Michael Adam Beck
Michael Adam Beck
Author, Pastor, Professor, Coach, Cultivator of Movements
Michael is currently the Director of the Fresh Expressions House of Studies at United Theological Seminary. Director of Re-Missioning for Fresh Expressions US, and Cultivator of Fresh Expressions for the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He serves as the co-pastor of Wildwood UMC and St Marks UMC with his wife Jill, where they direct addiction recovery programs, a jail ministry, a food pantry, an interracial unity movement, and house a faith-based inpatient treatment center. Wildwood and St Marks are traditional congregations AND a network of thirteen fresh expressions that gather in tattoo parlors, dog parks, salons, running tracks, community centers, burrito joints, and digital spaces.
Michael cultivates missional innovators in an individual, regional, statewide, and national capacity. He also teaches as an adjunct professor at several educational institutions. He coaches entrepreneurs across the theological spectrum and has consulted with hundreds of churches, districts, denominations, networks, and dioceses. As a practitioner of missional leadership, he has started and developed businesses and planted missional communities most of his life. Michael has done this for over a decade while pastoring in the local church. His coaching and consulting work are not theoretical only, but experiential. He believes in maintaining a practitioner’s ethos: “I eat my own cooking and share experimental recipes.”
Beck earned a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and a Doctorate in Semiotics and Future Studies at Portland Seminary. He’s the author of seven books, including Deep Roots, Wild Branches: Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology; Deep & Wild: Remissioning Your Church from the Outside In, A Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions; , and co-author of Contextual Intelligence: Unlocking the Ancient Secret to Mission on the Front Lines with Leonard Sweet, Fresh Expressions in a Digital Age: How the Church Can Prepare for a Post-Pandemic World with Rosario Picardo, as well as The 21st Century Christian: Following Jesus Where Life Happens with Michael Moynagh. His newest book, Painting With Ashes is now available.
The Five Congregational Personality Types
An Ancient Pathway for Congregational Renewal in the 21st Century
Missional innovator, pastor, and church renovator, Michael Beck, says they can.
But the old cookie cutter ways of doing church won’t cut it in today’s world. If churches are going to stop the shocking rates of pastoral burnout and exodus from the pews, they must understand that every church has a distinct personality type, which can keep it stuck or propel it into maturity, depending on how it’s used.
Now, for the first time in history, you can understand and leverage your congregation’sculture and personality using the groundbreaking 5 Congregational Personality Types™model. Based on proven methods from psychology and ministry archetypes in Scripture, The Five Congregational Personality Types will help you unearth:
- Which of the five congregational personality types your church is
- Your congregation’s unique culture and how to nurture your church’s strengths
- The “shadow side,” or weak point, of your congregation’s personality type – and how you can transform this into a strength
- Your #1 strategy for growth and clear next steps to take
Get The Five Congregational Personality Types and discover exactly what to do next to grow your church in the 21st century.
Painting with Ashes (Hardback)
When Your Weakness Becomes Your Superpower
FREE SERMON SERIES GUIDE WITH PURCHASE
Born addicted to drugs, to a mother who was on and off the streets, and to a father he never knew, from an early age, Michael Beck learned the importance of imagination. Imagination was a place to escape trauma, a place where the limitations and labels the world put on him didn’t matter.
His imagination carried him through years of addiction, dealing drugs, and living life in and out of prison until God met him on the floor of a solitary confinement cell and reminded him who he really was – transforming his path to one of redemption and healing.
In Painting with Ashes, Michael Beck tells his raw and powerful story of overcoming addiction and becoming a pastor on a mission to rethink church as a healing community that is safe, accessible, and real. Through his story and stories of others who transformed their weakness into their superpower, Painting with Ashes will inspire you to reimagine faith and remind you that the experiences you most want to hide or erase are the very experiences that God uses to bring healing to others.
For anyone who has felt unworthy, who has hit rock bottom, who has been hurt by the church, or who has felt like an outcast, Painting with Ashes will invite you into a journey of healing where all are met with compassion, where transformation happens as we hold space for each other’s wounds, and where everyone has beauty to share.
Reviews
Michael Beck is a prolific writer and influential thought leader in innovative forms of ministry in North America. In this book we are introduced to the raw, unedited life story behind the movement maker. We see Beck’s journey shift from a hurt person hurting others to a healed person healing others—a shift that begins with a Bible slid through his jail cell door. Beck takes us on a profoundly difficult journey through the depths of pain and addiction to the heights of loving community found in AA and the local church. Ultimately, Beck reminds us that in Christ our greatest asset is our brokenness and a masterpiece can be painted with ashes.
Luke Edwards
Associate Director of Church Development for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church
"Your God will restore everything you lost; He'll have compassion on you; He'll come back and pick up the pieces from all the places where you were scattered" (Deut. 3:1-3). Michael Beck has written a personal testimony that will encourage the hurting and wounded to trust God who redeems and restores the broken.
Lonnie Earnest
Christian 12 Step Ministry, Inc.
Spirituality is reality. God takes us as we are and works to make us people who live in the new creation. Michael Beck's story is a powerful testimony to the reality of God's transforming grace, and it is a reminder that the same grace is offered to us as well.
