Fixed Worth, Growing Value

When churches talk about money, we almost always talk about giving it. We rarely talk about how to make it. In this series on money we have learned how to divide what we earn; now I want to ask how we grow it. Your worth is fixed on the cross, but the commercial value of your work depends on context, and there are three things we can do to increase it: recognise the gifts God has given us, develop them, and position them well.

Expanding the pie

We have built this series in stages. Dama took us through stewardship: everything we have is God's, and we are only stewards. Pastor Kevin spoke about identity: whatever your bank balance, and whatever car you drive, your worth is fixed on the cross. Then Mark Mumo took us through budgets, and many of you went home and did the maths for the first time.

Mark's principle was that tax and pension deductions leave before you even see your pay. What remains is then divided:

• • 10% to tithe

• • 10% to emergency savings (once you have six to twelve months saved, that money moves to a replacement fund)

• • 10% to retirement

• • 10% to investment

• • 60% to live on

Some of you sat down with that and realised how little is left to live on, with rent, food and school fees all competing for it. Mark showed us how to divide the pie. Today I want to ask a different question: can we expand the whole pie?

Work came before sin

Work is not a result of the fall. In Genesis 2:15, God puts the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it, before sin enters the story. Work is an original, holy part of being human, not a curse to survive until Friday.

Think of the Monday memes. We mourn going to the very place God has purposed for us. We work because we bear the image of a God who works. As Jesus says in John 5:17, the Father has been working, and so is He.

Jesus did not come only to die. If that had been His whole purpose, He could have been crucified the day He was born. Instead He had around three and a half years of mission that led to the cross. Ephesians 2:10 says we are God's workmanship, created for good works He prepared beforehand. That word carries the sense of a poem, a masterpiece. You did not stumble into your life by accident. There is work God ordained for you before the foundations of the earth.

The work you do is what increases the pie. So this is not a question of whether you should work, but how: how to recognise what God has put in you, how to develop it, and how to position yourself so that your work grows the pie.

Joshua Bell at the subway

On 12 January 2007, a man in a long-sleeved T-shirt and a baseball cap walked into L'Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington DC, opened a case, took out a violin and began to play. For about 45 minutes he played some of the most complex violin pieces ever written, including works by Johann Sebastian Bach. I am classically trained, so this story excites me.

The commuters did not know who he was. It was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists in the world, playing a Stradivarius worth around $3.5 million. In the morning rush, about a thousand people walked past him. Around seven stopped to listen. He collected about $32.

Three days earlier, he had played to a packed concert hall in Boston, where the cheapest seats cost around $100. Those people had chosen to come, paid for tickets and understood what they were hearing. Same musician, same violin, same music: in one place a fortune, in the other, $32. When the context of your work changes, the commercial value you receive can change completely.

So what is the point of this message?

When churches talk about money, the emphasis is generosity, generosity, generosity. We rarely teach people how to make the money. It is like teaching people how to be married but not how to choose a spouse, and only running marriage classes once the decision is made.

If all we teach is generosity, the question remains: how was the money made? None of us would be comfortable with people robbing, bribing or mugging and then bringing the money to be generous. So how do we make money, and make it well? That is the purpose of today. I work in branding and business strategy, so expect some business language along the way.

Context sets perceived value; the cross sets absolute value

Context determines perceived value. Some of you have the capability of a Joshua Bell, but you are standing somewhere that pays $32. Absolute value is something else: it is fixed on the cross. Whether the market pays you KES 100,000, a million or a hundred million, that figure is not your value.

John 3:16 says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God looked at you and considered you worth His Son. Your commercial value may rise as your career grows, but your absolute value has never changed. Context changes your commercial value, not your absolute value.

Think of a chef. A master chef who cooks fine African food for someone who has just eaten a wonderful meal at home will not be paid, because that person is full. The food has not lost its value. When Marcus, our resident chef, cooks a barbecue for friends at one of our gatherings, he is paid in relationship, not money. Value is still exchanged, but it is relational. When the same chef cooks in a restaurant for hungry customers, they will happily pay KES 5,000 a plate. The ingredients came from God, his skill came from God, and your taste buds came from God. None of that changed. Only the context did.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get

Warren Buffett said, "Price is what you pay, value is what you get."

A brand new 2026 Mazda CX-5 costs around KES 7 million. If I am your brother and I sell it to you for one million, one million is the price, but the car's value has not changed. Go and insure it, and the insurer will charge you for a 7 million car, because if you crash it, they will replace a 7 million car. In the same way, you may pay a guard around KES 15,000 a month, but what you get is your children sleeping safely. Is that safety worth only 15,000?

Now flip it. When you are the one being paid, price is what you charge and value is what your client or employer gets. Some of you are a brand new Mazda being paid like a bargain.

You ask for KES 70,000 and the offer letter comes back at 30,000. A client says your consultancy is expensive. Most of us hear, "You are not worth it." But your value is absolute and fixed on the cross. "Too expensive" usually means one of three things: they do not have the money, the timing is wrong, or they do not trust that you will give them value in return. If it is trust, look at how you are presenting yourself, and whether you have enough proof.

So this message has three parts: recognising the value we have, developing and refining our skills and capacities, and positioning ourselves.

Part 1: Recognise the gift

When Dama preached on stewardship, we split into groups around the areas God has entrusted to us: time, gifts, money, relationships, talent and opportunity. Today the focus is talent, opportunity and influence, because developing these is how the pie grows.

Exodus 31:1-6 describes Bezalel. God says He has called him by name, Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, understanding, knowledge and all manner of workmanship: designing artistic works, working in gold, silver and bronze, cutting jewels and carving. In our Protestant circles, if someone was filled with the Spirit, we picture a church meeting. But the first time God speaks of filling someone with His Spirit, it is for craftsmanship. There is divine selection here: God calls Bezalel by name. And Bezalel has a broad range of skills.

So if you are multi-talented, you are greatly gifted. Most of us underestimate our range. You think, "All I know is accounting," but you have far more. The person we call a peacemaker in church is, in a corporate setting, a mediator or an organisational ombudsman. These are real skills: meta skills and soft skills. Some of you can turn complex ideas into simple processes. That is a gift. Dama can walk into a company, find the bottleneck and turn the business around within two years. Some of you can explain neuroscience, colour theory or sound so simply that you could train others. If you are the colleague who always steps in when people argue and brings resolution, that is a skill from God. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:9, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Finding the middle: ikigai

If you have many gifts, how do you know which one to pursue? There is a principle called ikigai: the overlap of what you love, what you are good at, what you can be paid for and what the world needs. Whatever sits in the middle is what you should do. Miss any one of the four and you have a problem:

• • You are good at it, the world needs it and you are paid, but you do not love it: you will get bored.

• • You love it, the world needs it and you are paid, but you are not good at it: you will second-guess yourself every day of your career. "Fake it till you make it" collapses the moment someone has paid you and asks the first hard question.

• • You love it, you are good at it and the world needs it, but no one will pay for it: you become a satisfied but broke person.

• • You love it, you are good at it and you are paid well, but the world does not need it: the work feels empty. You have the money, but no sense of impact.

Wisdom and God's interruption

Ikigai is general wisdom, and I want to say something that sounds almost heretical: there are many situations where wisdom is enough and you do not need to wait for a special word from God. If you are hungry at one o'clock, you do not go into your closet and pray, "Lord, show me the food." There is food in the kitchen. If you are cold, get the jacket. Salvation calls us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2): the renewal of your mind, not the removal of your mind. God gave you a brain and reason.

But Proverbs 16:9, in a chapter full of verses about making plans, gives the balance: a man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. The verse does not rebuke the man for planning. It holds both together: apply wisdom, but stay open to God's interruption. Run on wisdom alone and you finish your lunch at one o'clock, not knowing a hungry friend was about to knock on your door and give you the chance to be generous. You go and buy a jacket, not knowing someone was arriving from Barcelona with one for you.

It is in the interruptions that we see God's hand. God's interruption may take you somewhere you have no skill for, or somewhere you are not paid, like voluntary service or ministry in a place you never imagined. Yet the impact, the connections, and the treasure stored in heaven through obedience are beyond measure. So apply ikigai, but be open to God's interruption.

You can do ikigai for your business too. Some entrepreneurs cannot tell you their value proposition: carpet cleaning today, shoe washing tomorrow, then graphic design, then marketing. The world may need these things, but they have no expertise in them. There is a bug in entrepreneurship: once you taste money that does not come from a salary, you assume you can make money from anything, so you jump from idea to idea. You become a jack of all trades and master of none, and you never move on to the second step: developing your skill.

Part 2: Develop the gift

Using your gifts to grow the pie requires diligence and competence. Proverbs 22:29 asks, "Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before unknown men." Colossians 3:23-24 says: whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

The standard is to do your work heartily and keep refining it, because opportunities and promotions can come before you are ready. If someone offered me a fortune to work as a neurosurgeon tomorrow, "fake it till you make it" would not survive the operating theatre. No ChatGPT doctors, no Claude accountants. Develop the skill yourself.

This matters across your working life. Roughly between 25 and 60 are your most productive earning years, but some skills are not tied to retirement. Build them over the years and you can still use them at 65 because you love them, perhaps through a consultancy. As Mark said, your children are not your retirement plan.

The point of study is not the certificate. It is growing your competence so that you can give more value to the world and capture some of it. The market does not pay for papers. The market pays for competence. Papers may open the door, but staying in the room takes consistent competence.

This is not a guarantee. Psalm 75:6-7 says exaltation does not come from the east, the west or the south, but God is the judge: He puts down one and exalts another. Our work is to pursue excellence with diligence, while recognising that promotion, timing and fruitfulness remain in God's hands.

Rain only matters to those with seed in the ground

God has given you seed: your talents, opportunities, gifts and skills. But some Christians are busy praying for a harvest when they never planted. The rain of favour and opportunity comes, but on unplanted ground all you get is mud. You ask for a job but never applied. You ask for clients but never marketed. You never grew your team's capacity, so when a client finally comes and asks for compliance documents, you do not have them.

William McDowell once spoke of a rain coming on this generation. But rain only matters to those who have seed in the ground.

So develop your skills. If you are jobless, you are not timeless. Keep applying, but use the time to learn something, or build standard operating procedures for your business. Professional development may help your employer, but it also helps you: you get paid more and you have more impact. Many of us are still trying to cut trees with blunt axes. When I say some of you, I mean some of us too.

Competence includes the basics. Some of us ask God for international influence before we have mastered punctuality, arriving thirty minutes late to a call with a client in the US. Some have not learned to communicate professionally and speak to clients the way they speak to their siblings. If Kirk Franklin came to Kenya needing a bass guitarist for a 7pm concert, the concert would begin for that player three days earlier, in rehearsals. If you are always late, you will not be chosen. Do not ask for a harvest when you refuse to plant, and then ask God why He has not blessed you. Often people will not even refer you, because they know you are not competent.

There are so many places to learn: Coursera, edX, YouTube, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and training from Amazon, Google and Safaricom. Some partner with leading universities, so you can earn a certificate from a top institution for a fraction of the cost of studying abroad, without leaving your family or your job. And if time is your excuse: do you watch series? Did you go to the concert? What were you doing scrolling until 3am?

Three ways the market pays

The market pays you in three ways: for your input, for your output, or for the value you create.

Input-based pay charges for what goes in. A baker adds up ingredients and labour, then puts a profit margin on top. Much of this comes from Adam Smith and the labour theory of value. Time is the usual unit: agencies and therapists charging by the hour, PR firms on monthly retainers worked out from their costs. Most service and product businesses work this way. The weakness is incentive. If I am paid by the hour, why would I finish quickly? I am not hating on lawyers, but some can keep your case running for years on retainer. Not our saved lawyers, Ngina and Liz: they want resolution.

Output-based pay charges for the result. Your website costs, say, KES 200,000, whether it takes me a day or a month. If you become efficient, you earn more. If you can build a website in a day and work three days a week, that is three projects; work every day and you earn more still.

Value-based pay charges a share of the value created. If I build a website for Amazon, I might ask for 0.1% of what it earns, and nothing unless it makes money. Typically people will pay between 1% and 10% of the value you create: make someone a million shillings and you might expect around 100,000. Under output pricing, even if your work makes them a fortune, you still receive the same fee.

Many arrangements blend these. Most employment is input-based, with clocking in and out, so employers add bonuses and incentives to encourage you to create value. There is even a site, Clarity.fm, where top entrepreneurs charge by the minute, perhaps $20, and every minute has to deliver value.

Value-based pricing brings its own performance pressure, and that is fine. You do not have to work that way. Find the system that suits you. Some careers are so specialised that hourly pay is the only option; then the question is how to earn more per hour. Either way, develop your competence.

Part 3: Position the gift

Once you have identified and developed your gift, you need to position it, or you end up like Joshua Bell in the subway.

Genesis 1:28 says God blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. The Hebrew word for subdue, kabash, does not mean exploit. It means to bring order out of chaos, to create from raw potential, to bring things into structure. Everything in the newest iPhone was on this planet before any of us were born. What is new is how it has been brought together.

From engineering to branding

Let me tell you my story. In 2020 I had just got married, and about three weeks later I lost my job. I trained in mechanical and production engineering, and all my money had gone into the wedding and furnishing our home. I had promised my wife I would take care of her. The one skill I had to offer was graphic design.

It was lockdown, and people stuck at home suddenly noticed how bare their houses were. So I began designing digital wall art. When a client asked for prints, I worked out how: printing in town, finding someone to cut the wood and someone to cut the glass, and framing them myself. Some went as far as Mombasa.

One client wanted a large map of East Africa to pin with the places she had travelled. I drew it from scratch as vector artwork, with layers for roads, rivers and boundaries, detailed enough to print on a billboard without losing quality. A colleague of hers saw it, asked who had made it, and called me: his company needed branding.

I told him honestly that I had never done branding, only graphic design. I do not lie to clients. If I am learning on your project, I will tell you. An expert is someone with the skills to learn at speed in a way a client cannot, like a neurosurgeon who has never operated on your particular head but knows enough to prepare and work it out. He agreed. I spent a week learning branding and barely slept. He paid me KES 15,000, at a time when one artwork earned me around 200 shillings of profit. I realised I had been using my skill in the wrong place.

That is how I pivoted into branding. Same skill set, positioned differently, far more value. We are now approaching 150 brands. I also learned to bring in people who already know what I cannot learn fast. I studied IT before engineering and I can build websites, but I hate coding, so I partner with developers I still work with today.

I have made more money in branding than I ever made in engineering, but I still use my engineering. A mechanic listens to your engine and tells you which piston is misfiring; I troubleshoot businesses the same way. Some clients were already making millions, and I wondered why they wanted my advice, yet their revenue and profit grew, and years later they tell me they have expanded. In hindsight, I did not charge what I should have, because I did not yet know the value of what I was offering.

Follow the need

What fine-tuned skill do you have that could be positioned where it creates greater commercial value? People move companies and are paid more because they can create more value somewhere else. Value creation is not static.

Do not fall in love with your products, or you will become Nokia or Kodak. Follow the need. In marketing and branding we say: understand the customer, and you will not have to convince them to buy. Eugene Schwartz describes five stages of customer awareness. Businesses exist to solve problems at a profit, and employment works the same way:

• • Unaware: they do not know they have a problem.

• • Problem aware: they know the problem, but not whether a solution exists. Think of a founder who senses an investor will ask questions they cannot answer.

• • Solution aware: they know the problem and that solutions exist, but they do not know you.

• • Product aware: they know the problem, the solution, and that you can provide it.

• • Most aware: they are convinced and ready to spend; they are simply comparing you with competitors.

"Everybody is my client" may be true eventually, but people sit at different stages. If you need money today, do not market to the unaware: your next client or employer may not even be on Instagram. Sell to the most aware. If you want income for the long term, build with the product aware and solution aware.

People buy from those they know, like and trust, and the greatest of these is trust. That is why referrals work so well. If you trust me and I recommend a friend who does financial modelling, you will trust him, because I have passed my trust on to him.

Loving your client

This may sound like marketing language, but the Bible says love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12:31). Loving your client means understanding their real problem, otherwise you operate on the head when the problem is in the leg. I have turned away clients who came for branding when what they needed was help with operations or HR. They would have paid me, but loving them means not spending their money on something that will not benefit them. When I give real value, I get paid, and the pie grows.

Positioning applies in employment too. Dama, who works as a chief operating officer, gave me permission to share this. Every week she sends her CEO a short report: what happened this week, and what is coming next week. There were times I could not have told you what my own employees were doing. Her report removes the CEO's anxiety and gives her work visibility. It is not pandering or trying to look good. You are already good. It simply makes clear that they are paying you and receiving value. Send your line manager a weekly report. Copy them in when clients send good feedback. That is positioning.

Why a bigger pie matters

Why are we talking about this? So that the pie grows: more in the 60% left after tax and pension, more to give, and more for the Kingdom, for business and for family.

Second Corinthians 4:7 says we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are not just skilled labourers. We are anointed, gifted, Spirit-filled skilled labourers. Our capacity is being increased so that we can give value to the world and receive value from it, not simply to upgrade our lifestyles. A bigger pie means family stability, Kingdom impact and open-handed, second-mile generosity. How do you practise that with a small pie?

Most of our parents never had this information. We do. And many of us are caring for two generations at once: the children we are raising and the parents who are ageing. With a small pie, you cannot care for either well. When you start a business while still carrying heavy family needs, you end up paying your own people poorly. Then your employees wonder how their boss can be a believer and pay KES 15,000 for the work they do. We have to be different kinds of employers. Paying people good money is not generosity. It is your duty, because they are giving you a great deal of value. And the question works the other way: how much value do you create for your employer, and how much are you capturing in return?

Conduits, not buckets

Remember the bucket illustration. A bucket collects everything that flows from heaven and keeps it, until the water goes stagnant. When you have very little, the temptation (not the default, but the temptation) is to become a bucket. God increases us so that we become conduits of His grace to the world: first a straw, then a household pipe, and one day a pipeline, gushing blessing.

Today was about commercial value: how to create it and develop it, in employment or business. But your absolute value was fixed on the cross. Do not forget that. And not every gift has to make money. Being a conduit sometimes means giving time, skill or a referral rather than money. If you own a hospital that is doing well, you can see someone in need on the news and say, "Tell them to come, all expenses paid." Your doctors are still paid, even though the patient pays nothing. That is why we are talking about this: to become greater conduits of God's blessing.

Back to the violin

Some of us are called to play the violin in the subway, and that is not wrong. Some of us are called to play in the concert hall, and that is not wrong either. General wisdom is general wisdom, but God's interruption will direct you to the exact place you are meant to be. If the Lord convicts you to play in the subway and collect $32, you have treasure in heaven, because obedience is what He seeks.

But do not stay in the subway simply because you do not know how to get to the concert hall. We have so many skills among us, and we know people who have the ones we lack. If you are meant to be in the concert hall but stay away because you do not know how to get there, or because you are afraid, that is still disobedience. Wherever God places you, play your violin with wisdom and follow His instruction, not out of love of money or self, but because you want to obey.

So, three questions:

1. What has God placed in your hand?
2. On a scale of zero to ten, how diligent are you with it?
3. Are you wisely positioning your value, offering it in the right context, to the right audience, with clear communication, for the glory of God?

Closing prayer

Heavenly Father, thank You. Thank You for the work that You have given us. Thank You for the gifts that You have given us. Thank You that You are exhorting us towards excellence. If we claim to be Christians and our work is mediocre, we are a poor example of an excellent God.

I pray that even as we exercise wisdom, we will be open to Your interruptions. We might be walking, and there may be a woman with the issue of blood who just wants to touch the hem of Your garment. It is Your garment, Lord. You were walking and You were interrupted. The blind man shouted and the disciples tried to silence him, but that interruption was part of what You wanted to do. May we be open to Your interruption.

I speak great blessing. Even as we think about our budgets and how we will make more money, may we be more generous, and better stewards of all the time, all the gifts, all the opportunities and all the relationships, so that You, Lord, get all the glory and all the honour.

Every business that is stuck: sometimes they are stuck because they lack wisdom, sometimes for some other reason. I don't know, but You know, Lord. I speak great blessing upon these, Your people, to the glory and honour of Your name, in every single thing we put our hands to. You have already promised us that You would bless the work of our hands. May those who are planting seed, waiting for the rain of favour to fall upon us, find that the land is ready to receive the rain, so that we collect a harvest and are good stewards of the harvest that comes. Be glorified, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.