 Okay. Good morning. The recording started. We will pray and get our class started. So the others will join us. Let's pray and start. Somebody could lead us in prayer please. We'll get started. Well, thank you Lord for this wonderful time that you've given us, Father, for adding one more day into our lives of Father. As we prepare our hearts, Father, for today's class, I pray that the Holy Spirit would lead us, Father, into understanding and wisdom of Father. The whatever has been taught to Father that we would be able to understand and a Father that we would be able to put those things, Father, in practice of Father. But I just surrender the rest of the class, Father, and also Pastor and Chair of Mighty Hand. Pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Right. So we are continuing on in our course on church and ministry administration. It's a very practical course and also a very, very important course for everyone involved in Christian ministry just to understand the practical side of doing ministry work. And like we said in the very beginning, the ministry, which the spiritual work, it needs the backing of a strong organization, needs the backing of a strong support system so that the ministry can happen in a very effective way. So the church and ministry administration is a very, very important part of the ministry that's happening. And we need to start learning that and thinking like that. And we must not look at the organization or the administration as something less important. No, it is very important, like we said at the very beginning today. And maybe both today and on Friday, let's see how much we can cover today. We're going to be talking about human resources, people, church and staff management. And I have shared the PDF with you through the coursework and also a lot of sample documents. But this chapter is on church staff, human resource management. So for any Christian organization, whether it's church, which is what we are primarily talking from the perspective of a church, but also it could be any other Christian organization. Or if it's an organization that is focused on something else, maybe children or youth or whatever, there's so many different kinds of Christian organizations. People are very, very important to the organization and to the whole ministry. The ministry is done by the people. And broadly speaking, and a lot of this I'm saying from our church perspective, there could be some variations in other settings. But we have broadly speaking three categories of people who are engaged in the organization and in the functioning of the ministry. We have what we refer to as staff. These are full time people. They are salaried people and they work for the organization. We also have a lot of consultants. That means these are people who are paid hourly. I will explain a little bit more on the difference, but these are people who are paid based on the number of hours of work they provide. And then we have a large number of volunteers, a lot of volunteers. So if we just look at it from all people's church perspective, that is from our church perspective, I just want to repeat that, you know, for other churches or other organizations, things may be different. But just from our all people's church perspective, just to give you a sense of the numbers. So for us as a staff, sorry, now for our staff, we have about a little over 20 people. So let's say 25 people who are here as staff. And then we have about 30 consultants. Consultants means these are people who work for us on an hourly basis. So we have consultants who are helping with our publications work. They do proofreading, they do formatting of documents, things like that. And then we have consultants who work for us in other projects like the, right now we have the India care project happening so their people are making phone calls, those kinds of things. That's a big team actually almost, I think 15 people or so. And then we have consultants who, a lot of people who work as consultants who doing translations. So the books are being translated in so many different languages. They're also consultants, they are paid by the work they do, the work product. So the consultants are either paid hourly, we refer to this consultants or work basis, the translators. So there's a big group of people here who do a lot of this work. They're not the same as staff. Staff are full time, they work for the organization and they have benefits that the organization gives. The consultants don't have benefits from the organization. And at APC we have between 300 to 350 volunteers. This was before the lockdown. So in 2019, so at that time when we did a count of volunteers, it was about 350 or so somewhere in that range. So we have that many volunteers. Now what I have not shown here are our outreach pastors. So they are like upper missionaries. So, you know, we have about 15 or 16 people who are our missionaries, there are outreach pastors. They're also, they also are in some way like the staff, meaning they receive a salary from the church. They also have some benefits, benefits meaning the health benefits. So they also have health insurance. So they have that benefit. But they don't have, you know, other benefits which staff have. So I haven't shown them here. So that's, you know, that's our, you know, missionaries or outreach pastors. Now, obviously, volunteers are people who don't get paid. They just volunteer in the church. So you can see that we have a huge number of volunteers, about 300 to 350 volunteers. We have quite a large number of consultants, people who work hourly on various projects that are going on. So we have about six consultants who are doing content writing for us for mental health portal. That's, so there's another group there that's working about six or seven of them. So like that, you know, the consultants are assigned to different projects and we just let people give whatever number of hours. We just usually say in at least 20 hours a week you contribute, you work for and but there is great flexibility. Some may do more, some may do less. They do that. And there are consultants here. And our counselors, Chrysalis counselors, they provide counseling. Again, they're paid hourly, depending on the number of, you know, counseling sessions they do what work they do related to counseling. So we have about 30 of these consultants, and then we have about 25 staff. And what I've not shown here, as I mentioned, are there are outreach pastors or somewhere between staff and consultants because they also get a fixed salary every month. And they have some benefit, but not the same benefit as staff. Okay, so these are people and people are very important for the ministry, the organization. So I just want to share some practical things with us on, you know, how, you know, you work with people and so on. Today, in this chapter, we're going to focus mainly on staff and full-time employees. Okay, that's what we're going to focus on this chapter. Next chapter, we'll talk about volunteer management, you know, so what goes into taking care of managing these volunteers, which is again, as a big, big part of what happens. And so we will talk about that separately. Today, our focus is on staff in this chapter, talking about church staff. Some of it will apply to these consultants, to the consultants as well. So, you know, the reason this chapter is very important is because, especially from church context. And I think from what I've observed here in India, you know, just traveling to different parts in India, working with pastors and all. The engagement of people with the church, the local church and with the Christian organization sometimes is very, very ad hoc, meaning it's very random. There is no structure, there is no, a lot of things are missing. And so what happens in the process is from just what I've heard and, you know, being interacting with pastors and so on. A lot of misunderstandings happen, a lot of problems happen in the local church or in the Christian organization. And the reason is because, you know, a lot of things which should be there are missing. And so hopefully this lesson will help all of us. And many of you are going to go and start, you know, either you'll be joining some organization, whether a church or a Christian organization or you'll be starting some of, maybe some of you will be starting something on your own. And what I just want to put forward is, when you are having people join your either local church or your Christian organization, you know, put some of these things, this formal structure in place. Don't leave it just ad hoc, random, because the structure is going to make sure that everything is run properly and there is no misunderstanding with the human relationships. And if that happens, then, you know, the whole ministry gets affected and then later on, church, local church, the Christian organization goes into a lot of trouble. So this, this, you know, the things we're going to talk about is very important. So the very first thing, of course, is the hiring process. How do you, you know, so we're going to talk today mainly about church staff. How do you hire people. Now, one of the things we've intentionally done at all people's church and this again may be different for other organizations. But for us is whenever we think of having staff or consultants, we give a lot of preference to our own volunteers or people from within the church community. So all, all our consultants, I shouldn't say all, but almost all are people that either from the church community, local, our own, all people's church, church community, or they are students from our Bible college. So our staff and our consultants are people who in some way are part of what is happening. There's a big reason why because, you know, volunteers, they understand, you know, they're already serving in the church and they understand the culture of the church. They understand, you know, how we do things. So we give, you know, a lot of preference to taking volunteers as consultants or volunteers as staff. The same thing with our own Bible college students. We give preference to them because they have understood, you know, when our students have studied with us for, you know, one, two or three years, they have understood our culture. They have understood, you know, the standards, they understood how we work. So that is our, you know, I would say 90% of consultants and staff are our own, you know, are people who have been volunteering in church or they're part of the church congregation or they are Bible college students. So that's, we give preference. Now, there are times we do take on, you know, there are some consultants like a lot of our translators of course are people from outside. They're in different parts of the country and they're translating books into different languages. And we do take staff, you know, now and then, who are not part of, you know, either the volunteer or the church community or Bible college, we do. But like I said, that's probably 10% or less. Most are from within here. And we intentionally do that because volunteers, we have seen them work, you know, we see how, you know, maybe some of them have been volunteers for many years. So we have already, we already know them, we know their strengths, you know, their, you know, a lot of things about them, we already know. It's easy for us to make this decision to have them as consultants or as staff. That's our approach. And I'm not saying everybody does that, but this is how we work and it has worked well, very well for us. Now, but generally, when you talk about the hiring process, the first thing we need to do and I'm just talking in general for all organizations is to have a role description, meaning what is the role you're trying to fill, right? So that takes us back to the organization structure, which we did in I think chapter two or, you know, that means, you know, you've got a structure. So you've got an opening, meaning a role that you want to fill, right? And then if you look at it at a lower level, it takes us into the system and process. So in order for some system to work, you need people. And so that's a role, a function that you're trying to fill. So you need to clearly define that and write it down in a document, right? And, you know, you'll find sample documents here at, at our website, where for almost for every role, our first thing, our first step is to write down the role description. And we've been doing this, you know, right from our early days. In those days, it was mainly pastors that we were, you know, initially it was mainly pastors that we were hiring. So we used to write down, okay, this is the role description for worship pastor or a youth pastor or, you know, associate pastor or so that's how we started. And then later on, we started taking in people from, you know, more of like IT people and so on. Those people, you know, so then we started writing those kind of descriptions for those functions. But it's so important to just write down, okay, this is what I want this person to be able to do. And these are the skills they need to have so you can look at the sample. The next thing, of course, is to have a very clear interview process. And how are you going to interview a person? Like I mentioned earlier, because at ABC, we usually take people from among our volunteers or from our Bible college students. If we are doing that, this interview process becomes very simple, very easy because we already know them, you know, we may know them for many years. So the interview process becomes pretty simple. But if we are hiring somebody from the congregation, that means like they've not been volunteering, but they are part of the church. Or when we bring them from outside to become staff, then we take them through a process that looks like this. Okay, so first of all, we tell them to send us their resume. So they need to send a resume. I don't think we ever hire anybody at least in the last several years without seeing a resume. So they send us a resume, it tells us what they want. Then if the resume shows that if the resume doesn't have matching skills or it lacks in certain areas that are important to us, we don't copy on this. Okay, but if the resume, yes, they have the skills, they have the experience for what we are looking for, the role that we've tried to fill. Okay, we identify this candidate, yeah. Then there's an initial phone screening, you know, we call them on the phone, we ask them a few questions, and I will, you know, I'll go through some of the questions a little later. So we do a screening, that means this is an initial check, you know, and, you know, today, some of the things we want to do in the phone screen is make sure that what they have stated on the resume is really who they are and what they have done. You know, sometimes the resume can be very inflated, it can look great and grand. Whereas when you talk to the person, then you find that, hey, there's a business match between what is stated on the resume and, you know, what they actually do or have done. So the initial screen is just to make sure that, look, this is all in sync. And also, we, you know, we ask some basic questions, you know, why they want to work at APC, some basic things that you can do on the phone. Now, if it is for a technical role, like, you know, and of late, you know, we have IT team, media team, so then what we do is we tell them to do a practical assessment. So somebody from our IT team or media team will give them a practical thing to do, right. So then that is to check their skill. If it is for some other role, like a pastoral role, you know, some more of an admin type or pastoral type, ministry role, then there's an in-depth interview for that particular role. So we ask some questions related to that role. And after that, depending on what the role is, there will be a group interview. That means if they have done well here, then we tell them to come and meet with the group, the people involved. So usually pastors, this will happen. That means I may do an in-depth interview with the prospective person who wants to be a pastor. Then I will say, okay, please come and meet the rest of the pastoral team. So the rest of the pastoral team will interview that person. And now sometimes if I may be satisfied with them and this has happened, you know, I may say, okay, let's go to the next stage. And here they sit down and talk and they say, sorry, we don't want to take it forward. And it has happened like that. So then we just drop it here. But if it's a practical test, then it just usually we skip this group interview may not be needed unless it's a little higher role. But if it's just purely an assessment of technical skill, we go to the final round where I just talked to them. Just to make sure that from a culture point of view, they fit into what the APC is and so on. And then we make a formal job offer. So this is kind of how we take people through the interview process. There may be some variations here and here and there, but generally this is the flow. Feel free to interrupt me and ask any questions anytime. I can just speak and I will answer your question. So in the interview process, what are some of the things to look out for? Now, you know, again, this is I'm just making a general comment here that what I have observed as I've talked to pastors and others is that sometimes they don't do some, you know, and even a proper interview process. You know, somebody will just send a recommendation this, oh, they'll have a conversation or just come start tomorrow. And they hire a person like that. And then after that, then they find out, oh, he doesn't have the skills he's supposed to have. Now that his motivation is not where it's supposed to be. And then it becomes a problem to dismiss him. And if they dismiss him, then it becomes a relationship issue. So, you know, if you don't have a proper interview process, we end up with a lot of these kinds of problems, which I have seen and heard, you know, when we interact with pastors in different places. So it's, it's, you know, we recommend strongly that you have a formal interview process. In order to avoid all of those problems that happen later on. What do you do in the interview process? One is you want to check their motivation. Why do they want to work for the church or the organization? Right. So that's, that is a very important thing. Why do you want to work for the church? Right. And we want to watch out for wrong motivations. Now, one of the things we do is we have what we call as a prospective employee statement. It's a document and I can show you, it's again available on our website. It looks like this. We tell them to write out, write it out for us, you know, what is your life vision? And, you know, so we ask them, you know, how can ACC help you in fulfilling your vision? A little bit about their personal testimony. So we want to make sure that they have, you know, their faith, their faith in Christ and so on. And what has the ministry involvement? So here we try to get to understand, because these are things that can normally are not stated on a resume. You know, on a resume, they just talk about their skills and competencies. But we tell them to fill something out like this so that it gives us a good understanding of their background. Right. And then, you know, from there, we also ask, you know, why do you want to work for ABC? So, you know, if people say things like, well, you know, I'm tired of working in, you know, so basically we want to look for motivation. You know, why? If people, you know, if people are doing this because they just want maybe they think, you know, they have the wrong impression. Well, ministry work will not be as difficult as working in the corporate. So they're just looking for an escape. That means they're coming with the wrong motivation and we don't want that kind of people. We want people who are highly motivated and they're, yeah, I'm going to work for a minister. I'm going to give, you know, as much as I would have given in a corporate setting. Right. So the motivation, they should be highly, you know, the motivation should be right. Or if they think that well, if I come and work for ABC, maybe, you know, the motivations, whatever their motivations are. So we check for, you know, wrong motivations. Okay. I think they should understand that even if you're working for a church, you have to work. You have to give your best. And it can be, you know, demanding at times and so on. Other things that we want to do in the interview processes, make sure that, of course, they have the right skills, that they are passionate about, you know, what they want to do. They also have a sense of calling. That means I'm doing this for the Lord. I'm not just doing this as a job. We look at their track, work record, work history. So if, for example, some things we look at is a person has been changing jobs every two years. And that's not a good, you know, good track record. That's a dangerous sign because it just indicates that he's going to work for you for two years and then he will move on. And that's not a good thing. Because, you know, by the time two years comes, you know, you know, maybe six months goes into just getting them, you know, really into the full flow of things. And then, you know, then by the time, you know, you know, basically as an organization, you want people to stay with you for the long term. So you look at the track history. So there may be somebody who's got, you know, 15 years experience, but in 15 years they have worked in seven different companies. That's not good, you know, they've kept moving. It may be good for them, but not good from what we want to achieve, which is we want people who will stay and grow in the organization and help the organization grow. So that's something you kind of look for in their resume. Another thing I kind of do often, especially in ministry roles is I kind of give them the surprise question. I mean, it may not be a surprise now because it's in the document, but my usual surprise question is if we were given, if you were given a blank sheet of paper and there are no limitations. That means you can do whatever ministry you want. There is unlimited supply of money, unlimited supply of resources. What would you do? The reason I ask that question is to see if, you know, what they would do, what they'd really like to do is line with what they're interviewing for. For example, if somebody is interviewing for a pastoral position, any kind of youth pastor or children's pastor, whatever, and they're interviewing with us. And I put out this question to them, you know, the blank sheet question, you're giving your blank paper, you join APC and you're free to do whatever you want. What would you do? If they say, well, then I'm going to go and travel all across India and I'm going to travel all around the world preaching, then there's a mismatch. And they're applying for a children's pastor role, but what they really want to do is be a traveling preacher. Then there's a mismatch and I wouldn't even go forward with beyond that, you know. So this blank sheet of paper is, okay, what is really in the heart of the person should align with what they're interviewing for? And so in one way it's a trick question, but it's also a question that we can ask follow up questions to see if they really understand the ministry. So if they say, yeah, I would work with children. So that's a good thing. It shows alignment to what they're interviewing and what's really in the heart. But then you would ask other questions like, you know, how would you go about it? How would you, you know, how would you structure that ministry and to see if they understand really how children's ministry would work? So that's a common thing that we do, especially for ministry related questions, applicants. Then, you know, you, like I said, there will be practical assignments for skill based positions. And then also you want to, in the interview process, you want to recognize harmful character traits or dangerous attitudes. So this is two important things you want to check in the interview process, especially when it comes to church or Christian ministry. Okay, in the corporate, you know, somehow if a person has skills and it is very good at his work and, you know, they may or may not, they may, they can adjust, they can work out these things. But in a church setting, dangerous character traits and attitudes can be very harmful for the organization, because ultimately these people are going to represent the organization. You know, they're going to interact with church people. They're going to interact with others. And if they have these character traits, so part of the interview is try to recognize red flags and so on. So how do you do that? You know, some basic things, and I've just put down some of these common things here, you know, first of all, if a person shows up late for an interview, that's a bad sign. It's a very bad sign. I mean, you don't even want to take the interview forward, forget it, unless they have some genuine reason, you know, maybe the car broke down on the way, maybe there was a thunderstorm and a tree fell down on the road. There's some serious thing. If they come late for an interview, forget it. That's something you cannot rectify. Right. So first thing is if you set up an interview, say, come to the office at 10 o'clock, they need to be there by 950, 10 minutes before. Or if you're, nowadays we do online interviews. So if you say, okay, you know, we'll do an interview at 10, 10 a.m., they need to connect before 10 a.m. So that's one, if they connect late, if they show up late, forget it. Don't even bother, because that is something, if they don't have that self-discipline, you know, you can't, they're not children. You're not hiring children. That is something they have to sort out. Don't get into it. Secondly, you know, how do they treat people the moment they come to your office? You know, if they get angry with the person in the front desk, if they speak rudely to, you know, again, that's a red flag, you know, that means they're coming with an attitude, you know, they're coming with an attitude that disrespects other people. Yes, we have a receptionist or office manager. She's a lady, but you have to treat that person with respect. You know, she's there. She's in the front desk. But if they speak rudely to her and you get that feedback, stop everything. No need to go forward. Another thing is if they start speaking negatively about past employees' experiences, it's a red flag. So you generally ask them, you know, so you'd ask those questions. How was your work in the past? And why did you leave? So if they start speaking bad, then you know that they're going to do the same thing about you, you know, and they'll join here and then they'll go and speak bad about APC to somebody else and you don't want that kind of people. Or in a church ministry context, if they are being judgmental, critical about opinion about other denomination churches, you know, they say, I don't like that denomination. I don't like this. Again, that's being very judgmental. You know, we need to understand that there are many different denominations. There are different churches that denominations of churches have different flavors. They have each church and each dimension is different. But we don't have to be critical or judgmental about others. You know, so that's again a red flag when you're interviewing people. Again, a simple, very simple thing is they're unprepared. So people have applied, you know, example, they've applied to work at APC. So I just asked them, what do you know about APC? And they go blank. Then it's like a bad, you know, it's like, hey, you haven't done any homework. You're wanting to work in this organization. You don't know anything about the organization. So that is like, forget it. Don't go forward because if somebody's really serious about working here, they've at least gone to the website, at least read something about the organization, got to understand what is going on. What is this organization doing? How would they fit into the organization? They would have done some homework. But, you know, if you ask them this question, what do you know about ABC? And they say, well, yeah, I know you have a church in Bangalore, and they don't say much. They're unprepared. It's a red flag. That means they're, you know, it's, it's, you can't, you can't teach them these kinds of things. If you're appearing disinterested, you know, sometimes they may come because somebody told them to come and apply. Maybe their parents sent them. And I remember once one, you know, this is, this man was, I don't know, must be in his young person, but must have been in his early thirties. So, you know, and he was brought in by, you know, his parent who was also in ministry. So it seemed like his, you know, the interest was more from the parent than from this 30 year old young man. He'd done his, you know, he's got his master's in, you know, he got all the qualifications from, you know, good universities, done his master's and missions or whatever it was. So, you know, from, from an academic perspective is very well qualified. He comes from a ministry family and he's come for the interview. And okay, he's, you know, we ask him something. So then I start talking to him about, you know, what we were actually interviewing him for some missions work, you know, missions coordinator type of work role. So I was trying to tell him about, you know, this is what the, you know, the, what we're looking for on a mission square. You're like disconnected. So then I immediately knew this is not going to work out. That's, and the interview here because it's more like, you know, somebody's pushing him to apply in APC rather than his own job. So that's what he wants to do in the ministry. And sure enough, you know, we didn't go forward with that interview. So if they're not really interested, just leave it. And also another flag is if they're vague in the responses, you ask them questions and they're not giving you correct answers. They're not, you know, telling you specifics. They're just being very general, very vague. It means they're covering something up and we don't want to waste our time trying to be the investigative agency. You know, for example, we ask, you know, why did you leave your previous job? And they're not, you know, clearly telling you the reasons why it means that they're covering something up, you know, so just leave it, you know, don't go beyond that. But if they open on us and tell it in a positive manner, this, these are the reasons that's perfectly fine. Everybody has the reasons and, and if they are able to communicate it, you know, share it properly and it's fine. Right. So these are some things that, you know, we generally do in the interview process as we want to do because we want to filter out people who have traits and attitudes that are detrimental to the organization. And one last point is sometimes we have applicants who are family members of those who are already working in the organization. That is fine. There's nothing against it, but treat them equal. You know, treat them like you would treat all other candidates in no preference, no preferential treatment, take them to the same interview process. And right now over here, I just given you a sample interview for a pastoral candidate, you know, just, yeah. So suppose somebody's interviewing for a pastoral position. So these are the kind of questions we will ask them. You know, and this is what I did, you know, recently we, we brought somebody. Actually, we did the interview in March of this year. And so we went through this thing at the interview questioning or took us almost two and a half hours of, you know, we added it online. So it took us almost two and a half hours to do this in-depth interview, but then we check because there's a pastoral position. It's very, very crucial, very important. So we go from, you know, what is your personal motivation? What about your spiritual life? How do you study the Bible? Or, you know, your teaching, preaching experience. We want to understand some, some, you know, some of his theological positions. We want to know his past, pastoral type experience. We want to know about his leadership, you know, experience. We want to know in organizing managing because pastoral means he does involve that. How will you resolve problems? How will you work with multiple teams? How will you mentor other people? How do you manage your finances? Personal integrity and family life. And what do you know about APC? Right? Now, because this person was somebody was already volunteering with us, what do you know about APC? We didn't spend too much time on it. But all the others, we did spend quite a lot of time. So just that interview took us almost two and a half hours. And we went through all of these kinds of questions. This is just a sample. So how we interview somebody who