Jesus Army: Magazine - Prophetic Word

DID YOU know that residents of Great Britain now personally owe £1 trillion - that's twelve zeros - which is more than the national debts of Africa, Asia and Latin America put together? To put that in context, last year we borrowed £11 billion extra in one month just to finance Christmas.

That's enough to feed 50 million people in the Third World for a year; and that's one of the reasons why it's so important as Christians to address issues of money, education and debt.

I first got into this work 20 years ago when I was a stock broker, and a friend's wife found a years' worth of post hidden in a cupboard by her husband. I was asked to help because it was such a nightmare - they went bankrupt, lost their home, everything. I got very interested in this area and started to help other people. I'd been a Christian about ten years at this point, and got involved with the Jubilee Centre who were doing some work in this field in the late 1980s. Then there was a major management reshuffle at work, and I felt God wanted me to take a 90 per cent pay cut and work full-time through Credit Action in money education and counselling.

Now our sister organisation, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS), takes on the counselling part of the work, which it offers free, and at Credit Action we concentrate on education - teaching people how to avoid debt and use money well.

The three usual causes of debt are: not budgeting so people don't know what they are spending; using credit cards and store cards, which can be very, very costly; and the effect of a major life change such as having a baby, sickness or losing your job, which tips the balance if people are already stretched financially. CCCS is getting 200,000 calls a year, each with an average debt of £25,000 and some have 30 or 40 cards on which they owe £100,000. And Christians are no different here.

The area that taxes me the most is student loans, because that says to young people that you have to borrow heavily to get on in life. CCCS has seen a tenfold increase in calls from 18 - 21 year olds in the past two years.

I think the National Lottery, is all part of the 'take risks because life's a gamble' attitude - a very short-term take on life. I think 9/11 contributed too, because people feel they must have a good time today. But most people who play the Lottery regularly, and two-thirds of ticket buyers do, will have lost several thousand pounds on tickets in those ten years. The effects of serious debt include family splits - 140,000 couples who split up last year named money as the cause. Then there's isolation because people feel they can't afford to go to the pub any more or have friends over and feelings of failure because they no longer have the status symbols of the right car and house.

So we teach the basics, and with Christians we talk about what the Bible says about money. Did you know that Jesus tells five times as many parables about money as He does about prayer and faith? We also do a lot outside the Church and get support from companies like Marks & Spencer, Barclays and MBNA. Our guides go to many different groups of people. There's a lot going on - I'm doing more and more with the press, and write most weeks in the Saturday Times. It just shows that if you know your subject and pray like mad, you can really make a difference in society.

As Christians, we tend to spell sin s-e-x, but we seem to be able to be greedy and selfish with money and it's not seen as remotely sinful. Money and debt is not considered a safe subject in church, apart from perhaps the occasional sermon of giving, and I've even been told not to talk about money because 'this is church'. But the result is that Christians feel guilty if they have money, and feel guilty if they don't.

Money is not something to be afraid of but if we try to sort it out in our own strength, we will make mistakes. When we're praying about our finances, we see God supply our needs. And when we have a good year, we can consider if we're going to meet our wants - or perhaps supply other people's needs.

I would love to see Christians taking this into the community. Churches can be a welcoming point for those with money problems who can then be referred on to people like ourselves and CCCS. We've got 100 volunteers around the country, and we want to double that. You don't need financial expertise at all because there are lots of ways to help.

Keith Tondeur works for Credit Action. Their website is www.creditaction.org.uk This is a shortened version of an article that first appeared in IDEA magazine, Nov/Dec 2004 and is used with permission.