Brandon J. O'Brien > Quotes

“Leadership is a Western virtue; submission is a biblical virtue.”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible

“I don’t mean to be overly dramatic. My point is simply this: Our dominant narrative of success is not supported by the story of the New Testament church. Scripture makes it hard to claim congregation size as a foolproof mark of faithfulness.”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective

“Many white Westerners feel that the worst thing they could be called is a racist. We know deep down that we're not supposed to make value distinctions between people of different ethnicities, as if it's better to be white or Black or whatever. Because we're hesitant to make value distinctions, and rightfully so, we're often slow to make any distinctions at all. Thus it goes without being said for many that to be truly equal everyone must be the same.

This is what we mean by being colorblind—the belief that ethnic differences don't matter. Of course it would be fine if what we meant was that everyone should be treated with equal dignity or enjoy the same rights. But we suspect what is commonly meant is that everyone should be treated as if they were the same, and by same, what is frequently meant is majority culture.

Consequently, we are trained to assume that ethnicity is unimportant, and that prejudice on the basis of ethnicity is an impossible motivation for behavior. We avoid making an issue a race issue unless there's no way around it, because we have convinced ourselves that ethnicity is no longer a factor in social situations. This leaves us somewhat schizophrenic, because we all know that we carry latent prejudices privately, while we are trained to pretend publicly that we don't.”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible

“The overwhelming majority of pastors are living this second story, the narrative of obscurity. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there are 177,000 churches in America with fewer than 100 weekly worshipers and another 105,000 churches that see between 100 and 500 in attendance each week. On the other hand, there are only 19,000 churches – or 6 percent of the total – with more than 500 attendees. That means that if there were 100 churches in your town, 94 of them would have 500 or fewer attendees, and only six would have more than 500. Mega-churches (regular attendance over 2,000) make up less than one half of one percent of churches in America. The narrative of success may be the one people write books about, but it is not the typical one. We have allowed the ministry experience of 6 percent of pastors to become the standard by which the remaining 94 percent of us judge ourselves.”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective

“In fact, instead of illustrating the dominant narrative of success, the Bible testifies to the narrative most pastors experience – the narrative of obscurity. Sometimes faithfulness to God’s work results in the sudden shrinking of a group of followers. People left Jesus in droves when his teaching struck too near the bone. In John 6, just after Jesus feeds the five thousand and walks on water, he tells his disciples, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Nobody had any idea what he was talking about; they were confused and offended. “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?” (v. 60 nlt). Jesus’ hard words had devastating consequences for his ministry: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (v. 66).”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective

“These insights should adjust our mental image of the size and success of the early church. The three thousand that responded to Peter’s message were dispersed over an area twice the size of Texas and separated by the Mediterranean Sea. Pentecost may have been the first mass revival in history, but it did not create the first mega-church. Instead, Acts 2 records the birth of many small – even micro – congregations.”
― Brandon J. O'Brien, The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective