681: Strategically Small Churches With Brandon O'Brien  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Holy Post]] - Full Title: 681: Strategically Small Churches With Brandon O'Brien - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/d49fce83-52e9-4941-ad17-9c5acc3bd103 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Penguin Poop Cools Antarctica** - Penguin poop releases ammonia aerosols that contribute to cloud formation. - These clouds reflect sunlight, helping cool the Antarctic climate. Transcript: Skye Jethani That was for Caitlin because someone had to. Phil Vischer Oh, penguin poop may help preserve the Antarctic climate. Okay. Mm-hmm. Can you guess how? Can you guess how? The climate. How could penguin poop decrease global warming in the Antarctic? Skye Jethani I have not seen this article. I know. So, okay. Is penguin poop like other bird poop white and therefore reflects the light the way snow would? So as the snow melts due to global warming, if it's replaced by penguin poop, does it still reflect the light and therefore create less greenhouse effect or less heat on the ground? Phil Vischer You're directionally accurate, but factually completely wrong. Skye Jethani That's pretty much my life. Yeah. Phil Vischer Okay, go ahead. Antarctic is pretty ice, pretty much ice. Okay. There isn't anywhere where the ground is popping up in the Antarctic. So poop or no, it doesn't make much difference. No, let me tell you, Sky. Tell me, Phil. So that then you will know. So you can add this to your data cloud. And then at your next party, when you're mixing drinks for people, you can say, hey, I bet you don't know this one about penguin poop. And then Caitlin, who's probably at the party, will go, oh. And then we'll come full circle. New research shows that penguin guano, because scientists don't like to say poop. Skye Jethani I thought guano was only bats. Phil Vischer I know, so did I. But they call it penguin guano. But I'm going to call it penguin poop. Why not feces? Penguin poop in Antarctica is an important source of... Nitrogen. Ammonia. Oh. Aerosol particles. Wait a minute. Ammonia in the air. Skye Jethani Aerial poop is a fart. It's not guano. It's not. Phil Vischer It comes off of the poop that's lying on the ground. It wafts. It's not the gas that comes out of the penguin. Got it. Skye Jethani That would propel them pretty well in the water though. Phil Vischer Ammonia aerosol particles that help drive the formation and persistence of low clouds, which cool the climate by reflecting some incoming sunlight back to space. Skye Jethani You're telling me that penguin droppings enough ammonia gas to develop a cloud? Phil Vischer It's fun to think about, isn't it? It'd make a great children's book, especially if it was farts, if it was penguin farts. It would. They were keeping the earth from warming up. But cow farts are warming up the earth, so penguin farts could try to offset it. Skye Jethani Yeah. It could be like angry birds versus the pigs. Yes. It could be the cows versus the penguins. Phil Vischer Yes. Here's the deal. The findings reinforce the growing awareness that Earth's intricate web of life plays a significant role in shaping the planetary climate because the ammonia aerosol particles Are not actually what produces clouds. The ammonia particles from the penguin poop interact with sulfur-based aerosols from ocean algae to start a chemical chain reaction that forms billions of tiny particles that serve As nuclei for water vapor droplets. Skye Jethani Wow. So there's multiple ingredients needed here. Phil Vischer Yes. So you need the algae and you need the penguin poop. And the penguin poop accelerates what the algae would do on its own by about a thousand fold. Whoa. It's a catalyst. It is. Skye Jethani Have you ever hung out with penguins, Phil? Yeah, they stink. They really stink. Yeah. Yeah. Phil Vischer The little penguin house at Brookfield Zoo. My grandkids don't really want to go in there because it just stinks. Skye Jethani We took the kids to a penguin colony in South Africa. Did you? Yeah. Phil Vischer I just went to the Brookfield Zoo, which is about 45 minutes away. That's what I did for my grandkids. We really take our kids to the authentic experience, Phil. Yes. Oh, you want to see penguins, kids? Oh, you want to see dolphins? Skye Jethani Middle of the Atlantic. Well, South Africa, Cape Town was as close as I've probably gotten to Antarctica. And there's penguin colonies there. And everyone, you know, penguins are cute and they waddle and they're, you know, they absolutely reek. They are disgusting creatures. No, they smell. Phil Vischer They smell disgusting. Their behavior isn't disgusting. And they are not. And God made them and God loves them. So they're not disgusting. Skye Jethani I'm not making a moral judgment. I'm saying they smell. Disgusting sounds like a moral judgment. Disgusting is a factory judgment. Phil Vischer How many breeding pairs of penguins do you think live on Antarctica? In Antarctica? Skye Jethani Breeding pears like households? Yes. Phil Vischer I don't know. It's estimated about 20 million. 20 million. Pears. Breeding pears. So that's 40 million penguins. Skye Jethani Yes. Phil Vischer That's on a place that's just ice. Nests in vast colonies all around the frozen continent. Some of the largest colonies have up to a million breeding pairs and can cover several square miles. You know why there are so many penguins? Imagine how that would smell. Exactly. Ammonia. That's bad. And that's why they get clouds. They get penguin poop clouds. And then that helps keep the air cooler. Skye Jethani The reason there's got to be so many penguins still is because they probably don't taste very good and I'm guessing that their pelts don't help in any way, like feathers. Oh, for humans. Yeah, like no one's clubbing penguins. Phil Vischer I think sea lions think they taste great. Skye Jethani Sea lions eat penguins? I think so. Do they? Yeah. Okay. Phil Vischer And orcas eat penguins. Yes. Skye Jethani Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they get the sea lions also. Have you seen the videos where the orcas coordinate and they swim together under the little iceberg to create a wave that washes the penguins or the sea lions off? Phil Vischer Yeah. They're amazing hunters. That's devious. Here's a question. Did orcas do that before the fall? Skye Jethani Was there predation before the fall? Phil Vischer Yeah, that's a bigger. Yeah, that's a big one. I'm going to say yes. Good news, Sky. Good news. World Relief sent out a notice. Skye Jethani Oh, we're done with this news of the butt. Phil Vischer Yeah, we're done. Oh, this has been the news of the butt. It's over. Come back next time. I don't know when next time will be because Caitlin will be here and she'll resent me if I do it on her first week in studio. So maybe that's why I should do it. First week in studio. Skye Jethani We didn't talk about the implications of that story at ([Time 0:06:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6365d21e-3ad4-469e-bc9c-df9d0fb8f836)) - **Challenging White-Only Community Claims** - White-only community claims to preserve culture by controlling neighbors. - Skye Jethani challenges the biblical justification of culture preservation claims. Transcript: Phil Vischer Is it a golf course? Nope. It's a small town. Skye Jethani With no recreation? Phil Vischer Do they have golf? I don't know. Maybe they have. I mean, that's kind of been the trend, right? Maybe they have golf. I don't know. They might have golf. Whites only. Here's the deal. Established in 2023, it's called Return to the Land. And it describes itself as, quote, a private membership association or PMA for individuals and families with traditional views and European ancestry. So you got to have traditional views and you have to be white. Skye Jethani I think there's some people who have European ancestry who are not white. There's a lot of people in Europe who are now have backgrounds from Asia, North Africa, South Asia. Well, now. Yeah, but that's not ancestry. You could be third generation English from an Indian heritage background. Yeah, that's true. Come to the US and be like, I have a European heritage background. That's true. Phil Vischer And they'd say, no, you're Indian. They would say, we know because we ran the software on you and it came back Indian. In a recent interview with Sky News, the founder of- No relation. No, it's British news service. Eric Orwell, not Orwell, might be Orwellian, but it's Orwell. What we've done here is establish a place where we have control over who our neighbors are. Skye Jethani The way Jesus intended. Phil Vischer The way Jesus intended. And that is just for the sake of preserving our culture. When pushed on what he meant by culture, Orwell clarified white American culture. Skye Jethani That's still not specific enough. Phil Vischer White America, because it's all the same. All of Europe has the same culture, a monoculture. I just noticed this going from Germany to Austria to Slovakia to Hungary, no differences. But he's saying- They all eat sausage. Skye Jethani White American culture though, even that- What the heck is that? I mean, there's a white American culture on the South side of Chicago and there's a white American culture in the panhandle of Florida. Those are not the same culture. Phil Vischer Yeah. Their website lists six different sites that they're launching, including a second active site in Arkansas. The rest are in initial planning process and they claim to have received deposits from hundreds of people across the world. Skye Jethani Are these sites like where you hook up your RV? Is that what they mean by sites? No, they're building homes. Phil Vischer They're home development sites. RTTL believes that its status as a PMA, once again, that means private membership association, protects it from any charges of legislation that would bar discrimination. So they believe, they have a lawyer who's looked into this and they believe that they can make whites only communities as long as they're not municipalities, but they're basically Private real estate holding organizations. That will be interesting to see how that holds up. What I find interesting, this is why I brought this story up, is there is, first of all, there are those people say, glad we solved racism. Nope. Nope. No, we didn't. But also, you don't hear as much open racism. You hear the language on the far right. There is some open racist language on the far right. But more and more, it's turned to culture. We have to save Western civilization. We have to preserve our culture. We let black people try to preserve their culture. So why can't white people try to preserve their culture? These are the arguments that are popping up more and more in social media. And it's to say, this isn't about race. It's about culture. So you have to admit, that's a pretty good argument, that Jesus would probably be okay with this. Right, Sky? Skye Jethani No. And honestly, we've talked about this before, but I chafe, and I've heard this in very well-meaning Christian communities as well, in diverse Christian communities. I chafe when people use the diversity of cultures and the preservation of minority cultures and ([Time 0:16:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4edb050-fda8-4a35-b734-309e1a7b2e8f)) - **Culture Preservation vs. New Testament** - Desire to preserve cultural heritage can conflict with New Testament Christianity. - Intermarriage and cultural blending are embraced in the New Testament, opposing strict cultural preservation. Transcript: Skye Jethani Diverse Christian communities. I chafe when people use the diversity of cultures and the preservation of minority cultures and give a biblical spin to it. Let me just take it from my own background. So, my father's from India. He's an immigrant from India. There are plenty of South Asians who are Christians, although my family are not. Could you live in this community? Probably not. But my point is, let's say there's a group of South Asian Christians here in the US who have the posture of, we want to preserve our South Asian culture because God gave it whatever. It's in all the different cultures around the throne in heaven, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, which South Asian culture are you trying to preserve? Is it the one from 2025? Is it the one from 1995? Is it the one from 1600? And if you're trying to preserve it, then why are you in the United States and going to McDonald's? This is the part that drives me crazy because you can use that same logic to argue, then you shouldn't allow your children to marry anyone outside of your ethnic or cultural community. That's not Christian. So my beef with all this language, I don't care if it's white culture or any other culture, you can't reconcile that with New Testament Christianity. Phil Vischer So if your heritage is ([Time 0:20:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb05ab91-5f3a-495e-8fa9-363f24fe364a)) - **Congregational Polity's Achilles Heel** - Congregational polity makes pastors beholden to member preferences and politics. - When the congregation aligns more with media politics than theology, it distorts church direction. Transcript: Phil Vischer And riding a horse. Skye Jethani I want the horse involved. Phil Vischer Yeah. So Brett Leatherwood, years ago, the ERLC was formed as the Southern Baptists, basically public policy and lobbying group. To have a man in Washington saying, this is important to Southern Baptists. Yeah, yeah. And they say, oh, good to know. We'll see what we can do, sir. The first one is Richard Land. Richard Land kind of built it, built the reputation, became a bit of a culture warrior. When he left, Russell Moore took over. Russell Moore was seen as maybe a gentler, more moderate voice. Richard Land could be a bit strident. Skye Jethani Yes, but no less dedicated to Southern Baptist beliefs and doctrine. Phil Vischer Less theologically conservative. He was featured in Time Magazine as the new face of the SBC in Washington. And wow, he seems like a really bright guy. And so mainstream media was impressed with him, which was probably a bad sign. Not necessarily. Skye Jethani It was a different era. Phil Vischer It was a different era. And then Trump came along and Russell Moore said, nope, never. Christians cannot support this. And that was the beginning of the end for Russell Moore. More and more of the SBC ground folks. People in the pews lined up behind Donald Trump. Russell Moore was more and more a scene as someone who no longer fit and eventually resigned. Skye Jethani He's been on the show to talk about this at least a couple of times, but it's important to point out Russell didn't change any of his beliefs. He stuck to what the SBC had always believed in and advocated for in Washington DC. And he recognized that Donald Trump and his rhetoric and his ideas and his character were significantly out of step with what the Southern Baptist had always said and believed. And so it's a bit shocking that the Southern Baptists themselves got behind Trump and then Russell Moore found himself. Phil Vischer It was like everyone else in the line stepped backwards and he was alone out front and then got- Then he got shot in the back of the head and he's now the editor-in at Christianity Today. He was replaced by Brent Leatherwood, who worked for him, was friends with Russell Moore. And Brent Leatherwood went out of his way to not criticize Trump. And to try to focus more, he emphasized pro-life causes and fighting abortion much more. But he also said that Southern Baptists support refugees and we want to be- Which they always have. They always have. And we want to be kind to immigrants. And as the temperature changed even more in the US, he started getting a lot of complaints and pushbacks because he was too far from MAGA. Skye Jethani In other words, the SBC line took another step backwards and now Brent Leatherwood was stuck out front by himself. Phil Vischer So he showed up in Megan Basham's book, Shepherds for Sale as a wolf in sheep's clothing who was leading the whole SBC astray because he had pro-immigrant sensitivities. Skye Jethani How ungodly. Yeah. Phil Vischer Yeah. And William Wolfe, who used to attack me all the time online when I was more on Twitter than I am now, started a new group called the Center for Baptist Thought and Leadership or something Like that. And the purpose of that group, William Wolfe was in the first Trump administration at a low level. And he was also the intern of Al Mohler at which seminary is Al Mohler? Southern. Southern seminary. So he started this group primarily to say, and this, you know, Megan Basham was another one of these voices and the conservative Baptist network, another one of these voices saying, Liberal drift, liberal drift, liberal drift. And Megan Basham's book was making that case. And so Brent Leatherwood for the past two or three years has been kind of fighting for his job. And there've been more and more people saying, we don't think we even need an ERLC anymore. Let's get rid of it. It went to a vote last year at their national conference and 43% of the Baptists present voted to disband the ERLC. So they survived it, obviously. They survived it. But barely. But just barely. He, last year when Biden stepped back and said he wouldn't run, stepped out of the race, Brent Leatherwood tweeted that it was a selfless act for him to do that. People hated that. Because he dared to say something that could be interpreted as complimentary. Joe Biden, the head of the ERLC trustees board the next day announced that he'd been fired. The rest of the trustees board had to say no. Okay. Keep, wait, can we just pause for a second? No, we didn't vote on that. Skye Jethani Can we pause for a second? So he was back in. Being convicted in a court for sexually assaulting a woman is not enough to lose Southern Baptist support for Donald Trump. Phil Vischer Fake news. Skye Jethani But giving a veiled compliment to a president who withdraws from running for re-election gets you fired. Phil Vischer Uh-huh. That's crazy. Uh-huh. That's how weird things have gotten. Yeah. So anyway, Leatherwood finally had enough and he stepped down last Thursday. The culmination of a tumultuous few years when growing numbers of Southern Baptists saw him in the ERLC as out of line with their own theological stances? No, with their own political stances. Skye Jethani Yeah. Okay. We got to talk about this a little bit because I think beyond just Southern Baptist, it illustrates one of the Achilles heels. Can you have multiple Achilles heels? Phil Vischer You can have at least two. Skye Jethani Yeah. The Achilles heels of a congregational ecclesiology. Oh, okay. That's a fancy way of saying- I like that. When you have a church structure that is determined by what the members want. Yes, yeah. Right? Majority rule. Majority rule. When you have a church where your members are being shaped in their values and thinking more by their media consumption, particularly conservative media consumption, if Fox News Are the ones really discipling your people rather than your pastors or your theologians or your elders or whatever, then this is what happens. Because, I mean, I know Russell Moore. I don't know Brent Leatherwood. But since they work together, I assume there's some similarities. I know Russell to be a man of integrity and maturity and theological orthodoxy. And the fact that that ([Time 0:29:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e1294f69-b7d0-474e-962e-74ff88f21bdf)) - **Renewed Interest in Small Churches** - There is increased appetite and mainstream interest in small, focused churches today. - Small churches feel authentic and relational, contrasting with large, impersonal megachurches. Transcript: Brandon O'Brien In the last 15 years, the conversation about micro church, house church, missional community, or, you know, fresh expressions, those kinds of things have, they were a little more Marginal maybe 15 years ago and feel a little more mainstream now. A lot of kind of visibility to a group of people who have always been supportive of the idea that a small church that's very focused on a very particular group of people for missional reasons Can be highly effective and innovative and all that. I think of Neil Cole and Alan Hirsch and some others that we met, you know, years ago, who I think were kind of voices in the wilderness 15 years ago. And now that there's, they seem to be cropping up in some of the more mainstream, um, circles. And, um, so I think that, that there has been a shift to say, maybe there are different strategies, uh, are necessary. I also think this is, I can't prove this. There's no research so far as I know, but I also think that it's just been a lot of disillusion in the last 15 years with extremely large churches, but also organizations in general. And I think that there, maybe I'm projecting on the population, but I think there's a sense that size and money allows you to cover a lot of misbehavior. And even if the activities that are going on at a smaller church feel less professional or whatever, at the very least, what you see is what you get. And there's something attractive, I think, increasingly for certain people about being in a place that doesn't feel slick and shiny and professional. It feels authentic. And I think maybe, speaking for myself, I'm sort of a little tired of scale. I like to be in a room where I at least know who's new because I can tell, you know, that last year, last week, I didn't see you here. And I do think that there seems to be some broader interest in kind of existing at a more human relational scale in church. Skye Jethani Yeah, I feel that too. And authenticity is a theme that comes up a lot in your book. But okay, here, going with back ([Time 0:51:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3d14ca3c-d35d-4d36-af2c-effc500f17e1)) - **Measure by Participation, Not Numbers** - Measure church success by participation in worship and mission activities, not just attendance. - Foster worship where people, including children and sensory-sensitive