Episode 21: Pete Greig
Interview Date: 24 June 2021. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.
With family links back to revival in twentieth-century Scotland, Pete Greig is the Senior Pastor of Emmaus Rd church, Guildford, in Surrey, England. But he also describes himself as the “bewildered" founder of 24-7 Prayer, an international, inter-denominational movement of prayer, mission and justice operating in more than 100 nations.
A popular writer, Pete’s earlier books Red Moon Rising and Dirty Glory describes his odyssey in mobilising young people into intercession and evangelism and becoming inspired by the founder of an earlier 24/7 Prayer Movement, Count Zinzendorf of Herrnhut.
Pete's recent memoir, God on Mute, which describes the crisis of faith when his wife Sammy was diagnosed with a brain tumour, is considered ‘a Christian classic’ by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
Pete Greig - Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 45:45 Family background and childhood
Pete was born in Reigate, Surrey in the home counties of England in 1968, the product of generations of Scottish businessmen, missionary supporters and evangelists on his mother’s side and of practicing solicitors on his father’s. The most notable and influential difference between his father and mother is the generational age gap between them, his father being born in 1910 and his mother in 1943. It was only in his twenties after going through his maternal grandfather’s papers that Pete becomes fully aware of the tremendous Christian heritage of The Faith Mission, an organization set up by his ancestor John Govan in association with a brother James, with the purpose of bringing the Gospel to the rural areas of Scotland and also to Northern Ireland. Pete visits the Hebrides in his twenties in search of this history of all-night prayer meetings and revival, and the experience is transformational. His father’s family live in Ealing, where the law firm practices. Pete’s father becomes a Christian at Oxford but is obliged to abandon his plans to become a missionary in Brazil in order to rescue the family law practice, nursing his father through his final illness. Having had to settle for these apparently limited horizons, it nevertheless becomes clear at his funeral at St Mary’s Reigate, where the church is packed, how much influence his father had in his kindness and capacity to be the rescuer of “waifs and strays”. The courtship of Pete’s parents.
45:46 - 54:36 Public School
The brutalizing effect of going at the age of eleven to a boarding school. After three years, Pete runs away at night and is picked up by the police. His parents show real love and understanding and agree to place him in another school. The experience at boarding schools has left Pete with an acute capacity to read the atmosphere in rooms.
54:37 - 1:02:42 Prayer in the garden shed, Reigate
After moving to Reigate Grammar, Peter meets a wonderful Religious Education teacher Mike Fox who, through his hospitable mind, provides Pete with a secure footing for his faith. As a result, Pete starts to gather friends in the garden shed at his family home to see if Christianity can have some of the excitement that he reads about in the book of Acts. Word gets out. Reflecting back, Pete acknowledges that gathering people together to meet with God had been one of the grace notes of his life.
1:02:43 - 1:07:16 Pete questions his faith
Through a series of disappointments, Peter becomes temporarily disillusioned. He lapses into a vague agnosticism but finds that he is not very good at it and keeps talking to God, who soon breaks through into his life again.
1:07:17 - 1:15:15 Pete’s life as a series of adventure stories
Through an extraordinary set of circumstances, Pete ends up in 1988 in Hong Kong working with the Christian pioneer and missionary, Jackie Pullinger. The godliness of the people that he encounters, including former gang members, impresses on Pete the need to change inwardly and he finds himself praying repeatedly for a change of heart.
1:15:16 - 1:35:24 University
Spends three years at what is now Greenwich University. It still takes time to unpack what has happened in Hong Kong. Final reflections upon Jackie Pullinger. The experience there left him with some awareness of the radicality of Jesus, a liberation ethic, where God has a bias towards the poor.
1:35:25 - 1:41:42 Red Moon Rising
As recounted in this book, Peter has a vision while on a student hitch-hiking holiday in the Algarve. At the south west-most point on mainland Europe, during the night Pete leaves his tent to pray. He has a mystical experience. Super-imposed on the landscape as in a school atlas he sees an army of young people arising. It is the defining moment of his life.
1:41:43 - 2:00:45 Chichester
Recognizing the need for some form of personal discipleship, Peter encounters Roger Ellis, who offers to mentor him, provided that Peter moves to Chichester in West Sussex and attends a three-year discipleship course. It is here that Pete meets his future wife, Sammie. They fall in love. He also gets a job working with adults with learning difficulties. They start to run the youth congregation, called Warehouse, in the church pastored by Roger Ellis.
2:00:46 - 2:16:05 Count Zinzendorf and the Moravian Church
Pete had been introduced to Anabaptist theology (see also Simon Pellew, Episode 14, 28:47 - 47:09) during his student days at Greenwich by Roger Forster. Even at Chichester, Pete is restless for a deeper faith, so he goes back to reading and praying, and agrees with Roger Ellis that Pete needs to reconnect with the vision that he first had in the Algarve. Pete and Sammie head across Europe by car. It was when he was visiting an innovative punk church in Dresden that Pete travels on to Herrnhut, where Count Zinzendorf’s community was based. He realizes that the key to his own dissatisfaction is intercessory prayer.
2:16:06 - 2:21:43 The vision prayer of the 24/7 Prayer movement
Written by him at 3 am on the prayer room at Chichester. It goes viral.
2:21:44 - 2:34:54 Sammie her influence and her health
The backdrop of suffering to those who press on in to God. Sammie’s brain tumour, and its aftermath. Her experience has softened Pete and made his faith less tidy, more contemplative.
2:34:55 - 2:39:56 Other initiatives
Director of Prayer at Holy Trinity Brompton. Planting the Emmaus Church, Guildford, Surrey. Then the Order of the Mustard Seed, a lay contemplative order with a rule of life based on loving Jesus, loving others and loving the unchurched. A rule provides a shape for living.
2:39:57 - 2:43:44 Transitions
Hands on leadership of 24/7 and the Order of the Mustard Seed. Is living on a barge for part of the year, and a Scottish clifftop for the rest of the year. Future projects, including the development of a monastery.
2:43:45 - 2:50:07 Narrowboats, slowing down and the importance of long-lasting relationships
If the price of changing the world is using people, it’s not worth it. At heart our faith is all about friendship.