 sorry for being a minute late okay the recording has just started fine okay good morning everyone welcome let's take a moment just to pray together and then we will start I just request somebody to pray together with us and then we can start it please loving father this is coming to your presence of father but thank you for us wonderful morning as we gather to yours for the class of Lord Jesus you guide us and he is a father but keep us of you from all the distractions of father but Jesus we pray see you all in Jesus name with this prayer okay welcome everybody to this class and just drink a little water here to this class here on church and ministry administration last week we talked about volunteer management and today we're going to just do a very simple class on communications so I think we will spend just one lecture on that and then we're going to get into our class on Friday we'll get into talking about organizational culture so that one we'll spend maybe two lectures on that this week and we continue with continue it next week so a communications that's what we're going to talk about today I'm going to go ahead and share the PDF all right Dave you have a question before we move on to in communication yes just a small inquiry about how APC is handling with the the polluter recruitment and is there any kind of contract or any guideline for for the volunteers that they should or should not doze and runes or is there anything that the foreigners would know yes so good question thank you so in terms of enlisting volunteers like we do different things you know one is of course we announced periodically in our Sunday announcements the video saying we need volunteers for for various things various areas of involvement so that announcements happen we also have a sign-up sheet in our church website maybe I can just show you this quickly so we also you know in our church website if you go right here you know they can come and they can sign up here volunteer they go here and they they can see this page they can sign up they just put in their details which location they want to serve where they want to serve and sign up so this email comes and immediately when somebody signs up they'll get a call and they you know they'll be assigned to a particular team or the teams that they showed interest in so this is another way we do it from time then as I mentioned we also have a welcome banquet that means when new people come every three months we invite them for a lunch and then during that time also we will you know talk about volunteering and we give them a sign-up sheet similar to this so they can sign up and also personally you know where different people contact different people saying hey would you like to help so that isn't I think that would probably be the most important way when we personally ask somebody can you help in an info desk or in any of these areas now people sign up then we also have in that's listed here the staff and volunteer guidelines so we have this document that we share with people from time to time where we tell them you know these are all our these are the guidelines if you want to volunteer now this is a little strict of course it's not been updated for a while but it's quite quite strict you know so we tell them here's your personal life example your spiritual life your court of conduct all of those things you know how you in the state agreement of statement of faith you should respect the church community you know you respect your delegated leaders and these are the attitudes you have as a volunteer and your commitment to being a one-heart one-mind so this is our you know standard document we have you know it covers everything we haven't updated it in a while because it pretty much covers all that we want to tell volunteers before they start serving so from time to time we take our volunteers through this document which is our guidelines for staff and volunteers in terms of them serving and of course we have to keep reminding them because people will tend to forget so I think it's a good thing to do this once every year that we and now that we are resuming you know in person services I think we should do this once again with all the people once they come back right now we have very few people you know going to be involved but that that that's what we do yeah so I hope this does this answer question Dave yes so one more inquiry if somehow somehow somebody didn't go through the pipeline and he went against the pipeline and you have to dismiss the volunteer so what is the best way to do that so you know we do like you know it's like so you know we give at least two chances to people so you know if they do something that is against this you know what we have requested here in this volunteer guidelines document you know if they go against it do something that's not correct you know so you know we say hey first warning like you know just you know please this is what we require we want you to follow this guideline and and please you know so one warning second time second warning third time we have to say hey you know in a nice way sorry you're not you know you're not meeting our requirement here so we would ask you to please step away from being a volunteer you know you could serve I mean you can just you're welcome to attend church but as a volunteer we can't you know so for example if if they you know they've been rostered and they don't show up and they don't tell anybody that they're not coming so you know first time you tell them hey you should at least you should inform so somebody else can come in your place they repeat the same thing second time so again second as hey if you're not coming you know you should tell somebody so that we can do this and then if they if they do it again third time then we have to say look this is repeating and we don't know how many times it's going to repeat so maybe it's best you don't volunteer we'll find somebody else so we have to talk to them lovingly and release them from being volunteer yeah so we do take action now if somebody's done something straight away that's very serious then of course immediately we have to tell them you know please we want you to step sit down step down but if it's something smaller we can you know give them two chances and then yeah let them go yeah yeah all right good go ahead and is it okay for us to use your guidance APC guidance in our church or in our community yeah sure sure okay so so you know if you go to like okay this is our guidelines document so if you go to apcwo.org slash guidelines we'll find all our documents there all it's available just we haven't you know so we have all these guidelines for different areas like book table child protection policy different areas we have all these guidelines available and of course among them is the volunteer team guidelines staff and volunteer that this is the document I showed you staff and volunteer this this applies to all staff and volunteers that's the thing that we have to go with everybody every year but there are team specific guidelines there are training documents that we can use to train people there are role descriptions that are for different people who are serving in church so you're welcome to take any of these or all of these and modify it use it you're welcome so that's one reason why we put it out here because one is for our own benefit that we can always tell people you know go here and read the document but also to share with others so when you usually when pastors and I'll talk to me and they say hey how do you do this then I just direct them here to this website webpage and I see you can just download it and you can use it so please feel free we'll be happy if you use it modify and change it and however you want to suit what you're doing and you can use it thank you thank you very much you're welcome all right so today like we said we're going to talk about communications it's it's a very small lectures not nothing very complicated and most of us are already maybe already aware of these things but I I'm doing it more for the sake of completeness and also maybe there might be a few thoughts that that we could take away you know so we understand you know that in any organization communications is very important communicating with all the people who are part of the organization so as a church and as a ministry there are two directions in communications one is you're communicating within your own people who are working for the organization whether they are staff or volunteers so you're communicating with them but you also have to communicate with the congregation with the larger audience so that means as a church you know you have a congregation several hundred people sometimes several thousand people so you have to communicate with them or if you're a ministry you may need to communicate with people who are your partners your donors and so on the focus on on the staff of course is internal communications that means communicating with your own team members your staff or volunteers people are serving in the organization that's the focus of this lecture today but many of these things also are relevant when you're communicating to the larger crowd I mean the congregation or your donors and so on right so so most of what I'm saying is more in it from an internal point of view as an organization right so why is open communication so important and and and these are things we already know but you know just for the sake of reminding us you know why is communication internal communication communication with your staff and volunteers why is that important well it it it enthuses people about you know the the job or the role they have you know people feel excited or of course they feel informed but they feel that look I have a great place that that that speaks to me that you know that keeps me informed of what's happening it makes it gives people a feeling like you know this is a great place to work because they are telling me what's going on what's happening and rather than feeling you know I don't know what's happening right so part of just making people feel that you know feel good about the organization enthusiasm over the organization really helps in that of course secondly it makes people connected feel they know what's going on so they don't feel uninformed like oh I don't know what's going on when people don't know what's going on they feel disconnected they feel out of sync but when they are informed you know when the goal and direction what's happening is communicated people feel like hey I know what's going on and I am I am part of this whole thing you know I'm connected to it so I can flow with it so that's a very important piece there of communication that is if you want people in the organization to feel like I know what's going on I'm going with this I'm flowing with it you know we need to communicate we need to share with people what's happening also number three is they feel ownership of the direction we are taking so it's not you know it's not just okay you know somebody on top made some decisions and they're going on going ahead with them on their own but everybody's going and everybody's like ownership of that decision or direction right so we're all taking responsibility we're all going to put our efforts towards the decision that has been made towards the direction we're all responsible so there's a sense of ownership towards where the organization is going the decision that's been made there is also alignment that means in the other decisions that are therefore made in the other actions that are therefore taken by people they will stay aligned to what has been communicated if you don't tell them then they may make decisions sometimes that may be exactly opposite to what you know the direction and the decision that the organization is going it's not their fault they didn't do it intentionally it is just that they were not informed so that's why they decided to do something different right so in order to keep everybody aligned we need to communicate it also shows that we care