 Okay, welcome back everyone to our second lecture on BC310 Church Administration. We are now talking about finances, accounting and budgeting just to give us an overview. So this is not an in-depth course on financial management, but just an overview of these are the things to be mindful of when you are managing the finances of the church or the Christian organization. Now, okay, let's go back to the notes. So we looked at some of the key biblical principles that motivate our way of managing finances, generating and managing finances. Now let's just get into some of the practical things. I would definitely encourage all of us to make use of an accounting software. Within India we have Tali, it's a very commonly used accounting software. There would be others in different countries that help you stay compliant to the local regulations for reporting and so on. Tali helps us here in India. There are some other free open source accounting software packages as well. I've just mentioned too, there'd be definitely others that you could use. And sometimes some banks offer some form of accounting within the banking software itself for their customers. So that is also something you can look at or whatever works, but definitely use a system, a software system because that's very important. Some general things to keep in mind is that in most accounting systems today, I should say almost all, they use what is known as a double entry bookkeeping method or double entry system. So every transaction, transactions, it's either a debit or a credit. So it's a double entry, so every transaction appears either as a debit or a credit. And then the advantage here, of course, and this is all from an accounting perspective, you don't have to worry just that you need to know what's happening. All of this would be done by your accountant. It standardizes everything and it makes it easy to make accurate financial statements and detect errors because it's a double entry. At the end of the day, everything must, there are the debits and the credits must equal. So then you know, yeah, we've tracked everything. So that's a quick check. It's almost like an automatic check to the whole accounting process. The terms general ledger is part of this double entry bookkeeping method. And that's kind of what is referred to, it's in the general ledger meaning and it could be a software system. It's where all the data is stored. So you refer to that as the general ledger. And the within that are subheadings, you know, where money is allocated or where they're or you can call the expense accounts or project based accounts or so on from where money is taken. So this is referred to as a sub ledger within that main general ledger. Now, very important years. These are some things to think about. You may not necessarily, you know, have everything in place to begin with, but I'm just giving an idea as you go forward, is that you have designated fund accounts. So these are general ledger head, headers, right, fund accounts. So at a high level, at a high level, and, you know, we have, you know, our general fund account, that means all tides and offerings go here. So when people give tides and offerings, they go into a general fund account. But then we also have designated fund accounts. That means we try to the best we can track coming funds coming in by church location. So there are five locations here in Bangalore. There's a sixth one in Mangalore. We all work. It's all one accounting. So six locations, you know, what money came in in each location we track. Also, there are times people give to specific ministries within the church. So we have certain categories that is fund accounts called example, APC books, APC India missions, generosity fund, which is to help people in need. We have APC media, we have Bible college, we have outreach churches that is a support the church plants. Then recently we introduced the church planting accelerator program as one of the designated accounts that we have. So these are publicly visible. That means when people want to give, and then of course there's a building fund account for building construction, land purchase, all that. So there are about these 10 designated heads, including this general fund. So general fund plus nine others. So when people want to give money, they can either, if they don't say anything, that money goes into the general fund account, but they can also give designate. They can say, I want to give this money to India missions. I want to give this money to books, the work that we do through publications. I want to give this to media. I want to give this to church planting, whatever, you know, they can designate it. So that's designated giving. So then when money is given to that, of course it all goes to one bank account or we have, sorry, we have three different bank accounts. But anyway, it's all just three bank accounts. But in our accounting system, it will be posted against a specific head, a ledger head. So we know how much money has been designated for that particular area of work. And so money goes out of that for expenses and so on. And then of course, from the general fund, we allocate. So we budget, we allocate funds to these. And then there are a lot of internal headings. Like, you know, we have the course of any year, we'll have several conferences. So men's conference, women's conference youth, this youth, different conferences, we will have different events happening. So there are several internal ledger heads that are not exposed to people. People don't know they exist, but they exist inside the system. And funds are allocated from our general fund to those things. So we know that's the money we're going to spend. That's, you know, that's the budget, whatever expenses is reported against that header. So at the end of the year, I can, or anytime we can say, Hey, how much money did we spend on conferences? Or how much money did we spend on the men's conference? We can go down to that level. Right? So there's, or how much money did we spend on rentals? How much money did we spend on, you know, ABC, ABC Central running the service? So we can pull out that information anytime because everything has been posted against a particular ledger head. And that's important for you to do it. Because then you know, okay, you know, where is the money going very specifically? Where do I need to change? You know, so for example, if the media team from Central comes and says, Hey, we like to do this. And I tell them, Hey, no, because we're already spending so much money on all these things that we're doing. So if you want to do it, we've got to cut somewhere else. It's not that we don't have the money, there's plenty of money, but we don't want to waste it in that particular area, you know, to keep everything tight. When you keep every area tight, then overall, everything is tight. There is no wastage of money. Right? So when you know what's happening at that level, at the micro level, that means very specific to each fund or each ledger, then you can make those decisions and overall, everything is safeguarded. Right? So that's just a high level. But this to this level, if you as a leader know how money is managed and, you know, being used, then you could, you know, it's very important you will be able to make decisions and take good care of the money. Now, of course, the actual work is being done by professional accountants or people who know how to do all that work. And so you would need a finance department. Now, when we began, when we started, when APC started, we didn't have an internal accountant. We didn't have those days, we were very small. So we just had an external accountant who would come. So we started with this, right? We had an external accountant, we had an external auditor. So they were not part of us, external organization, they would send an accountant who would come, you know, for a few hours in a week. That was all there was. She would just type everything into the system, check everything, go. So those days, the work was very little. In the early days, I would say the first three, four years, it just took a few hours a week. So we didn't need a full-time accountant. This person would come, we give them all the information, you know, this is the money that came in, it was all hand written, they would put it, she would put it in the system, work is done, monthly reports would be generated, etc., and so on. Then over time, as things grew, we had our own internal accountant. That means we needed a full-time person to handle this. So I think it was only, so we had a part-time internal accountant, I would say from, I think from 2011, so almost 10 years later or something. So I forget the year, let me think now, a part-time internal accountant, I can go back to 2005, I think. Yeah, so somewhere around that, there was an internal accountant, but she was part-time. So actually this same person was handling accounts for the IT business that I was running at that time and she would then give some of her time to church work and handle that. So I think that happened from 2005 or something. Anyway, so we had an internal accountant and then that was a part-time and then later on, we had a full-time internal accountant because as the work grew, there's a lot more to be done, they have more staff and all kinds of things. So we had a full-time internal accountant and external accountant, external accountant. So this is what we have right now and this is sufficient for us at this point in time. So even today, we have a full-time internal accountant. The external accountant still comes once a week, will check the work, the internal accountant will give, you know, internal accountant does her work, she gives all the details to the external accountant who will also cross-check on a weekly basis. Everything is checked on a weekly basis. Then on a monthly basis, this external accountant generates reports. Every three months audit happens and then every year audit happens and then there's another external independent auditor who will verify what this auditor has done. So all the things are checked. Now at some point in the future, we may have an internal auditor. So that means we audit or keep things in check internally as well. Right now, we don't need it because the external accountant is coming every week and checking what is being done by the internal accountant and then every quarter, every three months, there's another audit being done. But if things grow to that, you know, that extent, we don't want anything to slip, then we will have an internal auditor and then we will also thinking of, see right now, this internal accountant handles all the purchasing. So purchasing request goes to this person, she approves the vendors, makes the payment, etc. But at some point, we may need, when things are much bigger, we may need a purchasing person or handles who checks the vendors, verifies them and then approves all the purchasing that is being made. So the point is, this finance department grew over time, but these are the kinds of roles that you will need within your organization. Another important thing to think about is to follow a two-person rule. At every point, whenever money is handled, there should be at least two people involved so that, you know, there is that sense of, hey, we can't mishandle things. So if it's one person, you know, things could be easily mishandled, but two people, they would hold each other. So example, if money you're receiving offering in the in the in the service, you should have, you know, two, three, four people counting that money, right? So that means it's not one person counting, you have more than one person, at least two, preferably three, four, five, so that they're sitting together and counting, they're holding, they're watching each other, right? Then money comes into the office and then from there on, there should be at least two people checking it. So like we have on a weekly basis, an internal accountant, an external accountant. So everything is being checked on a weekly basis, but two people, two people are involved. So that is happening. Then in our purchasing, which I said, you know, there's these internal accountants. So for purchases, all typically, you know, big purchase, that means over 5000 rupees. What we say is that it has to be pre-approved. I mean, they can't spend that money. If it's anything less small things, you know, people need to buy batteries or whatever small things, yeah, go ahead. But anything bigger than that. And it's not a large amount, but just as a rule, we have saying it has to be pre-approved. So the person who wants to buy that, you know, it could be any person, any staff who needs to buy whether equipment or whatever they need to buy for their area of work, they get the quote, they send it to the ministry leader. So it may come to me for several things, but it may go to another pastor, say example, Mr. Jay Kumar, or whoever's in charge of that area of ministry for review. And then once it is approved, of course, the internal accountant is copied on these emails. Only after that, the purchase will be made and the payment, the purchase will be made and payment given. So before a vendor is selected, the vendor has to go through an approval process. So we only allow our people to buy from pre-approved vendors, unless it's, you know, so known, say, online platform or something. But otherwise, if you're engaging a vendor, the vendor has to be pre-approved. We have a pre-approval checklist. Then that person gets the quote for what they want, sends it to the pastor or ministry leader who approves it, checks it, approves it, then it is paid. So there are two checks, the one making the request, the one who's in charge of the ministry area, and then the accountant will dispense the money. So wherever possible, you have this kind of two-person trial. And now everything is done online. So there are no checks to be signed, hardly any checks to be signed, almost none, you know, all the transactions are happening online. So we route it through emails, everything is documented, everything is stored, so we have a record of what has happened. A few other things and we'll take questions. For everything that you do, there has to be a receipt or a document. Yeah. So when counting happens, everything is documented in our book. When money, cash is deposited into the accounts, there's deposit receipts, there is a recording of, I mean, of course, bank transactions, everything is recorded, direct deposits are all acknowledged, are all recorded, and in some cases, not all cases, in some cases, contributions are acknowledged. Now, the reason I say some cases is one is in India, we are not required to track money, track the contributor, right? So, for example, in the US, it's different, you know, everything is tracked by social security number. So you know who gave that money and they get a tax deductible receipt at the end of each year so that they can use it on there for their tax benefit, tax reductions. In India, we don't do that, there are no tax benefits of giving to a religious organization. And so we don't track who gave how much, we don't do it. But there are certain people who request for an acknowledgement, so then the accountant sends an acknowledgement, when she knows that that person has contributed to an amount and they send us an email, we say, yeah, money has been received, we send them an acknowledgement. The acknowledgement serves no benefit in terms of tax purposes, but it's just us acknowledging that that amount has been received. So we have that in place only for certain people who asked for it. But generally we don't do it, there are people who contribute, so many people contribute, we don't even know who that person is, who's contributing, there could be people in Bangalore, there could be around the country. So we don't track based on, it's not required for us to do it. In some parts of the world, you may need to do that. So it's different. Other things that you would need to be mindful of is vendor verification. So before any of our staff can engage with the vendor, we verify them. That means they need to sign a vendor services agreement. We tell them, look, this is our standard of working. We want to make sure there are no kickbacks being paid anywhere, not none of that, in order to get our work, especially if it's recurring work. Every month we need their services and so on. We want to make sure everything is clean. We want to make sure that they are accountable for tax purposes. So we ask them for their tax documents, etc. So all that happens in the vendor verification, only then they come on board, only then we work with them. This is just to make sure, protect ourselves as well as protect our organization and, of course, it's also beneficial to the vendor. Then, as I mentioned, purchase processes. There's a pre-approval process before any purchase beyond 5,000 rupees is made. There's a disbursement process. We make all payments to our vendors within three working days. So that's something part of our vendor services agreement that is, we don't need you to wait 30 days. Most organizations would say you wait 30 days to get your payment. For us, we say we'll pay you within three working days, and usually it happens within 24 hours. But we keep it three days in case there's some busyness happening, busy thing happening. So that means we want to pay our vendors. As soon as they deliver the service, send us their bill, we pay them. So there's no waiting from there. So that's payment priority. We make sure everybody's paid well. Our payroll is taken care of. That means all our staff are paid on the last day of the month or maximum the first day of the month. So payroll happens on the last day, on the first day. And this is so strict. We never fail to do that. Then our consultants will be paid between first and second, maximum third of the month. And sometimes there's already in between. So consultants are paid because consultants have to report their hours and then we calculate based on their work hours, whatever. So the accountants, you have to pay them before the third of the month. So all staff, the payroll happens last day of the month, latest first day of the new month. And consultants paid before the end of day three, so long as they report their time sheets and everything is clear. Expense claims, that means people who spend money, the staff will spend money. They are reimbursed for what they spent. And again, we have a process. You have to submit the bills, send it in by email, and then the accountants will be paid back within the same working, within 24 hours, pay you back. All tax payments are made on behalf of all the staff, consultants. So we are very strict on that as well. Sometimes our vendors want to avoid tax and we say, no, we cannot do that. Tax is paid for all our staff, consultants, vendors, tax is paid. There are times when we have to pay cash, but anytime we have to pay cash, and these are for daily wage workers. Suppose we need some things to be moved from place to one place to other. We call in a few workers, or in daily wage workers, then we have to pay them cash. Then we take receipts from them, that they have received the cash. We take their ID card so that copy of the ID card so we know the cash has been given to them, that particular person get it signed. And we keep that as little as possible so there's no cash expense. Everything is done through online transactions. So let me pause you. Are you guys getting bored with this? Again, you're learning something or is it getting too boring? No, faster. We are learning a lot. Elisabeth, we can't hear you. Sorry. I was saying we are learning a lot from the practices of APC. We are not bored with it at all. Okay, thanks. Sometimes people don't think that, oh, I'm going to hear all this in Bible college, but I feel it's just very important. Yeah, thank you. All right, let me just the chat then I'll go back to the notes. Laisha, is it difficult to teach a congregation to take loans to give in support of the gospel? So, Laisha, this is my stand. We discourage, we tell people, do not take loans to give to church. Don't do it. Because why should somebody else go into debt in order to support God, God's work? So we said we never even talked about it in church. We've never talked about it in church, telling people to take loans to give to church. In fact, if anybody came and asked me personally, should I take a loan to give to the church, my first answer, no, don't do that. It's not right. God doesn't need you to go into debt in order to support his work. Don't do it. So that's my position. Kennedy's question. Talk, how have you used your credit facilities? Have you ever borrowed money as a church or to a teething problem in a church? If any, how did you manage the situation? Is it in order for church to take, to trade in forex to generate extra income? All right. So two questions there, Kennedy. One is, should we, you know, have we borrowed from the church, borrowed money for the church? So here's another area where from the very beginning we said we will never borrow. It's just our, I'm not saying it's wrong. If somebody wants to go take a loan from a bank or whatever, that's their decision. But for us at APC, our decision was we will never take a loan. In fact, in India, the bank will not give a loan to a religious organization. So we can't even take a loan from the bank if he wanted to, because the religious organization doesn't have a steady income, meaning it's dependent on the free will contributions of people. So the bank does not look at it as a source of income. So banks typically will not give loans to religious organizations unless of course they can pledge immobile property like other lands and buildings and so on. So that's a different scenario. But our position from the very beginning is we will never take a loan from any bank, any institution or any individual. So we've never done it. Our position is always God, you know, let the money come in and we will do what God has called us to do. And that's been the way and God has always given more than enough. In the very beginning, like the first two, three years, we're very small. So the second question Kennedy is asking is about our teething problems when we started the church. Now, our position was a little different because when we started the church, I was also running an IT company and God worked in such a way that, you know, working from Bangalore for a U.S. company, I was actually earning more in Bangalore than I was working when I was working in Chicago. You know, God just worked it out that way. So in the first few years, we had no lack, we had just surplus simply because the company were tied into the church and we had more than enough, more money than we knew what to do with. You know, our congregation was very small, like 20 people. But because the company was giving in to the church, there was a surplus of money. And we got on cable TV, we started printing, we started doing missions or everything, you know, within the first two years, so on. So that was our experience. I know that's not the experience of any person. But in our case, it just, God just orchestrated that in that manner. And then the church grew and then a lot of people also started contributing and so on. If that was not the case, example, you know, somebody else is starting a church and, you know, maybe the congregation is very small, the income is very small, I would say, you know, just trust God and let God, you know, journey with God. You know, each one has their own journey with God. God was gracious in our lives and this was our experience. But I also know that for many people, that's not their experience. But in the early years, it's very tough. That's why we want to help churches start, you know, we want to really fund as many churches as we can all over the world so that we can help them start. God was good to us, we need to be good to other people, other churches, others were starting churches. So in those early years, for many, it is difficult. But, you know, we just have to trust God and work with what we have. And I'm sure God will bring us to a place of plenty and, yeah, okay. All right, let me take other questions. There is Sri Kumar and then there is Charles. Please go ahead, Sri Kumar. Thank you, sir. I have two questions. One question. The first one is, how we handle the finances of the churches which is outside Bangalore, like as you said about Bangalore, we have branch and other part of the country, we have branch. So how we, are they actually depositing the money every week into the APC account, direct account or and how we audit those, that finances like or is the same, is there, it's a common auditor who audits everything and keeping the records. My second question is, like, do we ever forecast any project like, you know, with the money, like saying that we are going to buy this land and this will be the approximate cost. And this is something we are looking for. So and based on that, if the people wants to start contributing the money, though, is it, is it okay or is APC practicing like that thing? Thank you, sir. Good. Two good, two good questions. So first one, how, so we have, let's say, I think, I think 12 churches outside Bangalore. Oh, I forget about the forex issue. Okay, I'll come back to that, Kennedy. Yeah, I'll mention. Sorry. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, let me, let me answer that. Then I'll come back to Sri Kumar. So Kennedy asked about forex issues. So a third aspect is a third discipline we had as a church is the church will not make any investments other than fixed bank fixed deposits with people's money. So it's also part of our legal trust document. That means the money that comes to the church cannot be used for any kind of private investments. It cannot be done. So I'm answering Kennedy's question whether, you know, the church can invest money in foreign exchange and so on, things like that. So one is legally, we are not permitted to use money that we get in India, outside India, we're not permitted by the government to do that. All money obtained in India must be spent in India, because as a religious organization, that's what we are looking to set up an entity in the US and that will take care of our work outside India. So, and second, this and so the other thing is that money comes to the church cannot be invested in any private investments. I mean, if we can't, you know, trade in mutual funds, we can't invest in stocks, it's not allowed. We're not allowed to do that. That's part of our legal setup. We can only buy property in the name of the church, or we can only put it in, it's already in the bank, in the bank, put it as fixed deposit. So you get between 5% and around 5% interest. That's it for a fixed deposit. Of course, if you trade in mutual funds, you can get 11%, 15%, 17%, whatever, but you're not allowed to do that. So that's the rule. So what happened, the reason is this is not money we earn through profit, it is donations. So it has to be protected. It cannot be invested into anything that carries any kind of risk. And so only allowed is bank fixed deposits or purchase of property for the church. Is that okay, Kennedy? Yeah. So going back to Srikumar's question. So all of our six churches, that means the five churches in Bangalore and Mangalore are all budgeted under, are all covered by ABC accounts. What we are doing here, everything I've described to you today covers all of these six locations. Now, the way we work with our outreach churches is we tell all our outreach pastors to form their own legal entity. That's one thing. So we say, look, we want you to own the work you're doing. We don't want to own it. Ours is a relationship with them because many of them studied with us or trained with us. But their ministry is theirs. So we encourage them, we've encouraged many of them to form their own legal entity. Some of them have done it. Some of them have not done it because they had difficulties in their own states or cities to register a Christian organization. The people are creating problems. So they've not been able to register. So then what we do is we say, don't worry, you operate as an extension of ABC Bangalore, but they do not give any, whatever money they get for all our outreach churches, whatever money they get, we say, you don't have to give us anything back. Use it right there. So they don't give any money back. So this is aside from these six locations, which I said, where we function as one organization, all the other churches, the 12th, I think 11 other churches, some of them have registered independently, they function completely independently. Some of them are continuing under ABC as an extension of ABC Bangalore, but financially they're completely independent. That means whatever money they get, they spend plus we support all these churches every month. So they get our regular support. So that's how we work. They don't give back. We don't ask them to give anything back because it's people who are locally giving and let it be used to serve the people locally there and from there they can grow and so on. So we don't ask them. Now, for organizations for the churches that are independently registered, we try to teach them how to do the same thing we are doing. That means locally you file your taxes and you do your part locally, keep your accounts in good condition. Now, many of these are very small churches, many in terms of finances, they're not getting lots of money. So they're actually below the radar of that income tax and all those things. But if in case the money comes, grows, they know that they are supposed to report and do all those things there. So that's the first question. And Shikumar, what was your second question? So do we project the finances like? Oh, yeah. So budgeting, yeah, we do budgeting. And that's I think the next topic I'm going to talk about is for every ministry area, we budget. So what our accountant does is we use historical data. That means how much did we spend in each of those areas the last three years? Take the average, increase it by 10% so that in the next year, calendar year, that's kind of about the amount we want to spend. If you're doing the same thing, right, sometimes what happens is we may have had a conference example for 100 people, but now you're doing it for 200 people. So obviously, you know, the budget has to go up. But if you're doing a similar thing, okay, a 10% increase somewhere, that's ballpark. So we tell our ministry leader, you plan that event or you plan that ministry in that amount. Okay. But if the event or the ministry is increasing, then of course, the numbers will go up. But we do the budgeting and we give that guidance to that particular ministry leader as they prepare for, and as they're working on the budget for their event or their ministry. One. Secondly, for all new ministries, we do an estimation. So for example, we estimated church planting accelerator program. That means we want to plant, we want to have, you know, plant churches when help people plant, I'm talking about India, help plant churches in India for people who come within to Bangalore to work, work with us for one year, you know, we need to take care of their expenses. And then we send them out here to support them for three three years. So an estimate was about four crores over the next three years. So that's an estimate right now, when we actually start doing things, things may change, but at least we have an idea. Same thing for our books. This year, our budget was okay, we will spend 40 lakhs on 40 lakhs means four million rupees on our printing of books, which we just restarted from July because after we opened up and started restart printing next year, our projected budget for printing books is eight million 80 lakhs. So we've given that information to our publication. Okay, next year, you can go ahead and spend 80 lakhs on printing books, printing and distribution of books. You work with that, you know, so we project for what we need and so on. Or same thing with the building project. You know, so when we said we want to build a Bible college, we did our research and we said, okay, we want to spend so much money in buying the land 15 crores, we want to spend so much money in building the building or the facilities 15 crores, that's our budget. And everything is working very well as of now in the purchase of the land, which is well under that 15 crores. So the answer to your question is yes, we do this, we budget for known activities and we budget for upcoming new things that we're going to do. Sir, I just also, I also want to know that Louis forecast this budget and we inform the people so that they can also contribute this thing. And yeah, and I think if if church as you are seeing that like how the 10% increase is happening in the budgeting, we also want to know that as a church, when you type, as a church, if you are typing, then how that thing is also practiced. Thank you, sir. Okay, so in terms of informing the congregation, we only inform them about the big things. Like, you know, I sent an email out in the month of I think August, I sent one email saying these are the new areas of ministry, these are new things you're planning to do. This is what we are estimating like for books, we're going to be resume printing. So this is what we're going to spend this year, this is what we're going to spend next year. For the church planting accelerated program, this is what we want to spend for the next four years for APC media. So we wanted to start, you know, producing short films, so on, we budgeted one crore for five films. And so we said, okay, this whatever. So I sent an email out one email in the month of August, so that if people want to give, they can give towards these new projects. But no pressure, you know, we're just sharing a vision, we're sharing this what we've estimated, they are welcome to give. Now as a church, you know, I don't necessarily calculate our tithe month on month to do our giving, but our giving, because we give in so many ways and forms, which exceeds what we get. So our outflow, which are giving, free giving, our giving is one is we are supporting all our outreach churches. Second, we give to other missions and Christian organizations in India, especially those whom you know, I personally know, because you know, we don't want to give money into something that we don't know. So there are certain ministers, especially the mission oriented ministries who are doing missions work in India that we support, we give to them. Third, we give through our books and our conferences, that means all these are free. And so the huge amount of money goes out in the books and conferences. And fourth, we give to special needs, that means that is our generosity fund, which supports not only people in Bangalore, but outside Bangalore, especially for those who are Christian ministers who need money for children's education, food, you know, living expenses kind of thing. Those are the main areas, sometimes medical bills, but mostly it's education and living, you know, so the generosity fund money. So if you ask me, Thai thing, we don't say, okay, here's this money we'll give to one in one ministry. No, there's actually more than our Thai that goes out, but it goes out in all of these various categories. And it happens throughout the year. Thank you sir. Thank you. All right. Let me see if I can finish the other questions before time is up. Abraham, when I unable to download the CPAP application form, oh, okay, yeah, because Abraham, because the last day was 31st, our team would have taken it off. We will update that page, you know, and open it up for the next year. So we will get that back. Okay. I'll let you know. Elijah should finance amount one is able to raise, be an indicator for successful minister, how effective a minister is. Answer is no. So money is not an indicator of how good we are or how successful we are. I think what's important is to be good steward of whatever God has given to us. You know, and yes, we know the biblical principle Luke 16 Jesus said, you know, if we are faithful in little things, he will set us about more. He'll give interest us with more. So we know that progression is there. But the important thing is we don't evaluate success by money. Money is only one of the many things God gives to us to steward. Right. Just like he gives us time. He gives us people. And so we shouldn't look at money. Sometimes God gives us great influence. He gives us opportunities, favor. Sometimes favor is more powerful than money, you know, so we shouldn't just look at money as an indicator. There's just so many other things in which ways in which God works through the Christian ministry. The point we want to emphasize is whatever money God has given to us, let us be good stewards of that. Okay. Christopher's question is just a plan in church donations as an income tax on churches at 50%. So in India, Christopher, if we do a 12 a registration, that means there is so you register as a religious trust, plus you do an additional registration, that will exempt all income from tax. So but that is provided you have the 12 a registration, which is normal. You know, we tell all all our religious, all our churches. So you register first as a religious organization and then you apply for you do the 12 a registration and you keep it active. If you keep your 12 a registration active, then the government exempts contributions to religious organizations from tax. So you don't pay tax on those contributions. That's in India. Maxine, apart from church collections, do you also practice fundraising activities to boost finance? The answer to your question, Maxine, is we don't do any additional fundraising activities. We just tell people to give. I mean, we just, you know, every Sunday there's one reminder saying you give go to a church website. That's where the ministry information is to give. And so people from within our congregation, people from outside give on their own. We don't force or do anything extra. And you know, when we have conferences, when we have events, we do charge a registration fee. But everything, first of all, is at 50% of the actual cost. So we're not actually making any money on it. And plus, for those who cannot afford even the 50% of the actual cost, we subsidize further. So we don't make any money, even through our conferences or events, you know, it's always the event is given at a subsidized cost to all our all the people want to come. So we don't do anything apart from the contributions that come from people on their own. Charles question, do you sell APC publications? No, all our APC publications are free. We don't sell them. This is one reason, you know, we're not able to put them out on Amazon, because Amazon requires you to charge a small amount. I think they nowadays, I don't know if they can give it for a $0 amount. And I'm not sure what we I think in the time past, when we checked, you had to charge even $1 or something, we didn't want to. So we don't sell our APC publications, all are given for free. And so we distribute it through digital platforms where we can distribute it digital freely. All the print publications are free. So we don't charge for it. Okay. All right, our time is up. But let me finish these last two questions. Charles, how would you advise a member of another church who seeks advice from you when they have been advised by the church bosses to loans? Bring it either then pray for it and they get profits? My response to that Charles is don't do it. Don't do it. I don't think it's the heart of God for us to go and take a loan and give it to the church or to the ministry in order to gain profit. So my advice is don't do it. If somebody on their own, they want to go take a loan because they have money coming next month and they will clear out the loan and they just want to do this now. I mean, that's their choice. My advice is don't do it. God doesn't need it. God can handle his money well. But if somebody goes and does it, it's entirely their choice and their responsibility. But I would say don't do it. Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you for these engaging questions. So we will finish talking about finances and then do a little bit on the legal side of things next week. They get into project management and execution. Just share some things on project management. I was looking at the calendar. So my plan is to finish everything by 17th in the next two weeks, 10th and 17th. And then I will work on an assignment or an assessment that just is a review of everything for you to review everything and get a grade last week of November. You can work through it. Okay. Any questions before we close for the day? Okay. All right. Let's pray and close. I know we already taken time into our break. Somebody could pray and dismiss us, please. Let's pray. Dave and Father, we thank you so much for the time that you spent. Lord, we pray that you will continue to help us to put these things in practice but also to invest more time in them so that we'll be able to do them well so that the stewardship that will be put in and we are able to do it, we shall bring glory to your name, when Jesus' name will pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. God bless you. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll see you next week. Bye now.