 Alright, recording is on. Welcome to BC 309. Let's get our class started. Let's take a moment to pray and start. Good morning everybody. Good to see all of you. Can somebody just lead us in prayer please? I'd like to pray. Alright. Okay. How should I go ahead? I think it's so much better. It's one of our classmates though that they've grown wisdom and knowledge and strength Lord. I pray that you pour out your spirit. Thank you Lord for everything and you need me pray. Amen. Amen. Okay. Welcome everyone to the class. Yesterday, we started talking about some strategies for urban missions. We're just looking at, I got me to share the notes so I can look at it together. So we were talking about strategies for urban evangelism or urban missions. So, you know, when you are pioneering a church in a city, planting a church in a city, one of the things that we have to do is to think about how to reach people in the city. And so we're just discussing or sharing, you know, some of our learnings along those lines. We said that, sorry, we would look at strategies for different age groups. We would also look at strategies for different areas of need in the city. We could also look at strategies for different spheres of activity, you know, different areas, example of education, government, business, so on and so forth, different spheres. You can target individual spheres and talk about some of those things. We can also look at leveraging tools to reach people. And most importantly, we said, you know, we need to disciple people, equip them so that they can then reach out to more people. So we started talking about the first one, which is strategies for different age groups. We spoke a little bit about children, which is children, what can be done. And then, you know, there are many, many, many ways to serve children. I'm not saying what we've talked about are the only ways. God will give people different ideas, different strategies, whether you're reaching a small community or whether you're serving hundreds of children, you know, doesn't matter. But each one starts off doing what God has called us to do, and then we go from that. So God can give us different ideas, different parts of the world, different places. He can give us different ideas to serve people. So children we talked about, and we talked about the youth. And what we were sharing yesterday was that, you know, we need to understand urban youth, what are the challenges they're going through, what are their struggles today, especially now that, you know, we've gone through a pandemic, and their education would have been disturbed in some way. Families could have been affected. So many things are there, so we need to understand what are they going through, how can we meaningfully reach out to them. And, you know, I shared some of the things that we were able to have done here, trying to do it. Also, we need to do things a little differently now, post-pandemic, based on what's available, and we are going to look into those things. We, you know, one of the things we used to do in the past was having youth concerts. These were music concerts that we would just let people know it's a Christian music concert, in the sense that it's not a concert in a typical sense, like a rock band or something. You know, it's a Christian, it's hosted by the church. And then we just invite people to come. So we did that, and we've done, I think, at least one or two, I can remember, in our own city in Bangalore, and then we did some youth concerts in Mangalore. I think we did it twice. And, you know, just being our worship team, but singing songs, you know, in a more contemporary style that will be more relevant to the youth, and they would come in, and then you'd only share the gospel message, you should pray and minister to the people, and so on. So that's just another way to reach out to people. You could have youth meetings or events where you could invite people to come, like, you know, you could have a camp, a picnic, so on. They come and they interact, they are exposed to the gospel, and lives can be touched. So this is just a few things. There can be many things that we can think about as we reach youth. The next thing we want to talk about are young adults. So here we talk about people who have, you know, they've come out of college, they've started working young professionals, and then they are in that stage of life where they want to do well professionally. And they're also, you know, they've started to think about marriage and so on. So they're in there, you know, we would say mid to mid 20s on, 25 up. They are in that stage of life. They want to grow professionally, and they're thinking about marriage as well. So how do we serve this age group? Now, some of the things that we've tried to do from time to time, one is we have professional, we call it professional conferences. Basically, it's a one day conference where we will address, we will talk about teams that are relevant to those who are in the workplace professionals, but from a biblical perspective. So it's a time for professionals to come together. It's a time for these young professionals to see that there are other professionals who, you know, they've journeyed through their career maybe and they're still, they are believers, they're Christians in the workplace. So the workplace would be difficult, there could be lots of challenges, but they can be inspired by just interacting with professionals who are older, but who are believers. So that's a good thing. They can build connections, build relationships, and also hear some practical things on how people are navigating the workplace as believers, applying biblical principles and so on. So this is a professional conference. It's just a platform forum and opportunity for them to become and be inspired with faith, but it's something relevant to that age group. They're in the workplace, they're starting up the professional life, and they do have questions, how can I be a Christian in the workplace? How do I maintain my faith? How do I do things in a proper way in an ethical manner? These practical questions. So another important thing that has happened in the past was workplace groups. Now I can't think of anything happening at the moment because people are still coming back to work and all those things are still unsure, but before the pandemic we used to have workplace groups, that means in the workplace they used to meet for prayer. So in some situations people were allowed to use the facility like a conference for something with permission. In some cases they would meet outside of the office facility because you're not allowed to do that in the office, so they meet outside for prayer and so on. So just depending on what is allowed in those contexts, they would just meet for a press-up time, 15 minutes, half an hour, just pray and go out. So that's also a way where they could invite other young people to come, who may not be of the faith, but they could just come for prayer and then they are exposed to things of the faith. We also have done special seminars. Preparing for marriage would be one of those topics which would attract these people, because they are thinking about marriage, they're mid-20s, late-20s, they're beginning to think, okay, so when we have a seminar on preparing for marriage, it does attract a lot of these young people. They would come, look at it from a biblical perspective, how do you prepare yourself for marriage? What are the things you need to be ready in order for marriage? So can those special seminars would be useful? For some life skills, what are the skills and practical things? These are topics that would attract them, they would come. And I think also a very important part for young people are these small groups. We call them life groups here. Some people may call them home groups. These home groups are also very important for young adults because many of them would have come into the city, they would have left their home, wherever their home city is. They've moved into the city because of work. So they are looking for community, they're looking for meaningful friendships and relationships. So these life groups become an important piece in their spiritual journey. So this also is very useful, they can meet with other young people, young adults, whether men meet with men or girls meet with girls, or sometimes they even meet in family groups. So whatever works for them. But it becomes very important to them becoming strong in their faith and it becomes an opportunity to also reach out to new people. So these are some things that seem to have worked for us in our context here in Bangalore city to reach this age group. Young adults, we're talking about mid-20s on towards the 30s in their professional life preparing for marriage, that stage. These are some of the things that have been very useful. Let me pause here. Anything else anybody wants to share that you have found useful for the adult age group? We're talking 25 to about 33 years, that age group, and they're about any other thoughts, from your experience, from what you're doing, do you want to share anything for young professionals? Anybody wants to share? So we have to think, what are their needs, this particular age group in the community that you're working and then think about what can be done to serve them and then through that we introduce them to Jesus, introduce them to the Word of God and help them grow in their faith in the spiritual journey. So let's just talk about some of the other age groups and just share a few thoughts on other age groups. So you think about married families, married people or families. What are some of the things that can be done to reach people? So here, marriage courses, marriage seminars, workshops would be useful. Also workshops for parenting would be useful, for that age group. So what we have done, what we did actually, in 2010, I'm thinking, somewhere there in 2010, 2011, we created something called Christmas counseling. So it's just a ministry of the church. We just gave it a name, Christmas counseling. And the idea was we would have trained professional Christian counselors. These are people who have much of them, they've studied psychology or done something like that and they're professional counselors, but they're believers, Christians. And they will provide counseling for people. So we were looking at both people in the church plus people outside the church as a way for us to serve them as well. So what Christmas counseling has done, and continues to do typically every year, is to have workshops on parenting and on marriage. And what we've done in the past, again, I'm talking about pre-pandemic. Now after pandemic, we're just slowly bringing these things back. But previous pre-pandemic, what we were doing is we would do parenting workshop and we would intensely open it out or advertise it or promote it outside of the church community. Of course, the church committee was part of who we invited, but we would also invite people outside the church community. In some situations that we've done parenting workshops inside an apartment complex. So we would go get permission, of course, and then to run a parenting workshop there where there were several hundreds of families living in that complex, invite them. And we saw that non-Christians were willing to come for a parenting workshop, even though they knew. It was very clear that it was being hosted by a church. The church was running a parenting workshop. Non-Christians came. We did that once at a hotel. Actually, we did a marriage workshop in a hotel and not many non-Christian couples came. They knew it was being run by a church, but they came. They were willing to come and listen and learn. We also done parenting workshop in Englobe, another city. There again, we had a good response from people who were non-Christians. They would come to listen because challenges in parenting or marriage, it's not just for Christians. Everybody faces questions and challenges in these areas. It's common. So let me run a workshop for a parenting workshop or a marriage workshop. We can open it out to people. And it's very clear that it's coming. It's a church that's hosting the workshop or something like that. So they know it's coming from a Christian perspective, but they would come and listen. And it's an opportunity for them to interface with the church. And if they're interested, they can always explore a little bit more. So we've done those kinds of things to serve people. And of course, the counseling service always remains available. So people come to receive one-on-one counseling. That's an ongoing thing. In fact, what we are finding these days is there are at least 10 new people every month who are reaching out for help for counseling. So the numbers are growing, meaning we have the ongoing people who are being served, but then there are at least 10 new people reaching out every month for some sort of counseling help. And it's open to people from the church and outside the church. So we're not restricting. But this counseling service, workshop, parenting, it has really helped us serve people in this age group, marriages and families. But the fact is the need here is huge. It's big for this age group. People, let's say, mid-35 up on through till their 50s. They're going through these problems with their marriage or parenting, having those struggles. And if we can address that, it becomes a great opportunity for ministry. And then we do these men's conferences. These are actually tailored for believers. So strengthen the believers in here. And then senior citizens, which are older people. Now, I have to confess that we have not done too much in this area. We haven't put in a lot of thought and effort in here, which I think we need to. But that, again, is an age group that needs to be addressed, where as people go into, say, they come out of the workplace, they step into maybe retirement or semi-retirement stage. How do we serve them? That's something we need to, we can do. But we at APC have not done much. We need to think more on that. Let me pause here and see if anybody else has any thoughts and ideas on reaching this age group, the married family, senior citizens. We'll take some thoughts and ideas on that. Sri Kumar, go ahead, please. Thank you, sir. Sir, I just want to know about the counseling part. Do we also have any counseling for the youths? And also, do we have any counseling regarding to, especially for the youths, when they are going through certain depressions and so many challenges even they also have? And also helping them to take the right direction regarding to their career. So many youths, they may be struggling on that area. So do we have even such kind of programs where we strengthen, how we are like strength focusing on married couples and others? Do we have that also? Thank you, sir. Excellent question. The answer to that is, right now we don't have those kind of counselors but I am actually interviewing people now because we wanted to see, we have three counselors but these people are kind of more geared towards like what we say, the married and the parenting and those kinds of, that area, that is their expertise. So right now we are interviewing counselors who would serve exactly what you mentioned. We are trying to find, we really need counselors for children, children and that age group that is still about 18, 19 and we are also interviewing counselors for the young adults that they have come out of college and they are in that state. They are not married, so their problems are not marriage and parenting, their problems are there. So we are actually looking for counselors, we are interviewing counselors to fill these two areas but that is exactly what you have picked up. What we used to do in the past is, you know, when we either, these children would speak to the children's pastor or the youth would speak to the youth pastor. That happens, it continues to happen but the pastors are not counselors, meaning they are not trained to deal with some complex problems. They would definitely care for the children or the youth spiritually and guide them but they are not professional counselors to deal with some more complex situations. Also, like you pointed out, a lot of these young people need career counseling, that means, you know, how do I make choice about what courses to take, what career to pursue. Again, so the pastors are not necessarily equipped to do that. That is not what they are focused on. So in the past, we have done workshops, you know, career and actually, I think it is once a year we should do this workshop on career choices and all of that. That was a small response to this need but what we realized after the pandemic is that we need to have dedicated counselors for children and for young adults. We are interviewing counselors for that. So the challenge is, you know, we need Christian counselors, not just people or general counselors because those people are really on the side, they can go but we are looking for people who are good professionally but also they need to have a good spiritual thing. So we are interviewing people but that is exactly the need we are trying to fill right now and we will have them as full-time counselors as part of Christmas counseling. So good point, we are trying to address it now. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Charles, do you have something to say? Yes. Thank you, pastor. My contribution was about the Maledes Fellowship. The church arranges the Maledes Fellowship and the Maledes are also separated into two. There are the young Maledes and even those that are seniors, the senior citizens. So that's what we do with the marriage type. They have the marriage fellowship or home sales and they are able to do that. That's what I wanted to say. No, sir. Good. That's good. So that particular stage in life from the time they get married on, their journey through parenting and all that, there's a lot of tension because people have to balance family, work, children. So there's a lot of need. And honestly, I feel at least my observation is the need is so great both in the church and outside. But I feel at least what we are doing is very, very little compared to the need. But if we can have more people, more counselors available, we can actually go more aggressively outside the church. We can tell them, hey, look, there is counseling available, there is help available for marriages and parenting and people can reach out. And it becomes a great opportunity actually to reach people outside the church. Because those needs are there. It's very real. People are struggling. But we need to be able to throw the net, so to speak, to say that we can help. But for that, we need good people. We need good counselors. And that, I feel, is a challenge for intimate people. They may be good psychologists. In my observation from the interviews I've done, they're good psychologists. They've got a master's degree or whatever. But then spiritually, from a Bible side, we found them lacking. And so we are hesitant to bring them on board because ours as a church ministry, the spiritual emphasis is important for us. So we're still looking. But I believe it's a big need in the city. If the church can be positioned to serve those people, we can reach many things. And through that, providing counseling and help for those marriages and parenting, it's a great need. Good. Anybody else with any thoughts? Things that's going on in your area? So I see Tharun's sharing. I think it's an interesting observation Tharun has just shared. Digital literacy to elderly people. Interesting. I never thought of that. But it's really true. So when you're talking about that older group, elderly people, digital literacy, helping them just come up to speed with technology, using some basic things, I think it's interesting. Interesting need. And I think we should try it out. And I think it'll also be a great way for young people to build a bridge between the young people and the elderly as young people can come in and very patiently and lovingly share with the elderly. This is how we use technology. We use whatever you know. And be of assistance. I think it'll really help build a bridge. I never thought of it. But thanks for sharing that. It's something we should try. Great. Anything else? Any other thoughts on reaching these different age groups? Any other experiences people want to share? What you have done in your parts of the world in reaching different age groups? Okay. All right. So let's move forward. We'll talk a few more strategies. So one is, you know, you look at different age groups. I like that idea that Tharun just shared for senior citizens, what it can do. Now, we have done a little bit of visiting to old age homes. That's usually around Christmas. We did a little bit of that. But like I mentioned, this is an area where we need to do much more. We need to think about strategies how to serve people better. Now, the second way we can develop strategies is by addressing areas of need in the city. And of course, there will be many areas of need. We cannot address all of them. If God would lead you to take those up or you can help other organizations address those needs. So that is something we have done in the sense that, for example, the area of drug addiction, we as a church, for us to set up a rehab center and work. I mean, that's a big undertaking. And so we did not get into that ourselves. But what we have done and continue to do is to help one other Christian organization that we know that's working in this area. So we help them financially. And so that they can do the job. They know how to do it. They have a place in all of those things. For us, we don't have the expertise. We don't have the people. But we can come behind them as these people in the city. And if at all we run into people who need help, we refer them to that place. So that's kind of one way we've done that. Similarly for people who are working in the poor areas of our city, again, what we've done is from time to time, we come alongside other people who are doing the work. We have people from our own church who have their own ministry. And so we try to encourage that. And so we're not directly involved, but we come alongside others who are doing the work because they have the time and they've got things in place to be able to serve others. So we can think about other areas of need and how to serve those people. But in many of these, it does require certain kind of expertise. For example, suicide. If you want to help people who are at that point, we need to have people trained who know how to do it. So that if there's a source that help lying or something like that, trained people should be able to answer the call and guide them. So these are things that require certain skills, but we can think about it and look at ways in which we can serve people. In the area of financial guidance, what we have done is we do financial planning workshops about three times a year. Now, of course, this is primarily geared towards our own church people to provide them financial guidance, how to do it, how to take care of, manage their own personal finances. But it can also become an opportunity to invite people from outside the church if there's a need. Now, of course, financial guidance they can get from many sources, their own bankers and others, childhood accountants and so on. But it's an area of need because there are people, young people especially, who want to know how do I manage my money, how do I manage my car, how do I save, how do I invest, et cetera. And so this becomes important. In helping people look for jobs, we have a small mechanism. So if people come, it's part of our Christian Professions Ministry. They share their resume and then that resume gets distributed in some small way, sort of big formal way. But in a small way, we try to help people find jobs in their areas. So I'm just mentioning that these are areas where work can be done in the city and there could be many more areas that we can identify and try to help. And through that, we can reach people in the city and so on. Number three is different spheres of activity. So we think about education, arts, media, business, government, family, religion, arts and entertainment and look at how the church can get in there and do something. One of the common areas in this arts and entertainment sphere of course has been sports outreach. We've not done anything formally but I know in our city there are these sports ministries. Ministries that are geared, they may play soccer, they may have soccer camps and through that they reach out to people. So sports becomes one way by which they can reach out to people. Or having an arts conference or giving opportunity to people in this space so arts and entertainment come and share their talent becomes an opportunity to reach people. So we can think of ways by which we can target needs or target address matters of importance to people in these different spheres of activity and reach out to them. Now, again here I feel there's so much that can be done. We at APCR are not doing much but a lot can be done. We definitely need people who will think strategically and then begin to move into those areas. For me personally I'm always ready looking out to people who have a passion who want to do something then we can get behind them and help them carry out those ministries but we must keep open. So I've put out a question here. Traditionally the church has kept away from engaging in certain spheres especially so media arts and entertainment. How can we get the church to rethink involvement of believers in these areas? We're talking about specifically these seven spheres and also media arts and entertainment. How can we get the church to begin to engage people in these spheres? So let's take a few moments to share thoughts if anybody wants to do that at this time. How do we get the church to engage in these spheres? Especially media arts, entertainment, come up with strategies, come up with ways of reaching people because these are very influential people, people in government, people in education, people in business. How can we get the church to engage? Please feel free to share your thoughts. Anyone? You're up with me so far, I'm pretty sure you're quiet today. Go ahead, have to hear your thoughts, have to hear what you have to say. Okay, I see Shikramar is talking about having special conferences, doing conferences that are relevant to people in these different spheres. Yes, that's great. Anything else? So I think we have a lot of thinking to do, a lot of strategizing to do. And if I look at our own church or people's church, I feel there's a lot of known that we should be doing in our city to reaching people actively. Now, of course, the simplest and the easiest, they call it low hanging fruit, is that you already have believers in the church who are involved in these spheres. There are already people in the church who are involved in education. There are already people in the church who are involved, maybe to some extent in government or civil services. There are already people in the church who are involved in media or technology or whatever. There are only people there. So the first thing that can be done is to empower these people to make a difference in their own spheres, because they're in it five days a week, going into those spheres. They're there. So that could be a good starting point. And I see Avani's comment there, educating about the need in the church. So I think that that would be a good starting point to mobilize our own people, who are already there in the church, who are already in the congregation, and saying, look, when you go out and do these different spheres, you're interacting with people. You're interacting with influential people. How can you make a difference? You're getting that going. And from there, praying that God would birth certain ministries in all these different spheres so that we can begin to engage those spheres, meaningfully serve people in those spheres of activity, like those are in media. How can we serve them? How can we address their needs? Those are in