Replacing the cross with a glitter ball?

Peter Kerridge is the CEO of Premier Christian Communications Ltd he has just released a booked called “If Entrepreneurs ran the church” in which he asks eight highly successful entrepreneurs from different Christian traditions how they would set about running the Church. They include the founder of Mumsnet, Carrie Longton, and the billionaire founder of Christian Vision, Lord Bob Edmiston. Books for Life (BFL) caught up with Peter recently and had the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

BFL: Why did you write the book?

PK: I have grown up in church, been ordained in ministry, worked in church and been in religious broadcasting for 40 years. I have seen from many angles how often the church fails in basic organisational disciplines. My thought process was if business people were running their businesses like the church has been run they would be out of business by now.

BFL: How would you define the term ‘Entrepreneur’?

PK: An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision to see something achieved and goes and gets it done. Jesus, Paul and so many of the early church leaders were clearly entrepreneurs.

BFL: How have church leaders have responded to the book?

PK: The book has just come out so it’s perhaps too early to tell what church leaders are going to make of it. But there’s loads in there for any congregation, denomination and church stream. These business folk are in church every Sunday - many tell me they have had the unfortunate experience of watching how churches are run, they feel it’s like watching paint dry.

BFL: Many people have opinions on how churches are run. Isn’t it a bit like every England fan thinks they could do a better job running the team?

PK: Folk from business can often be treated with great suspicion by the church leader. People look at their house and their car and they think that business leaders are not on the same spiritual plane as the rest of the church, they are just capitalists. Business leaders, feel quite often that they are kept at the margins, are given relatively unimportant tasks do in the church rather than have meaningful input into leadership. If they are really lucky they get to be on the finance committee, and there’s a felt expectation that they will financially bail the church out. They often feel that they are put in a box, caricatured and exploited.

BFL: We recognise that we are not utilising all the skills that are in the church, too often church is a spectator sport where we sit back and expect to consume great preaching or experience great singing. How do you think we release the skills that are sat dormant in the pew?

PK: I learned so much from talking to these leaders. I also learned that there is no silver bullet.

BFL: But If there’s one thing you could change about the church what would it be?

PK: Say there are 10 churches in a small town. The average church attendance is 50 people. Most people go to church 2-3 times a month. So on any given Sunday there are 750 people in church on a Sunday. Do you know there are more people in the local Tesco for that hour on Sunday than all those churches put together. We need to rethink how we use buildings and resources.

Or take the average 15-year-old boy, if he wants to find out who Jesus is, he’s 1000 times more likely to Google “Jesus” than turn up at church. What we really need is the digital church and the physical church to wise up and grow together. We created The Premier Digital awards to highlight the exceptional churches that are thinking digital. But sadly they are the exception rather than the norm.

Someone said recently on Twitter that they thought Richard Coles and Kate Botley were doing more for the church than the Alpha course and the best thing about them is that they don’t keep 'banging on about Jesus'. It was when they said‘Banging on about Jesus” that I felt I had to get involved in the convseration. When St Cuthbert and St Aiden Christianised the north of England they went into the marketplace, where there was an idol to the god of mars, ​they put up a cross and then spoke the gospel and called people to follow Jesus. Today we are trying to replace the cross with a glitter ball.

BFL: What’s the best way forward then?

PK: In any congregation if the church leader didn’t feel so threatened and asked how we could do things better they would have 8 or 10 people would be willing to help. The lessons the Entrepreneurs can teach is not about turning the church into a money-making machine but how we utilise the resources we have to maximise on the opportunites for mission.

BFL: What’s the best way forward then?

PK: In any congregation if the church leader didn’t feel so threatened and asked how we could do things better they would have 8 or 10 people would be willing to help. We are not trying to turn the church into a money-making machine. But how do we utilise the opportunites we do have?

BFL: I finished my interview with Peter Kerridge, sympathising with his desire to use the skills and gifts God had placed in his stewardship for the best effect for Jesus. His book “If Entrepreneurs Ran the Church” will certainly ruffle some feathers, but he asks important questions about how we can help Christians bring their whole selves not to church but in service to Jesus.

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