 Welcome back to, welcome back to the second lecture, BC310 Church Administration. Are we going to get started from where we paused? So I was just sharing with you our page, apc.org slash guidelines where you could go and you know, we've tried to document, and this has happened over the years. And then we try to keep these documents up to date, in fact, our staff and consultant guidance going through another revision right now. We have to add, or we decided to add some section, add a section on sexual harassment and you know, that kind of thing. So just to make that clear on what needs to be done on those areas. Again, some of these things, you know, as the industry around us changes and government makes rules and government makes their labor laws and so on and so forth. We also have to keep updated. So, and so, you know, we keep updating these documents and I'm putting them out here on the webpage and you're welcome to use them. I take them, adapt them and use them. Now, some other things that I'll just, you know, that I want to talk about in relation to this. We looked at staff and consultant guidelines. Workplace policies, you know, so people need to be clear what is, you know, what are the policies based on which we work. And so that some of this is already documented in our staff and consultant guidelines. So they know about it before they join the organization. And then there are policies inside, you know, internal policies. For example, when you, so various teams will want to spend money or will have to spend money on their ministry area. So then there is a way on how to get it approved. So usually what happens, example, if the youth pastor is going to have a youth camp, then the youth pastor writes up a budget, you know, so he works on a budget with all the items on it. Then he sends it to our accountant and me for approval. I would approve, you know, I would go through it and then I would approve it. And, or if there is something, I feel like it's an unnecessary expense. So let's take this off. I could always go back and just email back saying, hey, get this off or, you know, make this change, correction, whatever. But once it's approved, he is then ready to go ahead and spend that money on that particular ministry. And then there's a whole process where, you know, because they may be working with several different vendors to make that camp happen. You know, there'll be a vendor for transportation, a vendor for the venue, a vendor maybe sometimes for the food, a vendor for maybe the sound and the equipment that are being used. So there could be several vendors involved. So the vendor has to give a certain bill, I mean, a bill that has to go to the account, then the account will pay, accounts will pay them. So these are all internal policies. This is how we work. For example, it's a policy that we will not make a payment to a vendor without a proper bill. So nobody gets paid, no vendor will get paid without a bill or it's an internal policy that you cannot reimburse, get a claim and expense without a proper bill. You know, it won't be done. So you have to send a bill. So that bill, which is a genuine bill, which shows that, you know, certain amount has been spent on that. So these are internal policies or in case we have to make cash payments. So, you know, there may be some, and this usually happens for like small purchases where there are either daily wage workers or, you know, you may buy food for a group of people and so on, get them in a small, some small expense where the person providing the service may not be a registered organization to give a bill. And so there's a cash payment made. Then what happened? There are two things. That person has to give an ID card, a copy of an ID card. So we know that the payment has been made to that real person. And there's also a piece of paper, we call it a voucher. That means they sign that voucher. And usually there's a, you know, these are small amounts that are paid. So these are all internal policies. And like this, there are several others, many of it having to do with accounting because, you know, we want to manage the money properly, which happens inside the organization, right? Within the organization. And how we interact with external entities. Again, here we need to have policies. This is how we work. And some of these things, you know, evolve over time. You learn through experience. Just for example, I will, I can share one example. You know, after we started our People's Church in Bangalore in 2001, in those years there was opportunity for foreign, I mean, overseas churches, mainly churches from the United States. Mainly, mainly from the United States who organizations who were coming into India and they would want to do ministry in India. You know, so they would come to our city, you know, and these, and I'll just refer to them as foreign missionaries. So these people would come and they may spend some time here in Bangalore. They would want to do ministry and so, you know. So in the early days, now, and so they, you know, they would want to attend a church. So they would, some of them may come to All People's Church and then they want to get involved with the church. So they would want to maybe serve in some area of ministry and so on. Now, in the early days, you know, I didn't know, I didn't have that experience. I just, you know, we should just welcome them. It's okay, yeah, you're welcome. You have a, so on and so forth. Now, but I had certain experiences. So I'll just share a couple of things. And this is not to, you know, speak bad about the missionaries who came from the US. That's not to speak bad about them. I'm telling you, these are things that actually happened. For