Podcast: Turning Savings into Sharings with Sanctifi

In this first episode of the new series of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast, hosts Graham Nicholls and Lizzie Harewood sit down with Alex Lyells. Alex is setting up a new ministry called Sanctifi, which aims to collaborate with churches across the United Kingdom to encourage financial sharing.

This article is part of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast series.

Graham Nicholls (0:11 – 0:27)

Hi there, welcome to Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast. We are starting a new series, this is episode one of that series, and I’ve got Lizzie here and Alex, and they will introduce themselves and get into some questions.

Lizzie Harewood (0:29 – 0:55)

Absolutely. So, yep, Lizzie here. It’s great to be back actually, Graham, I’ve missed doing some of these podcasts with you.

So, yeah, Alex, lovely to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do, and also the reason you’re here, which is to talk a little bit more about finances and wealth and how that can be used to bless people and honour God.

Alex Lyell (0:57 – 1:35)

Yeah, so my name is Alex Lyell. I’m currently a pastor in Streatham in South London. I’ve married to Lucy, got three kids who are approaching or in secondary school, and yeah, life revolves around the community here.

But I also am in the process of setting up and then from the summer going full-time on a ministry called Sanctifi, spelt with an I at the end, so sanctifying finance, making money and helping people to share their wealth.

Lizzie Harewood (1:36 – 1:51)

That makes sense now, because when I was doing a bit of research and looking at your website, I thought, wow, I was trying to be a bit of a cool kid here, Sanctifi with the I, but now I see how that’s integrating the two words. Brilliant, great.

Alex Lyell (1:51 – 2:03)

Yeah, making money beautiful for the sake of the kingdom. And yeah, I suppose I can go into a bit of my background and how I ended up with these two things of being a pastor and a financier converging.

Graham Nicholls (2:04 – 2:04)

Yeah, that’d be good.

Alex Lyell (2:06 – 6:11)

So yeah, I grew up in what some would consider extreme wealth, but actually was kind of relative wealth. And I didn’t grow up thinking we were wealthy in I grew up in sort of idyllic, rural, wealthy public school life. We lived in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful farm manor house.

And for those who’ve watched or read Pride and Prejudice, we were like the Bennett family. We were wealthy, but we used to go from large house to large house. And there were people with much larger houses than us, like the Bingleys down the road or the Darcys a bit further down the road.

And so I one of my earliest memories of thinking about money was when I was must have been around 10. And my sister asked my mother if we could dig a swimming pool in the back garden. And my mother explained that since my dad had deliberately given up a very high paid job, we couldn’t afford it.

And so we’d have to make do only with the tennis court. And I thought, gosh, we’re really struggling because we can’t afford a swimming pool. And now I fast forward and I realise actually that mindset is what everyone has, wherever they’re from, unless they happen to be the Elon Musk of their world.

We all look at the neighbours and we think, wow, you know, they’re richer than me and I’m not wealthy. And as a pastor, these two things have come together. And I’ve realised Jesus talks about money more than anything else, both to rich and poor, because money reveals our hearts.

And so, yeah, that was how I grew up. And then I went to a smart public school and then to Oxford. I grew up in privilege.

In that time, I was converted and I became conscious that I was wealthy and that I had a lot. And very early on, those who discipled me introduced me to the joy of generosity. And I remember thinking, oh, giving 10 percent, that’s a real joy, not a burden.

And even as a student, I was able to step into that to give £50 a month of my £600 a month that I or £500 a month that I lived on my £6,000 a year. And I really enjoyed that and found that I had more money at the end of the month – because of the consciousness of giving –than less and that sort of testimony of trusting God with your wealth. And then I also resolved in that time that I wanted to be a missionary or a pastor and just say goodbye to wealth and money.

I hated maths. I did history. I just was – there was no way Alex Lyell was going to end up in finance.

And then God had other plans and my parents wanted me to do a proper job first before I went into ministry. And so I did. I went into the city and, much to my surprise, I loved it.

I really enjoyed the way money works because of the nature of the market. I was promoted very quickly and also because of lots of other circumstances in my life. The three year commitment turned into seven years.

And so I had seven years. And by the end, I was running a large cross-European real estate fund. And I had to make the decision when I left the city.

I’m earning quite a lot of money and I know I could earn a lot more. I could fund people in ministry. So if I quit this and go and do what I’ve always wanted to do, I’ve got to be better than the five pastors I could fund.

And so I left the city with no sense of the idolatry of wealth. In fact, I was quite excited to go and do what I always wanted to do, but quite a big burden of ‘I’ve got to be really successful in ministry for this to make sense.’

Graham Nicholls (6:12 – 6:27)

There’s a load of things to pull on there and we probably haven’t got time for all of them. But I wonder if you have any guilt about being from a rich family that you’re trying to sort of atone for? This sounds a very aggressive line of questioning, but it’s just sort of to tease it out of you.

Alex Lyell (6:29 – 7:23)

I don’t think so. I think perhaps what I came to realise very, very slowly, mostly once I was already in ministry, was how much of the sense of entitlement from coming from a wealthy high society background I had. I think it was guilt.

It was more, oh, wow, I hadn’t seen this. I hadn’t seen this in my heart. And so I left the city to go into ministry thinking that subconsciously thinking, well, God needs me to change the world.

And I’ve learnt over 15 years of the ups and downs and the pain of ministry. Actually, God put me in ministry to change me. He didn’t need me.

He wanted to change my heart and show me that he absolutely doesn’t need me.

Graham Nicholls (7:24 – 7:51)

So you wouldn’t now say that the ‘five times better than you’ is what the standard should be for anyone going into ministry, five times better than what they could be earning or how many factor times better. You know, I was probably earning three times what I earn now when I was in business. But I didn’t think I ever thought I need to be three times better than anyone else.

So you wouldn’t recommend that, would you, as a sort of metric?

Alex Lyell (7:52 – 8:24)

Quite the opposite. But that subconscious feeling became more conscious as I, the ministry I was doing. And it was nothing like what I imagined.

I found Ephesians 3 – “him who’s able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” – very painful, praying immeasurably less, Lord, this feels like immeasurably less than all I asked or imagined. And so I felt I wasn’t even going to half a pastor, let alone five. And the hard work that God did in me in that place is immeasurably more than all I asked or imagined.

Lizzie Harewood (8:25 – 9:25)

Hmm. Interesting that you, that your instinct was to evaluate the financial burden or the financial cost, though, isn’t it, of what ministry could produce. And I think something I’ve been challenged about recently, and there’ve been quite a few articles written, and this is kind of slightly off on a tangent, but evaluating ministry and putting sort of targets on ministry and then evaluating that almost in a ‘are we getting bang for our buck’?

And actually, we know God doesn’t work like that. And actually, if we trust that God is sovereign in all things, then these kind of worldly ways of evaluating and measuring can really fall short and be very, very demoralising, as well as not being theologically robust, I guess. But yeah, just interesting.

Alex Lyell (9:25 – 10:10)

Yeah. The mindset of a financier in the city is return on investment. In biblical terms, that’s just so different in terms of paradigms.

And yet Jesus also wants us to use our mammon, to use our wealth, to further eternal purposes. So he, God gives us that kind of bang for buck, that calculating logic. But then he also surrounds it with the reality that the most successful church plant who ever lived, the Apostle Paul, ended his ministry saying, everyone’s deserted me and I’m being poured out like a drink offering.

And I think, yeah, God’s really ministered to me in that place of, wow, this doesn’t even feel as big as a mustard seed.

Graham Nicholls (10:11 – 11:17)

Yeah, I think that there is a good debate about target. We’ve had debates in our own church which have been quite difficult at times about whether target setting is at all useful. It’s kind of weighing up, certainly measuring is something that happens in the book of Acts.

So measuring donations, measuring numbers of converts is a thing that happens. So I think that’s the measuring is biblical. Whether looking for blessing, it’s in that area of kind of fruit and kind of how you pray.

You know, is it better to pray for a hundred converts than one convert, or should you just not pray at all? Those are all quite… do you not pray at all for any specific number of converts? Just save some people, God.

Or is it, I’d love it if you saved a hundred people in this town and our congregation was doubled. But anyway, that’s a whole different question. I think we need to move on to the money question.

And in preparation, apparently I had the question, what is money? And maybe you could throw something into that question, Alex. What is money?

Alex Lyell (11:19 – 12:53)

One of the reasons that I’m pushing into going full time on this ministry of financial generosity under the banner of the company Sanctifi is because Jesus talks about money way more than most people talk about money, let alone the church. And if we went to 10 different people in our churches or on the street and ask them, what is money? You’d probably get ten different answers.

And most people would really struggle to actually be able to put their finger on what is money. I will change my answer periodically, but the place I’ve landed the most is faith and grace. Money is faith and grace or grace and faith.

So our bank notes each say on them, I promise to pay the bearer the sum of £10, signed by the director of the Bank of England. And so that is a promise made from a store of capital, a store of grace that’s received in faith, in trust. And I think that is why Jesus focuses on money, or mammon, as he calls it, as the greatest competitor for our hearts.

Other than God, you cannot serve or worship both God and money. And so when we realise that is what money is, no wonder Jesus talks about money and wealth more than anything else, because money reveals where our true hearts lie. So that would be money.

Graham Nicholls (12:54 – 13:22)

Yeah. Would you make a distinction between money and possessions? Because money in a technical sense is the guarantee of something, if needed, to back up the pledge, because money is a pledge, isn’t it always?

It’s not real. I mean, everyone gets worried about Bitcoin, but actually pound notes and coins aren’t real either, because they’re just representing something else, aren’t they?

Lizzie Harewood (13:24 – 13:25)

This is getting a bit metaphysical.

Graham Nicholls (13:25 – 13:39)

I know. Yeah, I know. But I suppose just to think about it, because people could think, well, I haven’t got much money, but then they’re living in a mansion.

So is there a difference or would you kind of put together everything that you own? What about a turkey that I’ve got? Would you call that wealth?

Alex Lyell (13:40 – 14:14)

So I think it’s a very helpful exercise for anyone to calculate everything they have, everything that they’ve accumulated, everything that they have at the moment, everything they’re likely to receive and including inheritance that they might receive from family members, parents and so on. And to add all that up, including the value of the house that they live in and work out what do I have compared to what is my enough? And that exercise in itself done preferably is just is hugely helpful.

Graham Nicholls (14:16 – 14:20)

This is getting really interesting because how much is enough? Absolutely.

Lizzie Harewood (14:20 – 14:58)

And I think, yeah, no, absolutely, Graham. I was just thinking about the word ‘wealth’ because I think it gets a bit cliched, but no one thinks they’re wealthy, but then everyone is wealthy in comparison to someone else. I’m just wondering, do you know much about the Christian scene in the UK?

Are we generally pretty wealthy in comparison to the rest of the population? And what about in comparison to Christians worldwide? Because I get the impression we’re a pretty middle class bunch of people who are relatively comfortable.

Alex Lyell (14:59 – 16:39)

Yeah. So, yes, I mean, the easiest way to calculate how wealthy we are is to do so in comparison to history and to try and think what would be the average middle class person in Jesus’ day compared to today. One statistic I heard is that between the year nought and 1850, GDP per capita, as in the average wealth per average person, didn’t increase at all between the year nought and the year 1850.

