 Okay. The recording has just started. Thank you for joining the class. Let's just pray together and we will get started in this class on church and ministry administration. Okay. Good, somebody. So Manu, welcome back. I thought you were going on e-learning. But you decided to come back here or move back from e-learning. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. That's fine. Good. Why don't you just pray and we'll get started. Loving Heavenly Father, we just come into your presence of Father God. Thank you for this wonderful morning. Thank you for your protection over nine months of Father God Jesus. Thank you for helping us to enter this 10th month of Father God Jesus. Thank you Father God this morning. Father God, as we gathered here to study about the administration of Father God, you lead us and guide us of Father God. In Jesus name we pray for the Father. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Darrell. Thank you, each one. Let's get started. We'll just quickly review. So this week, we started talking about accounting, budgeting, and the finance side of the ministry. On Wednesday, we just gave a biblical perspective, just some principles that should guide us as we talk about ministry or church, finances, money and so on. So we did that. We talked about all the biblical principles, not all but some of the principles that guide us. So what we're going to do is, we're going to move into the practical side of church, ministry, finances. And I kind of try to give us a little bit of an overview. We won't be able to finish everything today. We probably will take two more classes, two more lectures. I'll give us kind of a little bit of overview. Then next week we'll continue on this next two lectures. I want to give us an overview of different aspects of the finance and then also show you samples of how we do it at APC. Now, just a little disclaimer. What I'm sharing with you is a lot of what we do at All People's Church as a church and a ministry. But this is not how every church or every ministry does it. For instance, one immediate difference is that in many churches, they have committees. They have church committees. So that means they have a group of people. Committees will oversee different ministry areas. Now, at APC, we don't have committees. We either we run it as teams. We just have teams and team leaders who head up those departments or we have ministries that are led by ministry leaders. Or we have for the functioning, we have departments and people who head up those departments. So we don't work in a typical committee-driven way. So there are some churches that are driven by committees for various things. But we don't do that. We have teams or we have ministries or we have departments. And each one is led by a team leader or a ministry leader or a department head or a head of that area. So that's kind of an immediate difference. And then secondly, we at APC, we've tried to be more, you know, borrow more from a corporate side, rather from a traditional church side of functioning, even in this area of finance. Okay, so what I'm going to be sharing today, and then we continue next week, I'll give us an overview of how we've set up things at APC as a church, as a ministry. But at the very beginning, I'm making this disclaimer that this is not the only way to do it. There are other ways, other ways other churches would do it, mainly by committee and a committee would have a treasurer, you know, different posts or offices held by people and they would then manage how money is used, so on. So there are differences. But I'll just share what we are doing and hopefully you can take, you know, whatever's useful for your church or your ministry and use that, okay. And of course, feel free to ask questions and, you know, we can discuss things. So finance accounting budgeting, you know, last week we kind of laid the importance of why, you know, we shared why this is so important and how it can affect churches and ministries and so on. And we went over these five principles, key principles. We did that, not last week, but on Wednesday. Right, so just to quickly review, you share a God-given vision and let people give towards that. You know, just trust that God will move on people's hearts to give towards the vision. The other principle is we serve people spiritually and they will so financially. So God has, you know, ordained that if you help people spiritually, they will give financially and you use that money to take care of the needs of the people and so on. We have to be good stewards of money, along with spiritual things. So these are not separate. God sees them as equally important. Be accountable to the people who have given. So just because somebody is given, we can't say, okay, goodbye, I don't care about you. No. The other ones who gave, we have to be answerable to them if they ask any questions, we have to give them, you know, the information, the proper response. And lastly, we also have to be accountable to government authorities, civic authorities. So these are just simple principles. We have to keep in mind as a church or a ministry. Okay. So let's get into the practical side. Now, the first thing I would say is, you know, use a software system. Right. Now, when we start, when APC started, this was in payback 2001, February, we had a notebook where we wrote down on paper what was the offering that came in on Sunday. So every Sunday, it's small piece of paper. I mean, in the