 Okay. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining the class today and I've done on the recording of the lecture just a little we had some problems with my connection in the first hour so I'm just hoping things things are okay with the connectivity over here but in case things that anything goes wrong I'll just turn off the video but things seem okay it was seemed okay in the second hour but anyway let's pray and then we will get started and I just want to invite somebody to please unmute your mic and lead a class in prayer and we will get started please. Thank you all right so we have been talking about this various aspects of church, ministry, administration. In our previous class earlier this week we talked about the forming of legal entity or an organization, the importance of that and just some practical things and how to go about doing that. So we will now go into the next chapter the next topic which is organizational structure. I'm going to try and share my the PDF this of course has been put out as a PDF in the classwork section so I am sharing the notes it's already available to you hopefully you can see it yeah right so we want to talk about church and ministry organization structure so you know in you get started in your ministry with the church initially things are very very simple you know and I remember when we started all people's church in February of 2001 it was just Amy and me and then you know a few people joined us but basically we did everything you know now we did they we had two speakers two mics we had one keyboard one overhead projector those those days we had you know an old-fashioned overhead projector not what we use these days so we did everything you know we would when we started using a venue near our home so we would go arrange the chairs before the service had arranged the chairs set up the PA system set up the projector a to z you know we would we would take up the offering everything we just did there was nobody else you know from a to z it was just us some basically Amy myself and there were two others who are helping us and Georgie and his wife so we would just do everything we did everything and then you know slowly people are coming to church and then you know we people wanted to help so we would say okay you take care of arranging the chairs you do this you do that slowly we hear kind of as we grew we gave responsibilities to people and then eventually the first people as a staff who would came on to help us I mean we first of all had an accountant to come to handle the finance that this was after we registered the trust so we talked about registering the trust last class so we registered trust I think in the month of April or something we started in February sometime in April I think we formally registered the legal entity and then we we were working with an accounting firm so a person from that accounting firm would come just for like two hours we there was not much to be done so just for two hours a week and she would you know enter all our accounting information into the system we will talk about it systems the later on what we need so we bought a license for a small accounting package it was called tally and and then she would just enter you know okay this was the offering that came you know there was nothing hardly any transactions so it was very easy within two three hours she would do her work so weekly she would come updated that was her work that was the first person we had as a paid service and that was we were just paying for a few hours a week then later on I think it was in perhaps the next year I think it was in 2002 we hired one person as an admin person so this was our first full-time staff and he would just basically help with different things like booking the venue you know writing all these you know making keeping track of things helping with you know any other work that needed to be done making phone calls handling those kinds of that he was our first person one person working as staff and actually he he was I think he should divide his time like you know between he was he was paid he was on was paid by the company so I was running a business as well so he was paid by the business but he would spend some of his time for the church as well so he would do admin work for the church he would do admin work for the company but he was on the roles of the company but he was the first person who was you know like staff to help us and then it was only later on I think in 2004 or 2005 I forget so it was you know four or five years later that we took on a youth pastor and then Pastor Jay Kumar used joined us at that time so I think it is I forget the exact year but around 2005 or 2005 or 6 when you know we began to hire people to be part of as full-time staff so this is after four or five years stop so people began to join so then you know we had we hired a few few more staff now we had a full-time admin person and then you know people start joining us so over time you know more and more people started becoming part of the organization so the organization was growing so we had IT people we had media people we had full-time pastors we had people on the administration side right so slowly grew so when you add people as staff what you eventually will need is and what we refer to as an organization structure that means so here you can see in the notes the organizational structure or organization structure the structure describes how activities which means roles and responsibilities and information which is decision-making controls etc are set up within an organization to achieve the organization's goals and objectives right so that's you need to have a structure right so that's what we're going to talk about so eventually as we hired sort of having people pastors joining us we needed to say okay this is the pastoral team this is you know the senior pastor this is the associate pastor this is the worship pastor this is the youth pastor this is the children's church pastor and then you know we needed to say okay here's the admin people here the accounting people here's the you know the media people here the IT people and how will they all work with each other and what are their roles or the responsibilities so we needed to create some sort of a structure for all of us to work together and then that kept growing and it will continue to grow in in in time to come so this structure is important and and so we're going to talk today on you know how do we as you grow as an organization what are the structure you need what are the structure what are some of the things you keep in mind as you design so we use a term organizational design that means you're designing the structure what should it look like right so you have a structure with the structure should be designed so you'd say organization design how do you design that structure and and what