About Break Free Ministries

We dream of urban communities, healing from their relationship wounds, creatively and boldly advancing the Kingdom!

We believe the family, both the church and nuclear family, are the foundational ways God designed to bring life, order and security to our society through the living and preaching of the gospel.

The increased absence of men in both areas has caused a devastating effect to society at its very core. Our purpose is to help rebuild these structures through rebuilding men.

By engaging, transforming and sending the Hip-Hop community, we want to build the church with passionate, Spirit-led men who will take seriously their role as servants and change agents in their families and communities!

Values:

  1. Forever a Student
  2. Tenacity
  3. Resilience
  4. Radically Love the Community
  5. Radically Serve the Individual
  6. Uncomfortable Vulnerability

Break Free Leadership

Michael Swalley

Executive Director and North American Regional Head

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My name is Michael Swalley, aka bboy Bishop. I am an adopted son of God, born again at a young age through hearing the gospel. My wife (Ellen) and I live in the Colorado Springs area and have three daughters and one son.

God has placed a passion on my heart for cross-cultural ministry, men embracing their role as husbands and fathers, and for racial unity. I started breaking at the age of 21. Initially, breaking was a fun hobby for me. But during an internship in Melbourne, Australia, I was fully introduced to the Hip-Hop community. Encouraged to start a ministry using breaking, I came back to the states in 2005 with a vision to see the Hip-Hop community passionately serving Christ.

In the last 15 years, I have lived in four major city centers in America. I have traveled the world and seen the Hip-Hop community in numerous countries. The time spent in these places has convinced me that Hip-Hop, through the power of the Spirit, is a uniquely effective method to make disciples. Local leaders serving in their local church, through the power of the gospel. That is my passion. Breaking is my method. God’s son is my identity.

Fred Johnson

South American Regional Head and Missionary to Philadelphia, PA

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I was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to immigrant parents from Liberia. Even from a young age I felt the pull of God on my life for something great.

I grew up in a Christian home and attended church 4-5 times a week. For the most part of my upbringing, however, I was just fulfilling religious duties until one day in church, the gospel hit me! My eyes were opened. I understood my sinful condition and knew I needed a savior.

After church, I went home and told my dad I wanted to accept Christ as my savior. My dad was happy, and that made me feel good because, up until that point, I had no real emotional or relational attachment to him. Years later, my parents went through a nasty divorce and abandoned my siblings and me to my grandma. God’s grace was so evident in my life during that time. I fell in love with his word, and at the age of 13, he spoke and confirmed to me my call to missions. I had no idea that he would use something that I was always so passionate about—dance!

After high school, I went to Liberty University. It was there that God solidified his call on my life through a hip-hop ministry called Bridging the Gap.

The choreographer of the hip-hop group was very passionate about how God uses our abilities, specifically hip-hop, to reach the lost! God was nurturing my calling during that time. I reached a point where I unfortunately could not finish my education at Liberty and so began to look for organizations that could prepare me to become a missionary. I found Youth with a Mission (YWAM). I spent 12 years serving with YWAM as a full-time missionary. I saw people give their lives to Jesus and miraculous healings. God has rescued me from looking down a gun barrel three times and has made known to me the truth and power of the gospel!

I am currently serving with Break Free Ministries as a city leader and regional director in Philadelphia. This is a city that I have come to love and am very passionate about. God is restoring generationally broken relationships in families, churches, the hip-hop community, and ultimately the city. Our family sessions have become a safe place where people are free to open up and be vulnerable. In a tough city like Philadelphia, providing a space where black men can “disarm” the tough man shell and just be in a home setting is powerful, unconventional, and abnormal. Just the way the Holy Spirit likes to do things!

Artem Usov

Managing Director and European Regional Head 

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Hey everyone! My name Artem Usov, aka bboy Artek.

I believe that God has called me to serve him by reaching my brothers and sisters from the Hip-Hop community. I was saved when i was 16, the same year I started breaking. I have a beautiful wife Olga, and newborn twin boys Martin & Levi. We are from the Ukraine, currently living in Kiev.

I have been breaking professionally since 2006. I have felt God wanting to use my art to serve him since my first performance at an outreach jam. My real journey with God started in 2014 when I was a student of SMS (Steiger Mission School) in Germany. I’ve been part of Steiger’s outreach tour (NLM) for over 3 years. More then 20 countries, 100 shows and 60,000 people have heard clear, relevant messages of the Gospel because of the work this band has been doing.

Since 2017, we have lived in Kiev and got involved a lot in a Hip-Hop community. Last year I took 1st place in one of the major breaking events in Ukraine, Breakidz. I am a member of Lost Law, one of top crew’s in Ukraine. Last year we started developing Saint Rockers crew, a group of people who believe in Jesus and have a Hip-Hop background.

Our eternal purpose to grow leaders in the Hip-Hop community with christian values. Missionaries with a passion for the broken world. We see breaking is a huge tool for God, and we want to use this tool to change the world.

Loic Chungong

Loic Chunong

African Regional Head and Missionary to Calgary, Canada

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Since my childhood, I grew up in an unstable and difficult family. This situation caused me to go through a lot of frustration. This frustration opened the way for me to get involved in a very bad lifestyle influenced by the street and unhealthy relationships. I was bad to God, to myself, to my family and the people around me. I occasionally went to church while growing up and sometimes a family member would tell me about God, His existence and who He might be.
Approximately eight years ago, I was going through failures in my studies. This caused me to start asking myself questions about God. Was He the one punishing me for the bad and detestable person I had become? Believing it was God who was punishing me, I took resolutions to stop doing all the bad things I used to do and that I knew were unpleasing to God. In return, I expected God to enable me to have better results in school. Unfortunately, just after some days, I realized that I was unable to respect the resolutions I made and was unable to be the good person I planned in my mind.
Some time after that, I randomly met a group of Christians who enabled me to understand Ephesians 2, that our works are worthless for our salvation. They then presented the Gospel to me and explained the plan God always had for me in Jesus Christ. That was the day I graciously believed and confessed with my mouth what Christ did for me on the cross and I became a child of God.

 

*WE BELIEVE IN:

 

The authority and inerrancy of Scripture.

 

The Trinity.

 

Jesus Christ’s full deity and full humanity.

 

The spiritual lostness of the human race.

 

Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement and bodily resurrection.

 

Salvation by faith alone in Christ alone.

 

The physical return of Christ.