 Okay. Welcome back everybody to our second lecture on BC310 church and ministry administration. We have been talking about church organizational structure. How do we design the organizational structure that can help us be very efficient to the way we do things. And we were just taking some question answers. And Jeffina had asked a question about reorganization. Have we done that? And so just sharing some examples. Another reorganization that I can think of, which we did all of this happened in the recent year, the past year. After we reopened after the pandemic, which was middle of last year when we started getting together. Is in the publications of books department area. So we had stopped printing our books like from 2019 or something somewhere around that time. So when we reached out to it, we brought in a new person, Hannah, to head our publications. So she was in charge and then two or three people under her to. So we had a, we kind of reorganized it before that there was only one person handling that, but now there were four people. And we really saw everything because we needed to reprint all our books. Next, because the inventory had gone down to almost zero. We had not printed our books for almost two years or so, many longer. So, you know, we put this team together. And yeah, I can see, you know, it was really good. Because all of us, we almost, we almost caught up now that almost all books have English books are out of print. The other languages are catching up. So it's been good, but we had to kind of put in a lot of effort. Have a have a good team to do that work and bring it back up. So these are things that we, you know, you organize, you put people in the right place, the work happens and people are ministered to. Okay, any other questions from online? Yes, Collins, you wanted to ask a question, please. Yes, Pastor, it's just a concern. The few years I have been in leadership, like when you move a person, unless if it is like a promotional, when you're like getting a person from a lower level to another level. But usually there is a way we usually call it a monkey on in my side here. That person lives with a monkey from this office to the other. And you just ask the word of God says that it's a to a sword. That person when his character can become to a sword in a way that it can cut that real person and the organization. So I don't know how in the because I've been doing that one in the in the circular world. I don't know if there is a way it it doesn't bring a report effect, especially in the spiritual world. Thank you, Pastor. So the question I mean the thought is that and I mean usually people are fine with the promotion if you move them out. But if we move them horizontally or worse if you move them down, they know they don't take it well. And then it becomes like a double agent sword. It hurts them and hurts the others also. So I think that's the thought that which Colin is shared. Did I say it correctly, Colin? You just put on pastor. Okay, thank you. So it is true, it is true. The question is how do we handle that? And you know, it is it is a difficult situation. But I think we have done it in the past and I can just recall a recent not not too distant example. For instance, we, you know, I was heading up even the it work that a church was doing. So from the time we started, I was driving the it team and giving them all of that work. But then at some point I felt it's too much and I would like to have somebody do this. I would like to be looking for a head of it. And so one of our senior people recommended his friends to join our it team as all these believers. So the mistake I made was I did not do a thorough interview of this new person. I just went by the recommendation of the senior person. Oh, he's recommending this person. He said, you know, we've worked together for a number of years before they work together. So he's good. You can hire him and he can be head of it team. So I just went by the recommendation looking back. I made a mistake. I did not interview him thoroughly. Usually, especially in the it space, we give them, you know, we do thorough interview. I did not do that. I just had a nice happy conversation. I said, okay, you know, because of the recommendation that was made. And he already had 20 years experience on that. So we hired this person. But the good thing I did was I said. We will give you the role of interim IT head for six months. If you are good, we'll make it permanent. So at least I put that in, you know, so he joined us as interim IT head. But then I realized in the six months, he did not have the skills that we were looking for. So now it's a very difficult situation because I cannot make him IT head. And actually I have to bring him down. I have to make him bring him down. I can't even keep him as interim IT head because he doesn't have the skills. He doesn't have the competencies to be that role. I have to tell him nicely say the best we can give you is senior developer. That's the level at which actually he was just barely at that level. And of course I made a mistake in the sense I did not interview him thoroughly. So I was also at fault. But anyway, at the end of six months, I had to have a difficult conversation with him. I said, see, I've observed for six months and you know, you are struggling. He knew he was struggling. You are struggling. These things are not, you're not able to get these things done. And so, you know, we cannot make you head of IT, but we can move you to being senior developer. And we cannot give you the salary that we would have given us head of IT. That also I have to talk, you know, these are very, very touchy things, right? But I have to talk. We cannot give you that salary. We can only give you this at this level because it is an honest assessment. Right. I'm not, it is not based on any prejudice or anything. It's an honest assessment. I've seen you how you're working for six months. I've seen what you can do what you cannot do. So we actually have to bring him down to any agreed that he, so that, that whole thing of went fine. It went well. He's happy. It's all right. So in some cases, it works out fine. People have understand where you're coming from. And it's okay. Everybody's happy. But not everything happens like that. Some people can get upset and leave. And that is true. But we have to do what is right for the people and for the organizations. We have to be honest. Yeah. That's a good point. If, you know, I