About

The Short Version

Brandon J. O'Brien (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is Director of Content Development and Distribution for Redeemer City to City, an organization that supports church planting in global cities.

Brandon is author and co-author of several books, including the best-selling Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, with E. Randolph Richards (InterVarsity Press, 2012). He lives with his wife, Amy, and two children in Chicago.

The Longer Version

I was seventeen years old when I sensed God’s call into ministry. The deacons at my church affirmed that call. They bought me a huge leather study Bible and two suits to preach in.

Off I went into the wide world.

In the twenty-plus years since then, I’ve had a lot of jobs and accumulated a lot of experiences. I taught English to elementary students, graded lumber in a mill, taught religion at a community college, and helped launch a satellite campus for my alma mater. I earned a masters degree and then a PhD. I wrote a few books and edited many more.

At different points along this journey, I worried that I wasn’t doing what God wanted. All these experiences didn’t seem to add up to one clear calling. From this side of things, though, I recognize that every step along the way has been preparation, in one way or another.

My role now, as director of content development and distribution for Redeemer City to City, pulls all these threads together. I get to serve local churches by serving pastors. I get to research and write about how our cultural contexts shape us and what difference that makes for ministry. I get to preach and teach. And I get to help discover and develop incredible contributors from all around the world.

What I’m Always Writing About

Even before we're born, the outside world shapes our perception of reality.

Babies decide in utero whether the world is safe or dangerous, a place of want or plenty. What food and language are best. (Seriously. It's wild. This video is a good introduction.) After we're born and until we die, all our experiences shape our perception—the schools we attend, the communities we live in, the media we consume, the marketing we are subject to—willingly and unwillingly. We receive messages about which people are safe and which are dangerous. What constitutes vice and virtue. What the good life looks like. Every day. All the time.

This means (among other things) that before a Christian decides consciously whether to resist culture or engage it, which cultural values are consistent with their faith and which to reject, he or she has already been catechized, socialized, racialized, and more, by our cultural context for years and decades. A whole lot of Christian discipleship material ignores this "cultural discipleship" that takes place prior to and continues during our intentional Christian discipleship. If we want to be formed faithfully, we have to factor these (often unconscious) cultural values into the equation. We have to know they exist so we can confront them.

So that’s what I try to do in my reading and writing. I try to identify the often-unconscious cultural influences that shape my view of the world and, therefore, my faith.

The Strategically Small Church considers how our cultural assumption that bigger is better makes us overlook the unique value of small churches

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes identifies nine cultural habits cause Western interpreters to misread the Bible in predictable ways

Paul Behaving Badly demonstrates how understanding both the cultural contexts of the apostle Paul and the lenses through which we usually interpret him helps us appreciate his writings about controversial topics

Demanding Liberty addresses how our misperceptions about our nation’s heritage of religious liberty shapes our current debates—and tells a great story of an important unsung hero

Not From Around Here explores how our values are shaped by the places we live and the people we love, often more than by our explicit Christian convictions 

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