 Okay, recording is on. The volume is a little low. Okay. All right, good morning everybody. Thanks for connecting to the class today, BC310 on church and ministry administration. We're going to take a moment to pray together and then we'll start. Could somebody please lead us in prayer and we'll get started. Go and Asha, please pray. Dear God, thank you so much for your conditional love. Thank you for giving a breath of air in our lungs, Lord. And God, as we're about to learn about the CME Lord, that we need to grow and listen and knowledge, because Pastor is going to share, Lord, that you fill in with your spirit because we help us to understand what it is to know about CME Lord. Thank you, Lord, for everything. And I pray for each one of our classmates that they will, that their day will be amazing because you have made it and they will rejoice it and be glad. Thank you so much for each one of them. And thank you for our pastor, God, that you blessed him as a teacher and also help us to grow and listen and knowledge. In the name of God. Amen. Good morning everyone, amen. Thank you, everyone. So, we're coming towards the end of this course. We will have two lectures today and I think next week, two lectures will be done. We'll complete most of the things that I wanted to share in this course. Last week we were talking about finances and we were just going through various aspects about managing finances in the Christian organization, just sharing some practical things that we need to keep in mind. So, I'm just going to quickly review and then cover some of ground on finances. Then once we finish that, we're going to talk a little bit on the legal side. And not too much, but to share something on the legal side. And then we will get into project management or project execution. How do you execute projects and just some guidance on doing those kinds of things? So, I hope to cover these three things, three areas today. Let's quickly review what we did last week regarding finances, sorry, finance, accounting, and budgetary. So, all of us understand that in church administration, managing finances is very, very important. It's a very important part of the ministry. If that doesn't go right, the whole ministry would, very often the whole ministry would be affected, would collapse. And so, this is very important for us to do it right, to do it well. So, we looked at a biblical perspective as far as money for the ministry is concerned. Basically, we just share with people the vision God has given to us, serve people spiritually, just be sincere, serve them spiritually. Then God will move on their hearts to sow financially. We don't have to worry about it. Then when money starts coming in, we have to be a good steward of money. So, be a good steward even when you have small amounts, when people give you a small amount, be a good steward of it. Only then God will promote us, but it all begins by being good stewards with small amounts. Be accountable to the people who have given. Never take people for granted. Whoever is given, say thank you, be accountable to them in whatever way you can. And also be accountable to the government. So, we have to, whatever was required by the government, we have to follow. Getting into the practical side, we said, make use of a software system. Don't try to do it on pen and paper, especially as the ministry grows, there are going to be a lot more transactions. So, use a software system. We spoke a little bit about how that works. We talked about having different fund accounts. That means you designate money to be used in different areas of the ministry. So, that's a gentle fund account where all the money goes. From there, you designate it to different funded accounts or ledger heads. And money that comes in, you can keep it under different heads so you know where it's coming from. Or when it's going out, when you're using it, again, you can keep it under respective heads so you know where the money is being used. We talked about having a finance department. Of course, we all start small initially. But over time, as the ministry grows, that particular department will also grow. You'll have more people involved. We talked about a two-person rule that throughout the accounting process have at least two people involved so that, you know, there's a ballot check there so nobody can misuse or mishandle money throughout the whole process. Everything, there are two people involved in this whole thing. So, we talked about receiving offerings and contributions, you know, having a procedure for counting the money, depositing it, recording it. And of course, nowadays people do electronic transfers so it goes directly into the bank account. And then also, wherever people request, you acknowledge their contributions. And then we made mention about policies and procedures. So, for different ways, different things that happen, you need to have clearly written policies and procedures. That means vendors. Before you start working with a vendor, there's a verification. The vendor has to provide certain information, you know, their identification number or maybe their pan card number or other things. Purchase process, that means purchases that are above a certain amount of money need to be approved by the right people. Disbursement, that is, the money that goes out. What is the procedure? You