are the things you should keep in mind as you design the structure that's what we're going to look at so in general and I'm speaking in general terms broadly speaking you know there are four types of organizational structure one would be functional structure that means you're creating a structure that's that's based on the functions or the roles that people do right so there's admin there is in a media there is it there is accounting so those are functions and you create a simple structure around those functions so that's called a very as a functional structure now as the organization grows and let's say it is expanding you know you would then create what is known as a divisional or multi-divisional structure so division is then by department and within each department you would have multiple functions you know so or in in church I don't think of areas of ministry and within each area of ministry you have multiple functions to people doing that sometimes divisional can be even regional you know so you may want to do not you know if you're looking at a country like a nation of India you might say well we have grown and we are expanding across the nation so we will create it by regions you know north south north India south India west India and east India and break it down like that so it would grow you could have some some sort of a divisional or multi-divisional structure which is a little bigger many organizations today like to be what we refer to as a flat structure that means they want to keep the number of levels as minimal as possible so they say we are a flat structure we are a flat organization and that is very good because it makes people feel like you know we're all together you know there's not too much of a hierarchy everybody's accessible and as a flat structure people can work together very quickly you know people can talk communicate make decisions move fast so those are some of the advantages of a flat structure and then there is what is known as a matrix structure which is a very complicated structure you don't find too much of that meaning there is division of people both horizontally and vertically and people can move across various intersections of this matrix and they can be involved in multiple roles and multiple functions so that's kind of a matrix vertical horizontal people move around within the matrix it actually is very complicated because people are moving around or people can serve multiple roles and functions you don't find that too often but that's possible that sometimes people set up a matrix structure right we will come into the details this is just now we will come into the details on that now you know a great example and in the Bible about organizational structure you find it I have mentioned this before in the organization of the tabernacle of David so after David became king and you find this in first chronicles 23 and chapter 25 and chapter 28 it's worth is interesting to read look at you know he brought the tabernacle he brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city of David and he built this tabernacle and then he appointed people and it is very good interest to see the organization there he had people who would take care of the the the maintenance of the tabernacle so they would take all things needed to be done around the tabernacle keep the the ministry right and they had the priests of us were there and then he had singers musicians or 250 plus something like musicians and singers so he had them and they were all organized with one-hour slots so that there was continuous praise and worship happening in the tabernacle and in first chronicles 28 what David so you know he set everything up in the tabernacle it's very interesting how he sets set up so there were about 8,000 people in all about 5,000 people to take care of the maintenance about 200 200 between 200 300 people doing worship they were all these priests involved so you know a lot of people very well organized and you know so it is all put together very well in first chronicles 28 when David talks about the plans for the temple he wanted Solomon to build he says you know all these ideas and plans were given to me by the Holy Spirit first chronicles 28 verse 11 12 and 19 Holy Spirit gave me these ideas so we can also you know work back but and say you know most likely it's the Holy Spirit gave him all the ideas how to organize the tabernacle and put people in place okay so that's just one example of organizational structure and design we see in the Bible and there are of course others we can talk about but let's get into the practical things as far as the church or the ministry is concerned you know I'll go through this and then we'll have time for questions and discussion so why is it necessary to have a well-designed organization you know especially as you grow like I said in the early days you know one person is doing everything and I used to be the accountant I would come back from service and we have a little notebook and I will write down on what was the offering that we received on Sunday to keep it ready because on Monday or Tuesday the accountant would come and she would put it into the system and all that and you know what were the expenses I'll keep all the bills ready but you know over time we have you know full-time accountant now was very busy and you know and we also have in addition to a full-time accountant we have an external accountant to come soon so there's a check and then every every three months there are audits being done and every there's an annual audit being done and so there are two external accounting firms that are involved so you know it's gone from one person who works who used to work two to three hours a week to now you know multiple arrangements to handle accounting so over time the organization is going to grow and while it grows it is important to design the structure very well right why do you need to position yes these are the reasons these are some reasons so the responsibility is of course in the case that people know who is responsible for what if there's an ambiguity there and therefore there's no confusion then roles but to place within your role is what you do this is what you do so we have an organization there's good coordination between different roles and functions people can work it's like a machine they can all work together very well there is good communication quick communication ideas skills resources people can communicate and share easily this will make decision making very quick right people we can make quick decisions so we don't want to waste time you know we want to move fast we want to be efficient so overall the organization is efficient and productive and you have a nice worker a healthy work environment so people come they enjoy working in an organization that's well designed there is less stress less conflict and all of this is influenced by the design of the organization you know how it has been structured it has an impact on on all of these things so having an organization structure that is well designed gives us all these benefits you know you can think of think of it like a well designed machine like a car or something you know if the if it is well designed it has a lot of benefits people enjoy what what has been well designed right so what I want to impress on us is that the organizational structure and design must be intentional so we just said you know the structure it should be thank you there it should be systematic and planned it shouldn't be too complex and it must be continuously improved right so what are some things questions to ask to determine if you know our design is good design or what must we keep in mind as we are designing the organizational structure first and these are some very simple questions but there are important questions number one is the organizational design aligned to the people we are serving that means the structure the design we are creating for our organization it must be aligned to you know the the the work we are doing to serve people so we don't want to create functions we don't want to create the things in the organization which is not aligned to the vision mission and purpose of what we are trying to do example example so suppose you are serving suppose the church is serving people who are from the villages then you don't need some you know complicated area of ministry on something that the people are not involved you know for example I'm just thinking you know you don't have okay we're going to have a ministry or a part of our organization structure ministry that is going to that's going to be a call center for these people you know they cannot even use it you know they are people from the village they just need you to come they would want you to come to the house and pray so there's no point in setting up a call center if these people that you're serving are not going to be calling for prayer you know they may just want to go sit and talk to you or or you know there's a point in you know having ministry for financial planning and having you know skilled people that at least these are village people they don't they don't know anything about that or even if you want to do it it has to be at their level where they are so some it's you know basically you need to have your organization design and structure and what you're doing the kind of people putting the activities it should be aligned to the people you are serving there shouldn't be a mismatch then you'll be wasting a lot of time and effort so that's one basic question second does it enable people or working in the organization to add value and contribute meaningfully so the organization structure is that there is there enough space and is enough room space and opportunity in the way you've set up so people can give can add value and contribute meaningfully you know so people shouldn't feel lost oh you know I don't know where I am I don't know what my role is well I don't know how what I do is contributing neither should people feel like I'm a machine you know I just I just come and do my work and go I don't know whether it's benefiting organization or not so all people have ideas if people have some inputs they want can they give it to the organization are they encouraged to give is it is it conducive for that so you want to keep that in mind the third one is this you know is is is there an alignment between the structure and the employee the people you have their strengths weaknesses motivation is there a mismatch so the design the structure is it matching is there a match with the kind of people who are there and what they are good at you know so if there's a mismatch then you're not going to get work done something is wrong either you have to change the people or change the structure you know so if you know you've set up an IT department and you're you're employing people who don't know IT then that's a big problem right so the question is do you need the IT department or do you need what these people are bringing yeah so and that happens many many times in churches you know they say okay I want to do this but they're not hiding the right people they're not bringing the right people to do that they're you know they're bringing all the friends or you know people they're liking the church they're adding that to the organization but those are not the people who are going to be able to fill the structure you want to fill so there's a mismatch and you know and that's a problem and number four there's the structure enable the department the units to function well right so is each unit or department functioning well able to function well and number five is there good cooperation between different just give an example you know suppose there's a person is doing certain work maybe she is writing a document and does some work then if she's forwarding it to person b who is not adding any value he's just okay he comes to his inbox then he follows it to person c and person c is not doing anything with that document and he follows it to person d so person a is doing the work person d is the one who needs that finished work and is going to make use of that then if our structure requires the that email to go through two people in between who are not adding any value to that then you know what these two people are actually useless and this two step process here is an unnecessary step here there's no value add it may only delay delay things by you know a few hours or sometimes by a few days because if this person doesn't check his email it will not get forwarded to this person and then that person sees and is there remembers to forward it only it'll get here the most simplest thing is person a does the work who needs it person d send it directly send it directly to person d that's the most efficient so we need to eliminate these kinds of things inside the organization right so look at it what is the minimalistic what a simplest way to get things done take out unnecessary steps which don't add value it is more of a formality you know so eventually person c appears to be the person doing the work but actually the work was done by person a now that's unnecessary we don't need that it's okay if person d knows that person a did the work and it goes directly to person d perfectly fine you know so we now don't need these things here in between right so that's just an example about how to keep things simple two more things are the text and how controls in the organization especially as it gets bigger and bigger you know one person is not going to be able to keep an eye on everything so we have to introduce in our design of the system checks and balances we have to introduce controls inside the system itself the way we design the organization to minimize waste and resources so you know at different levels wherever there's a usage of resources and time and people and money that has to be checks and balances so that these things are kept on track and not wasted and it has to become part of the development of the organization all right so we went through eight uh tests or eight questions to ask as you're thinking about the organization's design uh to help us you know make sure it's it's done well now there are factors that get effect or limit the design or limit how much you can do right sometimes there could be external factors like government regulations government may say you know an organization like for example a religious organization like a church or a ministry in India is not allowed to do certain things you know we can't take people's money and invest it in in you know certain areas so that those kinds of things are ruled out or and a religious organization cannot do a b and c so those things are ruled out so automatically based on regulations you know you have to make sure that your structure is in a certain way uh sometimes there could be the trustees who are not aligned to the way certain things should be done so that could also be a limiting factor uh other internal things is you know like we said they may not be the right people or the finances resources may not be there they could be cultural clashes or they could be internal politics so these are the things that affect the organization you know and we have our structure so we have to be careful so I say culture for example you know it could work both ways but let me just give this side as an example you know you may want a very flat organization right but let's say you hire a pastor who likes hierarchy you know he likes to have people you know in many levels below him he doesn't like people just walking in and treating him as a peer he wants you know three four levels down and all then there's there's a clash in culture because the design you're trying to have is a flat structure but the person you have hired or maybe multiple people you've hired want hierarchy they want power play power to be a power play so then there's a clash it's between what you're trying to create as an organization and the kind of people you have brought in to the organization it's you know there's a limiting factor there so we have to be careful about all of these things okay now I want to just quickly share with you as a case study about apc and I'll share a little bit about how we evolved as an organization I'll just go through that and give you some thoughts to think about and so on so at the apc this is our organizational structure at a very high level right and this evolved over time so it didn't happen from day one so it evolved over times so now how we have divided our area the structure is on one side here on the on the on the far right side are what we call as departments these are areas of our ministry which are more operational in nature that means they're not directly doing ministry but they are supporting the ministry right and so we have most of these people are George staff some volunteers may help here and there but most of them are full-time paid staff you know and and so the way we have now some some areas of these roles are not filled up we will eventually have people filling these roles which we are working towards so we have a person who's in charge of all the operations and then we have department heads so people are heading up these various departments so accounting office administration current communications human outside media and digital we'll have heads of these departments have people working in departments we have various ministries so the spiritual areas right the spiritual aspects of the ministry uh ledge or catalyst which is hula tree so the so this is called the hub and spoke organizational model right so let me try to present this again um today's been quite a challenging day here on this uh connection i'm not sure anyway we will finish in a few minutes all right so uh you know whatever we're saying is in part of the main most churches are volunteers play a big role so for instance that apc uh you know the last time we counted when we were functioning before the lockdown we had over 300 volunteers across all our locations in Bangalore the volunteers play a big role and this structure this hub and spoke model is a very good way to engage volunteers so i just want to quickly walk you through it so the hub which is the center part is pastors and ministry leaders as you saw earlier uh the pastors and ministry leaders form the hub and right around because they are the ones who have the vision and direction for the various ministries that need to be done right because it's a spiritual ministry then around that are the staff that is you know church staff the it the media are the various other part of the church staff you know so there and then come the red that you are again surrounding yellow areas that you see are the various so we can many ministers say we uh we may have missions we may have a lot of trees happening so these are uh the spokes what happens is for each ministry we are able to form teams and the teams are basically made up of our pastors ministry leaders will be in charge we also have our all to that and then now this is a hub that uh uh one there can actually be part of many of these and that's that's what actually happens in practice so a volunteer may be part of the worship team the same volunteer may go on mission trips and the same volunteer may serve you know christian professionals and volunteer also serve in let's say college outreach you know so this this volunteer can be you know easily part of many ministry areas and each ministry area is being led by a different pastor or ministry leader and involved as needed you know the it team will be getting will maybe be involved and so many such groups and so this hub and spoke model it helps us in in doing many things in a very very flexible manner so keep us in mind and as you think about you know setting up your organization structure the last few things is you know at at some point the organization may become national or maybe in grow internationally and then you need to think of restructuring the organization usually it's done by regions you know like i mentioned very big you can think of various regions of your country or various regions of the on a global scale but let's just dismiss the meeting the class we will pick up next week i'm really sorry about my connection right now my i'm not able to see see the glass i'm not sure if you can hear me but i apologize for this let's let's um we will close the class and uh you know we will connect again next week all right okay god bless everyone thank you thank you thank you thank you bye now bye thank you sir thank you thank you bye now bye