 Okay, good morning everyone, welcome to receive 310, our class on church and state administration. Let's pray and we will get started. Somebody could pray please. That's great. J. Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the class here about to help. But as we are understanding about church and ministry administration. As you have all this you have given a purpose in our heart, but I just pray that you help us to understand the practical and the spiritual aspects that we are learning so that we can do the commission that you have given us so that we can preach the gospel to the ends of the world and we can lift up your name. We give all my classmates in their hands. We bless Pastor Ashut over here and God we just pray for a good life like a nation throughout the session so that nothing would be a distraction to us. We give you all the glory and honor and Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. Thank you everyone. So sorry, Mr. Glass last week. We will continue from where we paused two weeks ago. We talk about volunteer management. There's some practical things on how we can engage volunteers. And in church in Christian ministry that's a very important part because a lot of the work, especially in a church context is done by volunteers and volunteers would be serving and working along with church staff. So we need to know how to have both sets of people, church staff for full time working in church. And those are volunteers who are giving a little bit of their time, their skills, how to have them all work together in a very peaceful way, in a very cooperative way. That's a very important part for a good, healthy local church and local Christian ministry. Any questions on volunteer management before we move forward to the next question? Any other questions? Any questions on volunteer management? Any thoughts? Okay, so let's move forward to our next chapter. I will share this screen. So I'll talk a little bit on communications. That is between, so communications. Let's say communications. It is communications within, among the church staff, the people are working together. There is also communications between the church and say volunteers, the church and the congregation. And the church and the wider audience, I can say the world. So there are different levels of different kinds of communication that we need to be aware of and be ready to do. That means I'll just repeat that. So there is internal communication which is within the church staff and all the people are working together as a team. We have to coordinate so that the communications has to be very strong, very quick. There is also communication between the church and all the volunteers, the people who are coming and helping, you know, in different times of the week or the month. And there's also communication between the church and the congregation. You know, from your people out there, the church needs to keep them informed. And then there's communications between the church and the crowd, you know, the world around that we are trying to reach. Now, in the meantime past, we used to tell brochures, we used to have printed communications. No, so please pick up the brochure on your way out or please pick up the... What is it called? Bulletin, yeah, bulletin. Please pick up the church bulletin on your way out after service or something like that. And so all the information is to be, you know, in printed form. So please pick up the bulletin or something. Please look at the notice board. Those were the ways we used to do it. But now, because, you know, this digital communications has come in, our medium of communication has changed. So we can now communicate almost instantly. We can communicate many times during the week through digital. You know, with an email, a WhatsApp message, so many things. And we can also communicate very creatively through videos and graphics, so many. So communications has really changed, hopefully for the better. It's given us opportunity to communicate more often and more easily and less expensive before we had to print bulletins. Of course, all of that costs, you know. Now it doesn't cost anything to send an email or send a WhatsApp message for the most part, right? So let's talk a little bit. So just some basic guidelines, you know, how do we communicate? Now, why is communication important? One is people, you know, need to feel informed. It creates that enthusiasm or the zine. It keeps people zealous for the church, right? When they feel informed, oh, this is what church is doing. They feel that that enthusiasm for the house of God is maintained. So communication is part of that. The more we communicate correctly, people can really feel enthusiastic about the ministry and what we're doing. If they don't hear from us, they think, oh, the church is not doing anything. Everything is quiet. They want that zine and the passion can just go away. People feel connected when they're informed. They say, okay, I am part of this community. It's a form of connecting them and they know what's happening in the church or some important events. It also gives them a sense of ownership, especially if they're able to contribute towards some decisions. They feel like, okay, I am part of this. So we are not just doing a one-way communication. It's a two-way. They can give their ideas. They can give feedback. They can give their input. So there's a two-way communication. They feel part of what is happening when they are able to contribute to the decisions. There is also alignment. That means everybody can move on the same direction. There