 Okay. Welcome back everybody for our second lecture today on church and ministry administration. I mean just going through the formation of the legal entity and what that involves and so on. Let me just get the notes and we will continue using that. So what we said so far is we went through what are the articles of incorporation or the trustee as we call it here in India. Basically it's a document that states what the organization will be doing, church or ministry and that is registered with the government. And it's a legal document in the sense that the organization will be held responsible to follow the articles of incorporation. The articles of incorporation will also include the roles and responsibilities of the directors, what they're supposed to do, what they can and cannot do, their privileges, their rights in order to run the organization. All of that is stated in the articles of incorporation. Now the moment you form a legal entity what we were saying was we need to follow what are the requirements, the statutory requirements by the government. So for example and I will just mention some examples. For us here as a church we have tax exempt status in the sense that we don't pay tax on money that is given to the organization. So when we register we also registered as a religious organization and we register in a particular category called 12A. So that means we get tax benefits that we don't pay tax on our income. So most corporations, businesses, they have to pay tax on their income. So typical whatever percentage of some person, maybe 30% we go to the government on their income. But because we are registered as a religious organization with this particular 12A registration, the government exempts us from paying tax on our income. So all the contributions that people give to us we don't pay tax on it. So that's a benefit the government gives for us but there is no benefit to the donor. So the donor does not get our tax benefits. On their income tax just because they contribute to a religious organization. Whereas in the United States is different. In the US both benefits that means in the United States if you are a religious nonprofit, they call it a 501C3 organization then the person giving money to the religious nonprofit, they get tax benefit for the amount they give. So they give $1,000 or $10,000. That $10,000 they can deduct from part of being taxed in the total income. So they get the benefit plus the religious organization that receives the donation doesn't pay tax on their income. So both sides get benefits. In India it's not like this. In India the donor no matter how much money they give to the organization that amount is still considered taxable for them. They still have to pay tax on it. They don't get a tax benefit. The only benefit is on the receiving side that is the organization, the religious organization that receives the money. We as a religious organization we don't pay tax on our income. But there are other statutory requirements. That means if we are having staff and we are paying the staff, we have to deduct the tax on the income we give to them based on the government regulation. And that tax we give to them, they have to pay to the government. There is the professional tax for consultants or there is the income tax for staff. So that we have to deduct according to the labor laws and we have to get it. So that is something we have to follow. Secondly, the retirement fund. So that is also part of the labor law. That is if you are having staff, people are working for the organization. You the organization has to contribute money to their retirement fund. Here it's called Provident PF. So it is a law. So we have to follow the law. That means we have to deduct money from their salary. Plus we have to add money to that. And then we have to put it into their retirement account. So if we have 30 people, for all the 30 people, we have to do this. So these are laws we have to follow, which is part of running an organization. But I said, like we said earlier, the accountant will handle all this for you. So we are not personally, you know, pastors, we are not sitting into this calculation. It's the accountant and the other conduct firm that handles all this for us. Plus every year we have to file our audit statements. That means this is the money that is coming and this is what we have done with all the money. All the report is filed with the government. So the government knows what this organization is doing. If we don't file, that is when they will come and start investigating. So every quarter and every year we file our reports with the government. This is how much contributions have come in. This is what is happening with the money. This is where the money is going. The government is happy. They check everything. This organization is following what they are supposed to do. But if any suspicious activity they see, they have a right to ask questions. They will send a letter. Please come and explain what is this. So that will happen if the officers in the government, they see any suspicious activity. They will ask questions. And if you don't file our papers with the government every year, they will definitely come in. They call it a raid. They come and investigate. What are you doing? So it is better that we follow these rules. And then from a management side, the law is that we should have regular meetings. The trustees, the directors, they should have regular meetings. They should record their meetings. So that's part of what we do. So we meet the recorders. This is what we have done. So till now the government has not asked to see those things. But technically they can. They can. But till now, you know, last 20 years and some years, nobody has come and checked. Show us your records and all. But we are maintaining our records. We have, of course, today, a lot of emails, communications are automatically recorded. But we have meetings, discussions, and then we record in the book. So we have decided. So these are some obligations that we have to follow to operate legally in any country. Now, I'm moving to another very important part of, which is called advisory board. Now an advisory board is not a legal requirement. So to run the organization, all you need are the office bearers, the what we call as trustees or the people. It could be three people, it could be four, it could be five, it could be seven. So right now we have five people. So legally that's all we need. But what most organizations do as a good practice. And what we also are following is we have an advisory board, meaning we have a set of people that we can go to for advice. These people are not involved in the direct running of the organization. They don't interfere with what we are doing day to day. So day to day things, they are actually, it is basically the masters and the staff, they are doing the day to day work. Main decisions, the trustees will do. If we need special inputs, some more discuss, then we will go to these people who are in the advisory board. So they are people whom we go to for advice. So they are not involved in the day to day things. They are legally not part of the organization. They are just people who can give some advice. So they are called advisory boards. Now what we have is, again, you can set up this advisory board any way you want. That means basically you're selecting some people saying, I'll go to these people for advice if I need. So the trustees, like I mentioned here on page 10, the trustees, they are the people who are responsible for the organization. So they are the ones who must make sure everything is running. The directors of the trustees, they have to make sure everything is running properly. The advisory board, the way we set it up and is that we, again, this is just how we are operating. I'm not saying everybody should do this, but what we decided was we have some people from within our church or congregation who are experts in certain areas. And we will go to them as and when we need advice on certain matters. If we cannot find people from within the church, then we will have people from outside as advisors. So we identified eight areas. One is legal. So somebody who knows the law, especially law concerning how to run a religious trust. So legal, then accounting. So we already have our own accounting people for doing the work. But if you want additional advice, somebody that we can go to, then organization development. How to build the organization, in case we need to, how do we structure people, organization, things. Missions and social work, somebody who can give us input on that. Technology, operations, media, current trends, counseling. So these are the eight areas. And we also try to have a balance in age. Some areas we need more mature people. Some areas we need people who are young and who are in current, and that's what the current trends and so on. So we want to have a balance of both sides. We need balance of experience. We also need balance of a fresh input and so on. So we have these people, but they don't come to regular meetings or they're not walk down with the day to day work or meetings. We just go to them when we need some guidance. So for example, right now, for the last few years actually, we've been very involved in trying to find land and buy land to build our own buildings and all that. So we have our people within the church who are helping us, a core team, but we also have one external advisor. So this person is not part of the church, but he actually was working for the government and he knows a lot. He was holding a big position here in Bangalore, so he knows a lot about the real estate. So he's been very involved. Just every other week I'll be talking to him to get guidance. And so we've gone and seen so many places and all of that. So he's always guiding us. So he's like an advisor because he's an expert in that area. He knows, he'll tell us what is right, what is wrong, what are the requirements, what you should do, what you should not do, help us. So because we don't ourselves know everything. Similarly, we have a legal person. This legal person is also not part of the church. He's from outside. So whenever we need some guidance, we'll go to him. Can we do this? Can we not do this? Because we don't know the law. We have to go and ask him and he will tell us this is the law. This is how we can do. All the other people in all the other areas are people from within the church. There are people in these two areas because we couldn't find qualified people with that expertise from within the church. We are looking, we have people from outside the church. They go to different church, they have their own. But they give us advice. And it's not like they have to attend meetings. We can just talk to them and just say, hey, this is a situation, what is the right thing to do? And they will give us advice and we follow that. So having like this an advisory board, meaning people who can give you guidance on special areas is a good thing. Because the trustees may not know everything. The trustees know about the mission. They know about the ministry. They know about the vision, but they may not know about the accounting, the legal, other matters. So in those areas, you need, it is good to get the input of experts. People who have knowledge. And that's why we call them as advisors. They're just there to give advice. And most of these people, actually all of these people are not paid. The advisors, they're not paid. They just give because they want to. Only on the legal side, when we actually have to do paperwork, then the lawyer will charge us. So when we have to do an illegal paperwork, he will charge us for that. But just to ask some question, it's okay. He just freely gives us advice. But when it comes to actual work that he has to file some papers, do that. Then he will do that for us, but he will charge. So this is a good thing. It is not a requirement. It is just a nice thing to have. So you can function without an advisory board. It's perfectly fine. But it's a good thing to have when you have some people to go for advice. Any questions on that before we go forward? Let me check online as well. Any questions? Any questions from our class on what we've discussed so far? Okay. All right. Let's move to the next lesson then. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry, the BF, yes. So the money that we have to give into the retirement fund. So how it works, it's a labor law that any organization that has more than, I forget the number, but I think it's, you have more than 20 people as staff. You have to make sure that you open individual retirement accounts for these individuals. Now the retirement account belongs to the individual. It's their account, but you have to help them open it. And then you have to contribute towards into those accounts. As long as they are working in your organizations. So it is a law and I forget the exact number, but I think if you have more than 20 people working for your organization, then you have to set up the retirement accounts for all your employees and you have to contribute to them. And the government spends the percentage, the labor law. Again, I don't remember these numbers correctly. So what happens is, when a new person joins the organization, we ask them, do you already have a retirement account, a PF account? If they have been working before, most likely they will already have a PF account. They are at a retirement account. So we will just take that account, which is held with the government and we will start giving contributing to that every month. If they are a new person joining, like maybe a fresher, they may not have a PF account, then we will open it for them with the government. And then every month we start contributing. Whatever that percentage is, basically the way it works is you deduct some amount from their salary and the organization contributes some amount and that full amount is credited to their appropriate as their retirement. And then they can take it out. Usually after they cross 60, they can take it out and there are some provisions. If they want to take it out earlier, there are certain votes. But it's a requirement. So we will talk about the human resources. The question is, is there a law on fixing the salaries? So there is no law. There is no saying that this role must be paid so much money. There is no law from the government side. So that becomes the question is then how as a church do we decide on the salaries of people? So the way we do it is we base it on the skills and role and responsibility and the experience of the individuals. So we decide. We also look at the industry. So what is the industry paying for a similar role? Now, of course, we cannot match the industry. The industry will always be higher. The industry may be paying five times more, especially if you're working for a big MNC and all that they will pay huge amounts for the same kind of role. But we try to make sure that we pay good salaries. We take care of them based on their skills, the role they are doing and the experience they bring. We will fix the salaries. So we will talk about that when we come to human resources. How do we fix the salaries? But everybody is better fixed start or consultants. We will share with you how we do that. Okay, there's a question here on the chat. What happens to the offerings collected at the branch churches? How to keep account for that? Thank you. Okay, good question. So I will tell you how we were across. So we have right now, like I said, I think 11 churches outside of Bangalore. And some of those churches themselves have branch churches. That means, for example, Balorobaza, there's one main church in Balorobaza. But Balorobaza also has two branch churches. So basically, there are three local churches there in the Balorobaza area. We just counted as one church. Similarly, Kalyan has also started a branch in Mumbai. We are just calling it one church, but actually there are two branches. So things like that. Now, the way we are functioning is we tell all except for APC Mangalore. So APC Mangalore, which is close to us, functions almost like Bangalore, almost like an extended office of Bangalore. So APC Mangalore, whatever types and offerings they get, they send it back to us here in Bangalore and we account for that. And they are directly paid. All the expenses of APC Mangalore is fully taken care of by APC Mangalore because we're pretty close to each other in terms of location. And we function as one entity. All the other churches, we tell them whatever money is given to them as tithes and offerings to keep it there and to use it as part of their expenses. So whatever money they collect, they will put it into the bank account of that particular church and they will use it for their own expenses. Plus, every month we send money from Bangalore to take care of some of the expenses in those locations. Basically, we will pay for the salaries of the pastors and also sometimes they rent buildings, the rent of the building. We will have them buy the equipment, all those things. So we send money from Bangalore to those local churches every month. Whatever they collect, they put it into their church bank accounts locally and they use it there. It doesn't come back to Bangalore. But they will send us accounts every month. So they will send us accounts saying, this is the money we received in tithes and offerings. This is what we spent on renting. Whatever they spend, those accounts will come back to us so we know what is happening. The reason we are doing that is the income in all these outreach churches is not much. Some of them are in rural settings. Income is very small. So we just say, just keep it there and use it there for any local expense that they may have. So we don't take it back, we just keep it there and use it. That's how we do it. Does that help understand any questions? Thank you, Mr. Chief. Any other questions from those in class? Okay, so there's another question in the chat. What if the pastor there in the branch which is having a secular job still should he get something from the work that the pastor does? Okay, the way we operate is all our pastors are 100% working for the church. So they do not have any secular job. So we discourage that. I mean, in the sense, we say, you concentrate on the ministry and we will give you enough to so that you can concentrate 100% on the ministry. All your personal needs are taken care of. So they don't need to work a secular job. So that is the way we operate. So all our outreach pastors, they just concentrate on the ministry and they get enough salary from us to take care of their needs. What I have observed is, so we're not against by vocational pastors. We're not against I myself was running my own business and pasting of people's church till 2014. So till 2014, that is only, that's about nine years ago, I was actually running my business and pasting the church. I was not taking a salary from the church. So I was like a volunteer in the church, but my salary was coming from my business. In 2014, I moved and I closed the business, concentrate on the church. So while I was doing it, I did it was, I was not taking any money from the church. I was like a volunteer pastor running the church, but I was getting my salary from my own business. That's the way I was doing it. And then when I changed, I changed fully. That means now I'm a salary staff of all people's church. I get my salary from the church and I'm focusing on the church. Now, what we have and basically we like all of our pastors to focus on the church. What we have observed was not everybody is able to balance the two. And even I can say from my own experience that it is not easy to run a business or do some work hand past the church. I mean, at some point both sides will be pulling you. It's not easy. I'm not saying it cannot be done. I did it for many, many years, 14 years at ABC. And then before that, you know, when I was working in secularism. So I was able to do it. But when the ministry grows, then the response with the increases of people need your time. So what I have observed, like one of the people that we were supporting, he started a business. So he was pasting a church, but he also started a business. And what I noticed was his full attention was pulled into the business. So it's not easy to balance the two. So we usually tell people just concentrate on to the ministry. They're not against doing a secular job. We know the apostle Paul did it when he was traveling and he built tents and all that. But you need special grace to do that. God has to give you grace. And God has called somebody to do that. That is fine. They're not against it. But generally we just say, you know, you're focused. So if they're getting money from both sides, it's okay, but it has to be a fair thing. So if they're getting money from the work they're doing plus money from the church, it is okay. It's not bad, but it has to be the fair amount. I mean, so if they're giving 20 hours a week for church, you get paid for 20 hours. If you're doing 20 hours secular job, you get paid for that money. So there's a fair thing. London, you had a question? Okay. All right. Feel free to ask me questions. Okay. We have a separate chapter on human resources where we talk about all these details. We will discuss this again later, right? Okay. Let me go to the notes and really go forward in the next chapter. So lesson number four is church and ministry organization structure. How do you organize the whole ministry? Right? So this is important because this organization defines how the activities, you know, who does what? It defines that. It defines how information or decision making flows, who's going to make the decisions? Right? So we can't say, hey guys, all of you love Jesus. All of you are wonderful people. Just do what you want. He told me full chaos. Right? We can't just tell people, just do what you want. Right? So you can, you know, say 20 people come. We're going to run a Christian ministry. It is, we're going to run a church or we're going to run whatever kind of ministry. 20 people, we're going to work together. All of you. Free. Do whatever you feel like. Get up in the morning, just pray. Whatever God tells you to do it. I mean, that is a good thing. Of course, we all have to pray. We all have to listen to God. But we have to be organized. We can't just tell, do what you want. Because then everybody is confused. Who's going to do what? Who is responsible for making the decisions? Who is going to, you know, take responsibility of various things? That is not clear. So that is why we need to be very organized. We need an organizational structure. That means who is in which place? What is the role? What is the responsibility? What are the decisions they're supposed to make? What is the work they're supposed to do? So that is the organizational structure. For example, we see the body. The body has structure. The eye is in a certain place. The eye is not in the toe. If the eye was in the toe and we put on the shoe, the eye cannot see. The eye is very important. In this place, it can see. Then the eye has a certain function. The ears have a certain function. Every part of our body is in a certain place. It has a certain function. It all works together. And that's how the body functions. Similarly, the church or the Christian ministry, people have to have a certain place, role, responsibility. Do your work, then everything will work together next week. So when you are thinking about the ministry or the church, you have to think about how you want to organize things. And who will be responsible? Mainly the leader of the ministry. That means it could be the master, the main master. Or whoever is the leader, the vision bearer. The other ones who will think and organize. In the down later on, once the organization grows, you can give that responsibility to different people or you are like a chief administrative officer. Like somebody who is in responsible for administration. But that will come later on. Because in the beginning, you will have a very small staff. You have two people, three people. You have to start small. So it is a pastor only who has to decide and make these things. Then as the organization grows, you can give that responsibility to somebody else. That is fine. Very rarely you start big. We always usually start small. And so we will have to grow over time. Now, generally speaking, there are four types of organizational structures. And we will explain, we will go through this. There is what we refer to as functional structure. That is, what function each person is doing based on the function of the individual. You are youth pastor. You are children's pastor. You are worship pastor. You are doing social. You are responsible for social work. So based on the function, you are creating a structure. Then there is divisional. You can think about this department. So you can create departments, music department, children's department. So it is similar to function. In a function, it is around a particular person. In a division, it is around a particular department. In that department, there will be many people. But you are creating departments, missions departments, evangelism departments. Publications department, TV ministry. So you can create many divisions. Sometimes the divisions can also be geographical. That means you would say, okay, we are going to operate across India. We will create divisions based