 All right. Okay. Good morning everyone. Welcome to this class today on charge and ministry administration. Let's take a moment just to pray and we will get started and one of us just pray together. Here could you please lead us in prayer? Yes, sir Father God we just come before your throne, Father God. Father God thanking you for the day thanking you for class thanking you Sir, I know the student Father God. Father God lead us to your kingdom, Father God. Father God Whatever we are going to learn, Father God the subject, Father God. Help us to understand all things, Father God and apply to your kingdom Thank you Father God and upcoming time I'm just submitting to your hand, Father God take care of every side. Thank you Father God Almighty Jesus name be praised. Amen. Thank you Okay, so in in this in our course on church and ministry administration last week we did a short session on the legal side of things, you know, just just shared a few thoughts there today we were getting to a new area which is on planning execution and coordination and I just start this off today and we probably will spend in maybe two or maybe even three lectures on on this The the reason this this particular part of church and ministry administration is important is because a lot of the work that we would do as a church as a Christian ministry, you know, whether it could be you know in specific areas of the ministries or having conferences doing mission trips We undertake special projects other events things that we do all of these things require planning if we are going to do them well and And so I thought just to help us think through on you know, how do you plan then? How do you execute a project? Right or what goes into it and is something important for us because As a church as a local church or as a Christian ministry, this thing is going to keep on happening over and over again every year and Many of the ministries we do will require a lot of planning coordination execution Even if you want to have a conference, let's say You know a men's conference or a Christian leaders conference Sometimes you Have to start planning many many months in advance and then and you know you have to plan it out you to Execute it and then you try to learn from Experience so that the next time you do the same conference or a similar conference. You can do it better so The reality is in Christian ministry or in church ministry There's a lot of planning That that is required Now however, you know There is a challenge because some of us, you know are very open to the idea of planning and Execution planning and you know execution doing things as projects, but There are some who would object to things like this and from a biblical perspective, you know For example, when you look at certain scriptures and if you have your Bibles, then you can look at it with me in Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 to 34 You know Jesus said don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink or what you're going to put on You know life is more than your food and your clothing Verse 26 Jesus said, you know look at the birds of the air They don't store anything in the barns and now yet father feeds them You're more value than them, you know think about you know who can you know who can add even one small inch to your height by watering Verse 28 he says, you know, why do you worry about clothes? Look at the lilies of the field How they're growing so beautifully, but they don't even Toil or spin they don't they don't make any clothes for themselves, but you know, even Solomon was not as you know Beautiful a grand in in his Our clothing was 30. She got croats clothes the grass of the field. It's there today It's thrown the throne in the oven. So why are you being or having so little faith? Why are you worrying what you're going to eat or drink or rare? And this is how the Gentiles live verse 32. You have any father knows that you have need of all these things So, you know, sometimes we may use this passage and say why are you planning? Just just go ahead and just do it and you know At the when things have what whatever has to happen will happen and you know things so ministry It just happens all spontaneously and so on some people You know Averse to planning and proper Executions one another passage that people may use is from James 7 to 4 Verses 13 to 17. So we have your Bible You can turn there, please James 4 13 to 17 Good somebody read that James 4 13 to 17 Now listen you Who say today or tomorrow? We will go to this or that city spend a year there Carry on a business and make money Why You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then finish it instead. You ought to say If it is the Lord's will we will live and do this or that as it is you boast in your arrogance All such boasting is evil if anyone then knows the good they ought to do and Doesn't do it. It is a sin for them So, you know people may use this passage as well and say hey You know why are you worried about one year from now? You know, so sometimes a Conference can be one year from now and we start planning for it And you know start working towards it and people so why are you even thinking I had looked the Bible says you don't even know What's going to happen tomorrow? Life is like a mist. It is here. It's gone. Yeah, why are you? Making this plan that you're gonna have this conference, you know, sometimes one year from now two years from now we start planning and why all this you know and You if it's gonna if it's a lot so it'll happen it'll all come together So people can use, you know a passage from Matthew 6 or James 4 To Say there's no need to plan. There's no need to worry about those things Yet in the same Bible if you turn to me to Proverbs chapter 6, you also find this in the Bible Proverbs 6 and you know, somebody could read for us 6 through 11, please Rob 6 6 through 11, somebody could read that Go to the ends, you slugger, consider its way and device It has no commander No overseer or ruler yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest How long will you lie there, you slugger? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest And probably will come on you like a fish and scar city like an armed man So here in Proverbs 6 he's saying go look at the ant and one of the things He's saying is look the ant is not it doesn't have somebody telling it what to do but it It stores food up in the summer for the winter Right, so It stores food up Provides taking a harvest and gathers food in preparation for the future So he's parting us with the example of the ant and says you know learn something in the end How would this you know it is actually doing something in advance for itself? So on the one hand It seems like script is saying don't worry about tomorrow don't think about it on the other hand There is the example of the ant who's gathering food in the summer and during the harvest in preparation for what would Come up at later. So how do we you know understand these things the key is in Matthew 6 Jesus does not worry He didn't say do not plan He said do not worry worry is to be anxious To be overly, you know concerned about something You know in James 4 the issues about arrogance or being self-dependent rather than being dependent on God right and so What we must do is We must learn That planning is not wrong but worrying is wrong some people They don't plan but they worry a lot and that's the sin that Jesus says, you know, don't don't don't Engage and don't engage in worry or don't engage in self dependence We are always dependent on God and I like how the Apostle Paul put it in you know in there Second Corinthians we go with me a second Corinthians. It's not there on the list, but In second Corinthians chapter 1 I Just want us to look We're 17 second Corinthians What second one is 117? Can someone read that for us? For Christ did not send me to baptize but to pray the second second Corinthians second Corinthians 117. Yeah Yes Therefore when I was planning this deep I do it lightly all the things I plan Do I plan according to the flesh that with me there should be yes? Yes, and no no so Second Corinthians 117 Paul is saying look when I am making my plans obviously Paul An anointed mad up God. He was planning. He was Yeah, thinking had what to do next where to go next and so on so he was planning and he says the plans I plan Do I plan? According to the flesh that means, you know, I'm not dependent on the flesh to make these plans or if you want to Put it another way, you know, you and I can engage in Spirit-inspired or spirit-led planning There's nothing wrong to plan, but we can plan Not just by the flesh on our natural abilities But we can plan according to the Holy Spirit And then there are these scriptures that I've listed for us from Proverbs and You'll find all of these scriptures about the prudent man a prudent man is a man Who is wise and who is let's say very intelligent and You know what we need in English we would say street smart. He's very skillful In getting things done Practically, okay, and what are the scriptures say about the prudent man, you know, it says he acts with knowledge He understands his way He considers well his steps He receives correction He acquires knowledge and he also foresees evil Right. So when you look at it, the Bible is telling us to be prudent to be wise in in a practical way in in the affairs of the matters of this life and And to be prudent means you Get knowledge first you get the information then you act on it You understand that your way you think deeply you consider your steps carefully You're also willing to take correction Guidance you're acquiring knowledge you're foreseeing evil you're looking up ahead and looking at Potential problems and pitfalls that must be avoided. So that's a prudent person So what I want to present to us is, you know, from a biblical perspective My understanding is it is not wrong to plan The two things we must avoid is must avoid being worried or anxious about the future and he was Avoid being self-dependent instead. We need to be dependent on the Lord and be led by the spirit in our planning and You know, we do these practical things of getting knowledge understanding of ways Thinking well on our steps getting guidance getting correction acquiring knowledge and foreseeing evil as we plan right so From a biblical perspective we can say that it is not wrong to plan It's not wrong to look ahead. It's not wrong to Get information on how how you can do something. Well It's not wrong to correct yourself as you are Going about things, right? It's all part of being prudent and being wise in the affairs and in the matters of This life So I just thought I'll take some time for a biblical perspective to Address this whole thing about planning because sometimes you run into people say, oh You just let God do it and let it happen by itself or you want to plan and so on but I think in the church in Christian ministry If you want to do a lot of things and we want to do it well Then we definitely have to plan Head and that's what we're going to learn Practically, right? No today as an introduction. I just want to you know get us to think in terms of projects that means Whatever you do let's say You're planning to host a conference a youth camp or kids camp Now or it could be a special project like you know going out to help people And whatever you do and some some of these things could be very small like okay. I'm just doing One-day conference and it's you know, just it's a small thing or it some of these things could be A large projects and it could be projects that go on for a long time maybe You know, maybe several months, maybe sometimes a group of projects can go on for several years as well so Regardless of you know the the what what we are taking taking up to do You can look at it from look at them as project like as a project and You know, whether you're hosting a conference or you're doing something or as a ministry for over time You can look at as a project and you can apply some of these things that we know about how to Plan how to execute and how to coordinate Projects you could you can apply it to any of these things. So that's what we're going to learn, right? How do you run a project? How do you execute a project? Some practical things So that in church minister church and ministry administration, you know, we can use these things so Typically and you know, this is just a general general information Generally, we say in the life cycle for project it means from the start to finish. That's a life cycle From its inception to its conclusion in the life cycle of a project There are these five common stages that we're going to talk about Stages, right? So first is the initiating stage where you're getting some you're getting an idea together And you are defining what you wanted to and you're defining your end goal. So there's an initiation stage You're getting sharing the idea, you know, discussing with people and so on. Okay. We are going to do this Then there's a planning stage where you Get into the details. Okay. This is when we're going to do it. This is how much it's going to cost This is how we're going to carry it out And these are the people we need and these are the maybe the equipment or the training we need and these are how we will You know, check that we're making progress. So this is a planning, right? In planning, it's more on, you know, you're writing it down You're putting it down on paper, so to speak, or you're discussing the ideas and you're, you know, you're defining how you're going to go about doing something Planning is important. Then there's the execution. The executing part is basically you actually doing the thing, getting the things done, you know, that's when the You know, from the start of making all the arrangements for the conference, the registration, the You know, the venue and all the details that go into making that conference happen for, as an example, or it could be a bigger project, right? So the execution is going about doing it, making it happen. And then while you are executing it, You're also monitoring it. That means you are measuring, you're watching, you know, what is happening? Is it going according to the plan? Is it happening the way it should be happening? Sometimes there could be some roadblocks, some problems that come up. So then immediately you need to resolve the problem. So you are watching, you know, you're looking at the whole project progress. And you're also keeping track of what is actually happening. Then, you know, you're also taking corrective action, like we said. And finally, it comes to the closing stage. That means, okay, the conference is over or the project comes to a close. It's the end. But at the end, you are also, you know, you want to clean up everything, you want to put everything, bring a proper Closure to the whole conference or the whole project. And as part of that, you also want to review and do an assessment. Okay. Did we meet our objectives or where did we miss our objectives? What went wrong? How could we do things better? How can we improve? So, you know, you take up an assessment, you document things that should be done differently so that the next time around, if you're going to have the same conference again next year, Or you're going to do it again in another city, you know, the things that you've learned from doing it once can help improve the same project the next time you work on. So five simple stages, initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, closing. This is standard. It just, this is what happens in a project. Now, there are some key success factors that we must keep in mind. If this project is going to be successful, you know, whatever it is, you're going to, you're having a conference, if this conference is going to happen, and it's going to happen well, or if you're going to, you know, you're doing something and, you know, doing a project for children in the slums, or you may be doing, you know, a project like recording an album, a worship album, whatever the project is. There are certain key success factors, things that will influence or determine whether this project is going to happen well or not. We just want to outline that. What we are going to do, as we continue in this lesson next week, and not next week on Friday, is that we will get into these, you know, what happens in each of these stages. How do you go about those stages, right? But before we get in there, we just want to outline some of the things that actually make a project successful. First of all, it's very important to have a clearly defined objective, meaning what are we trying to accomplish, right? If the objective is not clearly defined, and it's just, okay, let's all do something well, then people will do it, but what are we trying to achieve? Nobody knows, you know. So we don't know whether we achieved it or not, whether we, you know, whether we did well or not. And then we have no way to measure whether we were on target, whether we were in the right direction, so on. So before you get a project started, one of the things is we need to have very clearly defined objective, right? During your, when you're initiating the project, you have to discuss the objective. Sometimes the objectives may be redefined or refined, modified during the discussion and so on. But at the end of it, everybody understands this is what we are trying to accomplish. Second, very important, successful success factor is a practical timeline, right? So is the timeline realistic? That means, you know, somebody says, oh, tomorrow we're going to do a conference. Well, you can, but it's not practical because, you know, we haven't done anything. We haven't prepared anything. Sure, we can, you know, just get some people together and do something, but that's, that may not be useful. Now, useful, it may help us achieve, you know, anything or something of importance then. So the thing is, we have a practical timeline. Do we have enough time to plan, to prepare, to put the resources together to do whatever is needed to achieve that objective? Is there enough timeline? It's got to be a practical timeline. Now, sometimes there will be, what to say, things we do out of, in a very quick way, they have to happen very fast. It's a rapid response, you know, so, for example, last year, what was it last year? Let me think now. Yeah, it was last year, 2020. You know, when we shut down, we were forced to shut down, shut down our Bible college campus in the month of March last year. You know, when the, in India, when the pandemic broke out here, by March, the government said, okay, everything locked, we're under lockdown, everything shut down. So we just have to tell all our students, you know, please go home, everybody has to leave, we have to close campus. The government has said no hostels, no schools, no colleges. And so it was very abrupt, you know. And so we had to close. And we didn't know at that time, in March of last year, when we will be allowed to open and so we couldn't make any decision. Then we just thought, okay, you know, maybe things will change by June, and maybe we can tell all our students to come back for fall, for August of last year. So we waited April, May, June, and there was no sign that, you know, things were getting bad, things, you know, the pandemic was global. And there was no sign that, you know, no indication that we could have our students back. Then we said, okay, what are we going to do, you know, we haven't finished spring 2020 semester. And we're getting close to fall of 2020 semester. Now, what are we going to do? And how are we going to do classes? And I mean, are we going to keep Bible College closed, you know, for a long term or what are we going to do? And then in June, certainly we said, hey, let's just do classes online. At least let's finish up spring semester, let's just do it online. So, you know, like, maybe within a week or two, we just set up an account on Google Classroom, informed our students, you know, we are going to just do classes online till, you know, till we can all meet. And so it was, so that thing happened very fast, like we didn't have any time to, you know, think too much on it. But the good thing is the technology, everything was there. And we checked with students and students were ready to go online. And so we just started classes online with using Google Classroom. And we have not done it before. This was new to us as well, but it worked out fine. We were somehow able to close, finish up spring semester. So this all happened in July last year, many of you remember that. And then we said, okay, for fall, fall semester starts, first Monday of August, we're going to open up admissions. So, you know, usually we start admissions in March, the early part of the year and we start planning and we start promotions and all those things happen. We interview the students and, you know, that's how we normally do it. But now everything is moved online. So literally within three weeks, within three weeks, we had to create a website. You know, we didn't have a website for our Bible college till then. So within three weeks, you know, the IT team was working many hours a day. We put up a website, we did promotions and we did admissions, everything online during the month of July, end of June, early July. And then we started promotions and then so we could admit students and then we started class, first week of August. And so I'm just giving that as an example where that was a situation of a rapid response. We didn't have much time, practically there wasn't like a whole lot of time to work with. You know, by June, July we had to do everything. We had to run classes for finishing spring. Now we had to get a website ready. We had to do online promotion and we had to take students, we had to start class by August. And somehow it just came together and we were able to do, you know, have classes. And so that's kind of how we've been going on now, so long with everything online. So what happened is a rapid response. We had to respond to the situation. But this is not how we normally work, right? Normally you would think of a practical timeline, you would give yourself a little bit more time to think through on how to do the project and so on. So you would usually look for a practical timeline and you don't want to overwork people. So, you know, I remember those three weeks last year when we were working many hours every day to get the website ready and launch and, you know, get all those things. But it was a short sprint, you know, it was like about few weeks and then came the admissions and all that. But it's not something we're doing every time. It's not something we do all the time. It was just that period. Normally you need to give yourself sufficient time to get something done. Another key success factor is good leadership. That means now the leader should be able to inspire the people, define the objective and take the people who are working the team of people towards the destination. So that's leadership. You're helping people make that journey in seeing that project happen and leadership is important. Good leadership is a key success factor. A good team of people with the right skills and who are committed to seeing the project successful. So you need to have the right kind of people without the right kind of people with the right skills. It's not going to, you know, make the project happen. It will be very difficult. Another key success factor is what we call it's good management. That means there's somebody who is watching over the progress reviewing, giving feedback, making improvements as the work is being done. So you need to have good management. Another key success factor would be the ability to resolve problems. In almost every project, there will be unexpected problems. Some of these could be internal, meaning it could happen between people. It could be relationships. It could be in terms of resources. It could be, you know, something unexpected happening internally. There could be also problems, maybe external factors change. You know, something unexpected happens in, that's not part of what you are doing. For example, if you have booked a certain venue where you want to have a conference. Say, oh, sorry, we have having problems and this venue was no longer available. Okay, so that's an external problem for whatever reason that venue became unavailable. So how do you resolve the problem? You know, you want to go ahead and have the conference, but there's a problem. The venue is not available that you've thought you're going to have. You have to quickly find a solution, right? So the ability to solve problems that happen unexpected problems. And that's very important because it's very likely there will be difficulties. There will be problems, but we have to solve them and move forward, right? And finally, lastly, another important success factor is there's got to be commitment to finishing well. That means everybody must be determined that, hey, we are going to make this happen. We want to do it well. We want to have a very good conference or we want to have a very good music album that we are producing. Or we want to be able to really serve, you know, these people that you're serving through this project. We want to do it well. There must be this commitment from the team to finish well. So there's just a little introduction today on, you know, projects, how to manage and run projects. Because in the local church or in the Christian ministry, the work we do, and I'm looking at it from a practical perspective, not the spiritual side, but the practical side. Every work we do, you know, ministry, conference, seminar, mission trip, special projects, you know, special things we do. Everything can be understood or taught through as a project. And you can go through these steps and you know, okay, what is needed to make that happen well. So if we as ministers, as leaders begin to handle these things that we're doing as projects and we know what goes into doing it well, then we can make sure that, you know, the different things that the church does, the ministries, conferences, so on. All of these things will happen well. Okay. So I'm going to pause here and let's see if there are any questions, any thoughts on what we have discussed or just shared so far. And any questions on projects and just this introduction part? Okay. About us reopening the Bible College for in-person classes, we will send an email out. We were just looking at, you know, how the government is deciding and what is being permitted, what's not being permitted and so on. And so it seems like that we will have a discussion and I think by the end of this week we will send an email out but it seems like we may open only in August next year. Reopen classes, in-person classes in August next year but we will have a meeting, you know, this week looking at what government is doing. And because what's happened now as the latest is, even though the government has given permission to open up classes, you know, there are students hesitant, teachers hesitant. I mean, I'm not saying I have a teacher, I'm saying in general. So we just have to be sensitive to what's happening here and then make a decision. Right. So we will let people know as soon as we have this meeting. All right. Okay. There are no questions. We will close in prayer. So what we're going to learn in the next couple of lectures is, you know, how do you run projects well? What are things you, how do you go through those five stages? What are the things you do? So that, you know, when each of you in your areas of ministry, when you take up anything, you know, maybe you have to do a conference or camp or something else, some other special project, you know, you'll know, okay, this is how I should start. This is how I should go about how I should plan, how I should execute, how I should monitor and how I should complete it, completion of the project and what I should do during the completion stage. And so that at the end of it, we want to do things well for, for God's glory and to serve people. Okay. Let's pray and then we will dismiss. Um, yeah. Can I ask maybe Dave, would you like to pray and dismiss us, please? Okay. Father, we come before you and we thank you for today's class for Jesus. We feel that we've learned so much about family and organizing Lord Jesus. Thank you for this opportunity, Lord Jesus. Thank you. Let us forward, Father, we ask Lord Jesus so that we can apply it and use it whenever we are in need of Lord Jesus. And I thank you, I pray for each one of us as we depart from our past Lord Jesus. We have so many parishes at the end, whatever we do, Lord Jesus, let everything that we do bring glory to your name, Lord Jesus. We thank you for this class. In the name of Jesus, I pray and amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you, everyone. God bless. See you again soon. Bye. Thank you, sir. Thank you.