike (2006). The Semi-Circle : Living in rhythm with life. Colorado Springs, CO: NexGen (Cook Communications Ministries). ISBN 0-7814-4344-X.
  • Hopkins, Bob; Breen, Mike (2007). Clusters : creative mid-sized missional communities. Pasdensa, CA: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 1-932503-67-6.
  • Breen, Mike; Cockram, Steve (2009). Building a discipling culture. USA: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 0-9824521-0-1.
  • Breen, Mike (2009). Continuous Breakthrough. USA: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 0-9824521-2-8.
  • Breen, Mike (2010). Covenant and Kingdom : the DNA of the Bible. USA: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 0-9824521-6-0.
  • Breen, Mike; Absalom, Alex (2010). Launching Missional Communities: a Field Guide. USA: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 0-9824521-9-5.
  • Breen, Mike (2010). DNA of the Bible. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-96434-0.
  • Breen, Mike (2011). Building a discipling culture : how to release a missional movement by discipling people like Jesus did. Pawleys Island, SC: 3DM Publishing. ISBN 0-9846643-0-0.
  • Hirsch, Alan; Catchim, Tim; Breen, Mike (2012). The permanent revolution : apostolic imagination and practice for the 21st century church. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-470-90774-6.

Bibliography

  • Brierley, Peter (2000). The tide is running out : what the English Church Attendance Survey reveals. London: Christian Research. ISBN 1-85321-137-0.
  • Gibbs, Eddie; Bolger, Ryan K. (2005). Emerging churches : creating Christian community in postmodern cultures. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic. ISBN 0-8010-2715-2.
  • Percy, Martyn (2005). Engaging with contemporary culture Christianity, theology, and the concrete church. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-3259-8.
  • "Mike Breen and 3DM". Retrieved 12 February 2012.
  • ECPN. "European Church Planting Network". Leadership Network. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 12 February 2012.

Further reading

See also

References

  1. ↑ Breen, Mike (2010) p. xiii
  2. ↑ Breen (2010b) p. 16
  3. ↑ Breen & Kallestad (2005b) p. 212
  4. ↑ Mal Calladine in Gibbs & Bolger (2005) p. 251
  5. ↑ Hopkins & Breen (2007) p. 14
  6. ↑ Hopkins & Breen (2007) p. 10
  7. ↑ Hopkins & Breen (2007) p. 15
  8. ↑ Brierley (2000)
  9. ↑ Percy (2005) p. 6
  10. ↑ Breen & Kallestad (2005a) cover inside back flap
  11. ↑ Breen (2010), cover inside back flap
  12. ↑ http://leadnet.org/page/ecpn
  13. ↑ http://mikebreen.wordpress.com/
  14. ↑ Breen (2010) cover inside back flap
  15. ↑ "About Me – Jo Saxton". www.josaxton.com. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
  16. ↑ "Our Story". 3DM Publishing. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
  17. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-08-16. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
  18. ↑ "Discipleship moves in to the third dimension - JourneyOnline". journeyonline.com.au. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
  19. ↑ http://mikebreen.wordpress.com/about/
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