 Okay. Good morning, Euro1 to BC310, church and ministry administration. Thanks to all of you for joining. Let's take a moment to pray and we'll get started. Somebody on the online class can pray. We want to thank you for this morning as we come before your presence this morning. We ask your grace and your presence to teach us and help us to understand, especially regarding church and ministry administration Lord, we pray that we will be able to grasp and understand it well and also be able to apply this in our practical life slot, help us to deliver it in the right way O God, help us to have a good time in your presence in Jesus' name. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Last week we were spending a time talking about organizational structure and we talked about, just to very quickly go through how to create this structure or design an organizational structure for our church or ministry that makes everything very efficient and helps people understand who's going to be doing what and coordinating among various ministries and so on. So we kind of shared what we are doing here at All People's Church. Some of this is still being worked upon because it's not fully grown yet. It's still developing and growing but we have various themes and then we talked a little bit on page 14, the bottom of page 14. We talked about how we can engage volunteers meaningfully in church. Today we go to lesson number five which is administrative policies, guidelines and standards. So in this lesson what I want to share with us is it is important that everybody working in the organization can follow the same approach to making decisions. We need to know why we are doing certain things. What should be the right decision? Not from a personal individual preference but from an organization or from the side or from the understanding of the from the perspective of the organization. So example, as a pastor if somebody comes and says shall I buy two eggs? I might say yes, I might say no but the person or the people need to know why you said yes or why you said no. So that if they were faced to the same question should you buy two eggs? They should be able to make the same kind of decision. The reasoning should be there. Why you said yes or why you said no? It may be a small thing, simple thing. It is making made up an example. But if they don't understand why I said yes or why I said no they won't be able to reproduce that decision. They'll always say you go and ask pastor because only he knows why he said yes or why he won't. But it will be so much better if we communicate with all the people involved. See this is why you say yes, this is why you say no if you are faced with this question. Should I buy two eggs? Example, how many people are going to eat? Do you have enough money to buy two eggs? Those basic questions you think through in your mind and based on all that you say yes or you say no. But that knowledge or that information must be transferred to other people so they also know how to make that decision. Otherwise they'll always keep coming back to you. Should I buy two eggs? Go and ask pastor. So that communication of those, the reasoning behind decisions, the reasoning behind why we should do something or we should not do something is what we call as is communicated through policies, through guidelines and through standards. So and this has to be written down. It can't be in my mind. If it's in my mind, others may not know it but if I write it down, I put it in a document and I share it and everybody understands, oh this is what you must do or this is what you must know. And then there are so many different scenarios, so many different situations that come up in the running of the church and the ministry. So many different situations. So obviously we cannot write policies or guidelines or standards for every situation but if you give one example and let me say for other situations that are similar to this, follow the same guideline or this is our church policy in these kinds of situations. Follow the same thing. Then people will make those same decisions. So let's give one example. You know when we started the church and I just give one example. When we started all people's church and the congregations started growing, we started getting requests from other ministries saying, we'd like to come and make an announcement during the Sunday service. Maybe there was some conference. They were having some conference. Maybe they were having some other event. They want to promote the event. So obviously you're promoting the event across churches. So they say, can we come? We'd like to make an announcement to your congregation about this event. Now in the beginning, we said yes. But I told them, please take only two minutes or sometimes I say five minutes. And what happened was we gave five minutes for them to come make an announcement about it will go on 10 minutes sometimes about 15. And then you cannot stop them because you're in the congregation. Everybody is watching. Congregation doesn't know that you've told them take two minutes or five minutes. These people happily are going on 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And this actually happened. So one mission organization came. They said, we want to talk about this, our mission, our organization to the congregation now that make a presentation. They said, fine, we'll give you five minutes. And this person, and he's the head of the organization, he's going on 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And I was feeling very upset. But I can't do anything. I said, why wait for him to get over. Then I realized, okay, see, this is not going to work. This is not practical because one, even if we give people five minutes, they're not following time. And we can't go and stop them in the middle. It's very embarrassing. Second, soon, many more organizations will keep coming. We want to make presentations. Every Sunday, there'll be some presentation, some promotion. We cannot keep going like this. And our main thing on the Sunday service is worship, prayer and word. That's it. This is the main thing. Even our own announcements, we try to keep it within five minutes. Like whatever you want to put in the finish. We don't want to make waste people's time. So then I realized, see, this thing is not going to work. So that time, we made a decision. So this we call a policy. I said, and I shared it with our staff, from now onward, this is going to be our church policy. That means if anybody comes and asks us, can we do promotion? Our answer will, in the service, our answer will be no. In our service, our policy is to only announce our own events. And even our own events will be taking only five minutes, not more than that. But if you want to make an announcement, this is our policy. And we will treat everybody equally like this. You can come, you can keep a table at the back outside the main auditorium. And you can do what you want. You put your handles, you put your posters, whatever you want, you come, you do it, and you go. Only thing over there, don't give any handles and people are coming inside the auditorium because then they'll carry it and they will leave it in the auditorium because we have to clean it. You give it and they're going off. So they will take it and go. So we made it very clear. And then from that time, that is our standard answer to anybody who asks us, we want to do promotion. Can we come and promote our event or anything? Our organization. This is it. As a church policy, this is it. Everybody, same thing. You come, you put a table, you put your hand, whatever you want to put. And give it when people are going out, not when they're coming in. Standard. So this is an example where you establish a pulse. And there is a reason why you do it. So then we write it down. So we wrote it down. It's number on our church website. We have guidelines section. So this is one. So today, and we keep our staff informed, everybody's informed. So today when there's a request, they know what to say. And everybody's saying the same thing, not like one person saying, yes, you can come or we don't know. No, the policy is there. We follow. So like that in different areas, we follow the same. We have written policies or guidelines, which people will follow. So it helps everybody, be together and respond to different situations. So I missed the policies. They help so establish efficiency, consistency, responsibility, accountability. So that's the reason. So for example, we have a policy on reimbursements. We have a policy on making purchases for everyone. We said, look, if you want to buy something, you first have, and if it is more than 5000 rupees, you have to send a request. You can't just go buy it and then say you pay me. No, you have to send a request saying, you know, you have to get it approved first. That means you send a request saying we need to buy example, we need to buy a keyboard for one location. This is how much it's going to cost. This is the link. We send an email request. It has to be approved. So it will come to our accountant. The copy will come to me. It has to be approved. Then we will buy it. You cannot simply go buy it and then say, hey, I bought it for church, please, dream once. It has to be approved. Otherwise, so the reason we have that in places, if it is not there, people simply spend money. You won't have any control. They'll go buy it and they say, now you're paying me back. So we have put this in place. It's a standard policy or before any events, like a conference, a camp, our policy or a guideline is whoever is responsible for the event must work a full budget. And you must send that budget for approval. The budget has to be approved. Only then they can go ahead and start making those arrangements. If it's not approved, then we may not pay for it. And it has to be done in writing. They can't just come and tell me, oh, we need so much money for this conference. We can discuss things, but even after we discuss, it has to be put in an email and it has to come and it has to be approved. So it's a guideline. That means this is how we are going to do these things. We cannot randomly spend this. So that's in the area of money. And then, so we have policies, we have guidelines, even for our different ministry teams or volunteer teams, there are guidelines on how the teams have to function, how people have to serve in the team. And then there are standards, meaning this is more for the actual work that is done, example, standards for our media team, standards for the video, how we produce the media, how we produce the media, standards, how things are written for the website, all of these things. And all of these things are documented, they're written. So if any new person joins, we just tell them, please read the guideline or read the standards so we can all follow the same thing. So it makes life easier. So what's the importance of having administrative policies or guidelines and practice