But between 1850 and today in this country, GDP per capita, taking out all inflation and everything, is 35 times higher. So the average person living and breathing in the UK today is 35 times richer than the average person living and breathing in Jesus’ day. And middle class wealth in Jesus’ day would mean you had one room upstairs above a lower room in which the animals might live.

That’s where Jesus might have been born. And you would have a bowl with some water in it. And you’d have a room where everyone lived, and then you’d have a shared hole in the ground outside.

That would be average middle class living and sanitary life. We would consider that abject poverty today in the UK. And so I think just with that stat alone that we’re 35 times richer, we need to think, OK, we are all the rich young man.

When the rich young man came to Jesus, he was probably 35 times richer than the average.

Graham Nicholls (16:43 – 18:07)

I guess, though, doing an absolute is quite difficult, isn’t it? Saying that in general to make us aware that we are relatively well off and we probably have disposable income, that we have discretion over how we spend it. Many families listening to this would have choices to make.

Some may not, because when they’ve paid for housing, they’ve got just enough for food. So in a way, they don’t have discretion over that. But many would.

I think that might be easier than trying to set a line. I mean, I do think it’s useful, but I think it’s really hard to decide what kind of car should you get and how many bedrooms is OK. Because we live in the South.

Let’s say one of my relatives lives in a two-bedroom flat with two children, a husband and two children. That’s pretty basic for most people’s expectations. They wouldn’t think they were being extravagant if they had a three bedroom house with two daughters, but they’re in a two bedroom flat.

That’s all they can afford. But I mean, are they well off? What would their baseline be?

So I’m not sure it gets you anywhere, but maybe you’ve got a metric that really works.

Alex Lyell (18:07 – 19:41)

I think often where people start thinking of how wealthy they are is at what point do we start giving? Are we wealthy enough to give? I’m asked that question a lot.

I was asked that question by someone who’s living on under a thousand pounds a month. It’s very hard to live on. It’s very hard to get somewhere for less than that.

And they said at what point have I accumulated enough? Have I got to a point where I should be giving 10 percent? And I would say, well, it’s quite helpful to see yourself even if you’re in that category of 35 times richer than your average back in Jesus’ day and think that Jesus said to everyone back then that they should continue to give the 10 percent.

You know, even when he tells the Pharisees off for being meticulous about getting people to tithe their dill and cumin, he says you should care for the poor while not neglecting to keep tithing. And I would say that that giving of 10% is just simply however poor we are, however little we’re living on, including the folk who come to my church who live in the Asylum Seeker Hotel and have eight pounds a week. I would say giving 10% of that is just simply an exercise of faith in the Lord.

It’s a Jesus, I trust you with my money. I know many people at different levels who say, well, when I’m as wealthy as them, then I’ll start giving. And that’s a very dangerous place to be because you’re saying, Jesus, I’ll start trusting you with my money once you give me more of it.

Lizzie Harewood (19:42 – 20:32)

Yeah, I think what I’m actually quite astounded by is the fact that people are having these conversations openly because it is, I mean, maybe this is just a British thing. I hypothesise that this is not as such an out of bounds topic for those in other countries, but we don’t like to talk about wealth. We don’t like to talk about giving.

We don’t like to talk about suggested sums. And all of this, I think, is to a certain extent, you know, a good thing. You don’t want to put undue pressure or emotionally manipulate people.

But we – I would never talk with even my closest friends about particular amounts of money that I’m giving, proportions. It would be a conversation my husband and I would have together.

Alex Lyell (20:33 – 20:33)

Yeah.

Lizzie Harewood (20:33 – 20:34)

Am I alone in that?

Alex Lyell (20:35 – 22:57)

You’re definitely not alone in it. It’s the norm. But I think it’s a norm that we as Christians across the country need to be repenting of.

Because I was reflecting on this in terms of Acts 4. Acts 4 is such an extraordinary passage, especially the end of it. It’s all about spirit-filled mission.