about the people we care about their place and role in the organization they that you know look you are important to us you need to know these things you know we care about them people just just basic information you know just inform hey this is what's happening this is the latest update this is the news this is the result of what has happened this is the progress we've made this is where we are like just just basic information is another aspect and also people feel inspired you know when you share with them a success when you share with them a good outcome and you share with them something that has happened you know they feel inspired by it and that's a great way to keep people in the organization motivated in their work so you know these are just a few but important results outcomes of good communication if you're keeping people in the organization informed here are the benefits that we can have right now there's a lot that can be said about communication but i'm just highlighting some of the important parts it's important to keep communicate to look at communication as a dialogue rather than a monologue meaning communication is not a one-way thing right it's not just somebody telling people here this is what you have to do this is here's information just read it you know it's not just a one-way thing it's a dialogue and the more opportunities for dialogue the more you know healthy the organization will be right that means you want people to be part of the decisions that are made you know of what is happening and so on so of course you know depending on the size of the organization the how things are done can be different but there has to be the opportunity for interaction for discussion for sharing of ideas for solving problems together for making decisions together all right one of the best ways is just to you know have have a group meeting right so of course you know there are different teams so teams can have meetings for things that they are involved in so you know very often we call the IT team together you know happens almost every week and we all get on a call and we talk and we discuss and you know this is what's happening now yeah so so the whole team knows okay this is what we're doing this is where we're going etc and then from time to time we call all the staff together now we are not that big a staff group so it's easy to get everybody together especially these days we can all get on a call and then discuss you know everybody is welcome to speak everybody's welcome to share their ideas but then that is very important because it's not like okay one one person or a few people are making decisions and everybody has to go with it but rather we put things out in public you know have any ideas any thoughts we can you know we can discuss we can look at the pros and cons we can work out what is good and leave out what is you know not very useful so that kind of a platform or an opportunity for people to communicate people to share ideas actually builds not only do we get good outcomes not only does it keep people informed automatically because they were all there in the meeting they know what was decided but it also creates a very healthy environment because what we do in that group meetings big staff meeting or townhouse town hall meeting people will replicate when they have their own smaller team meetings so they will know that when you have a team meeting it's all about one person making a decision but it's about let's sit on and talk and let's discuss let's throw around ideas and and you know let's go over the best ideas regardless of who gave it so they will replicate that same thing and and so that improves communication between team members at all levels right so you know this dialogue opportunities for dialogue platforms for discussion interaction is very important and actually it's very simple it's just everybody getting together and talking about something that needs to be decided or planned or things like that you know so you do it at a big level well you know all the staff together you do it at all the team levels and team members get together and have discussions to make decisions so that's the that's a great way having dialogue now a great way to strengthen communication at all levels within the organization of course all communication must be open honest and direct right there's no point in communicating untruths or things that are not honest so whatever we say you know it has to be facts it has to be factual so that people can trust this is very important you know on Friday we'll start talking about culture how can you create trust see trust initially people trust implicitly that means you know they give us we all trust each other implicitly that means we say okay and i'm taking i'm trusting that person so people are going to trust the organization implicitly in the beginning but if they find that the organization people are not open and honest and direct you know what happened they will lose trust it affects the culture you know that means everything we say becomes susceptible people are questionable are they really telling us the truth so we need to maintain this it's got to be our long-term commitment it's got to be something ongoing if you want to create a culture of trust so beginning everybody gives trust as a gift implicitly we trust people but then as an organization we need to make keep it we need to create a culture we need to basically earn and maintain the trust of our staff and the best way to do it and the only way i would say to do it is to be open honest and direct over time right you know so when we communicate to people we uh share things okay this is good things this we made a mistake you know there have been times when uh i've made a mistake i made mistakes i'll send i send an email to everybody in the office hey guys sorry i i i did this i did that i'm sorry i made a mistake so everybody knows hey uh if if the pastor can be open about his mistake they can also be open about their mistakes there's nothing wrong to openly admit your mistake it doesn't change your value a single bit uh in fact when we are open and honest about what our failures are mistakes it just you know it creates that culture where everybody can be open but uh we do that over you know over time we keep that this is what it is and it builds a culture of openness honesty and being direct about what we want to do uh and so we need to be direct that means say what you mean and mean what you say uh don't beat around the bush so to speak meaning just say it straight uh and don't assume people can read your mind people cannot so you need to write what you're thinking and state it clearly so these are some basic things you know it has to be open it has to be honest it has to be direct then it really builds a good culture in the organization um some things about you know the congregation so for us as a church we have our internal staff so everything i said earlier was from that perspective communicating with our staff and volunteers but we also have to communicate with the congregation that the people or an organization may have to communicate with its donors a Christian organization so this has to be regular you know so people feel yeah they they are in touch with us but don't overdo it you know now if they get you know five six emails a week it'll be a nuisance you know they'll get upset so from time to time you know and then you're giving them the option if they want it or they don't want it so of course these days the tools we have and later on you know in another chapter we will talk about technology and we'll be doing a full course on technology in ministry next semester we have these tools you know we have a mail list service that you could use and you can maintain your mailing lists and different kinds groups of mail lists so you can target your communication so if you want emails to go to a certain group you send it to them if you want emails to go to multiple groups you can send it to those multiple groups so uh and then you give them the option to unsubscribe if they don't want it but so we need to communicate with the congregation keep them informed um so one simple thing that we do is we send every week we send an email with the sermon right now of course you can unsubscribe to it if you don't want it but at a very basic level we're saying hey here's a sermon here the sermon notes this is what it is and especially if somebody doesn't come to church missed church on a certain Sunday at least they will know okay this was a sermon topic and this was what was preached in church and if they want to go listen they can just click and go and listen to the message it's a very simple thing right now so we've been doing it for many years and just to keep the congregation informed it's of course an automated thing it's not personal as such but it's just a connect that's happening between the church and the congregation with that one email that has information about the sermon and then that email we may include any special announcements for that week or month that needs to be done right now if people don't want to receive that they can always opt out but you know usually people will say i didn't get the weekly sermon what happened you know if it doesn't go out on time i've had people ask what happened to that email so it seems like people just want to give whether they actually open it and read it i don't know but you know it's it's there they feel connected that okay but a very important part of this communication with the congregation is a little it's a passive communication which is the website meaning it's there and they can use it when they want it so it's a passive thing but we keep you know it's important to keep it updated as always current is updated almost every not almost but it is updated every day with the latest things changes there's a daily devotional that goes on weekly summons content and also the website is a means to communicate with the the larger group your congregation or donors or you know people outside it's a passive thing meaning they have to come to it to get information but the important thing is information should be there and information should be updated there so for example you know Arma once somebody wanted to invite a friend to church and but they wanted to know who's going to be preaching on sunday because they wanted to invite them so that they can come and hear the pastor preaching right so they need they want to know who's preaching on sunday so we have you know a pulpit calendar that's put out on the church website and this is done just to let people know who's preaching where on sunday now of course after this whole lockdown thing happened that's you know it's it's not very relevant because everything's now online pre-recorded and so on but when we're having in-person services people want to know who's preaching in which location if they're inviting a friend they would prefer I mean if they want to they would prefer this friend to come maybe hear the pastor not a guest speaker those kinds of things so they will go to the website and the ones okay who's preaching okay all fine I can invite my friend and so that they can listen to the pastor and so on or if there's a guest speaker whatever so just a simple thing but you know this has happened congregation won't want to know who's preaching there and so on and at different locations so this is helpful and it's just it's there and those who want it will come and look it up and use it to make their decisions and so on so the the website is a very important tool that churches and organizations can use and of course we you can use it for a lot of other things like registering for events which again is a very important thing okay so just some practical things here in in communication you know we need to be clear what we're communicating and to whom we're communicating right you know a poorly written email or communication is a disaster yeah it's better that it's not sent than being sent so you know so just some basic thing and I'm sorry for stating it but you