standards? Here's some benefits. It provides guidance for the organization that people working in. So everybody understands how you're supposed to do it. It clarifies the organization's position on specific issues. Where does the organization stand? It makes it very clear. It becomes a basis for decision making. So other people can also make the same decision. There is a greater objectivity, that means people know why they're doing it. Consistency, we all do the same thing. Understanding, people understand it. And there is fairness. We treat everybody equal. There is no partiality. So today, we cannot tell any organization, for you, we give five minutes. For others, we don't. No, we treat everybody the same. There is fairness. Nobody is treated with any preference. And it also provides a basis to hold people accountable. That means we can ask questions, why? Why did you not do this? Or why did you do this? We can ask questions if the guidelines are certain. And if they didn't follow, we can ask. But if there was no written guideline, then we can't hold them accountable because they'll say, you never told me or I didn't know no, they can't say that because the guideline is written. We can hold them accountable to what they were supposed to do. So this leads us to the next point, which is everything must be written and available. So if all of this is clearly written and we document everything and we remind people over and over again. So I just shared with you the link for us. So we have a link. It's APCWO.org slash guidelines. You can go to APC. Let me just share this. Let me share this. Yeah, you can see it APCWO.org slash guidelines. So on this web page, we have guidelines for every little thing, I may not a little thing, but every area of ministry like book table, child protection, how all these various ministries are being done, various things, these all guidelines. Anybody who wants to can take it and use it. We tell people from other churches also, they can take it, they can modify this and use it for their church and ministry. But we have all of these guidelines, some policy statements here, some training documents, we want to train people and then we have role description. That means this particular role, what is that person's responsibility. So all of this is available here on this web page APCWO.org slash guidelines. And we tell people, you know, when if at any point we want to reference, tell somebody, what should I do, what should I do, we can always send them here. Hey, just read this guideline document followed out. So we make it available for our teams as well. Let me go back to sharing the PDF. Sorry, I've been jumping around. All right. So you can see the PDF now. Going back to that point, everything must be written down and available. So we have written everything as far as possible and try to keep it updated and people can, you know, read it and so on. Now let's think about this, you know, what will happen in an organization? Suppose there were no policies guidelines in standards. Suppose there was organization, or we're all going to work together. But if there were no policies, no guidelines, no standard established, try to imagine what would be happening in this kind of an organization. This decision making will be so difficult, because people won't know, what am I supposed to do, or why am I supposed to do it, you know, or maybe one certain people only will be the decision makers, others, they have to go to them for every decision. And it may be also very, you know, erratic. Sometimes they're saying yes, sometimes they're saying no. So people also get confused. What does this organization stand for? What do they, you know, do they say yes, or do they say no? Because there are no established policies, no established guidelines or standards. So, yeah, so these are some things that, you know, some examples. We have guidelines for our staff and consultants, workplace policies are included in that. How do we interact with external entities, contracts and lease. So, you know, before we take any place on lease, we make sure we have a written contract. We never do things just based on verbal agreement, because after five months, I told you and we'll say, I don't remember, you know, all those confusions will happen. We don't know what he said, if it's not written. So we never enter into any contract or any lease without a written document that is signed and kept. We never do that because it can give rise to a lot of problems later on. So even in those areas, so this is the same thing we tell, you know, I try to advise other pastors and others say, sometimes pastors, you know, they meet somebody in the church. That person says, oh, you can use my house for something. I just give a word. Oh, pastor gets very excited. That person is attending my church. He said, use my church, my house for something and they don't go and stop. Then after sometime this man said, you can use my house for five months, you didn't give me any rent. Then pastor said, but that time you didn't say five months ago, you didn't ask for rent. He said, no, no, but I was expecting you to give me a rent. Okay. How much rent? Then he will quote his own price. You know, so it leads to unnecessary problems. It is better even if somebody from the church, anyone known, they come and offer something. Okay, let us sit down, discuss, put everything in writing, then we will start. Then there is no confusion. Everything is clear, clean, and people are happy. So without