 Welcome to this class on church and ministry administration. Today we're going to start talking about finances, the financial side of things, finance accounting and budgeting. That's what we're going to start talking about. So this is an important part of church ministry, church and ministry administration. A very important part of it, finance, financial management, accounting, budgeting. So let's take a moment to pray and then we will get started. I'm sure the others will get into the class in the meantime. Let's pray. Could somebody lead us in prayer? Let me pray. Lord, thank you for this another session to learn your word. Lord, as we learn your wonderful word, Lord, enlighten us all mentally and spiritually, Lord, with your word. So Lord, be with us and guide us, Lord, with your spiritual decision. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Thank you. So we're getting started to talk about a spot of church ministry administration. We're going to talk about finance, accounting and budgeting. And in this lecture, I want to just focus a little bit, focus on the biblical side of finances from a church and a ministry standpoint. And then the next lecture on, we may spend about one or two lectures, additional lectures on this, and we will talk about all the practical things that we need to do. But I want to help us get a biblical understanding on this. Now, finances in financial management, I should say, financial management for church or ministry is so very, very important. And, you know, we will see from scripture that, you know, God views it as very important and his, their instructions given to us in his word. But also from a, you know, from a practical standpoint, one is we all understand we need money to do the ministry, whether you put this a church or whether it's any other form of Christian ministry, you know, whatever organization or whatever kind of ministry you're doing, almost everything requires money. Now we need money. We need money to do the ministry. Even to have a congregation to run a church, you need money because you need money to rent your place, you know, buy equipment, if you're having staff, you need to pay the staff, you need to, there are other expenses. So all of these things require money. But money or mismanaging money can be very, can be disastrous. And we have seen and, you know, church history go back in time or even you look at recent history, recent times, big churches and ministries can just crumble overnight because of mishandling of money. Or in some cases, the ministry may continue, but the mishandling of money brings a lot of disrepute, dishonor to the name of Jesus. And there are just so many, so many examples. Of course, it's the big ministries that get published in newspapers. But there are obviously small things happening around us in churches and so much may not be picked up by the news and so will not be heard by many people. But the fact is whether you're a big global ministry or whether you're a small, you know, a small ministry, whatever this mismanagement of money or finances, it's going to cause problems and it's going to bring dishonor and disrepute. And sadly, this has been happening and continues to happen very often. And so all, so all I want to, you know, one of the key things I want us to take away from these lectures and we will do about two or three of these lectures on finances is that it is so important to be very careful, very careful. You know, one of the things that that I personally as as a pastor, that I am very concerned about is the money. Now, the reason I'm concerned about is because I am not directly involved in it. And I don't handle it. We have an accountant and, you know, we have other people handling it. So I'm not directly involved. I may approve things that are some of the bigger things. But on a day to day basis, there's a lot of small, small, small things happening, you know, which I'm not, I don't even, I don't know every bill that's being paid. I don't know every, you know, every transaction is happening. I can't be sitting and watching that. And so of course, that whole financial side has been entrusted to some other people. But if something goes wrong there, the whole ministry can collapse. You know, and that's why, you know, I can't overemphasize how important this is. You know, just to give you some examples, practical things. I mean, there was, and I'm, you know, I'm mentioning names just to let you know that these are real stories, not to defame these people, because people themselves, they were genuine. But mistakes happened, you know. And I'm just mentioning some of the stories. Some, there's just many, many, many examples. One I think of was a wonderful man of God called Larry Lee. This is from America. And in the 1980s, 1990s, especially, he was, he was coming up as one of the foremost leaders, spiritual leaders in America, Larry Lee. He was pastor of Church on the Rock. He had graduated from Oral Roberts University. He was doing wonderful ministry. And in those days, he was a prayer, he was a pastor, but he was a prayer leader for the nation. So when Larry Lee would have prayer conferences, the stadiums would be packed. And they would come and spend hours in prayer for cities. So that was, you know, he was a prayer leader. And he had written books on prayer, you know, one well-known book was, Could You Not Taddy With Me For One Hour. It was a very well-known book, widely circulated in those days. And so amazing ministry, powerful, wonderful man of God, genuine man of God. And like I said, he was a prayer leader, wonderful. He was really causing the Church of Jesus Christ to grow in prayer. But something happened in his church, in his ministry, church ministry. People found that, you know, the numbers were big, meaning that the congregation was growing, the numbers were big. I'm sure like he himself was like, cannot handle all the details. But they just showed, you know, so basically what happened was offerings that were being collected. Sometimes the envelopes were, you know, the way the envelopes in which people would put money and put it in the offering box. They just showed that, you know, when people put in prayer requests and all of that, the money was taken and envelopes were being thrown out and things like that. So the news media came, they showed this on television. This was what happened. And, you know, something small like this, I'm saying quote unquote small, it is important. I'm not saying it's not important. But I'm saying just the fact that the news media picked this up, went on television, that this is what was happening. And Larry Lee is himself directly not responsible. You know, this is like how the offering is received. And, you know, Larry Lee is not the one sitting and counting the money. The offerings being received, it's being processed by the people who are supposed to handle the money. But in the process, you know, envelopes were thrown off, prayer requests were thrown off, money was collected. And this came out in the news media. It had such a big impact on the ministry, the whole ministry collapsed. The whole ministry, the church was shut. It was so tragic. Was Larry Lee directly responsible for this? From my understanding, no. It was people in the organization who were collecting the offering and handling the money were responsible. But one, but this something like this ended the whole church finished gone. And you know, Larry Lee himself went into depression. And so it was very sad what all happened after that. But it was just the way my offering was collected and the way it was being processed. It was shown on television, finished. So people you know, saying that what's happening. But as a ministry, he was so powerful. He was doing such a wonderful ministry across America, leading the cities in prayer, you know, he would have these prayer rallies and the whole stadiums will be filled with people coming to pray. But just this one thing that had to do with the way money was being collected and processed, destroyed the whole ministry. It destroyed his marriage. He went into depression. You know, it was very sad anyway. But you know, I'm just giving a simple example. And this was a high profile because his ministry was so big, and he was doing so wonderful. You know, so just this, this mismanagement of money. Another example I can think of and let's talk, just give you a few stories. Was that a Yungi Cho? Now, we did, and a Yungi Cho is known of, you know, he just passed away. A couple of weeks back. At a good old age of 80, something 80. I forget what his age was 80 plus. But he began his ministry back in the 1960s, had, you know, the world's largest church, over 850,000 people in Seoul, Korea. And, you know, it was a pioneer in many ways, introduced the whole idea of cell groups to the church, the church growth movement, so many things. So tremendous blessing. It caused, you know, large churches to rise up in Korea. And, and he had a, you know, he had a wonderful ministry for decades, decades, wonderful ministry. And now, you know, this happened just, I think the early part of this decade, I think, I'm not exactly sure about the dates, but I think the early part of this decade, I'm sorry, not this decade, but somewhere in between 2011 and 2010, just somewhere five, six years back. So, you know, almost you could say about six decades from, you know, 1960 up to five plus decades, up to about 2010, flawless ministry. Nobody could find a fault. He was a minister, grew so many, so many things they were doing in Korea. Amazing. And of course, he was also getting older and age. So he had a wonderful ministry, no fault, nothing. But suddenly, about five, six years ago, and he was by this time, he was, you know, in the 70s, he was kind of retired, he was still preaching, but in the state of retiring, retired, elderly person. And at that age, news broke out that his sons, his or one of his sons, one of his sons, had in some way misappropriated some funds of the church. Now you're talking about Yonge Cho, he's now in the 70s. 50 plus years of solid ministry, no fault, wonderful ministry. In this, you know, like late 70s, something like this is happening. And it sent the news spread across the Christian world, because this is like a very prominent, very powerful, influential Christian church ministry and Christian leader. And, you know, there was this whole thing about some funds, and there's a large amount of money from the church was misused by his son. And Yonge Cho was in trouble, because or his name was there, because he signed the documents. And in Yonge Cho, you know, I felt very bad for him, because he was so elderly. And at this age stage in life, this thing is coming out. And he was responsible because he signed the documents. And now I don't know, and I don't know the details. So I'm not trying to defend him or anything. But basically, he said was, you know, he said, look, I signed the documents, I did, you know, like I said, regularly signed documents, I didn't know this was happening. So I don't, you know, I don't know whether he was actually aware or not aware, or was it a genuine mistake? I don't