That’s what Acts 4 is all about. Under pressure, they’re gathering and they’re praying and they’re asking the Lord that under the pressure to be quiet, they would carry on filled with the Spirit, speaking the word of God boldly. And all of our NIV headings, our Bible headings, then put a line under and say about them sharing their possessions or generosity and so on.

But actually, it’s the same theme. So the end of Acts 4 says, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there was no needy person among them.” And then it says some even sold land and houses and so on. And I was reflecting on that when I was teaching on that a couple of years ago.

They said they shared everything they had, they had everything in common. Now, if we’re genuinely sharing everything we have, we have to know what each other has. Because many people would look at me and think, oh, he’s a pastor, he’s not got much.

Well, you know, there have been times when I’ve had £1.2 million in the bank. Now, if I don’t tell anyone that, then when they are struggling, they won’t ask me. Whereas if I tell people what I have, not to boast, but to say what’s mine is yours.

We’re holding everything in common here. This is a family. We’re thinking together about what we can do for the sake of the kingdom.

Then we can share everything we have. And so I think holding back about what we have is a sign of the idolatry of our nation is a sign that we’ve taken one tiny thing Jesus said, which is don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing, and made that the overarching principle for English middle class generosity.

Graham Nicholls (22:58 – 23:01)

What is Jesus saying in that verse, just to clarify, Alex?

Alex Lyell (23:02 – 25:34)

Well, he’s talking in this whole section about praying publicly, giving publicly. He’s talking about you’ve received your reward in full. So the context of that is if you are looking for a claim for being very prayerful or being very generous, and you make a big show of that, then you’ll get your reward.

But that’s it. Now, I think that is the only point he is making in that. Otherwise, Barnabas really wasn’t listening when he heard the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and so on.

Barnabas very publicly put money from the sale of a field at the apostles’ feet and so that everyone can share. And I think actually those who are wealthy should say, so when I was preaching on this, I actually said from the front, imagine if I asked you on your service sheet, write down your salary, the value of your house, the value of your savings, the value of your investments, the value of your pension, your future inheritance, write it all down, put a sum at the bottom and then hand it to your neighbour and say, what’s mine is yours. And I obviously got some rather scared looking faces. And I felt in the moment as I was preaching, Alex, if you don’t do that right now, you’re a hypocrite.

So I did it. And at that time, it was when a lot of inheritance had landed in my account. And it did add up to about £1.2 million. And I told the church family that. And I said, what’s mine is yours. We’ll share this accountably.

This isn’t asking you to come and find me in a darkened place and ask me for money. What was really interesting is in a church of very varied wealth, some of whom are living on absolute minimum, no one asked me for money. I did have a chat with one person who had asked me for money in the past.

And so I asked them, how did that land with you? Was that weird? Did you feel intimidated by me talking about that wealth?

And he said, no. He said, it made me resolve that I want to start giving 10%. Because previously I’d held back because I was worried I wouldn’t have enough.

And when I realised that our church has that just in one person and much more in many others, it made me feel a sense of freedom that, of course, I can give because then if I end up in hardship, there’s others who can help me.

Graham Nicholls (25:35 – 25:49)

What does that mean to you that you say this £1.2 million or whatever is yours? I mean, is it mine as well? Or are you just restricting that to the family, your local church family?

What does it mean to them?

Alex Lyell (25:49 – 25:51)

So what’s mine is yours?

Graham Nicholls (25:51 – 25:51)

Yes.

Alex Lyell (25:52 – 25:56)

I’m trying to apply Acts 4.32. Yeah.

Graham Nicholls (25:56 – 26:07)

But what does it mean? Does it mean I have a call on your money if I’m a member of your church or does it mean I have to meet a certain criteria to get your money? Yes.

Alex Lyell (26:08 – 26:52)

We’re not told in Acts 4 how the apostles distributed and how they make decisions. We get little indication by Acts 6 that they set up a system of deacons who carefully work through who needs the money and how they get it to them. But we’re not told how Barnabas’s wealth was exactly shared.