example, there was a very, very large church in the US and they're known all over the world and they're the good people, but this is what happened. So their team came, the first time they came and they said, you know, they came and met with me. They said, we want to have a conference for workplace people, for professionals. And, you know, they had a book and they had all these things. We want to have a conference and can you help us? And I said, see, yeah, of course we can. We can announce it. We welcome people and, you know, fine. You go ahead. So we spread the word around and we just hosted a small conference for them because they wanted to talk to professionals, you know. So they had a conference. The next thing I found out was they had collected all the addresses, the contact details of all of these people. And the next thing I hear from them is we are here to plant a church of that big church from the US and they were inviting all these people who attended for the conference to come to their church plant. I said, this is not, you know, this is not right. And I was shocked actually that they would even do something like this, you know. Because out of good faith, you know, I said, yeah, I'll help you have a conference. But the next thing I know they're saying they're planting a church. Now, absolutely no problem. In fact, we help other people plant churches in our own city. And we have absolutely no problem. The city is so big and we need many, many churches. So absolutely no problem. But the way they went about doing it was completely incorrect in my observation. But then I learned from that lesson, you know. The thing is that never took off and then eventually they all backed up and left and, you know, nobody left the church to my knowledge. But it was a learning lesson for me. Then there was another missionary group that came from another part of the US and they said, you know, we want to serve and we want to be part of your church and say, okay, yeah, you can come and attend. And then they started getting, you know, they started trying to, basically what my observation was they started promoting their brand of Christianity within the people they were mingling with as though the way they did things was better or, you know, different from what we were doing. And so it brought a lot of confusion with the people they were interacting with. And so for me, that was again, you know, it seemed like they were more interested in promoting their particular brand of Christianity or the way they would do things. And it brought a lot of confusion and kind of we had to work through that. So that was, again, another learning lesson. And then I was watching, you know, other organizations. Again, these people would come, they would plant a church and then after two years they'll wrap up and go and, you know, everything will disintegrate and the church no longer exists. And so I was observing all this. So what happened from all these experiences and then we developed our own policy, you know, on how we were going to work with missionaries, foreign missionaries who come, you know, so some of the things I decided based on these experiences that they're welcome to come and worship at all people's church. You're welcome to be part of anything that's happening here, but none of them will be given leadership positions. They will all, they have to work under one of our leaders. The reason is, you know, I noticed they would come here for one or two years and then they would leave. And when they leave, you know, we don't want that ministry to stop. And so the leadership will always be our leadership. If they want to serve, they serve under us so that when they leave, the work will continue. You know, so that was very clear. Secondly, when they come and they serve, we do it the way we want to do it. We will not let them promote their style or their brand of Christianity. Of course we're going to learn good things. We will try to learn, you know, what we can, but we will do it the way, you know, we want to do it because we understand the local terrain better. And so these were things that we put in place as a policy and I wrote up a little document just distributed within our own pastoral team so that we know that this is how we're going to work and so on. So that's just having to do with interactions with external entities, meaning, you know, other ministries and other churches. So for example, we have a policy about when other Christian organizations in our city, when they want to promote their event, how will that happen? You know, because I remember in the past, they used to ask, you know, can you give us some time to make announcements? I said, okay, yeah, you know, take five minutes or whatever. And then the person will come and he'll take 10 minutes or sometimes even more. And then, you know, that disrupts our Sunday service. So we went through some experience like that and then we said, okay, from now on, we will not announce any event during the service, period. So it doesn't matter which organization who wants to come and say, can we make an announcement? Answer is no. Yeah, what we will give them is an opportunity to put a table outside of our auditorium. They can keep their posters, handles, banners, everything on that table. They have to man the table themselves and they are free to promote their event like that. No distribution of handles, things inside the auditorium, no putting it on the chairs, none of that. And this is to be uniform for all Christian organizations who want to promote an event on a Sunday morning at an APC church service or any other event. So this is a very clear policy. We've made it known to our admin people. So that whenever