any agreement without a contract, we don't enter into any kind of engagement. So that's part of our policy. It's very important. This is how we work. Then there are guidelines for volunteer teams, various specific teams and so on. There are guidelines and the guidelines basically say, you know, how should things be done? And the guideline documents are also helpful when you're training new people and make sure that there is quality and consistency regardless of who does the work, the output should be good and it should be the same standard. So having these guidelines and operating documents are very, very important. So I keep reminding our people, please write it down, document it, please. From time to time, we have to update those documents as we keep improving. The same thing is true for how we do a different work like graphics. So the way that every week we are producing graphics, if we don't follow certain standards, then big to big things will look very different. Suddenly it's this size, suddenly it's that big size, suddenly, you know, why are these people not being consistent in the way they are doing their work, their videos or their graphics or books as well. So if we have standards established, it will all look very nice. For example, all of our APC books, if we follow a standard, the book cover has to be like this, the name has to be here, the back cover has to be like this, these things that the inside cover has to be like this. So we have a written standard. So doesn't matter who joins the team, they read it and they follow. So it doesn't matter who's doing the work, the end result is okay, the book looks the same. There's a consistent look and feel to all the books we print. So it makes things look good. So similarly with the videos and graphics and so on. So the importance of having standards. So now our question which sometimes has come up is, believe us, may view policies, guidelines and standards as legalism. You're not giving any place for the Holy Spirit to give me some inspiration to do something different. I feel I had to follow only this, why can't I just be led by the Spirit and do as I please or as I feel led by the Spirit. So how do we help, first of all, how do we help people accept that there are policies, standards and guidelines and how do we give room for the leading of the Holy Spirit when we have set certain policies, standards and guidelines. So these are questions. So the first thing is, the first question is when we help believers understand that, understand why we are having these policies. It is to help us become better. It is not to control us. It is not to put a law upon us, but it is to help us all function well, to help in decision making, to help the work be of a certain quality. So the standards are actually helping us. It's not controlling helping us, but within the work we do, as long as you're following the guidelines, you are still listening to the Holy Spirit. You're still being led by the Spirit. So example, think about the graphics person. If he's going to do some graphics for a certain event, he can listen to God. He can, how he does the graphic is fine. But he has to follow certain standards. The picture has, it has to be this size, it has to be this dimensions, this big and so many pixels, etc., all that. He has to follow that. But within that is room for freedom to improve, do what you do. So these standards and policies, they are actually helping us. They're serving us. They're not controlling us. And within that, there is room for creativity and freedom to do things. Is that okay? You are with me so far? Question? Okay. Any question? Yes, sir. Go ahead. So somebody in the congregation offered a place or did they say they're going to give it for rent or they just said you can use it. So when they offered it to the, when they spoke to the pastor and said you can use it, they did not say give rent. They just said use it for the church. Then they use it for the church. And the author is taking the church. So what has happened is the church has taken the place, invested into that place by doing all the interior work, soundproofing everything. But nothing has been signed. So you've done all the work. After you've done the work, some problems have happened. Then I told them still some of the work has been done. Then she told I did some of the meetings. So after everything was done, they said you have to start paying rent. So they kept increasing the rent and nothing has been signed. Oh, so they can ask for anything? So they're asking for lots of money. And then when they're not, they're asking for some huge amount, if you're not able to pay, leave it less. Okay, leave it less. So because of the... So that was the same thing. So the main problem was there was no agreement signed before taking the place. Nothing was written. So they could really, once you've gone inside, once you've done all the work, interior work, they just kept asking more and more money. And when you were not able to pay the money, they said leave the place. And they never paid anything for what you've done inside. They didn't pay anything. So it's a big loss. I think that's, thank you for sharing that, but that's a big lesson for all of us. So before we go into any place, we have to, even if it's somebody from the congregation, we have to have a written rental agreement, discuss, write it down, only then go inside. Because people can also change. And even though they're from the congregation... So we have to pay the