education. How can we serve them? How can we address their needs? And so if we can mobilize people in our congregations, first of all, to impact their spheres, because they're already going into five days a week, six days a week, and then from there to birth certain ministries that can serve. I think that's an interesting journey to make, and we have not done too much, but I would definitely love to see that happen at all people's churches and see it happen so we can engage these spheres. And I would encourage you also in your churches and your ministries to think along those lines. God may give you some ideas to reach different spheres right to it. Let me see what Kennedy says. Kennedy says, by engagement and empowering the Word of God and financially, to empower people to do something. Yeah. So Asha is sharing about inviting people. Our Bible College students were here on campus. They go out on Thursdays. They go out to evangelize near our colleges that are nearby. So they did split flyers. They're inviting students to the seminar series of Breathe and Science. So that's practically reaching out to college students, and they're inviting them. So our Bible College students are doing that. I said reach out to the colleges near area. Okay. So let's wrap this up. I just see Tharon's comment. Churches can lead film festivals, contests, build facilities. Yeah. So I think churches can, yeah, if they're able to engage, like what Tharon has said, very meaningfully, specifically. So if it's a film festival and the church can do something really good, it will definitely attract people to come. And of course, it becomes a point of serving, a point of interfacing with people in that sphere of activity. Or have some sort of contests or things that people can come and engage, build facilities. Yeah. And I understand that that would be a big undertaking, right? But that can be done. Yeah. Yeah. I think we just need vision. Yeah. I just wanted to say like it's mostly theme-based facilities. Like most people will be looking out for good digital studios to come up with something. If we have facilities that we can lend out, right groups, although the groups come together to compose a song or something, they lack the right facilities and the instruments and things like that. But if we have something and if we have theme-based contests, like even if it's a film festival, there are like short film festivals that they do specifically on themes. If we set a theme and invite people to participate in that, we might end up getting a pool of good short films which are very meaningful, which will help in evangelizing. So it's the way we design and the contest so that we invite the right group to participate and also help them to stand out in the industry. Okay. Good. It's interesting. We've got to try these things out and especially here to see how we can use this. Good points. Good points. Okay. Anything else? Anybody? Okay. So, yeah, think about the different spheres of activity. I think a lot can be done if you begin to think about this and move into these areas strategically. Basically, we are reaching into the influential. There could be people who are influential, maybe in thought. They are thought leaders in those areas. They could be influential in terms of being high achievers, celebrities, so on. And so if we can think about these things, we can make a difference. Think about Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector. He was a rich man. He was interested in looking at Jesus. Who is this Jesus? He was curious. And Jesus impacted him. He said, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your home today. And he impacted Zacchaeus. There was a turnaround in his life and we don't know how many others may have been impacted because of Zacchaeus being touched by the Lord Jesus. So reaching people in these spheres of activity is important. They will then impact many others who are being influenced by them. So we need to think through all these things. So we'll pick this up next week. We will just talk about strategies using tools. And I can maybe share some of the things we are doing here on how actually these tools are very useful in reaching people. We'll talk about that and then we'll get into the seven-month assignment. All right. So thanks. I hope these sessions are just getting you to think of ideas and strategies and the different groups of people that we need to be reaching as we plant churches in urban centers. Okay. Let's close in prayer. I'm going to request somebody just to pray with us and then we can close. Good luck. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for what we have learned and discussed through this class. Father, we pray that it is you who places magnificent goals and the plans that you have for your church are mighty, Lord Father. We pray that you use each one of them who is listening to this as instruments to do your mighty work, Lord Father. We pray that you instill the courage and confidence as we think through these ideas that we get to make it happen. For we know that you are a God who is standing behind and you are the one who is going ahead and doing this for us, Lord. We thank you for what we have learned through. We thank you for helping us expand our thoughts. We pray that we continue to ponder on this and accomplish what you want us to accomplish through these classes, Lord. We thank you for Pastor Ashish who has taught us today. We pray that you always keep blessing. We pray for a good rest of the week, Lord. We thank you and we ask this in Jesus' name. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Good day. God bless. Thank you, Father.