know, only against certain, only against bills. Will money be paid? If there are no bills, then payments will not happen. And the payment priority, so I said that we try to pay all our bills within three days from receiving it. Actually, it happens usually, usually happens within 24 hours, but we give maximum three working days, pay the bill, you know, don't delay beyond that. Payroll is a monthly salary for our staff and consultants. I said we have a strict rule that all our staff are paid either on the 30th or latest from the first, a consultant by the third of the month, you know, depending on them submitting their time sheets and so on. Expense claims, that is, if people, our staff, you know, spend money, their personal money for church related expense. Sometimes they're in a situation where they have to spend something, maybe for travel or something that has been approved. They can submit the bills and they will get reimbursed for that. That's for our staff, but it has to be pre-approved, so only certain things, you know, tax payments. So we pay as a church, we pay tax. Now, we don't pay tax on our tithes and offerings, on the money that we receive as contributions, but we pay tax of what is known as TDS, tax deduction at source. That means for all the payments we make, the salary payments we make, we have to deduct the TDS. When we pay our consultants, we have to deduct the TDS, or when we pay our vendors, there's a tax that has to be deducted, and then that amount has to be paid to the government. So it's called tax deduction at source. So all of that has to be accounted for, and we have to pay. Petty cash is when you give money, physical money, to people to spend, and we try to avoid it, to bring it down to almost, you know, negligible amount. So all our payments are electronic. We don't try to avoid dealing in cash, but in some cases, you know, like a sample of daily workers, they come and work for a few hours. Then those people, they would, they need to be paid cash, but then everything is accounted for. They have to sign a voucher, and then they have to give us an ID card ID also. So we know who that cash has gone to, that is all recorded. So we are very strict as even when it comes to using petty cash. So we went up till here last week, and I'm going to start from here to go forward, but let me pause here to see if there are any questions that came up, as all of you thought about this. Any questions before we go forward at this point, to just quickly run through what we did last week. Any questions? All right. So let's move ahead, cover some additional details. Very important is budgeting. That means you want to manage how the money is being spent. So you need to know how much money is coming in, and then how much money can you spend on various areas of the ministry. So we have a budget now. In the last two, during the pandemic basically, two and a half years, a lot of things went haywire in the sense that we did not do the normal ministries work that we would do. Everything came to a standstill. So this whole budget thing was no longer relevant during that period of time. So I am talking mainly before the pandemic and after the pandemic. So the pandemic, these budget things didn't matter. But generally, what we have is we know how much money comes in to the church on a monthly basis. And so that's the total offering contributions that come in. And then we know all the ideas of expenses. So starting from salaries of our staff, consultants, supporting so many churches outside Bangalore. In Bangalore, we have to pay the rent for all the places that we are meeting at. So there are all these expenses. And then there are various ministry areas, video conferences, printing of our books, music, and Bible college, several other areas. We go on missions, conferences, events, all these things are happening throughout the year. So we plan for the whole year, for example, by December of this year. So now it's November. By December of this year, we will send out a plan, which is all the things that plan, all the events we're going to do in 2023. So the whole calendar is published or released before December. So we know all the conferences, the events that are going to happen. Now, in that, there will be some things that come up during the year that will be planned later. Example, specific mission trips that we make around the country, those kinds of things are, that will happen during the course of the year. But otherwise, we have the plan for the whole year. And so because we know all the ministry areas, we know what is happening. We allocate certain amounts for all of these expenses. We know. So we can say for example, Christian Leaders Conference in Bangalore, this is the amount we're going to spend for, you know, for different other areas. This is the amount we're going to spend. And so we allocate that much money for each of these ministry areas and conferences. Now, when the ministry leaders go about their ministry's planning and organizing, doing the work, they know that this is the amount they've been allocated. So they have to work within that. Now, they will also present a proposal. So let's take an example. Suppose we're having a youth camp, a three day youth camp. So even before the youth camp, we tell the youth pastor and our events coordinator, this is the amount that you can