individuals, can engage meaningfully. Transcript: Skye Jethani But it's the way they assess whether they're doing them well or doing them faithfully that is different. So what are the different metrics that you advocate for in the book for determining whether those things are being done well versus the ones that we tend to inherit from our culture and Corporate values and things like that? Right. Yeah. Great question. Brandon O'Brien So I think with things like worship, there, you know, one metric for success is, you know, butts in seats. So just how many people are there and then what's the quality of the performance of the music or the performance of the preaching. And I think in different ways, in different chapters, one of the things I want to suggest is that like a better metric for the faithfulness and effectiveness of worship is participation. So are children able to engage in your worship? Are people who have sensory integration issues able to make it through the drum set? Or do they have to stand in the lobby until, you know, the music's over? Is it a hospitable space for people who are not yet Christians? Like, can they come in and access the words that you're saying and understand the message you're sharing? Is it in our people participating in worship as in whether that's liturgy, so someone's up front doing a reading or leading somebody in a responsive prayer, or just able to sing in their Seat and participate in the worship in that way. Been a lot of large churches where the band is singing very loudly, and you look around and nobody else is really. They're just kind of watching. And so I think the level of participation rather than just being present is kind of an important factor across a number of domains. Okay. I mean, ([Time 0:57:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8c26fa35-0249-4adb-8261-92aaf72e01f2)) - **Focus Beyond Attendance Growth** - Assess church health by engagement in worship, mission, and formation beyond just numerical growth. - Avoid prioritizing increased attendance over deep discipleship and community involvement. Transcript: Skye Jethani Be defined by butts and seats and money in the plate so how do you acknowledge that reality of church without allowing it to take over everything else? Brandon O'Brien Yeah. I think that's a, that's a tough question. And it's tough because churches are small in, uh, for different reasons and in different stages. So I think the, you're describing, you've already got a budget, you've already got a staff. So attendance matters and giving matters. That's sort of suggesting one trajectory, which is the church got to a certain size where it could afford all those things. And now maybe it's shrinking and it can't afford all those things. So that's kind of one direction that smallness goes from big to small. Right. And I've been in a lot of churches like downtown churches with a steeple that, you know, 20 years ago they had all these people. Now they can't afford the building because the congregation has shrunk. Obviously, things go the other way, too, where they start small and then they get bigger. And so I think part of it is trying to figure out like where, what kind, are we experiencing decline or are we just not experiencing growth? Because if you aren't, if you don't have people who depend on a paycheck, then you have a sort of maybe a moral pressure to get bigger, but you don't actually have to feed your staff, right? Like if you have a small staff and a small budget, it's fine. It's really when you're declined in that sort of place of decline that I think that becomes a really difficult question. I think a lot of churches are there. And I don't know that I have an easy answer for how you make those choices, but I do think it's helpful to figure out like, you know, if let's say we increased attendance by 10 percent. If we didn't also increase, like, missional engagement or participation in worship, have we, or formation, like the people aren't also engaged in discipleship and volunteering In various ministries. Have we, is a victory? Did we win just because the numbers went up? And that's where I think that having those couple of, you're right, that people, no church would say, yeah, we don't do worship or we don't do mission. But I think being able to be honest about the fact that are we really investing there and are we seeing engagement from our people in those places and growth, if not in numbers, then in Formation or in, you know, engagement in the neighborhood. And you can sacrifice all of that and get more people. ([Time 0:59:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/72aed43d-fd67-4fa7-93d0-71900cd9371c)) - **Institution vs. Mission in Declining Churches** - A declining megachurch risked survival due to infrastructure costs despite attendance drop. - Institutional needs can override spiritual mission incentives in large churches. Transcript: Skye Jethani There was a season where I was doing some church consulting for lack of a better term, like different places around the country would have me come in and meet with me whatever they thought For some reason that i had some insights about next generation ideas because of my time at ct and leadership turn or whatever i remember talking to this one church that had been at one Point quite large like definitely mega church status and had plateaued for years in its attendance and had been now declining and they were all freaking out about that and there were Clear demographic reasons for it. The city that they were in was changing and the realities were changing and they were just in denial about all of that. But I remember sitting with some of the leaders at a table and I said something. I don't know if they actually ever invited me back afterwards. But I said to them, the problem with your model is that your church can survive just fine if people don't actually meet Jesus here, but it can't survive if they don't put money in the offering. And so your incentive structure is all built around the institutional needs of this infrastructure that you've built rather than the spiritual mission that you've been given by Jesus. And when those two things come into conflict with each other, you automatically go to the institutional need. And so to your point, if a church is kind of going on the up escalator or the down escalator, depends on what's going on, but it's a lot harder to deal with structures once they're in place. Yes. Right. So if you're on the up escalator, if you're just beginning a church and maybe you're experiencing some growth, the temptation is let's build more infrastructure. Let's hire more people. Let's get more buildings. But all those things are a huge burden on a congregation once you've reached stasis or you actually decline in some numbers and then everything gets backwards and the tail starts wagging The dog. ([Time 1:01:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f869fe0-6a56-44ec-9cd1-58996d833cb9)) - **Healthy Churches Multiply, Not Just Grow** - Healthy churches do not need to grow endlessly but can multiply in influence through sending members. - Being strategically small allows churches to remain lean and mission-focused despite size. Transcript: Skye Jethani Sense, I'm guessing you are still growing intellectually, relationally, spiritually, right? But we tend to narrow our focus on one kind of growth. Brandon O'Brien Yeah, exactly. But I think healthy things do multiply. Healthy things do reproduce. And so I know a number of churches that have been roughly the same size for a very long time. But that's because over the span of 10 years or 15 years, they have sent out members of the congregation either as a church plant on their own or as a core group with another church plant, Or they've even commissioned them to, as they move off to another city, to say, you're kind of going in that work as an ambassador of our, you know, the body of Christ here. And so I think that measurement, that then encourages those churches to keep operating in a lean way because they anticipate the drop. And I think there's some wisdom, whether you're planning to send people out in that same way to say, yeah, it feels like summertime now, but winter's coming and it's helpful to just sort Of, you know, to maybe be sober. And I would suspect that maybe some of the animosity that a lot of evangelicals feel in the broader culture right now could be, could help them say that, right? That like, can we agree that probably most churches are not, the willow thing is not going to happen again? And so let's temper our expectations and say, even if it grows, we got to figure out how to keep this thing lean and agile. And if it's large numerically, you could still operate in a kind of strategically small kind of way, I think. ([Time 1:04:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd2e0ffb-3dbb-4db7-8540-7ee93d50d3ea)) - **Leadership Maturity and Church Size** - Insecure leaders often chase megachurch growth for status, risking abusive tendencies. - Mature leaders embrace smaller, focused ministries with secure identities and genuine care for people. Transcript: Skye Jethani You know, it's the deeply insecure pastor who's just insatiable in their need to have a bigger and bigger audience, to grow more and more and more. And that leader often will be quite abusive in viewing the people under their care as just HR, right? They're human resources through which the mission advances, but he doesn't actually care for or love those actual people. So the prerequisite for this all seems like a mature, healthy leader. So are there things about the way you've seen church done that you think is more likely to produce those kinds of healthy leaders? And what have you seen? I know you've been a part of a lot of different kinds of churches. What are the systems that you think just are rotten and create an environment for toxic leadership? That's a really good question. Brandon O'Brien I do think there's a, I'm spitballing here. I do think that in a lot of very large ministries, one way that people talk about formation or development of leaders is to say that, kind of quoting Jesus, that if you're faithful with A few things, you'll be given, given a lot of things. And so they say, lead a small group, lead the youth group. You're kind of moving up in scale from smaller communities in your care to larger ones. And I think that while on the one hand, I've appreciate the, there's a wisdom there for sure. But I think that can translate into saying, there are plenty of pastors who have used small churches as a stepping stone to pastoring a larger church. I've noticed it's very uncommon for somebody to be called from a large church to a small church, but it's very common for someone in a small church to be called to a large church. And so I do think that there's a sort of system of formation that says this small church is a good place for you to make mistakes because there's not a lot to risk. You know, it's a small number of people before you get on the big stage. And so that whole, it's like a, it's like a, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a minor league system of church and that small churches are the minor leagues and the, um, you know, big churches are the big leagues and you go make your mistakes and learn your swing And get your reps in and the small churches, cause there's just, it doesn't really matter. And I think that's a pretty pervasive framework in a lot of seminary training and a lot of material out there. I don't know that. And I think that in large churches that have that kind of like bring people up through the system from the grassroots, kind of repeat that language internally. And so I think that's a really, I think a really unhealthy thing. Are really faithful and deeply committed pastors of small churches and who have, who feel settled in that identity, right? So they're not anxious about being pastors. Some of them have, a lot of them have missionary background. So I think that they, that the, often what motivates missionaries is people not institution. So I think there is a sense in which a missionary who has three people having dinner in their house, like that's a victory. Right. And so I think there's a frame there of saying people first, not platform building, not that kind of building. I also think people who are committed to a really particular place is another factor I see in people who are really kind of dedicated and passionate pastors of small churches. What I mean by that is like we both live in Chicagoland. If there's a large church in Chicagoland, people might commute from suburbs, from downtown, from various places. And so the people you're reaching are a sort of slice in the population that transcends a place. So it's whoever can get to the interstate and get to your church, and they're all kind of alike. But if you're pastoring in a small town, just outside the western suburbs, or you're pastoring in a neighborhood in the city, the commitment to that handful of blocks or to that small Population means you're thinking specifically about them and not just what do people like or how do we reach people in a generic sense. But there's like a focus on saying these particular people right now across the street or down the street, how do we, what do they need from us? Skye Jethani Right. There's a particularity to the ministry. Brandon O'Brien That particularity is unusual. But when you, when you find that passion in somebody, I find people get just really excited. Then they know about this. They know about the local history and they know who the principal is and they knew who, they they're so invested in the town or in the neighborhood and the neighborhood can feel that. Right. So I think there's something. So, again, I think there's a yeah, almost that's and that's a bit of a missionary contextualizing or church planting kind of impulse, but it can be done in any kind of church. Skye Jethani Yeah. I mean, there's a paradox that you see even in a missionary like the Apostle Paul, where on the one hand, he expresses in many places a deep sort of fatherly concern for the churches and The people that he has brought to faith and his care for them and love for them and wanting to see them mature. On the other hand, you see Paul say things like, I don't care what you think about me. I don't even judge myself anymore. I mean, he has this sort of holy detachment from the outcomes. And that's a rare quality in anyone, let alone a church leader, who can at the same time care for the flock, care for their particular community, but be secure enough in their own identity That their well-being is in some way detached from the so-called success of their ministry. And that's what's crazy to me is some of the most insecure people are often the most effective large church pastors because that very insecurity is what drives them to build a huge ministry. I'm not saying that's true of every large church, but insecurity can be an asset in building these big ministries when it's exactly the opposite quality you want in a healthy leader. ([Time 1:06:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ea0d46d-5c0f-4dd2-b293-9ec4cc839c4e)) - **Local Pastors' Contentment vs Anxiety** - Local pastors often find contentment, while denominational leaders feel anxious for growth. - Proximity to the congregation can foster celebration of smaller harvests. Transcript: Brandon O'Brien Yeah. And you know, as we're talking about this, I can't help but think that I've been in some denominational spaces or like, you know, at somebody's regional convention or national convention To speak. And I often find that the pastors at the local church level, I find a lot of contentment with the congregation. I find a lot of anxiety at the denominational level. So it's the sort of, it's not so much the local pastor in every case, but there's somebody above the local pastor who's reminding them always that you're not quite there and you haven't Quite done it. And we'd like to see more numbers and we'd like to see, you know, asking for annual reports and whatever. There's a, I don't, I can't say that this is true across the board, of course, but I just, I encounter a lot of denominational leaders wringing their hands and a lot of pastors of small Churches saying, yeah, God's doing really cool stuff here. And so I think there is, the closer you are to the ground and the more settled you are kind of in your calling and identity, the more you can celebrate what looks like small harvests. Right. But I think as you're more responsible for a system or a denomination or a budget or whatever, those things inevitably become major concerns. ([Time 1:13:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2204cc4-5f10-4b67-be4a-cd5a80e067b2)) - **Nimbleness Favors Small Churches** - Small churches proved more nimble during COVID, adapting quickly and maintaining community. - Large churches face complexity and inertia that hinder rapid response to shifting circumstances. Transcript: Skye Jethani And it was ironically small churches that were often more nimble and able to accommodate, adapt, swerve with the realities of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, back again to our time at CT together, I remember I did an article at one point. There was a year where Christmas Day was falling on a Sunday, which is not abnormal. It happens, I think, every seven years, right? Christmas Day falls on a Sunday. And we we were contacting churches around the country to hear like how are you what are you doing to accommodate for this reality and the the theme quickly presented itself that small Churches were opening and mega churches were not and when you drill down into why the mega churches were not opening on sun that christmas sunday morning it's because uh they couldn't Get enough volunteers to handle just a regular parking attendance children's workers all you couldn't get enough and two in colder climates just the heating bill to turn on the heat In all the rooms of the church was going to be more expensive than the likely offering given on a Christmas morning Sunday because there won't be enough people there. So there was a case where being big actually prevented them from doing something as simple as opening on a Sunday that was inconvenient. So pandemic kind of brought that to a whole different level. Talk about why nimbleness is more valuable today than it was in the 90s or early 2000s when everyone was so eager to just be a huge Goliath of a ministry. Yeah, man. Brandon O'Brien Yeah, the pandemic, we were living in Manhattan and our reality changed really quickly. And you're exactly right. A lot of small churches were able to just say, we'll meet in the park. We'll set up on the sidewalk. We'll give everybody six feet of space and you can do that. I also noticed, which I think is worth mentioning that actually it was Alan Hirsch, I think who pointed this out, that the churches who did well were the ones that already had really deep Community connections where like if you have churches that have a really great, whether it's small groups or not, or like good deacon connections, as soon as the, like the, the big machine Stops, people still have those deep connections. But if you have this kind of vast network of people who aren't interconnected, as soon as the services end, that's your only point of contact. Those people just fall away. And it's not always smaller churches, but it's often smaller churches that have that deep sense of connectivity to one another. So that when something like the service goes out, or we can't meet in public, you're not losing the only point of connection that you have. You're losing one of several points of connection. And I think that's a valuable sort of thing and obviously we're not anticipating another pandemic hopefully but unforeseen circumstances do arise that are challenges and it we think Skye Jethani I the reason i call them goliath ministries is goliath looked like an imposing impossible enemy to defeat and yet one small stone to the skull and he was toast and he was and you see this Over and over and over again with these mega ministries, whether it's a scandal by a senior pastor or COVID or whatever, like one small thing hits it and it's decimated because they're Ultimately very fragile. The nimbleness of smaller systems are resilient and adaptable and can swerve. Brandon O'Brien You can make quicker changes. I think there's a, you know, the book, uh, range, uh, Epstein, I think is his name, not that Epstein, but you know, a different Epstein. Um, and he talks about the difference between like, um, wicked world problems and like, uh, kind problems, kind world problem. And the kind problem is where all of the variables that you can anticipate, or you can anticipate all the variables from the beginning, and the circumstances aren't going to change A whole lot. And I think that maybe the 1980s and 90s was a sort of kind environment for church growth. It's like people, the culture was at a certain place. People kind of knew what to do to attract a crowd, etc. And I think that we are living increasingly in kind of the wicked environment. And I don't mean that morally, I just mean the fact that like, things change overnight, right? Populations who are like for this group one day or against that group the next day, with things like migration and polarization. It's just it's such a things change fast. And if your entire success depends on a couple of like flagship programs that require a lot of resources or whatever, then as soon as those things don't work anymore, it's like trying To turn the Titanic like it just takes forever to move a big ship. And I think smaller places can say, this thing changed on Friday. On Sunday morning, we're going to do something different. And I think that in the environment that we live in, I agree. I don't anticipate another pandemic, although I wouldn't rule it out. But I do anticipate something soon, creating massive national population division and people being angry or there being a natural disaster or there being something. ([Time 1:14:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5bed73d1-2b33-4ea3-9357-332882df1e73))