 Okay the recording is on. Good morning and welcome everybody to BC310, our course on church and ministry administration. This is our last lecture I think. It'll be wrapping up today and so thank you each one for joining with us through this course. Let's take a moment to pray and then we'll get started for today. Could somebody lead us in prayer please? All right Asha go ahead. Dear God thank You so much Lord for this day. Thank You for our breath in our lungs. Thank You God as we're about to learn the book of CME and I'm about to conclude also Lord. I pray that You fill us with Your wisdom and knowledge, that we may grasp every knowledge and I really know that it comes from You Lord. Thank You so much God for passing us through this Lord. I pray that You help us understand God. Thank You Lord for everything. In Your mighty name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you everyone. Thank you. All right so we're down to the final I think the final lap final round here on this course. Last week we talked a little bit about project management execution and of course it's not a complete you know in-depth learning on project management but just to give us an idea that even in the Christian ministry in the church when we are doing different things in different areas of ministry we need to look at things as projects. We're actually doing a project and then along with that of course we use the right methodology, the right way to go about carrying that ministry out as a project and there are tools, there's knowledge available for us on how to run the project. How do you plan? How do you estimate? How do you execute? How do you manage the whole project so that everything is done well? So we are really bringing in professional knowledge, the skills that you know that is used everywhere and we're using it in the ministry area. We shouldn't be afraid to do it because really we want to make sure that the things we're doing in the ministry are done well and you know and of course we want to manage the resources that people have given to us. We don't want that to be wasted so from that perspective you know project management is very very relevant to the Christian ministry, the church and the various things that we do as part of Christian ministry. Today I just want to mention I'm not necessarily going into these things but let me just go ahead and share the notes here. As I mentioned you know just three main points and actually two of these we will be getting into detail next semester. So as part of church and ministry management or church and ministry administration we must leverage technology. So and this is something we will get into next semester I'm just kind of making a mention here so I will not getting into the details of this. Technology is you know it is a very real part of our world in everything almost everything that we do. And therefore even in the church or in the ministry we have to look at how can we use technology for what we are doing and how do we yeah and of course we need to keep up with the things that are happening. So we look at technology as a tool as an instrument as a tool that we can use to further the work of the ministry. So technology is not against the ministry it's not something that we should avoid but we should learn how to leverage it. So right from you know and I'm just mentioning these things we'll get into all of these and a lot more next semester. You know right from the software just for regular office work. So for example at ABC I think every every staff we give them a laptop so they everybody has a laptop. And and and some people may have more than one machine depending on their work and then we you know everybody of course uses the office tools like the word processor email spreadsheet all of those things. Now most of us are using our own windows a few people use the Mac operating system but generally everyone is expected to use this these office tools productivity tools. It's not an option you know it is the normal way we all do things. So we communicate on email we know word PowerPoint spreadsheet all those things are just normal tools that we use in daily work you know every day work. So this is taken as you know a granted thing I mean it's just expected everybody needs to know how to work well with these tools. Apart from that you know we also use several different software systems. I've just mentioned a few here. The accounting like we said that we use a software system called tally. This is mainly for the accountant so not everybody else has access to this. Then we use a church management system. I'll just quickly show you these things. So we use a church management system to manage all our people contacts basically and then there's a lot more that can be done with church management and this is an open source. So you can go to rockrms.com you can download this sit up for your own church and you know start using it. And there's a lot that has a lot of features and of course we customize it. We've customized it the same software for not only a church we customize it for Bible college managing our Bible college applications all those things that come in. They're also using it for managing our database of contact Christian ministers across the country and around the world. The same is being used for different purposes. Then we have an HRM human resource management software. They just manage our staff. I'll just give you a quick glance on this. We'll get into these details next next semester. Again, this is an open source software. We use it for people to report their time, their work, apply for leaves, keeping employee information, things like that. And you can also do the recruiting process that can also be done. Another piece of software that the system uses a PHP list. Again, there's an open source and we use it for communications for our bulk emails of, you know, we manage our mailing lists and all of that. And we send emails out from here. So basically we are a team handles this and there's a lot more. I will get into those details next semester. The point is, as a church, as a ministry, we have to, you know, I'm just making it very plain. We have to use technology. We can't not, I mean, I'm talking especially in an urban context. Yeah, if you're working in a village somewhere doing, you know, not very, even there, of course, you would be using technology. You would use phones and so on and so forth. So I think, you know, definitely every church, every ministry will need to use technology. So I will just quickly give you an, you know, just an idea of what these things are and not getting into the details. But we will do that next semester. Very quickly. Let me just show you a few things. Right. So we mentioned our church management system. So basically, if I, this is our church management system, it is a rock RMS, which we have customized for ourselves. So as soon as I log in, I could see who all have birthdays today. Right. So, and where are they from? So this person is a Bible college student. Today's his birthday. That's actually my dad. That's his birthday. The first birthday today. There's another person from Central will be Samuel Condon. And there's another person who is from outside. And if there are anniversaries, it'll show here. So I can immediately see. So what I normally do every day is I just log in here and I'll wish all these people whoever's birthdays are here. Wish them happy birthday. Send them a WhatsApp message. And those anniversaries. Right. And if I want to, I can just look up any person, you know, just for, just for example, I will try to look up my wife, Amy. And then, you know, you can see all the other Amy's here then. Okay. I want looking up. So I can look up a person here. Right. So I see her name. I see her. And I get all her details here. And I can see that. Okay. She's the full family is shown. So that's me, son and daughter. And all these details. And then of course you could over here. You know, there's a lot of information we can track. You know, you know, the, since it's my wife, there's not much information that we don't put. But usually when people make a call, they can add a note against this person. And there's, when people apply for membership, that will show up here. If they're a Bible college student, that profile will show up here. A lot of things can happen within this system. I'm just giving you a quick overview. I'll get into the details next, next year. Okay. So this is a church management system. So technically, we, you know, we manage over using this, we manage. I think approximately we may have a data of about, you know, so I would church. I mean, the local church may be able to 3000 people. Then about this, another side, we will be managed about over 10,000 pastors and leaders across India. That's a separate database. Then we have another installation for Bible college over 2000, some students. So all that is there, you know, and it's all managed. So I can search for anybody. I can pull them up here, you know, and I can look up the details anytime. And it's very, very useful. Okay. So that's the church management system. Now, if I want to, what else we spoke about the church management, okay. The HRM, which is the, this is our human resource management system. This is where people will report their time, et cetera. Now, what is, when I log in, I'm logging in as an administrator. So I can see a lot more things than an individual staff and I can do a lot more things here. When an individual staff, when they log in, they won't see all these things. But basically, you know, people report their time sheets here. So, you know, I haven't entered my time sheet for last week, but I'll show you maybe some old one here. So this is my time sheet for the week of 16th to 22nd, October. You know, I just said, okay, this is all I did. This is the house I reported. So, you know, every week, so I can go back and I can, anyone can go back and, you know, look at their work and I can look at other people's work. Just, you know, anyone, it's all this is there for years. I mean, not years means for the time we started using it. So each individual reports the time sheet, our admin person will review and approve. So, you know, submitted as reviewed as approved. And then, of course, as an admin, I get to do a lot more things here. I can look up people, I can, people apply for leave here. So, you can, they apply for leave. And, you know, so these are all the leave applications that have come in. And our HR person will, you know, approve those leaves and all of that stuff. Things happen here. So, this is the human resource management. You know, you can actually do a lot of things managing the people and the recruitment process as well as I mentioned earlier. Right. So, just quickly, we'll get into the details next semester. So, that's the HRM. The last thing I'll just quickly show you, there's a lot of other things that we use, but I'm just quickly showing you some of the things that we use. All right, I need to, okay, I think we changed this. Sorry about it. I think we changed it recently and I forgot to update my password. Let me see. That's the mail admin. Okay. Anyway, I will show this to you next semester. I just, or I can quickly just give me a, I don't know. Yeah, I think I can show this to you next semester. Don't worry about it. So, basically, PHP list, I just had to update my password. This one, we use it to manage our mailing list. So, that means when we want to, you know, send out bulk emails and so on, we use PHP list. We, like we said, more than 20,000, I think more than 20,000 email IDs are there. We manage it. We have different groups so we can target. So, usually I would say, okay, send an email to all those who are in other church congregation in Bangalore so that we can send an email just to them. Or we want to send an email to all our Bible college students. We can send an email just to a Bible college students. Or we want to send an email to people in, you know, a certain country. We can send an email only to those people. So, that's the advantage of having that mailing list. And so, you know, like that there are a number of other software packages that we use, which we will get into. I will just kind of walk us through next semester in our course on media technology. And the main thing I want to impress for us is that as a church, as a Christian ministry, we need to use technology and use it to your advantage. It's going to help our work be very efficient and do the things that we need to do. So, that's one thing. The second thing, any questions on that so far? Before I shift a little bit, just a mention of leveraging technology. Any questions? The next thing I just want to mention is about innovation. So, let me just go back to the PDF. Again, the details on this, we will get into next semester. Pursuing excellence and strategic innovation, which means that in everything we do, we want to be excellent. That's part of our church culture, which we spoke about earlier. The culture we create is that, hey, whatever we do, let's do it well. Let's do it with excellence. Let's do it to the best we can. So, we may not be perfect, but let's give it our best. From our side, we are doing our best to do it well. That's pursuing excellence and making sure everything is done the best we can and well. So, that should become part of our culture. Along with that is strategic innovation. So, let's not be afraid to try out new things, do new things in the ministry. So, the church, the world around us is constantly changing. There are so many opportunities being created with tools, technologies, sometimes even the new problems or the problems that are being, that are faced. Actually, our opportunities for us to go in there and do something. So, as a church, as a ministry, we need to innovate. Now, innovate means you're getting into doing something you've never done before and you're solving a problem you've never solved before. And you are, you know, you're creating something, coming you up with something that probably in that context doesn't exist. So, innovate as a church, as a ministry, making use of all of these technologies. You know, just yesterday I was having a conversation and we were talking about, you know, how do we use gaming for Christian ministry? So, you know, many of us are aware that gaming is such a big part of entertainment these days. Everybody from kids to adults are so addicted to playing games, mostly on their mobile device and sometimes on their machine. It's such a big addiction. I'm not saying everybody's addicted to it, but it's another form of entertainment or recreation. Now, how can we use it for Christian ministry? What can we do? And gaming is also used in education and the same technology, same ideas. I used to educate trained people in medicine and other areas. It's used as a new way of learning, which is great. So how can the church use it? Can our Bible College use it? Can we introduce that gaming experience as part of our learning process? So, we're just talking about it, shared some ideas. Now, of course, we have to explore doing something like that. Why should we do that? Because there's an opportunity and because there's so many people involved in it. If the church positions themselves there, we can make a difference. We can reach those people who are already involved in that space. So, I'm just giving one example where we need to think strategically and think different in order to be able to innovate, to do new things, to bring the Gospel and the Word of God out to people. So, think strategically, innovate and do that. And we will cover some of these things in our course next semester on media and technology in ministry. So, this is just to introduce these ideas, to place them in front of you. We'll get into the details and integrities next semester. The last thing I want to mention here is that in any church or Christian organizations, one thing we must also seriously think about and start thinking about it early enough is about continuity and how are you going to pass the baton? Because whatever leadership we have today, it's not going to be there forever. People are going to, people grow old and they need to step out of the way and they need to let the next generation or the generations after them take over. That's just part of life. You can't deny it. No matter how good a leader is, no matter how anointed a person is, no matter how skilled a person is, we all have a lifespan and we are going to need to hand over. Sometimes that transition may happen early in the sense that a leader may move on to doing something else or sometimes that passing the baton happens because of age. One generation has to pass it on. So, in view of that, two things we have to think about is how do we develop the next generation of leaders. I know I've shared about this earlier that the present or current leadership and the people who are currently responsible for the church or the organization should intentionally think about two or three generations after them and start nurturing developing leaders two or three generations after them. Now, to develop a leader is a lifelong thing. It's not about just doing a course on leadership and you become a leader. You may gain some knowledge, but that's not the same thing as having a person's life shaped to become a leader. There are so many things that need to happen. That development of leaders should happen over time, over many years. So we need to think about how do we start nurturing at least two, if possible, three generations after the present leadership generation. So, in