Deacon Michael Halbrook is a Deacon of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, assigned to assist the Pastor of St. Elizabeth Parish in Granite City, Illinois.
Michael is also a Director in Consulting at Adobe, where he helps lead the team of consultants making Adobe marketers and employees the best users and evangelists of Adobe’s own products and the value they bring.
He was born and raised in Granite City, a suburb of St. Louis, MO, but across the Mississippi River in Illinois. His career has spanned media, production, advertising, consulting, and leadership of consulting & customer success for more than 25 years, including 15 years at Adobe, leaving to COO a faith-based mobile app startup, then a boomerang back to Adobe.
Michael married his wife Suzanne in 2004, and they have four sons. He entered deacon formation in 2015, and was ordained by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki on June 26, 2021.
Prior to entering deacon formation, Michael was music director and organist for more than 14 years at Holy Family Catholic Church in Granite City, where he evolved from entering music ministry as a keyboardist in a guitar ensemble, to leading Gregorian Chant camps for the youth and reintroducing the use of the proper antiphons and traditional hymnody.
Michael also spent decades involved in scouting. He served on summer camp staff at boy scout camps for nine summers. He also helped produce, write, and direct shows for national conferences and Jamborees, and worked on various national conference staffs in areas ranging from shows to the daily conference newspaper to leading the thematic elements of the conferences, from 1994 through 2020. He spent some time advising the national content subcommittee of the Order of the Arrow, Scouting’s National Honor Society.