we are. We are all going and doing the same thing. So there is alignment in what's happening. People can also feel very cared when they... If any communication comes in a timely manner, if they receive a call, they receive encouraging words. They receive something that really helps them. They feel cared for by the church. So communication is a way of expressing it. Of course, we want to inform people about where things are, what is happening, different areas of ministry. That's how we can inform them. And also internally, when we share stories, when we share testimonies, employees or staff will feel inspired. So there are a lot of benefits for having good open communication. Now, the next point, the talk that I want to come on is to think about areas. Communication should be two ways. That means sometimes all our communication is only one way. I talk, you listen. But what if they want to say something? What if they want to share an idea? What if they want to give feedback? So we should have channels for dialogue. That means for people to talk to us. Now, of course, we cannot have dialogue when we do like a mass email or a mass broadcast or WhatsApp messages. That is all one way communication. So we need to think about how can we give opportunity for people to engage with us. So some thoughts. One is if we have an email ID that says feedback, that's what we do. We have an email ID that says feedback at apcw.org. But any person in the church, if they have a thought, they have an idea or even if they have a complaint or something, they can always send an email to that and it will reach us. We can listen to that. We can find out what's going on. That's one way. The other option is that in smaller groups, in all our teams that are set up, we have time for discussion or brainstorming. But people are involved in that particular area of ministry in contraband. So that's easier to manage because it's very focused. It's focused on that particular area. This is not enough here. What shall we do? What can we do? We ask questions. We brainstorm and so on. So that happens with smaller, smaller, smaller teams so that people can contribute to those things. The other thing which we do from time to time is to have what we call an open house. Of course, in the past, we've done it online so that people can connect from anywhere. Open house, you can ask us any questions, anything about church. So anyone can connect and answer. Before we went online, our open house used to be in person. So one or two Sundays in a year, we'd say, okay, it's open house. Everybody can all stay back and ask life after service. Those are interesting. You stay back, ask any questions about the church or give any feedback. So those things we've done in the past and then we do it online now because then it makes it a little easier for people and they can connect from any location and we can have an open house online. But people just ask any questions about the church. So doing that once a year, twice a year is useful so people can... And similarly for our staff, staff meetings happen every month. We let different people participate, ask questions, interact and so on. And the idea of giving ongoing constructive feedback is always open. So people can give us feedback anytime. So there are channels where they can... Whether it's the staff or people in the congregation, they can give feedback to us. So that's very important. We should listen. I'm not saying we can do everything that people say because people have all kinds of ideas. But we have to listen. At least acknowledge that we have heard what you said and if we have something to respond, we can respond. Another important thing is this is very important. Our communication must be open, honest and direct. Because this is what builds trust among people. Now think about the congregation. Think about the people are coming to church. They're coming and they're part of the church because they trust. They trust the leaders. They trust the pastors. They're also trusting the community. That I will be safe in this community. I will grow spiritually. I will grow my love for Jesus. I care and serve the Lord. So they are giving us their trust. And we have to know the way we communicate. We should only affirm and strengthen the trust that they have given to us. And for that our communication must be open. It must be honest and it must be direct. Open means that we are ready to share necessary information. And if something has gone wrong, we should accept it. At least in a relevant manner. That means to the people who I need to tell, I need to tell that, hey, we made a mistake. If I need to say this to the whole congregation, I need to say it to the whole congregation. If I need to say it to a group of people, I need to say it to them. But it has to be honest and I need to take responsibility. I'm going to say, I mean the pastors, the leadership, they need to be honest. If they made a mistake, they will be made a mistake. And we need to be direct. That means state thinks very clearly. Don't power up, don't, you know, beat around the bush and power up and things. What needs to be said about our success, about our failures, about changes. We need to communicate very clearly. So communication is important because it is through that communication, we are going to build a trust to the people. I mean, people trust us, they will be committed. So if people don't trust us and if they feel like, hey, he's not telling the truth, their commitment will go down. And at some point, they may leave the church also. The commitment to the church