rent. We have to pay the rent. We have to pay the rent. So that was a big deal. It took a long time to get paid, but other than that, it was a big deal. Any questions from online students? Any thoughts? We just had one of us here sharing a practical experience as a pastor. Because there was no rental agreement, there were sort of problems that happened later on with somebody from the congregation. So what we are stressing is the importance of having policies, guidelines, standards, and having them written down. I'm just sharing from what we practice that we never take a place without rental agreement. We don't just do things based on people's words and so on, because as was shared in this example, things can change and they can put everybody else in trouble. So let's just move forward. Some other things on the same topic. So this whole idea that having policies, guidelines, and standards is legalism. It's something that we will have to respond to among our staff or among the people, the congregation. We need to let them know that these policies, guidelines, and standards are important. They are for our benefit and they don't intend to control us. So we have to help them understand why we have it. And there is freedom as long as you don't do things that are detrimental to the organization. So within that space, each one is free to serve. So let me just share some other examples. And many of these things we learned over time, sometimes we learned through our own mistakes. So for example, and this has to do with how do we work with other organizations, especially I'm thinking of organizations from overseas. So one of the, and I'm just sharing some practical examples. So one of the decisions we made at all people's church when we started was we will not be dependent on any money from overseas from outside India. We're going to do everything with the funds that we have within here that comes through our own people within India. And we're going to operate like that. So that was a decision we made even before we started the church, that this is how we're going to do it. It's going to be 100% indigenous organization. We will not receive any money from outside India. Now, so that was a thought and that was a policy. And we follow that. But then just to share some what happened. And maybe a few years in, like maybe about when we were not third year or fourth year, I don't remember exactly. We had a big church from overseas from the US. The person, I mean, there's some contact and they were willing to give money to do some work in our city. And I think it was like, you know, to remember correctly, the goal was like to start some sort of a coffee shop or some urban ministry like in the city, something that's relevant for the city. So that was like an opportunity coming to us. But the question was how are we going to work? And one of the things that was very clear was that for me, I had to be very careful that somebody wants to come and do something in in Bangalore, it's up to them. If they want to work with us, fine, but we want to be very clear that they're not going to take over the leadership of what we are doing. So that was one example where I simply wrote back and said, See, if you want to give money to do something here, that's fine. But we want to be very clear that the control of all people's church will not come under that big, you know, that big church, that's a big mega church from the US. People will be running by ourselves and so I made it very clear and then that actually ended everything. Like they didn't take it forward from there. They just left us. And so we never got involved. So like that, we've had a couple of other experiences where we've had organizations from overseas come and I had to be very clear as a policy that, you know, you can be, they can come and you can, you know, if you want to attend or people search, you're welcome to attend. If you want to serve our policies, the leadership of every team will be our own people, indigenous. Because what I observed and this happened in the past was they'll come, they'll do something and after two years they leave. And when they leave, if they were leading that ministry, everything is gone. And then all the time and effort that we've invested is all gone. So then I learned from those mistakes and then we put a policy in place that any ministry we start, even if they come to serve in that ministry, like I'm talking about a ministry from overseas, the leadership will be our local leadership. Somebody from our church will lead it so that if they go on which most often they will leave after two years, they'll go back because we are leading it, we can continue that. So that was something because we learned through mistakes and then we put that policy in place that this is a real function. If anybody from overseas wants to come and do something, this is how it will happen. But then many of them don't like that because when they come, they want to lead it. But this is sorry, that's not the way we even work. If it's something you're doing with us, we will leave the book. You work under our leadership because very often after two years, three years, they will pack up and go back. Then what will happen to that ministry if they are leading? So that's again a policy that in how we work with overseas ministries, some learning lessons we have to learn and therefore put certain policies in place in working with overseas ministries. So we have to be careful in that area. And also partnering with