What I think we see there is, I mean, the verbiage of it, the words of it could literally be described as communism. But I would say everyone knows it’s been proven historically that involuntary communism is a demonic evil that destroys people. So communism.

Graham Nicholls (26:54 – 26:58)

We’re having a little reeling moment, Alex, so go for it.

Lizzie Harewood (26:59 – 28:14)

I am. So, yeah, I mean, I think hopefully we would all agree that communism is is an abhorrent misinterpretation of or a misapplication of this. But what about socialism?

Because some people would say that that socialism was is really kind of founded or that there is an argument that the Book of Acts is a kind of not necessarily a precursor to the Communist Manifesto, but is is inherently socialist. And although those socialism, communism aren’t identical, this almost underpins a kind of welfare state system, this redistribution. Now, obviously, I’m hoping you’re going to go into some of the nuances of what it means to be part of a church family as opposed to state-run distribution.

But I certainly have family members who would call themselves Christian socialists and would have quite sort of stringent ideas about everything being in common. Is that something you’re trying to advocate for?

Alex Lyell (28:15 – 30:56)

It’s a really interesting one. I recently read someone recommended that I read the autobiography of Polly Toynbee, who is could be described as a champagne socialist. And she really rejects that term.

But she’s posh, she’s rich and she’s a socialist. And she was talking about how really the government ought to tax the rich much more carefully. And she was talking about the awkwardness she feels of living in wealth.

And I was reflecting on that and thinking, I know of someone with a private jet who is extraordinarily generous. He got a private jet so that he could give more because he worked out he could travel from business meetings across the world more quickly. And then when he wasn’t using it could let it out and letting it out would actually make more money than the cost of hiring it and so on.

I do agree that so much of what Jesus talks about in terms of money could look like socialism if it’s imposed. I would say as churches we want to give thanks for the fact that actually I think Christian foundations in this nation have made us expect that we would care for each other better and therefore we end up with the welfare state. But we should be more socialist voluntarily than the government would ever impose upon us.

And I’ve discovered that if you get rid of your wealth voluntarily and you live on as little as you possibly can you don’t pay any tax. So for most of my life as a pastor I’ve been, and I don’t think this is necessarily a good system, but I’ve been more of a net receiver because of having three kids and qualifying for tax credit because I’ve made efforts to give above and beyond and to get rid of my wealth and sometimes that’s been hard and I’ve made massive mistakes. But we can be really socialist but it should be voluntarily, it should be heart, we should be praying through, Lord do you want me to downsize?

Lord, do you want me to share this? Do you want me to get lodgers? Do you want me to give more?

And I think if we listen to Jesus’s principles and apply it we will end up looking way more socialist than any socialist government. But also the wealth will multiply so that we can share more. Whereas I think when it’s imposed people batten down the hatches and they end up giving less.

Graham Nicholls (30:57 – 31:42)

Yeah yeah. Yeah I mean a good right-wing conservative ideology would be that people give more at an individual level, a family level, a sort of local community level and that the state doesn’t take responsibility for that. So that’s not unusual.

Of course in practice that doesn’t always happen because of the sort of individualism about some forms of conservatism which they mitigate against that idea. Because, although in principle, there should be generosity at the sort of local level and that’s what conservatives historically have tried to call for and called for a smaller state, in practise people have grown very wealthy and not very generous. So that’s a bit of a dilemma and obviously the church should be doing better than that.

Alex Lyell (31:46 – 32:07)

I mean, in the end, society is built on, isn’t it, on the family and then the church – and as you build up from there you make agreements as to, okay, we should share our wealth to the level of paying for roads and water and electricity and so on and you can keep adding to that because it’s voluntary. What were you going to say, Lizzie?

