Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Steve Clifford

Steve Clifford, the General Director of the Evangelical Alliance decided to live on the equivalent of benefits during August this year. He and his wife Anne took the challenge after seeing a church in Southampton do it and raise £40,000 for charity from what they didn't spend on themselves during that month. Their website for 'Simplify' says it best:

'As the recession bites, instinct tells us to hold tight to every penny we've got, and dream of the stuff we can buy when it's over. But Jesus challenged us not to worry about money, but to think first of the needs of others. Simplify is a call to discipleship; to examine the spiritual hold money has on our lives by taking a month to consciously spend less and give more. Join us in October as we Simplify our lives.'

Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Steve on his City Drive radio programme during August, as Steve was embarking on his month of living on benefits. He began by asking about the roots of Simplify.

Steve: When I heard the story of what the church in Southampton had done, I was just so blown away by it. I thought it's just a fantastic idea. So at the Evangelical Alliance we decided we were going to pick it up. My wife and I have done it through August. We called it Simplify and the tag line is 'live small but think big'. We've set up this website; we've been blogging on the website and just had an amazing amount of interest that's kind of come in. Our hope is that in October all over the place people will rise to the challenge and say we'll have a go at doing this ourselves.

Jonathan: Well you're 26 days in I assume.

Steve: No 27 actually, we started the 31st July.

Jonathan: Ah. You're counting the days down aren't you Steve?

Steve: Yeh.

Jonathan: First of all, how much are you living on then; what is the level of benefits?

Steve: Well we sat down with a calculator and worked it all out and actually that was a very good process. You know just realising what you spend your money on. I couldn't believe it. You know we worked out we spend on average over £100 a month on phones, just on our phone bill. I thought, what are we doing? So we work it all out; if you go on to the simplify website; shall I give you the website address now?

Jonathan: Sure.

Steve: www.simplify.org.uk and you go there and it kind of helps you, guides you through and it works out what you would be on if you were living on benefits. For us, for Anne and me, it worked out that as £5 per day each. That was for our food, for entertainment, for our clothes - we're not going to buy a lot of clothes in August - and it was also for any emergencies. So I'm really hoping the fridge isn't going to break down. So it's really affected me. We realise there's things that have to go out the window straightaway. The car for example. Other than I'm continuing to do my work. So any work related thing I use the car. Other than that we're on the bikes. So the visits to the cinema are gone. We're not popping into Starbucks. We've been living for the last 27 days, on £5 a day.

Jonathan: So there's lots of ways that it inhibited your previous lifestyle. Are there any ways that it enhanced it? Are there things that you discovered in doing it?

Steve: Yeh. You know in a really strange way I feel we've so benefited through this process. I mean let me just give you a couple of little stories that might help. For example, the first day Anne and I went for walk around the park at the end of the evening. We walked back; I live in West London and we walked back up Ealing Broadway. In the past we might have popped in for a glass of wine or a coffee at the local coffee shop or whatever and of course, this time we realised we couldn't; 'cause a Starbucks is half of our money for the day. As we looked in at the windows we just realised that we were excluded people; there were people doing what we would normally be doing; but we couldn't afford to do it. We realised, we were just doing this for a month, but there are people that are living on this amount of money and this kind of way not just for a month but year in and year out. That kind of sense of identification just recognising how other people live. That was a kind of wake-up call for us right at the very beginning of this. Give you another story?

Jonathan: Yeh, please.

Steve: OK. Again someone rang up the other evening and said can you come and pick something up at our house; and Anne had arranged that she was going to pick it up. So she said oh we'll be around in fifteen minutes and I said, we won't be fifteen minutes, we've got to get the bikes out. Half an hour later, we're round at their house; we pick up this stuff. Actually we had a little look round their house and sat out in the garden and had a little chat with them in the garden. Then it was about nine o'clock, nine fifteen. Now in London at this time of the year it's actually getting dark at that time. We just suddenly realised we're back on the bikes, but we've got no lights on the bikes. So we're making this precarious journey home through the streets of London, on the pavements - I hope we're not going to get arrested for this conversation - and then kind of through the parks. I couldn't believe the park was still open. Then as we're riding through the park, we suddenly look out and there's this amazing moon that is lighting up the London sky. We stopped - we looked at it. Now if we'd been in the car, I'm sure I would have said to Anne what a great moon. But because we were on the bikes we stopped and we just took in this amazing - it just felt like a gift from God for us and a reflection of his creation, this moon. Which we know it's there but we just appreciated it in a way that we wouldn't have done if we'd been rushing around in our car. So there's something for us about slowing down and appreciating some of the things that in the normal course of life we wouldn't have the time to appreciate.

Jonathan: What about emotional feelings Steve. I mean, I guess it might be harder to get in touch with that, because you know that you're doing it for a fixed period of time; people round you know that as well. But could you imagine you know, things like embarrassment or lack of self-worth or something when you're having a jam sandwich and everyone else is having a BLT?

Steve: Absolutely. I mean it has been great the conversations that this has provoked. You know somebody's coming to us - we can understand you kind of saving up for a month but why would you want to give it away at the end of your time. I think there's something really good about, it's not just Christians, because I hope that loads of people could respond to this... But there's something about the Christian community at a time when people are tightening their belts out of fear of the recession; that actually Christians are tightening their belts in order to be generous. I just love the thought of that. Because actually the Christians are incredibly generous; I know they're not the only people that are generous. But actually the Christian community is known for its generosity. So I think - there are have been some hard bits. The worse bit I think has been our own shopping. Because actually we're used to jumping in the car driving off to the supermarket, going around the supermarket, filling up the trolley, sticking it in the back of the car and driving home. But of course we're not using the car we're using the bikes. So it's a bit of a nightmare you know, cycling off to Lydlls and filling up; you need a trolley, but you have to be careful you don't get too much in your trolley because you've got to put it all into plastic bags and then you've got to cycle back home with it. We have had a couple of precarious journeys back. One notable was - I've got about four carrier bags full of stuff and one of the carrier bag handles goes. And I'm suddenly faced with a potential of our vegetables all over the roads of West London. Fortunately I managed to stop the bike and get off and organise the bags again. But just some of the practical issues we just take for granted. The fact that we're going to be able to jump in our car and fill our car up with stuff and bring it home; the convenience of that actually. Loads of people that's not life; for them life is carrier bags and its carrying carrier bags home. You can't carry loads of stuff. So you're inhibited; you're restricted by those kinds of things. So again just learning through others. We've got some friends in our church who came around; Sarah and Teresa. They've lived on benefit for years and just sitting down with them and talking to them about what living on benefit is like - what they've learnt through the process of living on benefit. Giving us some hints about menus and where to shop; how to shop and what time of the day to shop. Those kinds of things. We just kind of gained benefit from hearing from them and learning from their life experiences.

Jonathan: You mentioned a couple of times about Christians, like this church in Southampton and yourself here, maybe taking a decision to live this kind of lifestyle; to be able to even free up resource that could be given to charity and to be able to make a real benefit out of it. I don't know if you actually managed to do that yet or you'll do that at the end of the month; but do you think that that could be a motivating factor that will change your lifestyle after this month is finished?

Steve: Yeh, I hope it will. In fact I really have analysed and said how good it would be for sort of on a regular basis; I mean I'm not saying every few months but every so often for us to do an exercise like this, where we just review how we live. You know when were first married we lived on peanuts for years. But as you grow up and your salary increases, and you establish your lifestyle, you don't have to live like that anymore. Every penny was accounted for in those early days; but it's not now. For us to be able to stop and to reflect and to look at the way that we live and maybe to ask some questions about do we want to continue to live like this? I think would be really important. In fact these next few days before we actually finish at the end of the month, we're researching some local charities in our area that are involved in - kind of those that are facing the implication of unemployment and loss of homes and the implications of the recession. We wanted to give our money away into that kind of direction into local charities that would benefit people who are living like this not just for a month but for big periods of their lives.

Jonathan: This is a difficult question perhaps, because it depends where you draw the line on things; because perhaps we could compare our lifestyle in the West in comparison to say the third world. Do you think that the benefits that we get are at an unacceptable level; or do you think actually it's a bonus or a blessing even to have that in our culture?

Steve: Oh Jonathan that's a really hard one to answer. I mean, we've been living on £5 a day for a month; but we've not had to go out and buy clothes for our kids to go off to school. We've not faced our fridge breaking down. It's when those emergencies happen. That's the dangerous thing actually. It's - you can live on £5 a day; you can live just about alright you know. Our menu hasn't been great but you are just about alright. There's not a lot of money spare for entertainment; but that's only been for a month. When your fridge breaks down, or something that you really need, that's when you're in difficulty. That's the dangerous point. When somebody knocks on the door and offers you a loan and the loan might be an extortionate interest rate and then you're tied into debt and you're paying back far more than you should be, if you had better credit ratings or whatever, or better income. That's when it gets really difficult for people. So you know I'm reluctant to kind of make any statements as to whether it's too much or too little. I know that it's really hard for people to live on benefit and to make it work for them in terms of their life particularly when the difficult stuff of life comes up. I know people do it; these friends Teresa and Sarah, as I say we met with them and they do really well with their life, but it isn't easy for them.

Jonathan: I think that's a good answer. The take up has been very good in terms of the interest of what you're doing. A lot of people are really interested. That's great because you've got this idea for October. You're calling individuals and churches across the country to do a similar thing. Give us the details of that and encourage people.

Steve: Yeh, well I think what would be, just to say it would be great if all over the place, people or churches said hey how about us doing this. It might be a small group. It might be a group of friends at a workplace and they say hey we'll do this. It might be individuals and you say, actually I like the challenge of that and I'd like to be generous. You know the great thing about this is you can give the money away in any direction you want. It's not coming to us; it's not coming to Evangelical Alliance. It's just to be given away as a statement of generosity. If you go to the website which is www.simplify.org.uk you can get all the information there that you need in order to develop a plan for this. You do need to plan, work it out and then just start the beginning of October. If you can register on the website; you can put blogs up there telling us how it's doing. You can exchange menu ideas. Any kind of funny thing that's happened to you; any lessons that you've learnt. Be great for us to almost get a sense of this as an experience, a learning experience for loads of us.

Jonathan: Steve that's great. Thank you very much. It's great to talk to you. Finally how do you end something like this? I mean it's not something you celebrate is it at the end of it. Or what do you plan to do?

Steve: Well interestingly we started on the 31st July because we knew that we wanted to at the very end of August invite all our neighbours round and we're planning to have an afternoon having a bit of a get together for our neighbours, so Sunday afternoon we've invited all the neighbours from our street around. We're going to have a bit of a bar-b-cue at our house.

Jonathan: Very good. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for talking to us.

Steve: My pleasure.