order to do that, we have to understand generations. Right now, in today's world, there are about four or five different generations that are working together in the workplace. So when people who study social science, they will tell us, we have the baby boomers, the generation X, the millennials, and the generation Z. So you've got about four or five generations who are all working together in the workplace. And each generation, each of the generations, typically about 15 years gap, have a different mindset. There are characteristics that are typical to these different generations. For example, Gen Z. Now these are people who are currently in their early 20s. They're all, they're entering the workplace. Now the Gen Z, this generation, the Gen Z generation are digital natives. They grew up. They were born, so to speak, with mobile phones in their hands. They are about in their early 20s and they are getting into the workplace. They are the Gen Z generation. For them, it's very normal to use a mobile phone and do things with that. The millennials transitioned into this. They saw the development of technology and how it transformed the world. And they come with a different perspective, the generation prior to them, who would typically be people who are in senior management positions and so on, leadership positions. They, again, they worked, you know, they have their own characteristics. But the point is this, the present leadership should work with succeeding generations, develop them, think about it, do it intentionally. Otherwise, leadership development will not happen. So in any church, we should be thinking, you know, how are we identifying leaders? Are we nurturing them? Are we building them up? Are we getting them ready? And then the next part in this is succession planning, which is plan. The leadership, the current leadership should have in their minds a succession plan. And of course, they should know that at this time, they're going to transition. We're going to hand over leadership. And this is how they're going to do it. And, you know, we want the transition. So the leadership transition is a very, very crucial time because the congregation or the ministry, they need to be ready for it. And they need to be able to adjust to new leadership. The new leadership, their strengths, their styles will be very different from the previous generation. Their focus may also, you know, may vary. So the congregation, the people need to be prepared. So that whole transition should happen very smoothly. So it has to be planned, the transition, as far as possible. There may be times when things happen very suddenly. But if leadership has been happening, then even that suddenness is not going to disrupt things too much. Because that leadership development was already happening over time. The succession can take place even if there's some sudden, there's a reason for a sudden transition. So I just want to place that before us. And I'm not getting into the details here, but it's something for us to think about in the church, in the ministry. Any questions on these three topics? I've just mentioned these three topics. Any questions on it? Any thoughts, any questions? Good morning, Pastor. Actually, we are trying to process it because it's something new that we are learning. And I think we need to process it because it's a very new perspective to us. To me personally, I can just say that how we can reach out. I'm really enjoying it like to the younger ones coming out with these new innovative ideas can be really exciting. Thank you so much for sharing. Okay. Good. So we get into the details next semester. Charles is expected for next semester. Go in depth. Sure, Charles. Get into that. Anything else? Any questions? I know I'm just going to introduce these three ideas. But any questions? Any thoughts? Okay. Let's just do a quick five minute review of what we've covered in this course. So just the topics, right? So what we did was in church and ministry administration, we said, you know, what is the importance of good administration? So good in a good administration is going to be really necessary to back up the ministry for the ministry to be strong, the importance, the objectives. We talked about how do you, you know, how do you get something started? You need a legal entity, a trust, and you need some governance, which is usually you'll document the trust deed or articles of incorporation. It's called different in different parts of the world. Then we talked about organizational structure. How do you create a structure for the organization, policies, guidelines, standards so that everybody knows how to work, how things are done here, what are the guidelines to make decisions on. Then we talked about systems and processes so that everything runs properly within the organization, the movement of information, workflow, and so on. Then we talked about taking care of church staff, people, and how do you take care of them? How do you pay them? How do you, you know, performance reviews, salaries, all those kinds of things. Then we talked about workplace culture, which is the environment in which people are going to be working, both in the workplace and also the church at large or the ministry at large, the culture that we create, what affects the culture, the importance of leadership on the culture, so on. Then we talked about finance, accounting, budgeting, getting shared with, you know, with some practical things. How do you manage the money? How do you have budgeting happening? Making sure money is going to the right place. We talked a little bit very quickly on the legal aspects. Planning and coordination that's along with executing projects, ministry of teams, volunteer teams. And then I closed just today with just mentioning about leveraging technology and pushing excellence and innovation. So the technology part and the innovation part, we will get into next semester in depth on just showing you various things that can be done. And how to keep in touch with new things that come out and use that for the ministry. Right. So I hope what we've covered is useful. Right. I see Kennedy's question here. What factors do you consider in succession? That means the person, the people you choose as leaders. I'll just mention this briefly here. And I've also point us to a resource in the APC book, House of God. We have a chapter on developing leaders. So there we kind of give a detailed list of how do you see if somebody is a good leader? What are the things you look for? I'll refer you to that chapter in the APC book on House of God. But when we talk about, you know, basically one guideline is what Timothy wrote, Paul wrote, sorry. Timothy said, you know, the thing, whatever you've learned from me, I want you to commit it to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So you see three generations, Paul telling Timothy, actually four generations, Paul to Timothy. Timothy, you commit to faithful people who will then in turn commit it to others also four generations. Paul, Timothy, faithful next four generations. So basically what is the criteria? Two things. This is faithful. That means their hearts got to be aligned. You know, they've got to be aligned, faithful. They connected with what's happening. Then comes Able, who will be able to the ability, the required skill. So two things you're looking for. You're looking for alignment to the vision, commitment to the vision of what's happening, commitment to the mandate that God has put upon the church or the ministry, faithfulness. Then you're looking for, of course, they need to have the ability, the required skills, the leadership skills, the ministry skills. They need that as well. But first look at faithfulness, because skills can be developed. You can train people, but the heart condition is something is not easy. It's either in them or it's not in them. So faithful and Able. So, and that's, those are two things we look for the details I've mentioned in that book House of God. You could have a look at that, please. Okay. Thank you. I just read your comment in the chat. Thanks for your note of appreciation. All right. Anything else? Any other questions? Okay. So with this, we come to the end of this course. I'm going to, you know, work on the assessment. It's going to be pretty easy. It's going to be reviewed through everything. Hopefully, I will be able to sit and do it today without being disturbed and work on it. And yeah, and with that, we will, you know, conclude this course. Roshan, I see a question here. Media technology is happening next semester. So we start January will be done in April. So next semester, part of the next semester courses, media and technology, one of the courses in the third year. So I think these on, you know, yeah, so we will send out the email and all of that in December. So you can enroll for the course and, you know, do that. Okay. Pray will wrap up. Thank you, everyone, for being part of the course. Thank you for engaging and discussing learning together. And we will, you know, I'll put out the assessment. You can finish it. And then we will continue interacting next semester. Could somebody close in prayer, please? Anyone? Go ahead, Asha. God, thank you, Lord. Thank you once again for this class. It was amazing learning about the everything that you've been taught teaching us, Lord. I pray right now, God, as we have concluded this chapters, that we may not just be the one who just understood, but instead carry it through our lifetime world. You have in this chapter, Scott, first of all, Mark, children, I pray right now, Lord, for each one of the students, God, that you bless them with what they've been taught. And I pray that they put them in their heart and write them on the tablet with their heart. God, thank you so much for best of us, Lord. I pray blessing over his life as he taught and also for everything that he's doing God. Lord, blessing belongs to those. Lord, I pray for the righteous, Lord Scott, thank you for everything. And thank you so much, Jesus, for just as amazing classes, God. We honor you and we praise you for all that you are in our lives. Amen. Amen. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being on this course. You'll get notified as soon as I put the assessment there, hopefully today. And yeah, see you again next semester. God bless. Thank you, Pastor. Pastor, I have one question. Do we have regional services other than English in the morning? Oh, not yet. Not yet. We are using real time translation headsets. So actually, I'm going to have a meeting with the IDT. What our plan is to have these headsets that have real time translation so that people can come in and listen to it in different languages. That's kind of what we're working towards. I want to know that whether you have Sunday services on in APC Central or in other languages. Other languages. Yes. Somebody wants to attend the service. So they are more convenient with Tamil English or some other local language. That's why I just want to know. Yeah. So what I'm saying is the way we are trying to do it is we're trying to have real time translation. Okay. So when people come in, they bring their mobile phone and they will receive the translation real time on the phone with their headsets in some of these, you know, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, and so then they can all sit in the congregation. But it won't affect the main service. The main service will be happening in English, but for them, they'll be listening to it in their language. So we're just working on that. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay. Okay. God bless everybody. See you soon. Bye now. Thank you. God bless. Thank you. God bless. Thank you. God bless.