Lizzie Harewood (32:07 – 32:34)

I was just wondering what, so in practice then, because some of this is a little nebulous, I’d love to know, so say in my local church, I’ve got ideas of how I actually do see this in action in some wonderful sense, but what would you say would be an example of that kind of redistribution or giving in the local church? What kind of things would happen?

Alex Lyell (32:35 – 40:49)

I think I would start at different places. So if I’m speaking to pastors, I’d say please could you pray about and work at talking about money as much and in the level of depth and application as Scripture does. And then also get in your own hearts, right, that if you’re a pastor and you’re paid appropriately – there are a few pastors who aren’t – then you are very wealthy because the best way to pay a pastor is to give them a free house and then a stipend on top of that. So my salary is about £25,000, maybe £27,000, which for a dad of three in London sounds like abject poverty, but I get a free house. That house would cost me – I’d need a salary of £60, £70,000 just to pay for the house alone.

So you know I’m not far off £100,000, in relative terms in terms of how I’m paid and pastors need to see that. Then speak more about money in the way that Jesus did, in the way that Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”

I think the next application I’d give is stop talking about generosity as giving, because giving is only a percentage of what we have, ideally 10% plus plus plus, but giving is only a percentage, where sharing is everything we have. Most of biblical generosity is about sharing and then for each person there’ll be the application of how do I do this? Is my car on the forecourt of my house most of the time if I have a car?

Well, if it is, how can I let the whole church family know that if they ever need to borrow my car they’re free to? If my small group know that someone is struggling, we had a situation where someone’s car broke down and they were furthest away from the church and so they were finding it really hard to get to church with their kids, and we found out that that’s because the bill to repair it was like £1500 and they didn’t have that in the bank at the moment, so they were waiting until they had that and we as a small group gathered together and lent them the money and then they paid that back at 100 pounds a month for a year and and they paid it off. The most lovely application in that was when someone who had very very little knocked on my door and handed me £10 to put in the pot.

It was just beautiful because we were sharing as a small group very practically and then when you start scaling up like that you start to realise, oh, we’re a family. I often think of the illustration of – if I siloed my three kids and thought, you know my wife and I, we might be killed next year, our kids are going to be orphaned, right, what would it cost? What do we need to have stored up if each of our kids individually were orphaned and we need to provide for them?

Well we’d need probably half a million per child to make sure that they had somewhere to live and someone to care for them, someone to take them to school, all this sort of stuff. How much do they need in our family at the moment? Nothing.

The incremental food cost and some money towards clubs and things. I think we as a church – we think of ourselves as siloed individuals or siloed families and what we should start thinking of ourselves as is well in a church of 100 on average London salaries of £50,000 well that’s £5 million of income a year and then many of those are homeowners so that’s several million of net assets. What would a family with £5 million of income a year and several million of net assets do with their wealth?

They could transform homelessness in their area and I think that’s where again I want to come back to challenging the pastors. Anyone listening to this, give this to your pastor and say to him why don’t you preach on money in a way that should convict you from the book of Malachi. Because in the book of Malachi, it’s the preaching priests, the pastors effectively, who are most condemned for allowing sloppy sacrifices, dodgy animals, to be brought in and I think, when we as pastors don’t preach on everyone should not because we need it, but everyone should because they’re trusting in the Lord be giving their 10 percent and sharing everything they have and being able to go above and beyond then suddenly the eyes of the congregation open as to what we could do and I suppose, just to give one very specific illustration of what happened, looking back at my life when I gave as a student when I was on £500 a month, £6,000 a year compared to what I gave as a city worker on close to £100,000 a year this is where I want churches and pastors to really kind of pay attention.