notebook one page, this was the offering that came in. Very small amounts. And so it was recorded. And then, but from the very beginning, from 2001, we start, we started using a software system. Now, in India, one of the common accounting software that's used by small businesses, organizations is called Tali. Right. That's in India. And it's customized for to meet the Indian regulations, Indian government regulations. Right. So it's easy to produce the kind of reports and things that are needed within India. So like this, you find out what software is suitable for, wherever you are working. Now, Tali is not very expensive. I don't know what the current rate is, but when we started for 25,000 rupees, we got one license and we started like that. There are free accounting software packages that you can download and use, or you can use some that's web-based if you're interested. So that's also there. But these are not tailored for the Indian market. So, you know, that reporting part will not be there. Now, I just want to say something is that, you know, in the early years, we did not have anybody in-house to do the accounting. So I would just write things in a notebook or collect the bills for whatever we've paid, made purchases or things. I would just keep it. And then there was an accountant, a person who came from an accounting firm. She would come and she would just spend one hour a week, those days that there was hardly any work, just one hour a week. She would just enter everything in the system, make sure everything is, you know, check the bank account, check everything. Yeah, it's fine. Her job was done. So that was how we started. So we didn't have an accountant full-time with the church. There was just a person that came from the accounting firm that we were doing the accounting for us. That person would come once a week for just one hour, finish her work and go. Then slowly, you know, as the, you know, as the church grew and as there was, there were more transactions, more things happening. We had, again, the same, we stayed with the same accounting firm throughout. So from beginning till now, with the same external accounting firm, that person would come maybe one day, spend a whole day, do all the accounting, make sure everything's there, all the files, paperwork, paper, everything's done. So it extended, it became like, okay, one day, it required one day to do all the work. But again, we didn't have any in-house stuff. It was just done outside. A person would come and go. Then later on, what happened was we had somebody in-house who would, this person was not an accountant, but she would just collect all the bills and collect all the needed documents, keep it ready. The external person, so now, over time, the external accountant would come. He would come two days a week if needed, three days a week, and he would, you know, he would, everything was already prepared, everything, all the bills, all the, everything was kept ready. So he would come, he would check everything, he would enter everything into the accounting software. He would check the bank accounts, make sure everything is kept right. So, you know, and he continued like that till, you know, I think for the first 15 years or 16 years, that's how it was. He'd ever had an in-house accountant, because it was enough to have an external accountant come in for, you know, like I said, two days or three days every week, do the work, it was finished, it was done. And then only, you know, after 15, 16 years of being in existence, did we feel the need to have a full-time person as an accountant. Now, the number of transactions increased, the number of staff also increased. So we had to, you know, the salaries of more people and their personal details had to be managed. We also had more vendors who needed to be paid. So there was, you know, bills coming in and people had to keep being paid. So, at that point, we said, okay, we need a full-time person to handle the money, the finance of the church. So the point is we didn't start big, we started very small, one hour of work a week to now, you know, there's a full-time person and there's some other people also involved. I will mention that a little later. So that's, you know, you grow with time. As the church grows, ministry grows, your accounting department will also grow. Now, you don't need to know this. This is, you know, this is what the accountant will do. Basically, almost all organizations of financial management, the standard is a double-entry bookkeeping method. You don't have to worry about this. This will be taken care of by your accountant and by your software system. Basically, every transaction, it's recorded as a debit and a credit because money is taken out from somewhere and it is put in somewhere. It's a double-entry. So that's called a double-entry system. And it's this whole way, this whole way of doing it is called a general ledger. So it's almost like a, it's a physical, it's a term, a physical book term, a general ledger. So in a general ledger, I just want to, you know, go to the part that is of importance, which is every general ledger has the individual sub-ledger accounts, okay? Sub-ledger accounts. That's the part that you need to know. Or, you know, people may use different terms for it. It's a chart of accounts, some people call it. Some may just refer to it as a header or some may refer to it as sub-accounts or sometimes even call it projects. So basically, in a general ledger