on geography. North, south, east, west, central. So you have four or five divisions. I mean you are looking at it from here. The divisional can be geographic. So one, the divisions could be along similar functions of ministries. Another division can be along geography. So north India, south India, east. Then within those divisions, you will have further people who are responsible for everything. So you will have north India director, north India coordinator, south India coordinator. You will give responsibility. But that could be another way to divide the work. Then the structure could be a very flat structure. That means not too many levels. So senior pastor, ministers, ministry leaders, volunteers, and I will share what APC is doing, how our structure works, I will share. Flat structure means there are not too many levels of hierarchy. Otherwise there will be somebody who is minister and junior minister, senior minister, associate minister, vice president. So many levels. Now if an organization is so big, you need so many levels, fine. But remember the more levels you have, the longer it is going to take for making decisions. And the more time it will take before something can be executed. Because if the senior person makes a decision, it has to come all the way down. Somebody has to do the work. So keep, as far as possible, keep it flat. There are just one or two levels, maximum three levels. Don't go beyond that. There's a senior leadership associates and all the others are there operating. So try to keep it as flat as possible. Yes, we need to have leadership and leaders, but keep it minimal. Only what is needed. So then things can happen very fast. Decision is made. The person is responsible, is informed, work is done. Otherwise, if we have three, four layers, somebody makes the decision. By the time the information gets down, some weeks will go away before the work even starts. So the point is try to keep it as flat as possible. Things can happen and people can interact very, very quickly with each other. They don't have to feel, oh, I have to go and talk to somebody, pay up there, just go talk, make the decision, do the work. So now in a matrix structure, there is a mix of things. There is a mix of the functional structure and division. It's kind of intertwined so that information, people can interact very easily and flow, flow easily together. So these are just some examples of the types of structure that you would want to use. Now, like we said earlier, the moment we start saying organizational structure, some people say, oh, we don't want it. Because you're becoming like the corporates, corporations, they have organizational structure. Why are you bringing that into the church? Why are you saying church has to have organizational structure, people and roles and positions and responsibilities? Why are you bringing the world into that? That's a mental block for many people to say, this is wrong. But actually, we can start in the Bible and in the Bible you will find many places that, like we said earlier, people are organized. God gave the idea to be organized, to put people in places. And that organized organization helped the work of God take place. And a classic example is in the way David set up the tabernacle. I'll just give introduction and we will pick this up next week. But when you think about the tabernacle of David, after he became king, it was such a big task, big task. So what was the task? He wanted prayer and worship to happen nonstop. So he said, we will build the tabernacle. But prayer, this must be running 24-7 nonstop. That was in David's house. Prayer and worship must go to God 24-7. David didn't say, okay, people just come and worship, keep worshiping God 24-7. No, he organized the tabernacle. I'll just give an introduction. We'll read the tabernacle. So he had about 270 some worship leaders, prophetic worship leaders. Then he had about 4,000 musicians, singers and musicians. Plus he had another 4,000, we would call them as attenders. They're taking care of all the work in the tabernacle. They're just cleaning, doing this, doing that. So think about it, totally more than 8,000 people working. 8,200 some people. And these are all paid people. They were paid by the kingdom. So imagine, this is like a big corporation, big multinational corporation. More than 8,000 people are working in the tabernacle. They are paid people, big stuff. What was the objective? We have to have prayer and worship happening 24-7. Non-stop, it must be prayer, worship, sacrifices, people are coming, so many things are happening. This must go on 24-7. That is the objective. So it's a very spiritual object, right? Worship God, non-stop. Pray and worship non-stop. But to make that happen, he had more than 8,000 staff working. And very detailed organization, very detailed. We will read the instructions. Very detailed. Who must do what? Like a timetable. So people are very clear. They know this person is leading worship. These people are leading worship. These are the singers. This is the time of day they will come and be doing their responsibility. So because he organized in such a way, for 33 years prayer and worship happened in the tabernacle of day with non-stop. So think about it. 33 years just to conclude. While he was king, during his reign, worship was happening. Prayer and worship was going on non-stop. So we will look at this next week where there's a spiritual mission, but good organization actually helps that to occur. He made it happen. So we will pick this up next week. We will close in prayer. Are there any questions? Okay. All right. Could one of us close in prayer? We will pick this up next week. Let's pray. Our loving Father, Once in the Lord, we thank you so much for this beautiful day, Lord. Thank you for speaking to us, Lord, through your servant, Lord. Continuously, I pray that we all are learning about church and ministry administration. Lord, you bless us. Lord, let our learning be a blessing to all of us, Master. Continuously, I pray for next class, Lord, as we all are preparing for. I pray that, Lord, you bless us and prepare our hearts and minds for the soul, Lord. But thank you once again for each of my Jesus and my prayer. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Ruan. See you again next week. I will put the sample dress deed on the glasswork, okay? See you all next time.