When I was giving £50 a month, that was really hard because I was living on very little and occasionally the pastor, the vicar, of my church would stand up and would say we’d love to do a giving appeal that goes above and beyond your regular giving because we want to support this missionary in Pakistan or this missionary here and we want to raise more money and I remember thinking, gosh, I’m already finding it quite hard to give but that sounds such a wonderful mission to be involved in, I want to give more. And so I remember thinking, well, if I lived on sandwiches rather than the main meal that my college provides, I can save a few pounds a day, oh, I can give more then and I found that really exciting. When I came to London, I was in a church of 50 to 100 adults and at one point the pastor and the treasurer of the church stood up and said, ‘Look, we’ve got a £50k shortfall in our church budget – we’re really struggling. We know many of you are living on graduate salaries and that’s not very much.’ (It’s a lot compared to £6,000 as a student!) ‘You know, we know you’re really struggling but if you could just up your giving a little bit then we can meet this short fall’ – of whatever it was, £15,000 or £20,000 or £50,000, I can’t remember. I remember sitting there in the pews thinking, what, I’ve got that sitting in my account. I know I can pay for that this year. I’m not gonna change my giving really because otherwise others will not be able to give. Can someone give me a figure for giving that is the equivalent of that £50 a month I gave as a student? And looking back I realised we if we’d seen ourselves as all pooling our wealth we could have with real estate finance we could have bought the derelict office block near where we met as a church and we could have turned that into flats and we could have offered accommodation to all the homeless people in Balham. We had enough wealth at that time, but our pastors just weren’t thinking in those terms of ‘What would happen if we shared everything we have? What would that do for using our money in mission in ways that could give us an excuse to preach the gospel way more loudly than simply handing out flyers for Christmas events?’

Graham Nicholls (40:49 – 41:16)

That’s all really interesting we have to wrap in a minute. We’re going to try and do them half an hour for this new series, but we’ve gone over but so we’re gonna have to wrap in a couple of minutes. What would you like anyone listening apart from doing all the things that you’re talking about? Are you doing the website in order to get speaking opportunities or are you going to put loads of materials on there with articles and, I don’t know, video blogs or whatever to try and persuade people of some of the things you’ve been talking about today?

Alex Lyell (41:16 – 43:22)

Yeah, so obviously I’m setting up this thing Sanctifi.com – people can look it up. And on there, that gives churches and communities ways of sharing their savings. So the the big strap line of Sanctifi – and this is the application whether you do it through Sanctifi or not – is turn your savings into your sharings. So think about the theology of the fact that you call it a savings account and and ask yourself the question who are your savings saving? Because if they’re saving you, then you have more than one saviour and Jesus would describe that as idolatry. And so go through the heart exercise of realising, oh yeah, I’ve got all these savings and pensions and so on stored up on earth to provide for me treasures on earth. How can I turn those not into giving – because we can only give a percentage of what we have – but we can share everything we have, so Sanctifi gives a practical tool for people to share and pool their sharings so they could even buy houses for ministry and so on. That’s one application and people can follow that. For me personally, I’d value your prayers as I’m going full time on this. But my main role will be mostly as an evangelist or as a teacher into this area of generosity. God’s brought money and and biblical generosity together in my life and I want to teach on that more because, as Jesus promises, the more generous we are, the more joy we’ll get, and the more joy we get in generosity, the more opportunities we’ll have to share the gospel. And so I want to preach as much as possible from church to church, from community one-to-one. Even with non-Christians, I’ve seen that just saying little phrases like ‘Jesus talks about money more than anything else’ – it’s started evangelistic conversations more than it did as a pastor. And then, yeah, if you want to get in touch alexlyell@santifi.com people can message me that way.

Graham Nicholls (43:22 – 44:05)

It’s brilliant, it’s been really stimulating. I think that there’s a challenge to at least move the dial on where churches are at. Maybe they won’t quite get to where you are at, but I think it will be really fruitful, actually, giving us all a good prod or even a kick on this topic. So yeah, we’ll be praying that it’s very fruitful and successful in the terms that it’s defined – fruitful and successful in the sense of moving and actually changing opinions and stuff. Yeah, so thank you very much Alex.

Lizzie Harewood

Yeah, absolutely thank you.