Carl Brecheen

Carl Brecheen, 90, of Abilene, passed away on Thursday, December 19, 2019.  Funeral service will be on Monday, December 23, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. at the University Church of Christ, 733 E.N. 16 ^th Street, with a time of visitation starting at 10:00 a.m. that morning in the Family Room, under the direction of Piersall Funeral Directors, 733 Butternut Street.

Carl was born November 26, 1929, in Hollis, Oklahoma, where he graduated high school in 1948. After earning his bachelor’s degree from ACU, he preached full time in New Blaine and Oil Trough, Arkansas, and Rhome and San Angelo, Texas, before moving to Abilene.

Brecheen married Ethelyn “Smitty” Smith of Colorado City, Texas, on October 21, 1952. While Carl completed three graduate degrees – an M.A. and M.R.E. from Harding University in 1955 and 1956, and a D.R.E. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1965 – they added two daughters and a son to the family, all of whom graduated from ACU.

Starting in 1961 as an assistant professor of Bible and religious education, Brecheen retired from ACU in January 2007. For all of those 46 years he served as a professor of Bible and religious education, well known for his Family Relations course that packed Walling Lecture Hall every single semester until he moved to the Teague Lecture Hall in 1990 when the new Onstead-Packer Biblical Studies Building opened. The course is still in the university’s Catalog but no one else has ever taught it.

Brecheen directed ACU’s Bible Teachers Workshop from 1966 well into the ’90s.  In 1970 he took over leadership of Abilene Christian’s annual Bible Lectureship, now known as Summit. He directed Lectureship until 1993 during an era when up to 12,000 people annually flocked to Abilene for the four-day February event that included dozens of speakers, hundreds of classes and a long list of special events. A 1989 feature story in the Abilene Reporter-News was headlined, “Mr. Organization.” Brecheen, typical of his genuinely cheerful and humble outlook, downplayed his role, saying he just took what had been created and fine-tuned it a bit here and there with the help of his secretary.

For most people, that would be enough – that and a private marriage and family counseling practice, and serving as an elder at the University Church of Christ where he was education director from 1961-74.

Brecheen’s broadest influence, however, began in 1974 when he partnered with his best friend and college roommate Dr. Paul Faulkner – now professor emeritus – taking their three-day Marriage Enrichment Seminar to more than 90,000 couples in 33 states and seven countries. Thousands more watched the Marriage Enrichment videos or read their book: What Every Family Needs: Whatever Happened to Mom, Dad & Kids?

In retirement, Carl and Smitty found ways to minister to families and others who benefited from their deep experience and innate kindness. They invited a series of newly single moms, each recovering from divorce and learning to navigate solo parenting, to breakfast once a week for as long as they needed the prayer and wisdom doled out with coffee and a simple breakfast at the Brecheens’ kitchen table in their house on Cedar Crest, just blocks from the campus.

He was preceded in death by his parents, E.R. and Inus (Yowell) Brecheen; a brother, Pat Brecheen, D.D.S.; and a sister, June Brecheen Cope.

Among survivors are Smitty, his wife of 67 years; two daughters, Patti (Brecheen) Fite and Stacy (Brecheen) Truitt; a son, Marcus Brecheen; and 10 grandchildren.

Condolences may be offered to the family online at www.pbfuneraldirectors.com.