Bill Simmons’ new book offers a simple yet thoughtful framework for keeping Christian organisations rooted in faith. But while its “Pause, Psalm, and Pray” model is commendable, it struggles to hold up as a standalone resource, says our reviewer
Leading a Christian organisation is tough.
Beyond the usual business pressures of budgets, strategy, and staff management, parachurch organisations often operate in spaces traditional businesses avoid due to low profit potential and high risk. Yet perhaps the greatest challenge for any CEO in this context is ensuring that the organisation remains distinctly and authentically Christian.
YMCA is perhaps the classic example. Does the ‘Y’ do great work across 120 countries? Yes. Is it still a Christian organisation, as the ‘C’ was Christian? Unfortunately, no.
This challenge is especially pressing for Christian training and care organisations. Consider Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the United States, or Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. All were founded as overtly Christian institutions, created to glorify God. Today, they remain powerful and prestigious, yet their original mission of glorifying God has long since faded.
The issue isn’t about theological shifts - Catholic versus Protestant, conservative versus liberal, Pentecostal versus formal. Rather, it’s that many once-Christian organisations are now, at best, agnostic about Jesus.
This reality highlights why The Way of Interruption by Bill Simmons is so critical - not just for Christian business leaders, but for the Church as a whole.
The book’s mission to integrate spiritual practices into Christian businesses is truly commendable. Bill’s background - born in Tennessee, raised in Africa as a missionary kid from the age of twelve, and trained in spiritual formation at a postgraduate level - gives him a unique perspective. Combined with over 20 years of experience as a CEO across multiple organisations where his model has been tested and refined, this adds significant weight and credibility to the book’s message.
Simmons proposes three simple yet intentional Christian practices - Pause, Psalm, and Pray - to be used at the start of every meeting. This repeated rhythm, woven throughout the business day, helps cultivate the spiritual character of the organisation over time. The majority of the book is dedicated to providing prayers linked to relevant psalms, making the model easy to implement with minimal preparation.
It’s an easy read, with minimal jargon, clear expression, strong narrative flow, and short, well-structured chapters. The book draws effectively on scripture and the insights of Christian thinkers, offering theological depth with a mystic Catholic edge despite Simmons’ Protestant background - something that should not deter readers from other traditions. That said, greater engagement with existing literature on Christian business leadership would have further strengthened the book.
A common strategy to keep organisations Christocentric, as Simmons notes, is to appoint a Christian CEO and sometimes a Christian executive team, expecting staff to embody “Christian values” or hiring leaders from a specific denomination. While logical in theory, this approach has major flaws. Finding qualified Christians - especially at executive level - is challenging, and narrowing the pool by denomination makes it harder still. Headhunting Christians can also remove them from ministry where they already serve effectively. Anti-discrimination laws add further difficulty and may create tensions when promoting talented non-Christians. Moreover, most of an organisation’s work and community contact is done by “ordinary” staff, not executives. Most critically, expecting non-believers to live by Christian values is unrealistic and risks misrepresenting Christianity itself. The Gospel is about salvation through Christ, not simply behaving morally.
The book’s key weaknesses are its narrow audience, length, and competition. Its niche focus on Christian parachurch organisations limits its readership, and just 16 pages of core content are stretched across nearly 150 pages, with the rest largely prayers and liturgy. Those 16 pages could have been a powerful article but feel diluted in book form.
Therefore, while The Way of Interruption’s model of Pause, Psalm, and Pray could complement other Christ-centred resources in strengthening employee faith, it struggles as a standalone resource. The material would work far better as one or two strong articles, but as a book - especially in a competitive, niche market - its overall impact is limited.
The Way of Interruption: Spiritual Practice for Organizational Life by Bill Simmons is out now.
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