spend for the youth camp. So they know that's what they have to work within that amount. Then they go and they get all the details. So this usually will happen three months before the actual event. So they will go get the details and the cost for the venue are all of these other things that need to be done to host the youth camp. So at least three months, maybe even before they will start planning, then they send a proposal with all the itemized things. So then we review that, make sure that it kind of matches with the total amount that we told them they could spend. If it's a little over, then we will tell them, you know, most most often we'll tell them to cut some things out, you know, don't spend on that, don't spend on that, bring it down. So we try to keep it within that amount. And so then we approve that. So then that's what they will spend. Now, in some cases, they may be a little over, they may go a little over by small amounts, that's okay. But we do not let them go over by large amounts. So maybe five thousand, ten thousand rupees. Okay, that's fine. But nothing more than that. So what's happening? We are managing how the money is being spent for every area of ministry. Then, so that's for events and programs. And then we also have, you know, when people give, they can give towards certain areas of ministry. So we have this listed that about 10 areas of ministry that people can give toward example, towards books, towards missions, towards supporting outreach churches, towards starting new churches. So all these towards our media ministry towards music ministry. So people could give towards it. And then if people give towards a specific ministry, that amount is designated for that particular use. So we don't move things money, you know, from one area ministry to another. No, if it's given for a particular ministry, it'll be used for that particular ministry. So that offering is allocated. And then that money is used for that area of ministry throughout the year. And as the months come, right? So having that, having a budget, knowing how much you're planning to spend for each area of ministry, allocating funds to special projects or special areas of ministry is very important. So that you manage your money properly, right? So budgeting is one very important way to manage church funds. So somebody asks, you know, how is how are you going to manage your money? Then you have to think talk about budgeting. Yeah, we know where we're going to spend. We know how much we're going to spend. Everything is managed based on the budget that we have prepared for that year. Any questions on this? Everybody's clear how to, I mean, I'm just giving you a very quick overview. But is everybody clear on how you can manage your church funds, your church money? Or your ministry money? Okay. So another important part then, okay, thanks for your responses. I see that in the chat. Another important part of managing money is auditing. Auditing means basically checking, right? So the checking of all the funds of money coming in, money being used, everything has to be very tight. Otherwise, you know, money could get lost, meaning get lost, meaning it's being used and you don't know where it's going. So we have on a weekly basis. So we have an accountant in our full time accountant who is handling money, handling all these things inside. She makes payments to the vendors. She makes payments for people, expense claims, all of that is happening almost on a daily basis. And then on a weekly basis, we have an external accountant come in and he enters all that has happened. He enters into our software system. And he, of course, that's the first level at which checks happen. That means he checking everything, you know, every bill has, you know, okay, this amount was paid, where's the bill? You know, this was paid against what, you know, so he's checking everything. And that happens on a weekly basis. Once a week, he's checking. Then there's a monthly audit. That means at the end of the month, everything that has happened for that month is checked once again, right? Everything is checked. And the tally of everything, what was there before we started the month? What is there at the end of the month? What was spent? What came in? What went out? Does it all match? So that is done again by this external accountant. He comes in and he does it. And then he sends me a report. So I will talk about the reports later. But the monthly audit results in what we call as monthly financial reports. That means the audit is done. The report is sent. So this has, we have a rule that the monthly audit has to be finished by the seventh of each month. So the first within a week, seven working days. So within seven working days, everything in the previous month is checked and audited. And you know, if there are any problems, he will alert. Usually there isn't any problems because on a weekly basis, it's being checked. So when you do the monthly audit, usually everything is fine. And then the reports are generated and reports are sent to me. So I can have a quick look how things were that month. Then there is, you know, every three months. There is every three months. So I put a chair every six months, but it could vary. Sometimes it's three months, sometimes six months, whatever is good for your operation. So every three months, there is an external account auditor, external accountant comes in. So now it's our internal full-time accountant. This accountant who comes weekly. And then there is another audit from an external another auditor comes in. So the three people said they look at everything. Right. So our internal accountant and this other accountant who comes in from outside, they present all the information and everything is checked one more time. Right. And then so that happens every quarter or sometimes in some organizations, they may do it once in every six months. And then at the end of each year, that means under every financial year, everything is audited, checked once again. And this time it's all signed off. Again, the annual reports are generated and we publish the annual reports. That means we put it out on our website. The summary of the annual report is put out on the website for everybody to see. Right. Now this takes a lot of time. So usually by November, you know, they will start usually by July, it's ready. Then we go through all the internal checks and then we publish it sometime later, maybe by October, November, we publish it. But usually by, so the financial year ends in March and this whole annual audit takes time to go through everything. Usually by July, it's done. And then the reports are generated. Once everything's ready, then you put it up on our website. So it takes a little bit of time, but it's a thorough check of everything every year for the whole year. Right. So we have a weekly, we have a monthly, then we have quarterly, and then we have annual, not quarterly, could be semi-annual also in some cases. But these are auditing, I mean, these are checking everything. Right. So, and you're doing it more than two, our internal account and external account, and then you have another company auditing company firm that will do this. So literally you have three different checks happening to overall the accounts. So that way, you know, you make sure that everything is checked and everything is kept clean as far as the finances are concerned. The auditing, these checks help generate financial reports. So these, there are monthly reports and then there are annual reports. So on every month, within the seventh of the new month, I get two Excel sheets. One Excel sheet is the income and the expense. So it will show all the ways money came in, all the ways money went out. Right. And then we also have, I mean, we have a few tabs in that. We have another tab that shows where we keep a running track, a track of, you know, money. I get a snapshot of month-on-month income expense, year-on-year income expense from 2016 till today for the last six years, or 2014 onwards. So I can see how overall we're doing year by year, month-on-month. And so how was this month, that means the preceding month, compared to the last several years or towards the previous month? How are you doing as you're progressing through the year in comparison to the previous years? All that, in just one look at that sheet, a lot of information I can see. And that's important because then we know that, okay, you know, this is where things often actually we are doing fine or, you know, for whatever reason, things are not fine. But that, you know, thank God for his grace, that has never happened, you know, things have been always good for us in terms of finances, every year, month-on-month, and so on. So we're grateful to God for that. But you need to see that so you understand where things are financially. So these monthly reports are important. And then there's the two reports, one is the income expense, the other one is the receipts, basically all the monies, getting the details of where the monies came from, so on. Not the names of people, but how did the money come? Where did it go? Report as well. And then the other report, yeah, sorry, the, so those are monthly reports. And then you also get annual audited reports at the end of each year. This is like after it's checked, all everything is checked, we will get this report. And we have to sign off on it. That means we say, yeah, okay, to this report. And that is published on our church website. So if you go to this page, apcdb.org slash financials, you can see right from 2001 to the most latest audited report we published there. So these reports are important so that you know where the money is going, where it is, where it's being spent. So what I do is I look at the expenses, I see, okay, is it okay to spend so much money there? Sometimes if I feel that too much money has been spent somewhere, I would tell our accountant, hey, the administrator, we have to be careful, we need to cut down. So, you know, looking at these reports helps us manage things. So having a budget is good, very important. But then there are a lot of other expenses that happen, you know, day to day purchases, these all kinds of things. And so when you look at the monthly reports, you know, okay, where are we spending too much money unnecessarily in certain areas, we need to cut down on that. And so if you know, you need to keep a watch on these things. Now, this is not a lack of faith when we do these reports and have controls and budgeting. I think this is an expression of faith by being good stewards. You know, there are some people who don't like all this. They think, well, why you just have faith and just do it. It's true, we have faith, but God has called us to be stewards. And a steward means part of stewardship is accounting. It's keeping watch over what is happening. And so this is an expression of faith. It's being a good steward of what God has given you. Now, couple of other things before I close off this lesson on finances. What do you do with excess funds? Now, as a religious organization, other constitution, the rules of the organization do not permit us, as I mentioned last week, we cannot invest in any private business or private venture. The only thing we are allowed to do is bank fixed deposit. That means money's in the bank, you just leave it in the bank, put it in a fixed deposit, you can earn a little bit more interest. That's all. So or you can buy property for the church or the ministry. That's what our trust, our constitution allows us to do. So all excess money is put into fixed deposits, so it can earn a little bit more interest, and we take it out whenever and if there's a need. We cannot, we do not invest in any private businesses and so on. And so I would encourage you to have that discipline. Don't invest money in private businesses. Keep your ministry separate. Don't take money from the church and put it into some business. Under the pretext that, oh, I'm going to multiply it. I have seen, meaning, I've seen some instances here in India, but also when in the US, when churches, ministers took money out from their church, they tried to invest to say, we're going to grow the money, this, that, but it just ended up in a big mess and a lot of people were hurt because money was lost. So never do that with contributions with money that has been given willfully, freely by people. Another side, another note that I want to mention here is, as a baby, as a baby work at APC, we do not allow fundraising between ministries. We don't allow that kind of activity to go on in the church. Example, you know, we just mentioned to people, these are the areas you can give, and that's it. We keep quiet. Let people give to whatever area they want because we don't want different areas of ministries to be in competition with each other in order to raise funds. That's a very unhealthy environment. So right from the very beginning, we said that will not happen at APC. Whatever money comes in to the general fund, we will allocate and just use that money. And if people give particularly to a particular ministry, that's okay. So example, think about Bible college and think about our publications. So these are two areas of ministry. Money is needed. Sure. But we don't let any of these areas of ministry, the ministry leaders, people in charge, we don't let them pitch to the congregation, hey, I need so much money. And, you know, they do all these things trying to get money from people. We don't do any of that, right? Whatever money comes to the general fund, we allocate to different areas, including publications and including Bible college. And then we simply mention on our church website that if people want to, they can allocate whatever money they want to any of these areas, which includes, you know, publications, Bible college, or any of the other, we have 10 areas, they can, they can give directly, but we don't go, you know, doing fundraising for any of these areas. We just mentioned this is what is there you give. So somebody calls us and says, you know, I want to give money, where would you like it to be used? Then we just tell them, look, it's all here, you give wherever your heart feels you want to give. You know, they will give to whatever it is. So that way we prevent competition between ministries inside the church. And the last thing is, you know, we file income tax returns. That means whatever we need to file with the government, we do that. That means we inform the government, this is all the money that came in. Now, we don't pay tax on our income, like I mentioned, but we do pay tax on what we pay out of tax deduction at source that means for salaries and consultants and vendors, we have to do tax deduction at source, and then we have to pay that money to the government. So all of those things happen on a monthly basis, so that we are up to date with all our tax payments. We don't lag on anything. And it's all clear. So with that, I have just given you a quick overview of managing ministry money. This is a very important area. Now, I have spoken mainly from how we do things here in India. And I know that in other countries, things could be a little different. But I think the main point is to manage money carefully, follow the rules, keep everything in order so that the ministry funds, money given to the church is kept, is managed and handled properly. Any questions so far? Srikumar, please go ahead. Thank you, sir. I just want to know, do we also keep some money for emergency purpose other than the excess amount? Do we also in the budget, do we plan it like how do you know that the pandemic came suddenly, which is so in such cases, do we have something like that, that we keep little money for in case an emergency occurs? That's my question. Yeah, so what we have is what we call as a general fund, general operations fund or general church fund. That is all the, not all, but most of the surplus money is there. So that money can be taken and used anytime. Now, there's a certain amount in the current account, that means you can take it. And then there's a certain amount that's put in fixed deposit. That means you need to bring it out of fixed deposit in order to use it. But the answer to your question is yes. So there is money that's available in the general church fund. Usually we keep a minimum of three months of total expense in the general church fund. So that means so we know every month this is our average expense. This is how much money goes out every month. That amount times three, three months is the excess money that we always keep in our general church fund. So just as example, if all contributions drop to zero for whatever reason, which won't happen, but we can still run comfortably for another three months with that money, right? So nothing will stop. We'll still keep going. In addition to that, money above the three months is moved into what we recall as fixed deposit. That means that money can be taken out. And usually you can take it out within 24 hours. So that money is kept in fixed deposit so that that keeps earning a higher interest and we can take it out whenever we want. So that's how we have arranged this. And so that even if for whatever reason, there's a complete shutdown of income, three months, we will be able to run without any problems. We will also be able to take out money from the fixed deposit to keep things going if there was such a need. But I don't think there would be such a need. Yeah. Thank you, sir. One more. I don't understand. Apart from salary, are we also giving insurance for the pastors and the other employees, I just want to tell the insurance or anything, including their family members? Yeah. So as part of our benefit for full-time staff, so we don't do this for consultants. We do it only for full-time staff. For full-time staff, everybody gets health insurance only for the immediate families, not for the extended family. That immediate family means spouse and children. So they get health insurance. We don't cover the extended family. Extended family, they'll have to buy insurance on their own. But suppose the husband is working, then his wife and how many of our children they have, they're all covered. Health insurance is covered. That's one benefit. The second benefit is what in India, we call it the employee provident fund. In other parts of the world, they call it retirement fund. So every month, we contribute towards the employee retirement fund. So what happened? And this is all only for full-time staff, okay, not for consultants or for others. But full-time staff will also get this benefit. That means, and this is required actually, this is required by the government, that a certain percentage of the money is taken from the employee's salary and a certain percentage is matched or given by the organization. And that money is deposited into that employee's retirement fund or we call it, I mean, it's called a provident fund. And they can only take that money after they are 60 years old, or they can take it out if there's an emergency, but then there's a penalty there. So that's the second benefit. So basically, we are putting money in towards their retirement, which they can use after 60 years of age. So those are the two main benefits, financial benefits that we have for all our staff. Thank you, sir. All right, let's see other questions. Do you enjoy, there's a question from Kennedy, do you enjoy tax exemption on imports or projects, example, buying of church vans or on that? So the answer to the question is no. So we do have to pay the VAT or here in India, it's also called GST. We have to pay that on all purchases. So we are not exempt from that. So whatever we buy, even if you're buying it online, or if you're buying it physically, or, you know, we pay, for example, we pay some of our vendors overseas. So for example, for our web hosting, we host on Amazon, we, some vendors overseas, online vendors. So when we pay, we pay whatever tax we have to pay and so on. So both the VAT or in India, we call other things called GST, sales tax, we have to pay. And so we're not exempt from that. Yeah. Okay, any other questions? All right. So let me quickly go to the next chapter. I'll finish it quickly. It has to do with legal matters. So as much as we need to be good with our finance, accounting, budgeting, the next one is the legal. So we have to, you know, as we, because the church or the Christian ministry is a legal entity in the country, wherever it is operating, it has to be legally compliant in the way it operates and what it does and so on. So we have to follow the law. So not only in terms of the finances, but in what we do, how we operate. So for these matters, we have an advocated lawyer whom we consult. Now, of course, because we're a Christian organization, religious organization, we have a lawyer of that background of Christian faith. He understands us and, you know, he's not a staff or anything. He's an advisor and more like a consultant. So we pay for his legal advice and the work he does for us. But we go to him only as and when required. So that's one part. Now, so when it comes to example, as a legal entity, if we have to change the trustees or you would call it the board of directors, if there's a change there, then you have to register that legally. You have to inform the government that so-and-so has resigned and so-and-so has joined. You know, that change has to be legally recorded. You can't just arbitrarily change and say, okay, you're a trustee, you're a member now. So you can't do that. It has to be legally registered. So we work with the advocate and he will help us do all the paperwork and so on. The other part is to record meetings in major distance. Of course, we don't record every meeting, but then we document any major decision has to be recorded just to keep the record. Now, of course today, all these things are done email and a lot of those things automatically are there for our recording purposes. But in times past, it had to be manually written in a book and in a book, a log book. And so we maintain a few things in the log book, but a lot of other things are happening in written form by email and documents and so on. I already mentioned about filings and compliance. Sometimes it hasn't happened recently, but in times past, the government will say, where is your money coming from? Yeah. And so then we have to respond to that. It's coming from our people. Of course, we don't know everybody's names and IDs, but generally, you can say congregation, there are so many people. This is where the money is coming from. So we have to respond to those things. Those are legal inquiries and we have to respond. And the government has a right to ask. They're not just asking as part of their checking process and we have to respond to that. If there are any property matters, especially when we want to purchase property, which we are in the process of, again, there's a whole legal side to it, we get the help of concerned, real estate advocates. So there are lawyers who know how to, then who are familiar with the laws of a religious organization of a trust. So that's one lawyer we talk to when we need advice on that. But for real estate, you have to go to a different kind of a lawyer and advocate to understand the legal side of things when it comes to property matters. So go to a different lawyer. So we have, so actually right now we have three different people. So one is an advocate who helps us with the organization as a whole. There are two other people who help us with property matters. So when you're looking to buying land property, they are the ones who can, they will check everything, they will advise us, guide us to give us their legal opinion and so on. And of course, you know, for lawyers who pay them their usual fees, for the professional fees, for giving you their advice. But this is also an important part of running your organization. So you find out such, find out good people and you work with them. The last part I want to mention here, the legal side is when there are, when there's persecution. So no, this has happened to some of our outreach churches. That is, when people come and attack the church, they try to disrupt the services so on. We should exercise our civil rights, that means the rights within being a citizen of the country, to protect ourselves, to protect our people. And so in this case, you need the help of lawyers who understand that aspect of the law. Now, in India, we have a network of these lawyers. That means there are these lawyers, there's, there's, there are a couple of organizations, Christian organizations. One is called ADF advocates in the defense of faith. ADF, they're a very good network of lawyers all around the country. And so like that, there is another organization called persecution relief. But we have worked with ADF on a few occasions when we needed the help. So we will call them and we will tell them, look, in this particular city, our church was attacked and we need your help. What should we do? So they will guide us to the lawyers in that area closest to that city. Because sometimes some of these churches are not close to a city, they're in a village or, you know, so then we speak to the lawyers, then it's okay, you know, this is what you do. This is how you file a petition in the police station. Or you file a report in the police station as being this format. This is what you have to write. This is what you document. So we've done that on multiple times with the help of those kind of lawyers. You know, and then, and then we go to the police station, they tell, okay, this is whom you have to talk to. This is whom you have to, this is what you have to do. This is the procedure. Because, you know, as, as ordinary people, we don't know these, how to do these things. So these lawyers will help us. And they may even write out the, you know, the documents for us. And then we go and submit in the police station, get the involvement of the local police, and so on. So that's another area, depending on, you know, if you need it, where you need the help of advocates or lawyers, right? So in the running of your organization, in purchasing property, in protecting your constitutional rights, for all these matters, you need good advocates. And so, you know, this is something to think about. And to make sure that you have these people, you don't need them all the time. But you need to have some con, you know, the names and numbers of these advocates who can help you, they need to know you. And then, if a situation arises, then you need to call them, you need to go meet with them, talk to them, and work with them so that they can guide you, have you, you know, you follow the rules, follow the law, and take care of these various matters. Okay. So I put this chapter more from a perspective of, look, this is an important part of what you need to do. And, you know, it's better to have these kinds of advocates, you know, you have, let them know you, you know them so that you can get their help when you need. All right. And they will interpret the law for you and help you understand the law, and tell you what you can do, what you cannot do. This is how you follow the law. Okay. So before we go for a break, any questions on this, the legal side of things? All right. So, Kennedy, Kennedy's question is legally how do you handle noise pollution? Is it chargeable in a court of law in your case, and managing church distance between churches? So yeah, locally in our state, we have a law, or yeah, let's say it's a law about noise pollution. So we are, if we are having, so basically, all our events should be indoors, that means the speakers sound that we, you know, it's not, it should not be disturbing to the public. So, if there is noise pollution, the public has a right to file a complaint against us. I mean, any organization, whether it's church or mosque or any, any, we have to control that. So there's a law, and so we have to follow it. Now, of course, because all our events are held inside auditoriums, we are following the rules. We are not disturbing our neighbors or people around. If we were to have an event in public, then we need to get prior permission to do that. That means we need to go, we need to go to the nearest police station, tell them what we're doing, what we're having, and they would give us permission. If everything is okay, if they feel that we are going to be disturbance to the people, they will not give us permission because it's a law here that, you know, against noise pollution. So we have to follow the rules. So the safest thing is to be inside a closed auditorium where you are not disturbing anybody, sound is controlled, then there's no problem. Distance between churches, we don't have a rule on that. So there is no thing on that. But that's more of a conscious decision that we don't get close to another church of the same kind. There may be churches in, say, different language or of a different nature. But if you try not to plant our churches close to another church of, in the same spiritual charismatic type church, try to keep our distance. But there are no laws on that. Okay. Srikumar, you had a question? Yes, sir. I want to know, like most of us are not aware about our rights, especially in India, based on the, which like as you said, the constitutional rights, but we are having the most of the people just, you know, we are just ministering, just knowing that one thing it is there, but we don't know the details of that. And that is sometimes actually putting many of us in trouble because of the lack of ignorance. So I just want to know that, do we have something like where you teach or train or something like you give an awareness or these are the things on which you can use at the time of, you know, when you stuck somewhere or something like that, these are the laws and the costs. I just want to know that, do we have something like that for your ministry in like as integral places and different places? Are you training the pastors like that, telling them these are the laws on which? Yes, that's my question. Thank you, sir. To answer a question, we don't, we ourselves, we don't do it. I mean, it's a good idea, actually, what you've just proposed. And I think we should do it. But we have not done something in-depth, you know, we ourselves, like as APC, we have not done something in-depth. So I think we should do it. But these organizations, like I mentioned, ADF and persecution, those organizations from time to time, they hold their awareness meetings where they invite, you know, they invite churches, organizations, Christian organizations who come and they inform people because they know the law, they're lawyers, they interpret, they understand, they read, you know, all the latest updates, and they communicate to the church what we should do. So that is useful to attend. And again, the other thing in India is things vary state to state. So, you know, in our state, there are, for example, anti-conversion laws. If you go just across the border, neighboring state, they don't have anti-conversion laws. So, state to state, we have to be careful how we operate. But ADF and these other organizations, they from time to time do this. We ourselves, as APC, we only, you know, informally inform, talk to our pastors, advise them, tell them to be careful what to do, what not to do. But we don't have, like, a formal written, you know, training on this. But I think it's a good idea. Maybe we should put something together. But I would prefer if, you know, an organization like ADF does it because they are, you know, they are lawyers and they can study the latest things, whereas for us, for us to keep up to date, it's better for us to learn from them, listen to them. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay. So let's go for our break. And Abraham, I see a question in the chat, but right after break, we will pick up your question. Okay. We'll be back in 10 minutes. I know I've taken six minutes in the break, but take full 10 minutes and we'll be back. Thanks.