there's an inquiry, the answer is, this is how you can do it. You can use it or if you don't want to use it, it's okay. So, you know, these things we learned through our mistakes, we learned over time but then we documented the policies on various things based on observations, interactions. And then everybody within the organization is clear how they have to respond to external entities who want to interact with us and so on. And last point here in terms of the administrative side is that, you know, always whenever we do things with the vendor or we take up a building, everything is contractual. That means we have a signed contract with the landlord or the people who own the premises. And we don't just do this by word of mouth. Everything is documented. So we don't want to get into any kind of trouble. So, you know, our administrative people, they understand contracts and lease agreements have to be in place, have to be renewed as we take up places that we use or, you know, do our activities in. All right, let me pause here. Any questions, any thoughts so far? Everybody with me? Any thoughts, any questions? Okay. So much, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Sri Kumar. Thank you, Master. Master, I just want to know, do we also have some legal thing in it is settled the bear in case any kind of persecution or such thing happens. So do we have some kind of that kind of something? Some guidelines are there. Thank you. Okay. So in case of any persecution, what do we do? We haven't written this document out. Actually, your question kind of makes me think that we need to write it down and put it as a document. But so it's a good question. But internally, we know what to do. One is if it is something that has to do with us locally here, we have a person, a lawyer who is one of the, who is on, like I said, the advisory board, right? So we go to him for any legal advice. Secondly, there is a network across India called the, it's called, it stands for ADF, the Alliance in Defense of Faith, right? So basically it's a network of Christian lawyers all across India and we have their contact. And so like that there are one, two, there are three organizations, three Christian organizations who cover India. So ADF, another one is persecution relief and another one is, I forget the name, so anyway, I have these contacts on my phone and you know, Passenance has those details as well. So if any of our churches outside of Bangalore are affected, we know that immediately we call ADF, we call them, we call that number. We ask them for the lawyers in that particular area. So they'll give us the details. So then we engage with those lawyers in that area and they will guide us, you know, how do we, what should we do, how do we respond and so on. And this has happened in reality. In, I know we have done this on at least two occasions for our churches outside of Bangalore when there was a mob that came outside the building and you know, ready to attack and so on. And so again, we engaged with ADF, got the lawyers involved, got the police involved and so we worked on that. But we have these contact details. Now, based on your question, I think, you know, we will write up a document and put it there for easy access or at least circulated internally, but we have the details and this is what we normally do in case of persecution. Yeah, thank you, sir. Can I ask you one more question? Okay, go ahead. Thank you. Because of the current situation, now the government came out with this law that you should not advise non-Christians and other things. So in that case, do we have to take any measures like especially when we are reaching out to the people? So in that, when the laws are changing, so do we also, you know, have some guidelines where we have to take care of ourselves in these areas? Do we have that also? Thank you, master. Okay, so what, okay, let me answer it like this. What we did, that this was even before the government came up with these laws, this right from the beginning from day one is for what, I'm sorry, I'm speaking specifically for what a baptism is that we have a what a baptism consent form. And again, this is also available on our church website. You know, let me just give you the link. So we have, we have a baptism consent form and you can find it there and that forms. So before we baptize any person, if they're an adult 18 years about, they have to sign this form. Basically it just says they are making the choice to do it and so on. So if, if they're not, obviously an adult is free to make their choice, right? In India, nobody can violate an adult's choice, but the form says that they are making the choice. They're not being induced, forced, compelled, coerced in any way to make the choice to be baptized. So we started doing this from the very beginning and we continue to do that today. So if at all, you know, in any case, any questions are raised by anybody. We have this form with us saying they signed it and they have given us a consent. If it's a person under 18 and the parents sign it, right? So that way we are, in some way we are protected in the sense we had, we have a document that says we did not force the person into baptism. Okay. And this was advised to us in the very beginning when we started, again by our advisors and say, okay, you do it like this. You know, so we've got it in writing. That's what we continue to follow. And I think it's fine. And I think the other thing is more, more from my side, you know, understanding that what's happening. If we, you know, publicize this everywhere, people think, oh, they're doing something converting people. Really it's an expression of faith. So, you know, we do our baptisms in the swimming pool. People may take their own photos, but you know, it's not like something we publicize, put out on social media and all that, you know, we don't do that. So, you know, it just happens quietly and we keep going. Yeah. Is that okay, Sri Kumar? Thank you. Can I do your question, please? Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. Can you talk about in case where you want to aid some foreign aid or get some foreign aid, you want to assist somebody outside your charge and where you want to get some kind of assistance, we have some kind of policy based on that. Okay. Good question. So, our policy on receiving aid from overseas, outside of India. So this was something we, we, you know, from the day, what I would say from before we started, our policy was, let us be 100% indigenous. Let us be like that. That means we said, okay, we will not receive money from outside India. Right. Because in order to do that, there's a government procedure we have to follow. We have to get what is known as a special permit, you know, under a particular category called foreign currency remittance account and so on. So there's this process, the government has a process, but we said, look, we will not make use of it. Now, there were times we thought about it, you know, later on as we made our journey, a couple of times we did discuss it, should we, should we get it, should we not. And, you know, every time we, that came up for discussion, the end decision was, okay, let's not do it. And the reason is we said, look, you know, we will be indigenous. All the money will be from Indian citizens and we will just use it. And, you know, God was just blessing, so we had no lack. And we continued that, and we still continue like that. The other reason was the moment you start receiving money from overseas, then you come under the government scanner. The government begins to look at you. Now, the only change we made was, I think, last year when, or a year before, last year, I think, when we started having overseas students in the Bible college. Now, when we started having overseas students in the Bible college, there is a provision by the Indian government that you can't receive tuition fees from students if they are being educated in your college. So, that was a provision. So, we gave the option to students who were overseas if you want to pay. Now, we don't make it mandatory, but those who want to pay, if they are from overseas, they want to pay, they can. So, because there was a provision that education, money coming for education fees is exempt from that criteria. So, I would say maybe, you know, a couple of students from overseas would pay, but, you know, we would be not insisting on it. We just gave it as an option. Now, this... So, that's about money coming from outside to us. Similarly, the government has a restriction on money going out. That means we cannot use money as a church. We cannot use money... I mean, we cannot send money out of India. So, that became a problem for us because when we wanted to... I mean, first is we wanted to work outside India. And secondly, you know, even if you're thinking about our Bible college students, you will be the first batch of so many international students graduating, and we wanted to be able to support, you know, financially and help. And for those, of course, we'll have a process in place. But if our students wanted to start a ministry and work with us and so on, we wanted the means to do it. But then the government says we cannot send money outside India. So, our option was to create another entity outside India, in the U.S., where we could receive money there. And that money will be used to fund our work outside of India. And so, you know, we are working on that. I've spoken to some people whom we know and they're ready to form that legal entity and they're people ready to contribute towards that. So, that will be called APC World Missions. And APC World Missions basically will fund the work outside of India. And the focus will be on our Bible college students who graduate to help them start churches and ministries and so on. So, that's how we plan to do it. So, as far as Indian regulations, you know, we just follow the regulations, but then we find legal ways outside to do the work. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Christopher. Yes, Pastor. I just wanted to find out if you have any criteria in regards to source of funds, you know, funds that come into the church and particularly maybe in the case of large sums of money which may be in cash. I'm not sure if you have that experience, but they are religious trust or, you know, communities that have received funds and they received some cash. So, I'm not sure if there's any sort of criteria around that. So, yeah. So, you know, let's think about the time pre-pandemic. Before the pandemic, in the churches, in our services, you know, we would pass the offering bags and people would put money in. It's all cash. And we should take it and deposit it. Do we know the source of the funds? No. You know, it's whatever people just put in. That's, that was what, you know, whatever came in, that was it. Right. Right. So, do we know the source of the funds? No. Even in fact, so now post-pandemic, we don't necessarily take offerings very much in our services, everything is digital. So people transfer online. And even in those cases, we don't know the source of the funds, meaning, you know, because it's a bank to bank transfer or, you know, through UPI, of course, all within India, but we don't know the individual who's sending the money and we don't know how that individual got the money. In some cases, we will know the name of the individual because, you know, the transaction will carry their name. In some cases, nothing is there. We don't know the name of the person who actually contributed. But from a legal standpoint for a religious organization, that is okay, meaning the government is not asking because the government knows that people are contributing. You know, they could contribute in cash. They can contribute in, you know, all of these ways I mentioned. And we are not responsible for tracking the individual. And the government is not making us responsible to account for where the individual got their money from. So the answer to your question is we don't know. And the government has not made it a requirement for us to track it because it's going to be very difficult, you know, when people make these contributions. We actually don't even know who all are making contributions and what is the amount other than when they actually see names show up in the transaction, which doesn't happen all the time. So the answer to your question is we don't know. And secondly, the government doesn't mandate that we know because of the nature of our organization. It's a religious trust. So it's okay. Yeah. Did I answer your question? Okay. All right. Let's pick up from the pause. And I hope these questions are useful to everybody. I don't know if it's boring to some, but it's good to hear the questions and try to answer that. Okay. Let's sort of finish this chapter. Another area is operational guidelines. That means for various teams, and you will see this in on that guidelines page, you know, for various ministry teams, if you think about the hub and spoke model that we spoke about in the earlier lecture for all of those teams, the volunteer teams, it's good to have guidelines. What are the teams supposed to do? How is the team supposed to operate? And how does the team interact with, you know, the staff and the pastors? So these guidelines are very useful. They help us train new volunteers who join and they make sure that, you know, there's consistency in this work. And of course, these guidelines have to be updated because, you know, things are constantly changing or how we do things change. And so we need to keep these things updated, but there are these guidelines and they help us in inducting new volunteers and staff. And lastly, we also have standards. So, you know, when we do graphic design or video, when we have our books, our done, we follow standards. So we have, you know, for example, the graphics that we do, there are certain standards, you know, example, on a Sunday, for a one Sunday service, for one Sunday sermon, there are 14 different sizes of graphics being created for one Sunday sermon. So, you know, I will send a sermon title, okay, this coming Sunday, this is the sermon title. Okay, I just have to send that. Now the media team creates a design, a graphic design, but there are 14 different layouts and sizes of that same graphic that is done because one is done for the, you know, website banner, one is done for the PowerPoint presentation, one is done for, you know, different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and so on. There are thumbnails that have to be done for sermons, for YouTube. There are, yeah, so, you know, so just that same graphic, the different sizes and details that have to be done in so many different ways, what is being used in the videos and so on. But it's standardized, I mean, it's all documented, so the work is very simple. If I send this title, all of that will get done, you know, and then it will be distributed to the people who need that and they will push it out on their platforms. Or, you know, when we do videos, okay, there's a certain way, for example, Sunday morning, our announcements are on videos, there are guidelines for it. The video has to be five minutes or less. As a rule, it's five times five. That means, maximum, you know, keep it to five announcements, less than five minutes, and each announcement, less than, say, about 30 seconds, you know, maximum. If there's a reason for it to be longer, okay, you know, so on. So all these guidelines were, you know, put together. And then for, you know, for various videos that you create, if you're doing a report of a ministry event, it's got to be, you know, one minute, maximum two minutes. Now, a year in video, reviewing the whole year, is between eight to 10 minutes, you know. So these are all guidelines that are already set for different people who are doing the work. For the books we do, you know, this is the font we use, this is how the cover is going to be, this is how the back cover is going to be, this is how the scripture should appear on all of that. So all these things are documented as standard, especially, you know, in these areas of graphic design, videos, books, so on, and then, of course, for the IT team, and how they do it, and when they send out the e-mailers, what is the format they follow. So all these things are standardized, so everything looks very uniform. And, you know, when we do our class next semester on media and technology, we'll talk about the importance of, you know, having this standard look and feel on different platforms, or when do you want to make it a variable of what is the importance of consistency and all that. But these are all documented standards, so everybody follows it. And, you know, when new people join, they can read it up, they know what to do, and they follow. So I want to close this with a question. The sad thing is Christians don't like rules. When I say Christians, I mean us people, you know. We don't like rules. And the moment we start talking about policies and guidelines and standards, the thing like, oh, you're putting us, you know, under so many rules. I shouldn't, I must do it like this. I shouldn't do it like that. I must, you know, I must get up at this time, and I must sleep at this time, and whatever, you know, whatever kind of things, you know. And so we tend to have a very negative perception of having policies, guidelines and standards. And believers tend to view it as legalism. You know, you're not giving me freedom. You know, why are you being so legalistic about these things? So my question is, and we could discuss for a few minutes, how do we help people understand that this is not legalism, but this is something good for everybody. You know, so when we have guidelines, when we are doing things according to certain policies, we have certain standards, this is not about, you know, being legalistic, but it's good for everybody, you know, so we can all work well together. How do we help people understand that? That's something we can just talk about for a few minutes before we close. Anybody want to share your thoughts on it? Okay. So Srikumar says, educate on the importance. Educate on the importance. Yeah, good. Elisha, go ahead. Pastor, thank you for the opportunity. I think engagement, extensive engagement with those who are going to be the ultimate implementers of beneficiaries of the policies, the standards is very important here. Sometimes some of these policies have come out without the engagement of the people. So I believe when at the initial stage, when the thoughts are being guarded, we engage the people to also make input. Then they come to own it. When there's that ownership, then there's that commitment to see the successful implementation of the policies and then the standards. That is my thoughts. Very good. Very good. Yeah, I think that's very important that, you know, that this as far as possible, especially when there are teams of people, that they come up with these things and then they own that. And if they own it, they will definitely make sure they do it. Very good. Go ahead, Kennedy. Thank you again. I think there should be an importance to let them know the, I think there should be an issue of public participation. Because these administrative issues, it's like they cut across the board. So they are beneficial to the touch. So if we have public participation, where they'll see the benefit, teach them the values while we're doing this, I think they'll eventually appreciate. Because that equalism is an old school of thought. Because they are not taught what to do. They are told just do it straight away. So it doesn't give them that clear understanding. Yes. Yes. Good. Good. Thank you. And I see Rupa's comment. Teach by example. Good. So when they see it and being followed and they observe that others are following, they will also want to do it. Good. Any other thoughts? How do you help people understand that this is good for them? It's not legalism. It's like, you know, bringing a set of commandments and forcing them. No, it's everybody's good. What can we do? Any other thoughts? We've got some good ideas. Anybody else? Go ahead. Nice. Pastor, I also think that we can push from the puppets. Many a times you see, you hear ministers of the gospel, what they say, the comment they make about government rules and regulations. We realize that they push some philosophies in the mindsets of the congregation. In that this is, as you stated, is something that is for all Christians. Generally, all Christians are against rules, standards, policies. They think they are legalistic. So from the Prophet also, we can begin to preach messages. When our messages are coming, it shouldn't attack policies, government, policies, government programs, government standards. We should rather try to harmonize them with the gospel so that our people, the congregation will begin to have a different perspective in some of these things. So help people see things on biblical perspective so that they can then begin to imbibe those things. Good thought. I see Asha's comment there, help and encourage them with love, kindness and compassion. That's true. So we gently lead people to understand these things and practice these things. Charles, maybe we'll take yours. Let's last before we close. Sorry Charles, I can't hear you. I'm not sure if it's just me, but I can't hear what you're saying. Could you please repeat it Charles? I couldn't hear what you were saying. Okay, I'm not sure, but that's a connection issue now. All right. Okay, it's time for us to close so that you can have your break and get ready for your next class. I want to encourage you to think about this. I know we're kind of moving quickly through different topics, but there's a lot of ground to cover. And just think about these things. See if you have the opportunity to make use of them, please do in your organizations where you work. But definitely keep these things in mind for the future. May I request somebody just to say a quick prayer and then we can dismiss, please. Thank you so much for everything that you do in life. Thank you for the message and the truth that you've spoken. Now that they're hard to obey and follow the guidelines that you have for us from authority and blessedness or in health care, deliverance, peace of mind, and also thank you so much for the blessing and that each one of my classmates got that they will grow in wisdom and knowledge, strengthen them, empower them and equip them more so we'll be done each one of their life. Thank you so much for everything that you understand. Everything that you have for us and growing your ways, God, you need me to pray in you. Amen. Amen. Okay. Thank you, Rowan. I have a quick break and enjoy your next class and the rest of the day. See you soon. God bless.