TERRY BRENNAN

Terry Brennan is retired. And he likes being retired.

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He was in the workforce for nearly sixty years, from the time he was a 12-year-old selling programs for football games at Franklin Field in Philadelphia to being a senior executive for two New York City nonprofits that serve homeless people. When Terry turned seventy-years-old, he decided that he had worked enough.

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And yet, there was this ‘writing’ thing that still dominated his life. From 2008 to 2020, Kregel Publications published six of Terry’s action-adventure novels: international thrillers based on historical facts, populated by empathetic heroes, haunted by intentionally evil villains, and influenced by Brennan’s faith-based worldview.

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Terry Brennan was born to be a storyteller.

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Through twenty-two years of journalism, the first half as a sportswriter, Brennan told many stories. He was a reporter, a newsman. Some of those stories won awards. But they were other people’s stories. He wasn’t telling his story.

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Six years removed from his newspaper career, one day Brennan stood at the back of the Bowery Mission chapel in New York City. He had an interesting thought. What if there was something hidden behind those organ pipes? That idea (which became his first novel, The Sacred Cipher) and others that followed, kept Brennan busy writing ​novels for fifteen years.  He was now writing his own stories. But there was that other book. The one that wouldn’t let him go.

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All too often, Brennan would fall asleep when he got up to pray in the early morning hours. Starting more than thirty years ago, he took up the habit of writing in a journal to stay awake. Brennan continues to write down his prayers to God … and God’s answers … in his growing number of journals. Messages that are spoken softly, heart-to-heart; spirit-to-spirit. One recurring message Terry often heard in his spirit was: “Write down all the words I’ve given you.”

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And then the words he heard in his morning prayers became more direct. More pointed. More purposeful. Although clearly for Brennan, the words, the messages—all the words I’ve given you—also held great value for others. In 2016, Terry set out to write a nonfiction book, Rescuing Hidden Hearts, that was fueled by many of the entries in his journals. But, even though he believed God was speaking into his heart, this was a tough assignment.

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Terry Brennan writes action-adventure thrillers. What does he know about rescuing hidden hearts? What does he know about changing peoples’ lives?

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Turns out, more than he thought.

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Always active in men’s ministries in the churches he and Andrea attended, Brennan also supplied leadership in other ways. He served on the Board of Trustees at Trinity Baptist Church in New York City. He was a member of the Board of Trustees for St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, NY and served on school boards for LaSalle College High School and as school board president at Loudonville Christian School, both in the Albany area of upstate New York.

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​But Terry’s true immersion into life-changing ministry occurred during the eleven years he worked for Christian Herald Association—including the seven years he and his family lived in the Bowery Mission on the lower East Side of New York City. Since it first opened its red doors in 1879, the Bowery Mission has not only fed, clothed, housed, and rescued homeless, addicted men from the cold, hard streets of New York, it has also been the catalyst for thousands of