Dr. Steve Harper
Director of the Wesleyan Studies Program at Northwind Theological Seminary
Painting with Ashes is a powerfully-written life story that’s both heart-rending and awe-inspiring, filled to overflowing with both brokenness and redemptive healing through God’s miraculous grace. Stories from scripture woven throughout come to life with illuminating, soul-convicting relevance. Especially, the compelling instructive picture of all God’s Church is intended to be provides an urgent call to leaders everywhere.
Rev. Sue Nilson Kibbey
Director, Bishop Bruce Ough Innovation Center, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
There is power in the practice of authentic testimony to a God who brings life out of death. This is Michael Beck’s story, and he places his journey within the larger narratives of scripture, spiritual wisdom and recovery. God has never ceased to transform and heal us. Michael Beck bears witness to what all of this can mean. I needed to hear his story, again. I hope you will come to know it too!
Bishop Ken Carter
Florida and Western North Carolina Conferences, The United Methodist Church
Painting With Ashes is a must read for Christians at any level in their journey. Now in my 50th year of ministry I was reminded of how God has used and will continue to use my own weaknesses to display divine power. Michael Beck uses powerful examples to demonstrate the fact that our greatest asset is in fact our greatest brokenness.
Michael Slaughter
Founder & Chief Strategist, Passionate Churches, LLC
I often mention Michael Beck when I refer to Jesus asking, "who do you say that I am?" Michael responded to this question with, "He was my cellmate!" That made an indelible mark on me. Michael found the One who could change his life around and he wants the world to know this One who can do the same for us. Generational trauma is real and he has experienced that and so much more. If you are afraid of reading a raw and real book about life, stay away from this one. But, if you want to experience the transformational power of Holy Spirit and the God who can heal any and every generational curse or trauma, then, by all means, dive right in. Thank you Michael for inspiring us.
Rev. Dr. Dee Stokes
Lover of Jesus, Author, Leader, Speaker
This was like reading a Henri Nouwen book – if Henri Nouwen was an alcoholic with a drug addiction and had a criminal record, that is. Despite a background of substance abuse and violence, Michael Beck has found the deep kind of healing Nouwen wrote about. In this comforting and inspiring book, Michael invites us to see how Jesus can make all things new, not by wiping away our past completely, but by reworking what we’ve been through and leading us in the direction of true human flourishing. This is beautiful work.
Michael Frost
Morling College, Sydney
A can’t-put-down, gut-wrenching story that I couldn’t recommend more, Michael Beck’s Painting with Ashes shows how God brings beauty out of the most desperate places. By weaving his story together with that of others who rose from difficult circumstances, Beck proves that each one of us is qualified to become a wounded healer. Beck also exposes what not just we, but also the church can be at our best. It is a necessary book for anyone looking to find their place in God’s story and teach others to do the same.
Oneya Fennell Okuwobi
Teaching Pastor, 21st Century Church
I was riveted to every page, deeply moved, exhilarated and spiritually revitalised. Michael Beck’s book is wonderful.
Michael Moynagh
author, Church for Every Context and Church in Life
Painting With Ashes is a wonderfully honest and deeply insightful story of radical conversion set in the frames of the tragic human narrative as this intersects with God’s prevenient grace in Jesus. The result is a genuinely poignant, intelligent, and meaningful, witness. Captivating!
Alan Hirsch
award winning author of numerous books on missional theology, spirituality, and leadership. Founder of Movement Leaders Collective
Michael Beck’s to-hell-and-back conversion story conveys what it means to be the church even better than some of the highest moments of Christian literature. Just as Jesus founded his church at the gates of hell, a church which isn’t hell-bent for heaven doesn’t deserve the title 'church.'
Leonard Sweet
best-selling author, professor, and founder of The Salish Sea Press, SpiritVenture Ministries, and PreachTheStory.com
Michael Beck’s new book will break your heart in the best possible way. His deeply personal stories of humanity’s brokenness will tempt you to close its pages and shut your eyes to the pain. But if you do, you will miss the most remarkable story of God’s redemptive power to turn the ashes of depravity and desperation into a stunning masterpiece of healing and hope.
Missy Buchanan
popular speaker and author
Church in the Wild
How to Start a New Faith Comunity
*Course fee includes a free hardcover copy of Painting with Ashes.*
Church in the Wild: Evangelism, Discipleship, and Church Planting for the 21st Century
Get equipped with everything you need to start your own “church in the wild”. This online masterclass course includes a full step by step guide to church planting for the 2020s, with real world lessons learned and best practices from a pioneer on the missional frontier, Dr. Michael Adam Beck.
“Churches in the Wild” are fresh expressions of church, or forms of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church. They come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.
This masterclass will empower both leaders and teams, the “priesthood of all believers,” to be unleashed in new ways to join the Holy Spirit’s work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. During the course you will learn practical skills and competencies everyday churches are using to become a movement that reaches new people, from one of the most experienced practitioners in the world.
Post-Christendom has brought new challenges. Forms of church that seek only to attract people to existing buildings and church campus no longer connecting with many people. As Dr. Beck teaches, now we need a new “blended ecology” that includes both existing and new forms or “fresh expressions” of church to thrive on a new missional frontier.
This masterclass is led by Rev. Dr. Michael Adam Beck, author of Painting with Ashes. Michael is a rare breed of practitioner and scholar. He is actively involved in cultivating fresh expressions of church from his local congregation in Ocala, Florida, while also teaching as a seminary professor and Director of Fresh Expressions for the United Methodist Church.