that has this double-entry bookkeeping method, you have account heads, account heads, okay? To which money goes in and goes out. That's a credit and a debit to that head. So example, we have a general fund account, okay? So this is an account head or a sub-ledger head. What is this? That means when people give contributions, if they don't say what the money is, they don't specify the money is meant for this particular thing. Like example, nowadays people could give money and they say, okay, please use it for supporting pastors in North India. So they are saying use that money to support churches or pastors in North India. That is a specific account head, okay? Or a ledger head, ledger account or whatever. You can call it a project. You can call it a header. You can call it an account head, right? So that's a very specific thing. So that means the credit goes there and then when you take money out from there, it goes to support the pastors. It's debited, sent out, right? It's all with respect to that particular fund. That particular project or ledger head, right? But if people don't specify, they just make a contribution. It'll all go to the general fund because it has not been specified, you know, they just gave to the church. So you have a general fund account that's one of your heads and money comes into that and money goes out of that. So there's a credit debt, okay? But at the same time, you will have many other funds or ledger heads, many other, okay? Example would be by church location, you know? So for example, we, you could do, maybe have North, South, East, West, Mangalore. Then we have, you know, these churches outside and around India. So you could do it by church location. We also have by ministry area. So youth ministry, children's ministry, publications. That's our books, our media, television, then we used to do television, things like that. And sometimes it also be set up by projects. So that means sometimes we do, you know, a project which is like, you know, that may run for a couple of months. So example, recently we did this COVID relief project, okay? So that is a particular head, a fund account or a ledger head in our whole accounting system, okay? In the whole general ledger, that's a particular head. What is it? COVID-19 relief project, relief project. So when people give money, it will be, and they say it's for that, it will go to that project. And then when we take money out from there, it will go out. So although physically there's only one bank account or not one, we have a couple, I think we have two bank, two or three bank accounts. Physically there are, you know, a few bank accounts. Overall, the money is treated in a general ledger with account of the ledger to which money is credited and taken out, okay? That's all you need to understand. Because when you see your financial report, which I will show you next week, it will be based on this. So when you get a snapshot, when you get a summary of, you know, how the organization is doing financially or your monthly report, it will come under these heads. So you know immediately how these things are doing, how each chart of account, how each line item in your chart of accounts is doing, you know, okay, so much came in for COVID relief, so much went out for COVID relief, things like that, okay? So you just need to know also this will help you in your budgeting. And I will share with you a little later on how we do our budgeting, meaning example, youth ministry, okay? So youth ministry is one of the ministry areas. It is a ledger head. So now people don't usually give money specifically for youth ministry. Nobody does that. It's very rare. But we may just, for example, we may collect money when we have a youth camp or when we have some youth event. Okay, there, that's the only time money comes in, which is specific to that area of ministry. But most often it doesn't happen. What happens? Money goes from general fund to that ministry area. That's how most of it comes, right? There will be money coming in to the general fund. And from there it goes to, you know, various things, whether it's church locations or whether it goes to ministry areas. So we are talking about youth ministry. So money will go from here to youth ministry. So when you get your report, monthly report, or I'm sorry, I was talking budgeting. I'm getting looking, sorry. So when you're doing your budgeting, what happens? On a 12 month basis. Now, you know, in India, the financial year is a little different. It's not based on the calendar. It goes from April 1st to March 31st. That's our financial year. So it's a little different from the calendar year. Now in some countries, the financial year and calendar year are the same. Anyway, so whatever that your 12 month period is. So over that 12 month period, you look at, okay, what was my expense for this ministry area, youth ministry? What did we spend on it? So, you know, over the year, over the 12 month period, there'll be different things taking place under youth ministry or under publications or under whatever. But when you look at that report, you know, okay, in the last financial year, the last 12 month period, we spent X amount of rupees for youth ministry. So therefore, for the next year, this is how much we must budget, right? Now you may also know that, okay, we're going to, the ministry is going to be more or less the same. We're going to be doing the same similar things, same things. Nothing special has been planned. So the increase will be minimal, you know, the budget increase. Maybe you keep it to maybe 10%, 15% increase for the next year for that ministry area. But sometimes you may plan something big. Hey, this year, last year we didn't do this. You're going to do a big youth conference. So, okay, therefore I need to budget, you know, sizable amount more for that. But where is the money coming from? It's coming from your general fund. It's going to there. Okay, so having these heads is very important because that is how you're going to manage your money, right? Otherwise, if everything, if you have only one head called general fund and money just goes out from there, then you won't know where it was used and you won't be able to plan for future things. Okay, was the money from here used for, how much was used for church location? How much was used for different ministries? How much was used to approach? You won't know that. Okay, so the point I want to get across for us, you don't have to worry about the details, but you need to understand this part, which is in your accounting, you need to tell your accountant, hey, see the accountant won't know this. The accountant is not going to know that your church has 10 different ministries or your accountant doesn't know these things about your church. So you as a pastor or a leader must tell the accountant, okay? We have a general fund account, but I also want you to create other ledger headers, heads such as, you know, whatever, youth ministry, children's ministry, north church, south church, east church, west church, the central church. Okay, media ministry, television ministry, you know, whatever you want these heads to be. And so you should tell them. And sometimes you will, like I said, you may create new projects. You may start new ministries and you may also retire some ministry areas. That means you're no longer continuing in that. But whatever was done there will be recorded. It'll always be there. Okay, so this part you understood. If you understood, okay, we're ready to go forward. Any questions or maybe I didn't explain clearly enough. You're welcome to ask, please. Is that okay? Very simple, but you need to understand that everybody understood. Okay. Okay, fine. So we're moving forward. Okay. So that's basic thing as far as and all of this is, you know, you just set it up in the software system. The content will set it up for you. You tell them what your church is doing, what your ministry is doing. They will get it set up. Okay. Next is your department. Now, how do you set up your department? What are the kind of people you need? And so on. Okay. Now, once again, this is how we are doing it at APC. It is, it will be very different. I'm not saying very, but it would be somewhat different from how other churches may run it. They may run it a little differently. And we have tried to adopt more of a corporate type of setting into the church functioning. Okay. So like I gave a little run through on the history. That is we didn't necessarily have a department. You know, it was just an external. So we had an external for a long time. We had only an external accountant. Right. This accountant would come depending on the hours needed, handle everything for us. Go on. Then we put one person in place. I wouldn't call her an internal auditor yet, but she was more of a person who would collect all the information internally. Keep it ready for the accountant. So she was, you know, more of an admin type person, internal admin, account admin who collected all the, you know, so people would send, give the bills to her. The vendors will send the bills to her. The, the, she knew all the staff who had to be paid war and what the salaries were. And so it was more of an internal account admin who kept all the things ready. The external accountant came and did all the work. Paid, did the payroll or paid all the vendors did the work and went. Okay. So that was the next step, but sorry. From the very first year, from the very first year, there was also an external auditor. So what is this? That means this auditor is a different company. So it is not the accounting firm from where this accountant comes is a separate firm, the separate accounting firm. Accounting firm. Those people will come and check what has been done by these people, the accountant. So initially it was done once a year. Okay. There wasn't much. So once a year was enough. They came, they checked everything. They signed off on. Okay. Everything is fine. You know, they check all the bills. They check all the transactions incoming, outgoing transactions. So everything has to, you know, match. Good work is done. They will sign it off. They will give us an audited report for the end of the year. That means that 12 month period, everything has been checked. Everything is in good condition. Fine. So we had an external auditor who would do that. And like I said, in the early, early years, once a year was enough. Okay. Then as time passed by, we had hired a full-time internal accountant. So he basically took over the admin role as well, because everybody, you know, sent their bills to him, expense things to him. He handled. So basically it became a full-time job. So we had a full-time person, an internal accountant. And we had an external accountant come. So our present working is like this. Right now. So we have an internal accountant who handles all the accounting work internally. The external accountant comes once a week. And the internal accountant will give everything to him. And he will put it into the software system. Okay. He enters everything into the software system, checks everything first. That means all the money that came in to the bank accounts, all the money that went out of from the bank accounts should be, you know, all the money that went out should be validated by bills. Right. Okay. So these were paid, money that was paid to a vendor, money that was paid for salary, money that was paid for purchase of certain things. Everything has their bills. This external accountant checks everything on a weekly basis and then enters it into the software system. Then on a monthly basis, every month, an external accountant will generate a report, actually two reports. And I'll show you what it looks like. An income expense report. He, so two reports he will generate based on, and we will look at it next week. He will generate two reports based on everything that month. Plus the report will have the current balances of all the accounts, all the, the, we talked about the ledger heads. So special projects. So, you know, you will see, there's a overall snapshot. That means high level. So much came, so much went, but then you also see by projects. Okay. Building projects, so much money is there, this, whatever. So you get an overall view, you know, in, in two spreadsheets, you get an overall view of the financial status of the organization. So he sends it and that's what I look at. So I don't look at what is happening on a day to day basis. I don't see what's happening on a weekly basis. I only look at the monthly reports. Right. So as a pastor, as a leader, you are busy with your ministry. You're busy with, you know, doing all of those things. So you can't be involved in the day to day checking and all that. So you leave it to these people on a monthly basis. You look at it now, but this Excel accountant is the one who has to tell you that everything is in good order. Right. Now, sometimes when I look at the reports, I say, Hey, something is not here. Something's not right. This has not been, you know, maybe like I said here, it may not have been put under the right head. Some, something is wrong. We did not spend so much from that head. You know, so I, I raise flags. I ask questions based on what I see. Now I'm not saying I look at it and spend the whole day looking at it. I will look at it within, you know, a couple of minutes. I look at it. I can immediately see something is right or something, I mean, something is wrong. Then I raise a flag. By the way, as I would look at it in those few minutes, I'm able to see like everything is fine. Things okay. Okay. No worry. Right. So it's not like I spend hours on it. No. But we are depending on the internal accountant and the external accountant to make sure everything is in good order. So this is how it happens on a monthly basis. Then the external audit. So there's an another audit that's done and we do it twice a year. So you remember, we used to do it once a year before. Now we do it every six months. So every six months, everything is checked in detail. So, so you see now on a weekly basis, there's a check that's happening because weekly basis, this account internal accountant has to give everything to the external accountant. Second on a monthly basis, everything is tallied and a report reports are generated. Then every six months again, another audit is done. Once again, we're checking everything for a six month period. Is it okay? Is everything okay? Right. Sometimes, you know, okay, what happened? Yeah, what happened? Okay. You've got to find answers, where was that money spent? Hopefully we've not had any major issues. In fact, I, yeah, in all these years, we've not had any major issues. We've not had any problems. At the most it may be, you know, wrong headings. Money has been taken out of the wrong header or credited to the wrong header. Okay. That's changed that. Sometimes, yeah, so those kind of things we'll have to do make corrections, but most of it, otherwise things have been good. What was I saying? Yeah. So twice a year, the external auditor comes, does, and at the end of the 12 month period, which is usually the end of our Indian financial year, a few months after that, the external auditor will generate an audited report for the previous 12 months. Say that, look, we have checked everything. Everything is fine. They sign off on it. And that audit, the summary of that audit report is released to the public. It's put up on our website. I will, I will share that with you later. So this is where we are. Now what we are going to be adding is we're going to be adding an internal auditor. This, now this is again, I felt it's needed because things are becoming very big now, meaning it's bigger than what it used to be. There are a whole lot more, whole lot more money coming in, a whole lot more transactions happening, a whole lot more vendors are being contracted. It's getting much bigger. So we need to become more tighter in our control of what's happening. So that's why I want another intern. We're going to have another internal auditor who will join us. We're going to look for this person. And this person is going to do an overall check on a daily basis of what's happening. Okay. And also manage all our vendors to vet our vendors. That means, you know, because vendors are being approved and some vendors we paid big amounts because of the kind of work they do. So money is going out. So this auditor has to scrutinize and, you know, vet those vendors, make sure that everything is okay. And then approve them and then payments can go. So we're going to add another level of check, safety for the well-being of the organization. So, so slowly we are growing. Now, right now, the purchase of things are approved. Either by me or by the head of the department. I mean, it's a person heading as example IT. So if somebody wants to buy, you know, somebody needs a computer, they need some hardware, they need, so that the head of IT right now, Spurgeon, he would check, he would check the prices, compare prices, and he would make the purchase or approve the purchase. Similarly, when it has to do with some other ministry area, it is left to that person heading it up to make sure that, okay, yeah, this is the right thing to buy or this is the right thing to spend and approve the purchase. So there's somebody, the head of that ministry, the head of the department, or in some cases myself, somebody has to approve the purchasing, then things are purchased. So that's basically how the finance department works at APC right now, okay. I'll just say one more thing and I'll pause for questions. Something to keep in mind in throughout what you do with money, yes. Everywhere, have at least two people involved. You know, have at least two people, at least, if you have three, it's okay. But have at least two people involved everywhere. And as we get into the actual, you know, basic things of offering, contribution, other things, we will see this happen many times. But this is a rule or a simple rule of thumb to keep in mind for purchasing two people, you know, see and approve it. Should think about what's, you know, okay, there's a request coming in from a person who's checked out the vendor, but somebody else has to also check before they're counted and they counted also check. So at least two people involved in the accounting process in each step of the way, general rule, okay. It is for safety. In case one person misses something, the other person can pick it up. You know, maybe they didn't scrutinize a vendor, maybe a bill came that was a duplicate or it's coming twice, you know, when you have so many bills coming and you, you know, sometimes you can make a mistake, you know, so you have to be careful. So if you have checks happening to people involved on every step of the accounting process, that's a little safety measure that we can put to prevent any mishap. Okay. So everybody so far with me, maybe I can even do one more section. All right. Let me pause here and see if everybody's okay. Any questions? Any questions? Any so far anyone? Okay. All right. Let's just do one more, cover one more section and before we have to close. Okay. So now let's talk about offerings. All right. Now, in the early years, most of the offering or contributions was given in the offering back. A few people would do it through direct deposit, that means through the bank. There would be checks and cash given in the offering backs. So that was the usual early for a long time. Checks or cash put in the offering bags. That's how the contributions would come. A few people do direct deposit to the bank. But now, especially from the time, from 2019, 2020, when the COVID situation happened where there was no receiving of offerings physically, everybody moved online. So which is a very good thing. So now, if you look at the offering counting process, so you have to have a very strict counting process. So when the offering is received, and this information was given to us by our, the external accounting firm. They are the ones who told us to put all this in place. I mean, we didn't know how to do all this, but they advised us and they followed their advice right from the very beginning. So here's what they told us to do. They said, money must be counted at the venue right after the service. It must be counted by a team of people. So at least three or four people are sitting. It should be done in a space where things are visible. So people are there. You can see that it's, you know, I mean, there's some visibility. Somebody is watching. They're counting the money. It has to be written in the notebook. All the denominations here, you know, so you have 500 rupee notes, 100 rupee or 2,000 rupee notes, whatever the denominations, this is what came. Checks, these are checks that came. And the envelopes people gave, people wrote those also. Everything has to be put together, put in a seat and signed off by two people who have been part of the counting team, put in an envelope. And the seal envelope comes to the church office. Church office, once again, it's opened. Everything is once again tallied. And they also write, this is what we received. So it has to match. And then that is, that all of that is taken and deposited when you're doing a deposit in the bank, the depositing, the bank also provides the deposit slips. So the deposit slips should match. So you've got three levels of checks. One was written at the venue. One was written in the office. And one came from the bank. All the three should match. Then all of that information goes into your accounting system. Okay. Now, even though we had such a tight thing in place, I can tell you at one point, somebody was stealing money from the church offering. So what happened? This happened some years ago. And I'm not saying this to scare anyone, but this actually happened. And I was so sad this happened. So we had this accounting team at, this happened at Central who would sit and count money. And, you know, so there was a group of people. So they will open the envelopes in front of everybody. Cash put in the thing, envelopes kept here. Then everything is tallyed, right? You count all the things, envelopes match, everything sent. Now, there was a lady who was part of this team. Now, the reason I'm sharing this is you cannot be too careful about things and you must never be trusting of people. Accounting is one thing that cannot run on trust. Accounting has to be done based on numbers that are written, actual numbers. So don't trust your accountant because you can't run your accounting department on trust. It has to be run on actual numbers. So here's what happened. So this lady, she kind of somehow took charge of the group. Right. So she said, she began to insist that she would be the only one who would open the envelopes. Now the other people obliged. Okay. She wants to open the envelopes. Okay, fine. But that was actually, she was setting herself up to do something. Now, usually anybody can open the envelope. You put the money into the box and you keep the envelope aside. Anybody can do it. But she started insisting that she was the only one who would take all the envelopes and open them and put it. Now, what happened was one particular Sunday, she, so there were envelopes given. Now you see, if the whole envelope disappears, nobody will know that amount actually came in because there is no envelope. There is no cash. So it's not even accounted for at that level. So what happened was one particular Sunday, this, you know, so this lady was supposed to do this, you know, whatever she did. Now, we don't, so she must have taken an envelope with it directly in her purse. She opened the other envelopes and the accounting was done. But that same day, a person had put somebody had put in an envelope with 50,000 rupees into the offering. For whatever reason, that person called the church and said, you know, this is my name. I have put an amount of 50,000 rupees. This is the envelope, the denominations. I want to make sure it reached the church office because usually nobody puts that big amount in the offering. Those big amounts would be transferred directly to the bank. You know, usually people put in small amounts, put small cash amounts. But that particular Sunday, this lady did it. She called the church office. Then we checked, checked, checked, said, no, it's not there. But that person said, look, this is what I did. This is what I have put. The money is, you know, was put in the box. So immediately we called this lady, the lady in the offering team. Hey, can you come and meet us? What happened? So one so has put this amount of money. That's what they've said. That money did not come. What happened? That lady disappeared. She never came back to church. And she was, you know, to then that whole thing came out that, hey, she was controlling. She was saying she was be the only person would open up the envelopes and now we knew what was happening. Now it is very sad. I was very sad when I heard it. I was hoping that, you know, hopefully this was her only time that she did it. We have no evidence. That's right. Then from then on we said, okay, guys, you got to sit next to a CCTV and do this and all those kind of precaution measures. We tried to put all the things in place and somebody was still trying to find a loophole to take church money. And they, you know, you almost feel like, Hey, you're stealing money, church money. But somebody didn't have any. Coms about it. They just. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, when somebody didn't have any coms about it, they just did it. And when they were confronted, they just disappeared. No. We left it at that. We didn't, you know, we just became more strict cautious and how that offering comp was happening at the premises. But the message I want to get across his look. You can never be too careful. part of receiving things. The safest is direct deposit. So when they moved completely or to direct deposit, I was very happy. No chance of money being lost anywhere. People just put it directly in the church account. It's all done. It's all good. Okay. So I'm going to stop here. I know we have a lot to talk about, unless we go into the details. And next week, I'll show you some examples of reports and so on. But this is an important area of ministry. It is something you have to be very careful of. And you can never be too careful in this area. Okay. Any questions before we close? Okay. All right. No questions. We will continue this next week. Get into a little bit more of the details. Let's wrap up. Somebody could close in prayer and dismiss us please. So anyone could pray. Thank you Lord for this wonderful time that you came in as a father that we could learn today and understand the financial part of it a father. But I pray that we would apply it wherever we are a father. I also pray that we would be stewards of money and the skills that you have put in our lives of father. I pray that we would live before you a father. The hearts would be right before you and before all the men's a father. But we just submit the entire class into your hand a father and the rest of the day into your hand. Pray in Jesus name. Amen. Okay. Thank you. Let's see all again next week. Have a good weekend. God bless you. God bless you. Thank you. We'll continue this next week. Bye.