other ministries, we are careful that we will bless them and how they wish to work with us, it's fine. But we will not interfere in their functioning and we will not let them interfere in how we function. So we will not go in and start telling them how to do things. We respect that organization's way of working and we expect them also to respect how we work. So then we can work together without interfering in each other's internal matters. Be very careful in those things. So when we have these policies, guidelines and standards, then it also helps us work with other organizations, whether they are overseas or other organizations within our country. It's very clear we don't interfere in their matters. They won't interfere in our matters, but we're working together for the same, for the cause of God's kingdom. So we partner with many other mission organizations around the country, but it's very clear how we work with them. Any questions on this thing, on this subject from those online? Yes, comments, please go ahead. Yes, Pastor, it's not a question. It is an experience. Please go ahead. Yeah, in 2017, we happened to rent an institution like a school that was fading from its owner. And why I'm so appreciative of this course is that of this very course is that we learnt the hard way. Maybe I should say that we learnt the lesson in the hardest way. The owner leased the entire property to us and it was a contract of five years and it was collapsing. It was indeed in a limbo. So we made a foolish contract with them. They gave us the accounts. We had to maintain the name of the school and we maintained the accounts. So she wrote a document and it looks kind of confusing. She was a pastor, so she made for us a document and we were allowed to sign money from the accounts. So this was the biggest blunder we made. After some time when money was on the account like around, it was not much, but it was much on our side then. It was like 25,000 USD. She out of the blue removed us from the accounts. We had no access on the accounts. And when we were like, and she always was monitoring the accounts down there because the person was the one who had opened up the account. Her number was down there and we wouldn't see because foolishly when we were writing on the checks, we thought that everything was under control. By the time we brought in our lawyer, the lawyers of the bank and her lawyers, we were tossed. We were down under the carpet. They said no, this is our client. She gave us a document that you would sign on the account, but now she has written another one. So that it took us a while to survive that one. So even when you're going into the accounts, I mean into the contract, you must have genuine lawyers to make for you the legal documents. And those people who can't change themselves, usually when you're in a foreign country or you might buy off somebody, but when that person is also working for the other organization, when you don't know, they usually put there some tricks. So I'm so delightful that maybe it is now six, seven years down the road, but we are still suffering from that very loss. Because it was a very big institution, but it was collapsing. It was like entering like a hundred, 13,000 per month, I mean per four years, 13,000 USD, I mean per four months. But by the time we left after three years, it was in 60,000. So you see how much we put our heads down the ground because of foolishness in making the contracts. So thank you so much. And I think my colleagues will learn from that. It is clear that they should make contracts with genuine people and from people who are educated. Otherwise, they will be crying in the darkness one day. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you. Thank you, Collins, for sharing that experience. Yeah, I think that's a very valid point, which adds to what, you know. So I was only saying you should have a contract, but I think Collins said, you know, very, very important. Make sure the contract is right. Check the contract. Have some, you know, qualified people check the contract. Because even when we write it, I mean, even if you have a written contract, it has to be tight. Things cannot be changed, modified. We have to be very careful because, you know, not everybody, even though we are church, we are ministry, not everybody is going to treat us kindly. You know, sometimes they take advantage of us. Because we are a church, because we are a Christian ministry, they know that we are going to try to be kind and honest. And they'll use, take advantage of us from that perspective. So very valid point. Contracts must be checked and legally verified. Yeah, thank you. So think about these things when, when for your church, for your organization, it is hard work. You know, it is hard work, you know, having these policies, having these guidelines, having these standards, not easy. You know, it's so much easier that, oh, don't worry, just trust everybody and do it. But actually, that might get us into a lot of trouble, as Colin Collins was sharing. So all that is hard work. We must make sure that, you know, we put everything down in writing. And then it'll save us and save all the others involved in the ministry. Okay. So let's take a little break now for 10 minutes, come back. And then we'll get into our next lesson, lesson number six on systems and processes. And just, we'll go through on how do we set up good systems and processes within the organization. Thank you. Let's come back in 10 minutes.