Carl Brettle

A Product of other peoples prayer

Born in the South Wales town of Neath in 1970. His was a close-knit family existence where “church” through the influence of His grandparents played a routine role, through the weekend stopover visits Carl used to make to the village of Clyne, a few miles away.

At 14, Carl became actively involved in the church his grandparents attended, Clyne Free Mission, helping to run the youth group. It was something he served for more than five years, often finding the work challenging, but never boring. At the age of nineteen came his first “serious” encounter with God. Describing the moment, he said, “I had been wondering for many years if I would ever reach the point of no return. Then, from nowhere, God gave me a crystal clear vision that God would give the church a new building which would be constructed on the site of what was then, small church constructed of metal sheeting. I knew that from that moment on, there was no going back and with the benefit of hindsight, that was almost certainly my moment of initial commitment to the purposes of God”.

The church was one that taught about the Holy Spirit’s work from an historical perspective; Carl was mainly learning about God’s nature and His character, without ever building any kind of relationship with Him.

Disillusionment has set in by mid 1989, and he eventually turned his back on the church in general, moved house and began pursuing a career creating business instead of serving the Lord.

“I moved to Swansea, set up a print brokerage business and pursued & achieved great success and comfort but fell into a lifestyle that revolved around frequent drinking and drug-taking”.

Two years later his life was in tatters. His business was sold for a fraction of its value, the millionaire lifestyle had gone, he had run up significant debt, was diagnosed with cancer and had been subjected to an assault.

It took just over 24 months for his perception of life to become a living nightmare and he wanted to end it. He said, “I remember one evening in September 1993, I was walking home, very drunk crying out for something different but feeling there weren’t any new answers. When I got home I found a bottle of tablets, I put a handful in my mouth but was too afraid to go through with it”. Gripped by fear and incensed by what he saw as his failure to finish what he had started. As he wrestled with his place in life for many hours, eventually, his head touched the pillow, and he heard a very audible voice say, “I love you”. His drunken haze cleared. He sensed a warmth & familiarity to the voice that brought a deep sense of peace, sleep arrived along with a new chapter in life.

Over the next few days with questions racing through his mind, he heard the voice again, 'Stop trying to work this out, it's far too simple for you to understand'. Again, there was a sense of peace.

A close friend and the only person to have remained in touch with Carl from the old church came to visit ‘out of the blue’ and invited Carl back to Church. The decision was made and leaving his old life behind him in Swansea, Carl packed a few things into his wreck of a car and drove the few miles to Neath and moved back in with his parents never to return to the rest of his belongings or the Swansea house again.

Carl accepted his friends invite to the churches annual anniversary service. He got there late and found the only available seat one the front row. in Carl's words "it was a prodicals return to the front of the church". Sitting next to Irene Turner (84), she told Carl, she 'had prayed for him everyday he had been away', Carl also heard God say to, "Never think of himself more than a product of her prayer". What further troubled Carl was Gods suggestion that "The ministry I will lead you into will see 100 million souls come into my Kingdom". Carl put that thought on the shelf for many years, thinking he could never do what God had said was his destiny.

He started re-attending the same small church in Clyne. Within weeks he was now deeply involved in prayer and was avidly re-reading the Bible in the context of the Holy Spirit working today and admits to, “spending the next 18 months terrorising the Pastor with difficult questions”

A schools ministry visited the church and in 1994 volunteered fulltime with them. He moved to Aberdare to work with “An Open Door”. Carl said, My bedroom was the living room sofa for the first year and then I finally got promoted to a single bed (also in the living room)! Seriously though, they were great to me, helped rebuild my life and also helped build my faith”.

Chasing after God, and crying out in prayer for God to use him, Carl, in 1995 met an African minister Charles Kizito who had been sent to Wales by the Lord to “teach people to pray”, during a weekend of prayer together Carl had a vision which he shared with Charles for a missions trip to Uganda. Over the next few days and sharing the vision with others enthusiam to do more for God brought dozens of people together to pray for 'the Uganda trip' In 1996 13 people took the step of travelling to Uganda to do schools work and open air preaching in a country absolutely ripe for the Gospel. It was Carls first time out of the UK, and he even needed to obtain a passport to go. The trip resulted in several further trips, contact with some of Uganda’s largest churches, and a flourishing ongoing work where “An Open Door” now runs two orphanages.

During his time at Aberdare, Carl hadn’t settled into a church preferring to devote all his spare time to prayer. However, in late 1996, he asked God to lead him to a church and a month later, joined an AOG church - in his home town of Neath - where he was asked to coordinate the church missions department and eventually took up a full-time post. This led to further trips to Uganda as well as Kenya, South Africa, Ukraine, Czech Republic and the USA.

In October 1999, as Carl was preparing for a trip to South Africa, he felt the Lord say “one million hours of prayer for Wales”. Unsure at first but then returning from South Africa with a new zeal in his heart for Wales, Carl threw himself into the campaign. TV ads, 45,000 prayer cards and receiving over 26,000 emails, it took just five weeks to raise one million hours from people in over 70 nations, by November 2000, and the one million hours turned into ten million with over seventy countries involved. Carl speaks of this time as 'waking up in the morning knowing that this was a day when you were doing something you were born for'.

At the time the prayer campaign started Carl was unaware that the UK even had a prayer movement. As time has progressed and people have seen the long term desire for breakthrough that runs through this man, he has become heavily involved with several strategic prayer organizations, liaises with prayer networks all over the world, travels extensively and often speaks in and coordinates conferences focused on prayer.

With over 400,000 contacts internationally Carl has realised the purpose of everything that has grown out of prayer is literally a collision of the destiny peoples prayer and the availability of a man to say Yes to something crazy God suggested should be done. When preaching you will often hear Carl say 'never think of yourself more than a product of another person’s prayer life'. To the future, there is more determination that ever to serve the Body of Christ in Carl's life, Carl now works across the UK with over 40 denominations and truly sees the potential of God breaking into all aspects of society in revival once again.

Carl has travelled to 45 countries, working with Churches, leading people to Christ and working with political groups in several countries. The ministry has seen over 1.8 million people make a decision for Jesus (figures upto April 2012).

Carl was asked to join United Christian Broadcasters as their Prayer Mobiliser in August 2008, so a new challenge begins to organise Prayer for and from the UK's largest Christian Media Ministry. Within a year of working at UCB, the organisation invited Carl to join the Executive Board as their Ministry Director, overseeing all the ministry activity of UCB including Word for Today, Word 4U2D, Prayerline, Youth and Children's Ministry, Looking for God, UCB2GO and the Prison Ministry. This new role saw Carl overseeing UCB's relationship with 1.2 million Christians each day in the UK.

And so the journey continues.