know our communication should be clear there shouldn't be no spelling mistakes no grammar mistakes these things are unacceptable from an organizing from an organization perspective so and nowadays we have tools to help us you know a simple tool is Grammarly you can put it on to your to your web thing where you're using you can check your grammar or if you're using a word document automatically the word document has grammar tools and spelling and grammar checkers so make use of it send you know an email or anything a communication that has spelling and grammar mistakes is not acceptable another important thing is to keep things very concise you know today we are living in a day and time and people are used to SMS's and WhatsApp meaning it's very short messages so if our emails you know you it may be wonderfully written but if it's too long nobody's gonna read it so always when we're communicating you say how can I say everything I want to say in the fewest words that I can use that's the goal right if you can say it in one sentence say it in one sentence you don't have to put more than what is needed right so try to keep communications to be very precise and concise why because we're living in that kind of a time we're living in that kind of a generation for whatever reason people have so many things so many things to read and so they will give few seconds to read an email or read a message so when we're sending emails especially our goal must be keep it precise keep it concise that thing will not one word more than what is needed because people you know are just in that mindset you know they don't want to read long emails and things like that wherever possible you know in our communications and again this is more from an internal perspective try to meet people face to face wherever possible because then it's not just the words you get to see their the non-verbal part of the communication their expressions actions and you also get the sense of their emotions things that these things cannot be picked up in written communication so wherever possible try to keep it in person face to face and today we do have the benefit of technology where you can actually see people even though you may be physically in different places that does make things so much better because at least you can see them you can see the sound of the non-verbal parts of their communication so we can you know reduce time like other costs by using these tools and technologies that are available right so make make make use of those things today right so that's it you know just a very short lesson here on communications but it is very very important in terms of taking care of the people within the organization keeping keeping them excited about the work feeling connected sense of ownership staying aligned feeling cared feeling informed and feeling inspired all this happens through good communication important to keep communications as far as possible as a dialogue rather than a monologue where you know people have the opportunity to share their ideas participate in the decision-making participate in problem solving so keep that provide opportunities for that another important part is to keep things open honest and direct because that's going to create a culture of trust and they're going to repeat it you know if they see it happen from the leadership they are going to repeat it in every level we also had to think about communicating with the larger congregation there can be active communication that's happening keep it regular but don't overdo it and there's a passive communication where you're making information available through the websites our website and portal so people come and take it from them and as in and they need it and some practical tips here of you know when you're communicating there has to be it's got to be clear it's got to be well written etc keep it very concise and precise because people don't actually will not read long emails and try to have face-to-face communication whenever possible with and we can take advantage of tools technologies okay so just a little note there on communication I want to ask if there are any questions any thoughts on this I will share with you later on some tools that can be used you can set up your mailing lists whatsapp groups all those things some of us are already familiar with that but we'll mention it later on tools that can be used any questions any thoughts any points to discuss all right so I think this is a pretty simple lesson most of us are already familiar with these things and probably already doing it so what we'll do on Friday to get into the next chapter which is on culture organizational culture there's a very important aspect of administration running the organization creating a good culture because it affects just the workplace environment it also affects performance and it eventually affects outcomes you know for the organization as a whole culture that you have if you have a good healthy culture things are good things are very positive if the culture is hostile toxic difficult then people don't like it they may not stay and the organization will struggle in trying to pursue its goals so it's a very important part I will pick it up on Friday okay let's wrap up let's close in prayer and then we will dismiss can I just request somebody to pray with us and then we will dismiss anybody okay all right nobody's volunteering to pray all right let me ask Prince Prince would you close in prayer please thank you dear Haripara Lord just coming forward Lord thank you you help us Lord to learn from your word Lord that communication should be open and thank you and help us to more and more that we could learn and use your kindred more thank you and I submit all the they all in your hand Lord just I pray in Jesus name I pray Amen thank you Prince okay everyone thank you for joining the class and we will see on Thursday Friday sorry as we talk about the next part thank you enjoy the rest of the day bye now thank you thank you thank you thank you sir thank you