know. But what I felt so bad was, he was a great man of God, who, for decades, had served so faithfully, here now in his late seventies, a financial scandal or thing has broken out, and he was supposed to go to jail. You know, so the whole the whole case was charged everything. And they said he has to spend at least two years in jail, two or three years or some whatever that sentence was. But they on humanitarian grounds because of his age and all of that, they said, no, they did this, they, they kind of made some changes for it because he had served so much and he was elderly, etc. And things like that. So the actual sentence was lessened and changed modified. But the point is this, something went wrong. Whether Yungi was aware or not, I don't know, we don't know all the details, but an otherwise flawless, wonderful ministry was tarnished towards the end of his stage. And he died, you know, like I said, a few weeks back towards the end of his, it was so sad to read about that. And, you know, whatever the crowned realities was, the factors, this happened. And whether Yungi himself knew it or not, he was the senior pastor. Whether he was aware that was happening, he was a senior pastor and he was sentenced to jail. But on humanitarian grounds, they, they lessened it or removed it or whatever. But it was really sad. So just another example where mismanagement of money, something went wrong, it brings this repute to the Christian ministry and like this, you know, there are just numerous cases. And right here in India, there are shocking stories of Christian churches, large Christian organizations where money is not managed and things happen. And and it's very, very sad. Yeah. So these kinds of stories are just almost, you know, every year you run into these kinds of things, you hear about high profile ministries, you hear about smaller churches, ministries, monies mismanaged, churches get into trouble, Christian leaders get into trouble because of money being mismanaged. You know, and so I just want to share one more story. One of the things that really shocked me was this happened somewhere between 2008 to 2010, I forget the exact year, but you know, at that time, there were several churches in Bangalore. We had all, we had come together and to do some work together. And we had a common entity that was formed, where, you know, we would all contribute money to and then whatever project needed to be carried out would be carried out with those common funds. And I sort of remember at that time that, you know, when when things were very active, because they said, Okay, we need to raise up some money to do a certain project. And I think it was to help rebuild some churches that were destroyed, that had been destroyed. So at that time, from APC, I said, we will give one lakh rupees, 100,000 rupees for this towards this. So we contributed from APC, we gave one lakh. So I know I'm not sure what the other churches gave, whatever. So the money was collected in this common fund. And then, for whatever reason that money was not used to the project didn't happen, you know, and so then after some time, they said, Okay, see, we haven't executed the project. So we will turn the money back to the people, the churches who gave it. Fine. So I got a call from this person who was handling the money, the finances, in that common organization entity, he called me and he asked me. So this 100,000 rupees, we are returning it back. Do you want to check in your name, or in the name of the church? That was a question he was asking me. I was actually shocked that he was even asking me that question. And my answer was like, I didn't even have to think I said, the money came from the church, it has to go back to the church, the check has to be in the name of the church. Thank you. That was it. My answer, it was a very quick finished thing. But after the call, I started thinking, what kind of a question he even asked me, do you want to check in your name, or in the name of the church? What kind of a question is that? You know, it really shocked me. I mean, kind of, you know, that moment I just reacted, I said, money came from the church, I was gonna go back to the church, put it in the, you know, check has to be the name of the church finished by. But after that, you know, I said, I was actually shocked. And then I began to think, you know, I wonder what's happening with, and I'm not in a past judgment. But what if a pastor who was in my place said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, put the check in my name, that money would have gone. Right? It came from the church, went to this common entity had to be returned. And this person who's handling the accounts there is asking the pastor, whose name do you want to check? It's that question should not have even been asked. But I was just suddenly thinking, after the call, what kind of a question is asking me? And what if some pastor had said, Yeah, just put it in my name, that money would have disappeared. But I'm sharing this because when it comes to money, you don't know where the opportunities come from for mishandling it. And it may seem very, what to say, innocuous, it may seem very harmless at that moment. But if we compromise, at some point, it's going to come out. And it will be very destructive. So the only choice we have is to be 100% honest, 100% integrity in the handling of money, that's the only safe way. Right? But there are challenges. The challenges as a pastor, you're not the one handling the money, the money's being handled by your accounting team. So it becomes very