wants to apply for a pastoral position. And of course you can tailor it, you know, a little differently if it's a youth pastor, if it's a children's church pastor. This is just a generic questionnaire. You would tailor it depending on what the role is and ask them these kinds of questions. So I've given you a sample. You can use it if you want. So after that, just let's quickly wrap up. I know time's running off. You know, you may do background checks. That means if they have given reference for other pastors, you would call them and ask them, you know, how what do you have to say about this candidate? Now, in most cases, like I mentioned, because we at APC, we take people who are volunteers or who are part of the church or from our Bible college, this background check, we don't need to do in most cases, 90% of cases we don't need to do because there are people who we already know and who have been volunteering with us for some years and we already know them. So this may not need to be done. Then after that, once we've decided to hire them, we give them an offer letter. Again, this is very important. Many organizations skip this step. I'm talking about churches or Christian organizations, but then offer letter means it's a formal letter that states, you know, you're going to work. This is your role. This is your money and so on. So again, I've given you a sample offer letter. It's a very simple thing. You know, it's a standard format we use. This is your role. You start today. This is how much you're going to be paid. Go through our staff guidelines. I'll come sign it, send it back to us. So we put the offer letter down. And then we give them a, we also send them our staff guidelines. So they read this document. They understand it's like a pre-orientation before they join. They go through all our guidelines and they sign it and send it back to us. So it helps us in the next step actually. So before an employee joins us, we get a lot of things organized. You know, there's some paperwork to be done. That is these two things, documents have to be signed and sent to us. We need to get their back details. We need to get their, if they have worked before, then they would have what is called as a Provident Fund setup. So we need to get that information. Then we also need to, you know, get computer email accounts, access to whatever they need access to, you know, all those things are done. You know, as soon as an offer is made, all these things are put in place so that when the employee comes in, they're ready to start. Now, in some cases, we may set up a call or have a meeting where we introduce them to their team members. It all depends on what the role is. So if it's a pastoral role, we will introduce them formally to the team members and so on. But again, because we are, you know, 90% of our people are people we already know. We don't spend too much time on it because they already know our pastors and people are working with. So they just jump in and start. They already are familiar with it. But in the case when somebody is new, we just introduce them to their immediate team members and they know who is who and so on. And so that's that number. Of course, the last two years it's been done online, but that's how we get to it. Okay. So before we jump, get into compensation benefits. I want to pause here and see if there are any questions. Is everybody following me? Is everything okay? Any questions on this so far? Everyone okay? All right. Others any questions? Any doubts? Okay. All right. So let's just cover a little bit more before we close off. Okay, today. So the next big thing, of course, is to decide on what salary you're going to pay the person. Right. So we call it compensation. The compensation means it's a total. It is the salary you're going to give the person. You may give other benefits like bonus and other things. Okay. So why is this important? Why is this compensation very important? Because it will determine how people feel about their job. Okay. So one, it is one thing to be given a job. But if they don't feel happy about their job or they don't feel happy about the organization, then they're not going to be able to really enjoy the work and give their best. Right. So compensation and the benefits are important. Right. And most important is people need to feel that it is fair and competitive. Right. That means they're getting what they deserve for the role, the work that they're going to do in the organization. Right. And also, of course, once they start working, that means as they continue working, they need to feel that it's based on their performance. Right. That means if they're really contributing well, they should be appreciated for that. Right. That it's linked to their performance as well as of course the organizational performance. I mean, if the organization is fine, you know, then everybody can be paid well. If the organization doesn't have money, of course, we can't pay them, but they understand that it is connected. Right. And it is in line with their contribution. That means how well they are performing and how the value they are bringing to the organization. It is all connected. Right. So it is so compensation is very important. Now, of course, you know, how much organization can pay, it depends on where the organization is financially, the capacity to pay. So, you know, we cannot, especially in a Christian setting in a church setting or a Christian ministry setting, this has a big variation. Right. Just like in the corporate