would become almost nothing. They will just feel free to leave because what has happened is they become suspicious about our communication. They're not telling us the truth. Actually, the real issue is something else and they're giving us a different story. And if they become suspicious, if they think that's what we're doing, and in fact if that's what we're doing, the level of trust and level of commitment will go down. So that's why having open honest direct communication, especially in modern matters, that matters that affect the community, that affect the church, we need to speak, we need to say, share. I'll share a little later how we do this, some of the things that we practice and just sharing the principles. Also, when communicating with a congregation, the church congregation or if it's a Christian minister communicating with a donor, we must not overdo communication. We don't keep sending an email every day. That's it. If we get too many emails, too many messages every day, it can be overbearing. So it should be regular but not too much. So as a rule, what we have been practicing is maximum two emails in a week, maximum two WhatsApp messages in a week. The plus one, that is, if there is an emergency, then we can send one extra email. Something has happened. There's a change of location. Something, an emergency. What if there's going to be a funeral? Then, okay, we can send an extra email. Otherwise, no more than two emails in a week, no more than two WhatsApp messages in a week. That's our rule. So people don't feel that, hey, I'm getting a message every day from the church. Then they may not like it. So we have to be regular but don't overdo it. We need to be sensitive to how much we can communicate. And then we take advantage of that. We can put other information on the church website. So if people are interested, they can go to the church website. They can have a list of all the events that are coming up or other information, whatever they want. It's all on the website. So we just point them there. So this is something to just think about. When you're communicating with a congregation, keep it regular but don't overdo it. Don't do too much. Some biblical notes here, the Bible tells us that our speech or our communication must be with grace. It must be seasoned with salt so that we know how to speak. So it must be gracious, kind, and it should be wise. Season with salt means there's thought that is visible in this communication. You know, just speaking your mind, just saying what you want to know. There's grace and there is wisdom in communicating carefully whether it's written or oral, probably communicating. And Paul tells us, you know, be an example for the believers in your speech, how you are communicating. Be an example to the believers in speech. And our communication should not be dictatorial, domineering, controlling. It should be kind, it should be gracious, it should be compassionate. So some practical things here. One, use good English or, you know, if you're using some other language, any other regional language, whatever language you're doing it, I'll just speak English now. So that means use good English because if you make spelling mistakes, if you make random mistakes, the English is not good, it leaves a bad impression, especially if you're in an urban context. If you're communicating with people who are professionals, they are used to working on these corporate jobs and they're interacting with people globally. Of course, their expectations are much higher of how we communicate. So we need to be on that level. And nowadays, we have so many tools that we can use. If you're typing in your Word document, it does auto-correct, it gives you correct spelling, correct your grammar, correct everything. So we can take advantage of those tools and make sure that our English is good. Use good etiquette. That means, you know, not only the English, the grammar and the spelling is good, but how we communicate. The courtesy, the manner in which we communicate should also be good. So we use proper salutation, you know. So reading so and so. Salutation, applaud, express gratitude, instead of commanding, you place a request. So it's the same example. Make sure you come at 4 o'clock. So that's like a command. But instead you could say, could you please come at 4? Or shall we meet at 4 p.m.? So that's a better way to communicate. That's making it a request rather than saying come at 4 o'clock or make sure you come at 4 o'clock. So just how we say could make such a difference how the person receives it. Be patient with people within reason. So that means, you know, in our interactions and the communication, example. Suppose somebody is pointing out a problem. Or some other things may happen often in a church setting. They want to debate a theological issue. Example. This happened recently. One person sent me an email. I don't believe in writing. Why you say we have to write? This person was very, you know, almost seem like ready to argue. So I responded. I said, you know, you're free to hold your opinion. Even if you want to say you don't want to type. You're not forcing anybody to type. I just said, you know, here are reasons why I believe typing is something we do as we just believe. I gave the scriptures and I just sent it back. I replied to the email. Then the person asked, is this open for debate? Then so now, you know, it's almost like it's getting into a place of kind of argument or something. So I have to be very careful how I responded. I simply, I didn't answer the question, is it open for debate? I don't want to get into a back and forth email. I don't want to get into that. So I just said, you're free to examine the scriptures and come to your own conclusions and follow your own conclusions. Basically, I'm saying I'm not interested in a debate. I have given you the scriptures. You can study the scriptures. Then so I left it at that. Then I got another email that they are explaining all the reasons why they feel that I didn't even respond. So we are patient with people. So I'm just giving this as an example where, you know, sometimes they can be this kind of from people who are coming to church. They may argue about, they want to argue about something theological something like that. You're patient within reason. That means, look, I'm not going to change our belief, but I'm willing to share with you, but I don't want to get into argument. I don't want to get into anything. You make up your own and you're free to have your own opinions. So that's really to be careful, you know, rather than getting into someone back and forth debate or an email. No, no, no, no, just, you know, you make up your mind. Be patient with people. Be kind. Now, I said, don't harm the organization. It means you have to be careful. Is that person in any way affecting the community? For example, if the same person started, you know, sending emails to everybody saying, hey, Maya, you got it. Then I would handle that differently and say, hey, please don't disturb other people. You know, don't trouble other people. If you have a question, we'll answer your question, but don't go and disturb others. So we don't want to harm the community, but so we have to be careful. Be kind with people. So in our communications, we have to always be kind. Sometimes people can irritate us and trouble us and sometimes criticize us. So when I get emails that criticize or, you know, try to keep pointing flaws, I just leave it aside. For example, you know, this started sometime back. I don't know when, but there was one person almost every week he'll send an email and he'll be pointing out something wrong in our church service. In the beginning, when I first started receiving emails from this person, I thought this person was genuine. Like, yeah, he'll point out maybe music was too loud or worship leader was not standing properly. Worship leader was not taking communion properly when everybody was saying, almost every... So initially I thought, okay, this person is genuine. He wants to help us. So I acknowledged, I used to acknowledge that email and then I used to share that feedback with whoever needs to know. Then it was happening every week and this person would become the silliest of things. Then I realized and it was upsetting me, right? Either on a Sunday or Monday, I'll get one email from this person. Something was wrong in the service. And it was really upsetting me. Like, what is this? I'm a small thing, he will point out. Sometimes it'll be in my sermon, how I spoke, how I was walking on the stage, what shirt I was wearing. So many things, you know, all kinds of things. The email will come. Then I realized, okay, you know what? I'm just not going to answer and I am not going to be troubled by this email. I'll just leave it there. So I just stopped even responding. Just, okay, I don't want to get in any kind of fight or argument of this, okay. They can say, you know, they can say, so we just have to be kind. We can't, you know, let that offend us and retaliate to anything. So these things happen. We need to thank people and, you know, wherever possible, respond promptly. You know, when people send an email or message, respond promptly. Let me just move on. Number three, in our communication, I think these are three golden words. Please, thank you. And so use these words lavishly. So every sentence, you know, try to use please. Could you please do this or thank you for this or if you make a mistake, say, I'm sorry or I'm sorry, I apologize. I am not able to meet you today. Can we meet another day or whatever. So these are three golden words that especially in written communication, we need to use these words because when we write an email, it's only letters. The emotion is given by the person who's reading it, you know. So the person who's reading it, in their minds, they can make up anything. They can even attribute to the text, the email, emotions of thoughts that you were not having or you were not even thinking about. So we have to be very careful. But that's why when we say please or thank you, sorry. It's like, you know, it's trying to make that emotion very gentle, very kind, very gracious. In conversations, discussions, you share an idea as a suggestion, not as a mandate. When there are times when we have to say something must be done, you know, something that's very important has to be done and we must get this done. But otherwise, most of the time we are presenting our ideas as a suggestion and say, hey, you think about it or let us think about it. How do we do this? Or should you consider how about exploring this option? So basically we are introducing our ideas as a suggestion most of the time. That means we're saying, hey, let's do this together. There may be times when we say this is very important, it has to be done. Some matters that are very critical. But otherwise, try to keep our communication as ideas and suggestions not as a mandate. This thing, this part, number five we already discussed earlier that when you are discussing difficult matters always do it in person or on a video call. It's better to sit and talk rather than just sending an email or a WhatsApp message. Say, hey, can you come and meet me? Then sitting together we can discuss the matter. Or if the person is in a different place or following, then we can do it on a video call. So difficult matters always do it in person or on a video call. When you are communicating, be clear, so there has to be clarity about what you're saying, to whom you're saying, and why you're saying it. If there is no clarity and then people are left hanging, they don't know what exactly you're trying to say. So consciously, am I communicating clearly? Is the message clear? Number seven, when you're doing things by email, try to keep it short. Don't write long emails because most people won't read it. Nowadays, people don't like to spend time reading long long things. So keep emails short, brief, as simple as possible. And of course, use technologies to communicate. So these are some thoughts here on communication. Just trying to keep it simple. So from a church perspective, some of the things that we try to follow, like I said, one is we try to do just two emails a week, just two WhatsApp messages in a week, nothing more. Our Sunday announcements also follow a five by five rule. That means only five announcements, five items, and within five minutes. The whole video announcements, normally, from start to finish, the intro and the outro have standard information, giving and so on. And then, only five items, apart from the standard intro and outro, every Sunday, only five, we try to keep it, only five things you talk about in the analysis. And that's it, we're done. So we try to follow that, a five by five rule. Now, yeah, there will be some exceptions. Sometimes on this, we may have to announce extra things, and if they're really important, we have to include it. But a general rule is, just talk about five things, because people are not going to remember more than five things. Five announcement items, keep it within five minutes. If we have to do a report, like some of those admissions or some conference app, and even that report is okay, keep it within one minute, so don't make a long report, just one minute, show the highlights. So that will add that in those Sundays, maybe we'll have an extra minute, five plus one, six minutes, six, seven, and that's maximum. So we have created our communication in our Sunday service through the announcements. We're trying to be very brief, keep it short, only on a New Year's Day service, we do a year interview, video recap the whole year, that will be about eight minutes, generally. So we are conscious of those things. The rest of the information, we keep it on our website, so that keep our website updated, so that people can go look at information, events, things that are happening in church. So that information is always updated on our church website, church website is updated every week, so content is kept up to date. Any questions about communication from the church, amongst church staff, so don't hesitate. I have a few personal questions, maybe. I just want to know, do you take care of all the communication, like all the feedbacks from the church people, like how do you manage your time on that, how do you find, like you said you send two messages to me, that's from the sending part, but even about the receiving part, if people are sending too much emails to you, people might send, they have a very big congregation, so do you prefer to answer like one or two a day, how do you take care of that? Yeah, so the fact is we get lots of emails every day, so emails are coming in from all over the world. It's not just our own congregation writing to us, but there are emails coming from people all over the world and all kinds of emails. So, how do we handle this? I don't handle all the emails. I handle the emails that come directly to my email ID but even that is a lot. But generally we have somebody who handles all our emails, so example emails that go to contacts, so that's where most of the emails come. They go to contact at APC. So that comes, that's the general public course, so emails to contact the emails that come to prayer, people sending in prayer requests are there emails that come into member care, that is our church people asking for help, there's emails that come into feedback or testimony, so all these texts. I see them but I don't respond to them, so those emails are handled by one dedicated person, so we have one dedicated person Smith Brown, so she handles, she's in charge of communication. So it's her responsibility to read all the emails and respond. So that's like almost like a job, it's like a dedicated person. So because there are so many emails coming she is responsible and then if that email needs to be sent to somebody else, she will forward it. You know depending on that email she's the one who reads, responds and forwards all the emails here. Now even emails that come to me directly, there's a lot of emails and honestly I don't read all my emails. I cannot read all my emails. It's very difficult. So I will select I will only I will look at the emails I mean who's coming who's coming and so I will respond to the ones that are important, the ones that I know I need to respond especially within our staff amongst them. Even then I'm not able to keep up with all the emails. Just within our staff because so many things are happening I don't know. So personally I may get probably my inbox let's say I'm just estimating maybe I maybe a more than 100 emails every day coming in directly to my so I cannot follow them I cannot personally respond to that. So what I've done is I've created separate folders for all our staff because they are important. So any email that comes from our staff goes directly to their particular folder. So I know that okay, for example Pasachekumar it goes directly to his folder. So okay I have to read this email and respond. Now I may not be able to do it today itself but sometime during the week I'll go to his folder and I'll look at his emails. I can respond to it. So all our staff at least in my inbox all our child staff have a folder. So when an email comes from a particular staff it goes directly to that folder. So I'm already automatically segregating those emails because those are I have to go and look at this all the other emails go to a common folder which means everybody others email before a common folder so that's something I actually am not able to read. And I'll just quickly glance if I see something that I need to respond, I would respond. So that's why we have somebody dedicated to handle me. All other emails and only the important ones others. And then some emails are more of a documentation meaning they are more for keeping records. So especially all our financial matters so there will be lots of emails on our accounting and all that. I don't read all that but they're just going in there as a record. I have a record. If I want to go back I can go and look at it. I can figure it out. So a lot of those accounting type emails I don't need to handle it because there's an accountant who handles it but I get a copy. It's in my folder, it's a separate folder but I can always go and read it if I want. I can always look it up but I don't read it because there's an accountant who is responsible for that. So again that's another category of emails. Similarly there are missions related emails I don't read all of them. These will be reports from all our churches I don't read all of them but it's there if I want to I can always go back and I can look it up but there's somebody who's handling missions. So I know that those emails are being handled by whose personnel is handling missions. So I know those emails are being handled so that's why I don't need to read them but I do get it's already in my inbox and I get it goes to a particular folder. So if at any point I want to know what's happening in the church or say in 20 months I can just go to the missions folder and I can just open up the latest report. Every month they send a report. So I can open the report I can say oh that's what is happening but I don't read it every month. Like every email I won't be able to read it. So that's kind of what happens in real life. Any other question on communication in church and ministry? I have one more question. So we see so many rumors spreading inside the church. I have seen in some churches a lot of rumors spreading between the church or about the church outside has anything like that happened over here and if a rumor spreads how do you actually handle it any kind of rumors, maybe rumors about you or the congregation or any kind of rumors? Yeah so it's like when people basically I think if and when when people start talking negative about the church or spreading information that's negative about the church how do you handle it how should you handle it now has it happened to us you know let me say this I've heard some things now and then about all people's church you know but so as an example I give you some silly these are some silly things you know but way back in our journey in in forget the year but I'm thinking 2004 2005 we moved into an auditorium that was air conditioned so we used to meet in a different auditorium and we outdrew that we moved into an auditorium that was an air conditioned auditorium which is near MJ Road so then somebody's this is like a rumor on things spreading somebody came and said oh people are calling ABC as an air conditioned they're just speaking very bad like as it was our mistake to be using an air conditioned auditorium to observe the surface now when I heard it I was like I have people even bothering to say you know we just needed an auditorium we found an auditorium it happened to be air conditioned we are meeting in it it's not a big deal and so when I hear something and I heard something I just let it go I don't bother there may have been someone then I've heard some silly things most of these things that people talk about are silly so for example I've heard somebody say oh ABC is an MNC church meaning we are catering to people from who are working in multinational companies so I mean it is true that a big number of people who come to our congregation are working in international companies because they are professionals and so on but for people to use that as a to talk about us in that way I mean I just heard it I just let it go I say like you know I'm not I don't and then I've heard sometimes somebody say this pastor was comparing this church with that ABC the pastors were talking about some things so whenever I hear these kinds of things I just let it go I don't even pay attention to it I don't even think about it a second time in the sense that I don't waste any time on it so to answer your question are there people kind of rumors or things that people say about ABC maybe there are I've heard some few things do I pay attention to it I don't in my mind so I'm here to serve God I'm here to serve people and I just want to keep my heart and mind clean and just do that and that's it so I just don't let that distract okay so yeah let's take a 10 minute break we'll come back right after the break and then we get into our next yes