Step into the inspiring world of faith and devotion! Join us as we dive deep into the heart-warming interview with Jon and Graham by none other than the remarkable UCB Christian radio presenter, Matt Brown during the Great is Thy Faithfulness conference that celebrated 30 years of ‘Word for Today’ devotional.
Get ready to be uplifted and inspired
During UCB’s Great is Thy Faithfulness conference, that celebrated 30 years of their ‘Word for Today’ devotional, our co-directors Jon and Graham were interviewed by Christian radio presenter Matt Brown.
Jon and Graham both discussed how Trinity Wealth Management came to being, as well as how since Trinity’s foundation, they continue to incorporate God’s word within day-to-day business. They also shared their wisdom on giving, goal setting and importance of financial management from a biblical perspective.
You can read the transcript below or you can listen to the full interview with UCB by clicking on the link below:
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Transcript from Matt Brown, from UCB, Interview with Jon and Graham
Ruth:
Saturday 29th of June, and we are celebrating God’s goodness and his faithfulness, Josephina Ganister. UCB 2 , Matt and Ruth broadcasting live from the Bethel Convention Centre in West Bromwich ahead of the greatest thy faithfulness celebration of 30 years of the UCB Word for Today. You can still be part of it………….
We’ve roped in a few guests to share stories of the impact of the UCB Word for Today. Who have you got with you there, Matt?
Matt:
Well, I don’t want to tell you.
Ruth:
Oh please!
Matt:
No, I’m only joking. I’m going to engage my full seller and say Good afternoon gentlemen. What are your names and where do you come from?
Graham:
Graham Cleveland from St Alban’s, Trinity Wealth Management.
Matt:
Fantastic.
Jon:
And I’m Jon Cobb, also St Alban’s, Trinity Wealth Management.
Matt:
So there’s a common theme here. You guys work together at Trinity Wealth Management. So I suppose, because traditionally on this is my story, we ask people what their love story is if they have a significant other. I’m not saying that about you guys, but how did you guys first meet and then get into business together?
Jon:
Well, we started, I’ve known Graham, many people do actually say it’s like a marriage because we’ve known each other for many years and we do trust each other greatly. We both went to a church in Luton called Stopsley Baptist Church back in the nineties. We were in the same house group. And the story of basically how we started Trinity because we’ve known each other, as I said for all those years and came together in work, was that I worked in Lloyd’s of London, so I was an insurance broker. Graham worked in wealth management already. I had no interest in that line of work and I got headhunted and it was everything that I wanted in a job, materially much more money, long lunches, trips to America. So I was very excited about that. I’d had about two interviews already and I went for a third interview after work. It was literally just a case of signing on the dotted line. Straight after that interview, I went to a barbecue at the house group that both Graham and I were in. And so I’m completely suited and booted. Graham sees me and says, nice haircut. You’re looking very smart. And I’ll let Graham tell the rest of that story from there.
Graham:
So I say to him, why are you looking so smart? And he says, oh, I’ve just had my third interview. He said, I’ve got this perfect job. And I said, brilliant. And we chatted a little bit more and he walked away and as he walked away, I felt God say to me, tell him he’s going to work with you. And I went, sorry. And I felt God say, tell him he’s going to work with you. I went, okay. And after about 45 minutes an hour, he was at the door ready to leave. And I went up to him and I said, I just feel that God’s spoken to me and told me that we are meant to work together. And he goes, that’s amazing. He goes, because I don’t alright. And left the building, alright, and now I’ll pass it back to him to say what happened thereafter.
Jon:
Anyway, what Graham did say at that point was he said, I literally did say that. I said, that’s amazing. I don’t, my life was nicely planned. I didn’t need Graham. And sadly I felt I didn’t need God to go changing my plans, my plans were set. But Graham said, well, I’m going to pray about this and if it’s right then you won’t get that job.
Now I can look you both in the eye and tell you that what happened then was it was as if I completely disappeared off the face of the earth as far as that company was concerned because they never ever made any contact with me again. I mean, it was literally supernatural and there’s no, if they had come back and said, sorry, you’re not the right person. Your haircut wasn’t right, but they just didn’t come back. And that to me is supernatural. So you’re thinking, okay, Lord, what are you telling me? This was 1995. So we spent quite a bit of time together praying around this and seeking God’s direction and started to work for the company that Graham was working for. So over to you from there.
Graham:
And that’s when we started to build a relationship and that’s when UCB started to come into our lives thereafter. But we decided to start Trinity Wealth Management off 23 years ago. I’ve been doing biblical financial planning since, and that’s where UCB really came to the forefront of how we start the day each day
Matt:
And I just got to pick up on something. So this is a barbecue that you feel God say this to you, tell him that he’s going to be working with you. You said it was about 45 minutes to an hour before Jon was going to leave. The fact is you had to be bold in taking a steps at actually saying something to him. Can you remember what it felt like at that moment where you were like, okay, God, I’m going to do it. Was it a case of having to pluck up the courage or did you have a kind of inner confidence about it?
Graham:
I think when God speaks to you once, it’s great, but when he speaks to you twice, there’s a bit of confidence and it’s more about the timing of giving that I can be quite bold.
Jon:
He can,
Graham:
And it doesn’t really worry me because if God’s gone before you, then he’s gone You and you don’t need to worry about the consequences, but you are potentially changing someone’s life and outlook. So I wanted to make sure it was right. And that’s why I said to him the prayer, well, if it’s right for us to work together and remember, I didn’t have a choice at that time either. This was about what God wanted and he knows best. So yes, it is about being a bit bold and not being fearful of what man thinks and we’re still together, so something was right,
Matt:
Definitely. And Jon, just to backtrack slightly, obviously the world was looking pretty good up to this point. You’d gone for your third interview and then nothing. How did you process that and get to the point where you guys started to talk about going into business together?
Jon:
Well, I think it is quite a humbling experience, but I mean I think God is interested in every facet of our lives as well as our career. I think the love of money and career sort of fits in with that, doesn’t it? Very much so is something that can be a temptation, but I think it is really important to invite God into that walk and to seek his path and his direction. So it was something that I was reluctant to do, but I think I knew it was the right thing. It was a step of faith and oh, Matt, I mean we’ve had some times in the last, since 1995, there’s challenges although one has a sense of peace, there’s also plenty of times where it’s been very challenging, very challenging, and you think, oh, I wish I was back where I was before, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Because there’s a real sense of calling and I think when you know that you are where God wants you to be, even though in the short term there’s disobedience, but you know that you’re on that path that he wants you to be, where else would you want to be? That’s the best place to be. It’s hard, but it’s the best place to be.
Matt:
Absolutely. It is. So 23 years, Trinity Wealth Management has been going, helping people with a biblical perspective on that, how to handle their finances. But we know because we’ve spoken to you before that the Word for Today actually plays a key role in the part of what you do in the day to day. We’re going to hear about that. But first of all, we’re going to go to a song. This is Seth Schluter with Counting My Blessings…
…it’s UCB two Sounding a little different today. Matt Brown, Ruth O’Reilly Smith Broadcasting Live from the Great Is Thy Faithfulness Event. We are the warmup act and hearing some stories of what God is doing in so many people’s lives through the Word for Today over the last 30 years. Today we are pausing to thank God his many, many blessings. Matt, you are in conversation with Jon Cobb and Graham Cleveland from Trinity Wealth Management.
Matt:
I am indeed. And I think one of the things about the Word for Today is that when I first got my copies somewhere back in the 1990s, it was very much about me and my relationship with God. But more and more we’re seeing that people are engaging with God’s word through the Word for Today in groups, whether it be a house group or another group associated with their church, whatever kind it might be. What I think your story is particularly interesting because the Word for Today has become part of your daily life within business as Trinity Wealth Management. How did that first come about?
Graham:
I think we wanted to, prayer was at the heart of our relationship, but we wanted something that gave us direction on a daily basis and I think through Stopsley Baptist Church, UCB, somehow someone introduced it and we thought that would be great for us. We wanted to put God first in the business. It’s his business at the end of the day and one of the best ways we felt was to introduce UCB and it works and it has worked amazingly well and that’s how we came about doing that on a daily basis.
Matt:
So what’s the reaction from the people that work with you when you first say to them, look, this is the thing that we’re going to do together in terms of reading the Word for Today. Is it well received all the time?
Jon:
Oh, always. I mean sort jokingly you could say, well, it’s better than work, but I mean it really is an integral part of the day and it’s in our DNA and so as all the staff are believers and one would hope that reading the scripture is a discipline that they would embrace anyway, to do it in work time to be paid is even better. So there’s never been an issue with that. On the contrary, I think there would be a lot of dissension if we took it away. There’s that great line is it by Martin Luther King of saying about how much busier he is today so he needs to spend more time in prayer in the word. And there are times when the temptation is, we’ve got a lot on today, let’s skip it. We’ve never ever skipped it. There’s not been a day. And again with things like Covid, which obviously created problems, we used to do it in the office, now we can do it through teams. Never missed a day, we missed a day and staff would not be happy if we did and we wouldn’t be happy if we didn’t.
Matt:
Exactly. So there must be some stories of how you’ve seen God’s power at work through his word, through the Word for Today within your business, without naming anyone specifically, are there any testimonies of the Word for Today that impacting people?
Graham:
I think it’s quite hard. I wish we’d have kept a record of it. So we were talking in the car and it was quite hard to remember back some of those. But I think in business, when you’ve been in business 23 years, you have your ups and downs and we’ve had both and there’s been certain days where we’ve come out of the meeting where the staff haven’t realised what’s been going on and we’ve got together after we’ve gone, wow, that Word for Today was absolutely spot on. This is what we need to do. We need to get together and pray more about it or we really need to not do anything. We just need to trust God. And so what it does, it gives you direction, it helps you in your faith and your trust in God. So without sort of being specific, it’s more the timing is always per which is incredible. From an individual basis staff there are sometimes things that we know on that’s going on in staff and that word that day is so appropriate for them. Sometimes they’ll share it, sometimes they won’t. So it works corporately and personally, that’s the beauty of it. It works on both basis.
Jon:
I think another thing is that within the 23 years of being the business owners, although I’ve sort of worked with Graham since 1995 and like a marriage, there are times when we don’t see eye to eye. There’s times when there is sort of contention.
Graham:
Absolutely
Jon:
But it’s like Paul says when you go to the Lord’s table that he’s got to search your heart. And I think again, having that discipline every morning and we are reading the word together, so if we’ve had a cross word or if there’s something, it’s like we really need to sort this out. We can’t come to the word and not sort this out. So again, it builds that in as well that keeps us unified. So again, Word for Today and the scripture do unify you. I think the point with UCB, which I love, is it brings alive God’s word. It is so apposite on so many occasions and it just sort of expands on the scripture. It’s just one scripture. It’s even sometimes just half a verse and whatever. And then you’ve got this wonderful narrative. It just brings that out and it’s just so often so appropriate to that day, so appropriate. So often.
Matt:
The thing that blows my mind over well, it’s now over 30 years that the Word for Today has been made available in its various different formats now. Not only the fact that God used Bob and Debbie to create this daily devotional, but also the fact that there are so many yet faithful supporters of UCB’s ministry who pray for the ministries of UCB, who tell others about the ministries, but also who give from their own resources financially to make this resource available so that it can be delivered to people’s homes or churches or prisons or cafes, libraries, supermarkets. In Northern Ireland, this is only possible because people have sat down and either sat with guys like you and said, I want to make sure that my finances reflect my relationship with God. If there’s someone who’s listening this afternoon, he maybe hasn’t stepped into that place of financially supporting or maybe sponsoring copies of the Word for Today, what would you say to them is a great starting point in terms of them thinking about how God might want them to use the resources they’ve been blessed with to support this ministry?
Graham:
That’s a brilliant question, and I think the five principles that we work on from a biblical perspective, the first one is that God owns it all. So you come with an open palm mentality, so all that you have belongs to the Lord. And second one is spend less than you earn, borrow wisely, plan and plan ahead. But the fifth one is give and give generously. So if you understand the first one that it all belongs to God, whose money are you giving away anyway? None of it’s ours, none of it. So I think if you can come from that perspective that actually isn’t ours, it isn’t yours, that takes a different perspective. And I think that’s the first point. I would say, understand it’s not yours and go to the Lord and say, Lord, this is your resource, this is your money. What do you want me to do with it? What difference do you want me to make? And I think that’s the starting point.
Jon:
Yeah. I think that for a lot of people there’s a desire to give more, but our lives are complex. Maybe our finances are complex, and I think that’s where Christian financial planners such as Trinity Wealth Management is helpful. If we can determine how much is enough for a client and demonstrate that to them. So these God-given goals, which are fine to want to retire at a certain age, to want to put your kids to university or whatever, if you’ve got an order on all that, but you can see that you’ve got surplus, it’s much more easy to give. I think most people don’t have a handle on their finances sadly because of busyness, It’s not a judgement. therefore they think, can I afford to give away? Now, it is easy to give out a surplus. There’s a whole other discussion, which I’d love to have on giving from a faith point of view out of other funds. But I think getting your finances in order is a good place to start.
Matt:
Absolutely. Some great wisdom here from the Bethel Convention Centre this Saturday afternoon, Hey, Ruth?
Ruth:
Yeah, absolutely. I love those points. I need to run through them again. Thank you very much guys.
Hearing there from Jon Cobb and Graham Cleveland from Trinity Wealth Management, just part of the story of God working through the UCB Word for Today, and maybe it’s inspired you to make the Word for Today available in your business. I mean, I just think that’s great. We heard from the horse trainers and the stables playing UCB in the stables. It’s about changing the atmosphere and not just through good stuff, nice stuff, but it’s the power of God at work. It’s the spirit of God working through the word of God that changes lives for good.