scary because it's a matter of trust. I hope they are handling it right. Because if they make a mistake, they may not suffer. The pastor and the church will suffer. If they mishandle money in some way, the only person who's going to get a bad name, nobody will know the name of the accountant. Everybody will know the name of the pastor and the name of the church. And they will point fingers. So it's actually a very, very, very scary situation. In hand in this whole thing of church and Christian history. But there are solutions, of course, there's a way in which you set up things in the administration so that it's very tight. That the chances of mishandling the chances of mid mismanagement should be zero. So we are going to learn that next week in the next lecture. Next maybe next two lectures. How do we set things up so tight? As far as money is concerned, there will be zero error. So that the church and the ministry, and of course, the pastor and the pastoral team are protected. Because like I said, anything goes wrong, the only person who's going to get into trouble is the pastor and the team. Because nobody's going to catch the accountant or the people who are actually handling the money, they're going to point fingers at the pastor. So that's very important. But today, I just want to give a little biblical perspective of things. As far as ministry finances, ministry, church and ministry finances, just a little biblical perspective. Then next lecture on we get into the practical side of things. Okay, so what I've done now is just to share a little couple of stories and like this, there are so many stories where money, church and ministry money has to be handled with utmost care, with utmost detail, so that nothing goes wrong. So I want to place before us three simple biblical things. And we see this in scripture and I will show you some of the we will look at some of the scriptures. The first thing is this that that the the work of God, the work that God wants done, right? God has God has designed it that every God given vision, the provision comes through God's people. So God will provide for a God given vision. So he gives the vision for something to be done. And then God will provide for that vision. And it usually happens through God's people. I say usually because sometimes there are exceptions when God will provide for a vision he's given through even the unbelievers sometimes. But the normal normal thing is God gives a vision. And he brings provision for it through God's people. It's a biblical thing. And some examples that say for example, you see, if you see in the Old Testament, Exodus 12 God told Moses, Moses, I want you to build a tabernacle. I'll tell you how to design it. But tell the people to bring an offering. Tell each one to come and give, you know, things of gold, things to make the curtains, the ornaments to jewels, tell the people to bring it. So Moses goes in front of the people. This is in the 12th chapter of Exodus. And he tells the people, hey, God has said, we have to build him a tabernacle. Those who want to give, please give. And the people brought they brought whatever they had they had from Egypt, they brought their gold, their silver, their, you know, the materials to make the curtains, everything the people brought and gave. And so the tabernacle was built. Then, you know, when they came into the land of Israel, and one of the things that God instituted was, okay, people, you bring the tide of the produce of your land. So he set up the priesthood. They were priests and the Levites would take care of the temple and all that. They told the people, people, you bring your tide, the tide of your produce, you know, of your animals, of your cattle, of your, the producer of your ground, you bring it to the temple. And the priests, the Levites will live out of that. And your people bring the offering. A part of it is burnt as an offering to the Lord. And there's part that is that is given to the priests and their households for them to live on. So God set it up in the Old Testament. So this was a pattern that here are these people who are serving in spiritual things, and they would be cared for by the offerings and the tides, which the people bring and give it to the temple. So God set it up. A vision from God. Provision comes through the people. Same thing. When David had in his heart, this is in First Chronicles, the 29th chapter, I'm just giving this story, just mentioning it and not going to read it. In First Chronicles 29, when, you know, God put in David's heart to prepare to build the temple. David just told the people, he said, Hey, this is the temple we're going to build. This is the design I have. Those of you who want to give, give. And the people brought until it was so much that they said, okay, we have more than enough, you know, so people brought and with that Solomon built the temple. So you come into the New Testament to see the ministry of Jesus. He was a traveling minister. He traveled from place to place and people gave. So the gospel records, you know, people who took care of the needs of Jesus and his team and they gave to the to him and his team, the apostles as they traveled, you know, people helped them financially. And so Paul in his episodes, the Corinthians talks about money and he says, you know, that those who preach the gospel, they live off the gospel. This is what God has ordained. And this is in First Corinthians nine. And, and he also says that, you know, those who are taught in spiritual things, you give in material things to the people who minister to