world, you know, they can be IT companies, but it all depends on how well the IT companies doing for it to pay its stuff. Similarly, in a church, Christian church or a Christian ministry setting, the compensation can vary. There can be a big variation depending on the organization's capacity to pay. Right. But the other side of the compensation is and it must be based on the organization's values and principles. That means we are not, you know, based on what where the organization is and what the organization is the values, how we work. That also will influence the compensation. Right. But ultimately, the compensation should help the person focus on the organization and not on their compensation. So if a person is not earning enough, you can imagine what happens every day he's coming to work. But in his mind, he's thinking, I'm not being paid fairly. You know, I'm not getting what I should deserve. So what happens? He's thinking about his compensation every day. He's not thinking about the organization's goal and so on. Okay. So this is something to keep in mind. If we pay our employees or our staff poorly, then their attention is on their own pay every day rather than on, you know, working towards the organization's goal. So then they're not able to contribute. So compensation is important, but of course it depends on the capacity to pay and the values and so on. So how do you how do you determine compensation? Right. So of course, first thing is what the organization can afford. Then you also look at the skills and the competence competencies this person is bringing, you know, what is this person able to do? Then what are the responsibilities and the work that they are actually doing? What are the responsibilities they're getting? If a person is getting more responsibility, obviously he has to, you know, be compensated more. Another important, you look at another important factor is leadership. So if they are providing leadership for the ministry area, that means they are being responsible for the, you know, the vision, the planning, the growth of a certain ministry area, then they are providing leadership for that area, which is a very valuable thing. So not everybody is a leader. So there can be many workers, but the leader is being given, you know, paid more because they are doing additional very strategic thinking and ambition. So that's your compensate for that. And then you also compensate for, of course, the individual performance and how they're advancing the organizational objectives, right? So the organization wants to go forward in a certain area and they're helping that. They're helping, you know, making that happen. So another criteria that will determine their salary is are they themselves growing, you know, so year after year, are they growing personally? Maybe they are developing new skills. They are learning, they're developing new, you know, they themselves are growing. That means they are becoming more valuable as a person and therefore they are able to add value to the organization. And then lastly, you want to also reward commitment, right? Experience and commitment. So if a person has years of experience, that is valuable because experience also is a good teacher and also tenure. That means the duration of the organization. So if they've spent one year with organization, two years, five years, you want to appreciate their commitment to the organization. So that's, again, another component to it. Okay. So you, when you're deciding, you look at all these things, you know, that's okay. In all of these areas, you know, depending on these, these factors, you arrive at a pay, right? Now, ultimately, of course, you see, what can the organization afford to pay for this role, right? And how does this, you know, this particular role that this person has, you know, how is it meeting all these areas? You know, how is it influencing the organizational objectives and so on. And then based on that, we arrive at a pay. Okay. All right. I think our time is up already 1150. Okay. All right. I think we'll have to, we'll stop here. We'll continue this on Friday. We will, you know, talk about other things that influence compensation. Okay. So let me pause here. Okay. I'm sorry. I wasn't sharing my screen. I thought I was sharing my screen. I, in the last part, when I was talking about compensation. I thought I was sharing my screen. Maybe I didn't. Okay. My mistake. So we will pause here. We'll pick up from there on Friday. And I will quit. We'll continue. Any quick questions before we dismiss? All right. Thank you everyone. Another time went by so fast. I hope it was useful. I will just pray and dismiss. Okay. Could somebody please pray with a class and we will dismiss. Well, thank you Lord for this time again, Lord. Thank you Lord that we could learn about the hiding process and the different things that involves in the organization of father. I pray that the Holy Spirit would lead as a father that we would not use our human minds a father to interpret a father, but the Holy Spirit, our helper would help in each of our ways of father. And thank you, Lord, for this opportunity that you've given as a father, as a family, as a church, Lord, that we could learn and grow as an organization into your ministry and establish your kingdom of father. Submit the rest of the day into your mighty hand. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your days. God bless. Bye. Bye now. Bye everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone.