Pivot Podcast18 Sep 2025

Why Smaller Churches Have a Secret Advantage Right Now

The 90% of American congregations with fewer than 200 weekly attendees are gifted communities of faith. They are strategically positioned ministries with unique small church advantages for this time. In this episode, Brandon O'Brien, author of the newly revised "The Strategically Small Church" and director of global thought leadership for Redeemer City to City, challenges the narrative that bigger automatically means better in church ministry. Drawing from nearly two decades of serving pastors worldwide, Brandon reveals how small churches possess distinct small church advantages including radical particularity, authentic community, and the agility to contextualize ministry for specific populations that larger congregations simply cannot replicate.

Brandon shares practical insights about leveraging small church advantages through asset-based thinking, focusing on worship, formation, and mission as a minimally viable ecclesiology, and embracing authenticity as a powerful evangelistic tool in our current cultural moment. Whether you're pastoring a rural congregation of 15 or an urban church of 150, this conversation will help you notice your assets and strategic strengths for ministry and mission in this time. God loves congregations of all sizes. Smaller membership congregations are strategic powerhouses positioned for meaningful mission and ministry in your particular community. Discover why the future of faithful church leadership may well depend on understanding and maximizing these essential small church advantages.

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A Solo Reflection on Prayer, Longing, and an Australian Movie from the 90s

This week's episode breaks from the usual format. Pivot producer Joey Goodall steps in for a solo reflection on what prayer practices are actually for, and what happens when we lose sight of that. He ...

3 Sep 7min

Leadership for a Diverse Church

Eastminster Church has been in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood since 1856, and for most of that history it worshiped and looked like a fairly typical Presbyterian congregation. Aaron Teter, the...

27 Aug 43min

What Sunday Morning Teaches People About Monday

Katie Roelofs has spent years thinking about the space between Sunday morning and the rest of the week. A pastor in the Reformed Church in America and managing director of the Worship for Workers Proj...

20 Aug 28min

Ministry That Doesn't Rush Toward Results

For twenty years, Johnny Sertin has practiced a kind of place-based ministry built on staying put. He and four other families started the Earlsfield Friary in southwest London, committing to live with...

13 Aug 39min

Augustine Was a Pastor First

For most of his afterlife in the Christian imagination, Augustine has been a theologian first, a philosopher second, and everything else a distant third. What tends to get lost is that he spent nearly...

6 Aug 33min

A Different Kind of Strength

Second Corinthians is one of the strangest letters in the New Testament: a leader defending himself, a community in open doubt, and in the middle of it, some of Paul's clearest writing on power in wea...

29 Juli 43min

The People in Your Church Don't Belong to You

"The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists." That's how Dr. Scott Cormode opens his book, and it's the starting point for this conversation about Christian leadership wi...

23 Juli 37min

The Church With No Budget, No Staff, and No Sunday Service

Ten years ago, JR and Amy Rozko planted a two-hundred-year-old congregation in Canton, Ohio, only to discover that what their city needed wasn't another program but a rule of life: a shared rhythm of ...

16 Juli 36min