you. So this is something God has set up even in the New Testament. So that's the first thing that God has set this up where when he gives a vision, the provision comes through his people. There are exemptions, except exceptions like for example, in the case of Nehemiah, you know, God had put in his heart to go and rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And there the provision came through the Persian king. So you know, the Persian king said, okay, whatever Nehemiah wants, let him have it. So, you know, there are times when God will bring the provision in through people other than his own people and that's fine. But the normal is God's people give towards the vision. The second spiritual principle that we see in scripture is that we must serve people spiritually than they will so materially. Right? So that's again a spiritual principle that we see in the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. So how do we get funds for ministry? Simple. You serve the people spiritually, then they will so financially. That's the arrangement God has made. Those who preach the gospel live of the gospel. Those who are ministered to in spiritual things, they will give back in material things. Galatians 6 also says that. Okay. So that is the second biblical principle as far as money is concerned. Right? So today I'm just covering the biblical principles. Next class we'll get into all the tactical side. All right. So this is what God has put in, put for his people. Right? So our goal is, look, let's do the best we can to spiritually serve the people. And if we do that well, then God will put it in their hearts to give back materially, to give back financially so that our needs will be taken care of, and then we can do all the work of the ministry that God wants us to do. Second principle. Third principle is this. Jesus taught. This is a Luke 16th chapter. He taught us that being a good steward of money is important to being a good steward of spiritual things. So I just want us to look at that worse because sometimes we don't pay attention to this. So let's just go to Luke 16. And so this is the parable of the unjust steward. And we just read the last part of the parable. Luke 16. We read verses 10 to 12 please. Luke 16, 10 to 12. Can somebody read that for us? Luke 16, 10 to 12. He who is faithful in what his list is faithful also in much. And he who is unjust in what his list is unjust in much, also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust, your trust the truth which is. And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? Yeah. Yeah. 12. Right. So what is Jesus teaching us? Verse 10 he says you be faithful in what is least because if you are faithful in what is least, you'll also be faithful in what is lot. So that's a very important principle. So when you when you and I have little money and the whole context is money. Luke 16, right? This parable here. When you're faithful, little amounts of money, you're faithful in that. God will entrust to you much more. So when there's little money, be faithful. Now remember, you know, those early days, ministry, sometimes somebody should, you know, this was like in my teenage years and early 20s, people used to give me offering 100 rupees, 200 rupees. That used to be offering those days. As a God, it's only 100 rupees. I'll be faithful and I'll take, make sure I use this right. I'll write down my accounts, keep it. And I will make sure I tied out of that 100 rupees that people gave, make sure you use the rest of the money carefully. So there was a time when offerings was very small, you know, small amounts, which when we look at it today was small amounts. I said, I will treat it, I will treat it with honor. I'll treat this amount. Even if it's a small amount, I'll treat it with honor. I'll treat it with respect. Because I remember this parable. Jesus said, if you are faithful in little, then you will be given. You'll be faithful in much. I say, I don't say, I say, I say, God, I'll be faithful in this, but one day I know you'll give me lots of money to handle for the ministry. So when there were small amounts, just be faithful. Treat it as you would treat large amounts. And then God will bless you. The second thing, notice he says in verse 11, if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous man, who will commit to your trust, the true riches. So in verse 11, Jesus says, somehow equating handling money to handling spiritual things. He's saying, if you cannot handle money properly, who's going to commit to you the true riches, meaning the real things of the kingdom? Who will entrust you with spiritual things? So somehow here he's connecting this, look, if you handle money carefully, I know I can trust you with handling the things of the kingdom. Now, many of us don't see this connection. We think of money, forget it, I will only be handling spiritual things. That is good, but Jesus connected the two. That for us in order to be entrusted with handling true riches, spiritual things, show your faithfulness by handling money. That's in verse 11, look, 16, 11. Then in look 16, 12, he says, if you're not faithful to somebody else's, how can you have your own? So when you're handling money on behalf of somebody else, be faithful, then God will trust you with your own. So this is the third biblical principle I want to put forward, which is if we are a good steward of money, then God will also help us be steward of spiritual things. This is based on Luke 16, 11. So first biblical principle is for a vision that God gives, he will bring provision through his people, normal way. Second biblical principle is if we sow spiritually into the lives of people, then God will help them to give or God will move them to give financially. Third biblical principle is if I need to be a good steward of money, just like how I'm being a good steward or I want to be a good steward of spiritual things. These are not separate things. These go together according to Luke 16, 11. Fourth thing that the Bible teaches us, the principle considering money is we must be accountable to the people who have given the money. And I just want to reference one scripture. This is from Second Corinthians 8 and verse 20 and 21. Can somebody read that? Second Corinthians 8, 20 and 21. Second Corinthians 8, 20 and 21 please. Avoiding this that anyone should blame us in this lavish gift which is administered by us. Providing honorable things not only in the sight of the Lord but also in the sight of man. So you know Paul here is actually you know we just picked up two verses but Paul is you know coordinating collection of money from the Corinthian believers and this money has to go to Jerusalem to help the people, the church in Jerusalem. So he's basically just coordinating all this but as he's coordinating this he's saying look I want to make sure that nobody can be able, nobody should be able to blame us. That's verse 20. Avoiding this that anyone should blame us in this lavish gift that is administered by us. That means look we are collecting this money you know he's expecting a lot of money but nobody should be able to find fault with us. And verse 21. You want to provide honorable things not only in the sight of the Lord but also in the sight of men. That means and how we handle the money. We want to be honorable not only in God's eyes but also in man's eyes. You know I remember the city harvest church in Singapore. I think that's the name of the church. Pastor Konghi and his wife son. So you know again there's a wonderful church that that was coming up that became very prominent, very influential, became a very big church with many thousands of young people tending all of that. Wonderful. So this was you know the last 20 years or so. But then problems happened and again I don't want to go into all the details but just just to give a little idea what happened. So Pastor Konghi's wife Reverend son. She was a worship pastor, worship leader there in the church. All of that wonderful. She was her service ordained pastor. But at some point she felt that she should take her singing talent abilities along with lots of people in the church to sing music that would appeal to people outside the church. So it was you know going out into reaching people which is which is fine. No no not against that. So she did songs that would reach people in China. Then she wanted to you know she moved to the U.S. wanting to be on the whatever you know the the music scene there all of it. But the problem was in order to pursue this from the information that was available a lot of the church money was funding this work. That means it's almost like church money was being used to fund her personal music career. Although in the early stages it was stated that the her personal music career was a way to reach people with the gospel but the songs were just neutral songs. It wasn't like gospel songs or Christian songs. So that became a big question. Now you know they were since you know my feel again you know I'm not passing judgment or anything or I'm not I don't know all the details but my feel is they were sincere people. They sincerely wanted to bring kingdom influence outside the church in the music field but somehow they made mistake. They were sincere but this area just blurred where money given to the church was being used to fund this this music career and that that that caused a lot of problems. There's a lot of yeah thing in the news and so on and so forth and anyway thanks to thank god that you know the church stood by them and helped them through it and I think things have been resolved. I'm not sure what state it is in but the point is this that brings us to the fourth biblical principle. We must be accountable to the people who have given the money just because they've given the money doesn't give us the license to do whatever we feel like with the money. Can't do that. They've given the money but the back of our minds we must say look whatever I do with this money I must be able to answer back to the people. I must be answerable or accountable to the people who gave. If they ask what did you do with it with a clear heart, clean hands I should be able to say look this is where we used the money this is what it was given for and that's how it has been used everything clean. So Paul wrote here in verse 21 you must be honorable not only the sight of the lord but also in the sight of men. So that's the fourth principle and one last one. We must also be accountable to civic authorities that means government. So just because we are you know receiving money to do church work or ministry work doesn't mean we are not accountable to the civil government. Now we are accountable we have to follow the rules or to follow the rules and whatever is required. So here again and I can speak of what happens here in India there's a lot of problems because churches, Christian organizations, you know we don't follow the rules and the government then comes in checks you know and then we say we call it persecution no it's not persecution the government is doing their job and we fail to do our job in filing with the government the required filings that need to be made every year regularly and when we fail to do it then the government obviously will have to come and investigate what's happening where is the money coming from where is it going what is it being used to used for and if they come to investigate you know obviously when there's something suspicious and there's something that has not been reported and that's why they come in to check then we say oh the government is persecuting us they're not persecuting because if we had filed everything then we can you know we can respond with the confidence and say okay here here are the papers here are all the documents here all the accounts everything is fine but you know especially in the last several years recent years so many organizations Christian organizations also had to shut down not because government is intentionally persecuting well they may have some agenda at the back but there was a reason why they could do it if we had not given them a reason of filing things on time keeping the accounts the way they're supposed to be then even if they come to ask questions we can provide the answers but when we are unable to answer then we are at fault and we can't call it persecution so that's the last point I want to mention here which is we have to be accountable to civic authorities financially right so quickly to recap the five principles one is you know when god gives a vision he will bring provision through his people second we serve people spiritually they will provide they will share financially third being a good steward of money is equally important to being a good steward of spiritual things fourth we must be accountable to the people who have given us the money to use and lastly we must also be accountable to civic authorities now for all of this there is scripture and I will put it on the notes that I'll give you next class it's there and I think all of us know that this is what the bible teaches us but so you know okay I'm seeing a question so does a believer have the right to ask how it's used like in a genuine way yes right so that's a policy we follow here at all people's church one is our audited financial accounts are on our website so we actually put it out for people to see that means you know we have our web page apcwo.org slash financials so right from 2001 every year we tell our accountants once they have audited everything it's been audited by a independent organization as well the final things are published on our website plus we state that any member of our church apc has the freedom to ask any question about the money they can send an email to our accountant and we will respond right so they have the right to ask because they've given the money and now of course they they don't have the right to ask of how much somebody else is giving no it's you know this is what you've given we can tell you what's happened or how the money is being used and so on but that yes they have the right to ask and it should be answerable to people of contributed okay that's the way we operate and yeah that's that's how it is okay so we'll get into the practical side of how to do it over the next couple of lectures but today was more of look you know this is what we have seen happening in the Christian world there are just so many examples of problems happening we have to be very careful and these are the biblical principles we should keep in mind as we handle the money for the church or the Christian ministry and it takes a lot of effort to make sure that things are kept properly but we have no other alternative but to handle things properly but there are good rewards the many if you handle it well you know people will trust us more and we can also be you know have a clean heart peaceful mind as we do this thing okay all right so we'll pause here for today we are going to continue this on Friday and maybe we'll do you know how many lectures we need to cover this properly could somebody just please are there any questions sorry I know Siddharth asked this question anybody else has any questions okay yeah when we get into the actual practical side you know you're I'm sure you'll have questions then let's pray and we will dismiss can somebody just pray with us and dismiss us please yes sir for the court we just come before once again you're strong for the court for the court give through your wisdom and notice for the court that we can like maintain the money side for the court this is very important side for the court give you give the maintain the the money side for the court and the integrity we will maintain for the court we can keep the nicely for the court and we can maintain and take the clean heart for the court and also for the court help us to the move to your kingdom work with the money side for the court for the court give your fully understanding and wisdom and knowledge for the court they can we can use rather for the money side for the court to nicely to your kingdom work for the court for the court we can maintain the accountability for the court to infOpen to you and you're in front of your people for the court to help to move the money-side for the court for the court thanking you the class for the court thanking you the subject for the court thank you sir and also do you know all the students for the court for the court upcoming time. I'm just submitting to your hand take care of everything for the court thank you. Thank you father. Almighty Jesus' name be with you. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much. See you again soon. God bless. Thank you so much. Bye now. Bye now.