Michael 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 for pre-sale.