remember, for example, we had to let go of our accountant in the past because he refused to do something that I asked. And this was needed for the organization. I said, you know, I'm giving you, this was just for the pandemic. You know, I want to have this thing done. His accountant is doing good in this world. But I just requested, you know, please get this done. And he refused to do it. I was begging him, please do this. I'll give you another three months to it. Second time he didn't do it. And I still don't understand why he didn't do it. But then finally I have to say, we have to let you go because he had good skills, but he's not willing to do something that was for the benefit of the organization. Like, basically, I told him to document the accounting process and I told him, you need to build up an accounting team. You have to, you know, you have to hire more people, build a team because one person cannot handle all of the accounting work. So, okay, then we need the right person in this place to handle that work. So we had to let him go. So there are both difficult challenges when you're trying to create that organization structure. Some people are unwilling to change. And after giving a lot of, you know, at least two chances, two, three chances to let him go. Anyway, so let's move on. I know these are all the difficult side of ministry. That's more. All right. So we continue to talk a little bit about organizational structure and design. There are sometimes, you know, there are some limiting factors in how flexible you can be in designing the organizational structure. One is the, there could be external factors, government regulations or sometimes the trustees, if they are not in agreement to how you want to design, they could affect. You know, so government regulations may, you have to follow government regulations, what they say you can do and cannot do. So if the organization wants to do something, example, they want to do some sort of activity, but the government says, no, that cannot be done by this organization. Then you cannot, for example, running a school. If the government says, this organization cannot run a school, then cannot run. So even if you want to do that ministry, you want to design and run to it. If the trustees are not aligned, no, and God for us, you know, our trustees are all part of the church and they're already aligned to what we're doing. But if the, the board of directors, if they are not willing to accept a new, new avenue of ministry, new work, then obviously you cannot go forward. There could be internal limitations. Maybe they're not, they're suitable resources are not there, people are not their finances. Now, one of the big challenges that we have found in church ministry is finding the right people, you know. So because in the church, of course, you have to hire believers. You have to hire people who believe, you know, who I think believe the Lord Jesus Christ. And they also have to have the skills. So you need both. And it's not very easy to find that. So it is a struggle, you know, especially in areas like technology or media or, you know, administration, you know, for example, accounting. Yeah, you need an accountant, but you can't hire any accountant. You need an accountant who's also a believer because this is a church. And they need to understand how church functions, ministry functions. Of course, we have outside auditors who are not believers. That is fine. But the day to day running of the accounting has to be run by a believer or IT team or media team, all the others. So the challenge is to find people with the right skills who are believers. So sometimes that itself limits. For example, right now, there are so many IT projects that I want to execute for the church. So many things that we can do with all the technologies available. But it's difficult to find the right people because I'm not saying there are no believers who are good IT people. Believers are good IT people. They're all working for the big companies and they're making huge amounts of money. To convince them to come and work for the church is not an easy thing. You know, because they're working for big corporations, they've been making by six times the salary that the church would pay. And then of course, they get the opportunity to have a labor or to have a lot of the world, etc. So to find good people with technical skills who will come and work for the church so that we can do the project we want for the church, for the ministry is a challenge. But we have to trust God that He'll send the right people, move their hearts and they will come and say, I want to work for the church. I want to use my skills. And similarly, we also have to be careful of money. If you have the money, we can do the work. So culture, organizational culture is important. We will talk more about the culture of the organization. There should not be conflict in the culture of what we're creating. An example would be if by chance, if the culture, the mindset of the people is very hierarchical, I am more senior than you. How can you talk to me like this? I have been here longer than you, so you have to listen to what I have to say. It's a very hierarchical mindset. That's not a healthy culture. Healthy culture, okay, you're a new person, you're a junior, but you may have a better idea than me. I should be open. You may be new to the organization, but you may be bringing some fresh ideas. I should be open. So we have to make sure that the culture of the organization gives us the ability to adapt the structure, to change the structure. Well, bring new people in, try to do new things. And we shouldn't be so rigid, so hierarchical, so thinking that I am senior and better. We talk about culture, how we create that. And we should also avoid politics, internal power play. So I'll just share with you a little bit about our current organizational structure. This is only to give an idea. I'm not saying this is the best. I'm just saying this is how we are. And this may change over time. This keeps changing. Like I said, we keep moving people around and so on. But so this is kind of what we broadly speaking our organizational chart. Now, I want to say one thing. We didn't start like this. When we started, we started with one person. I was there, Amy and me, we were there, my wife and I. And then we started and going back to 2001, I had to do everything. I was master accountant, sound and set up, media team, member kit. I was everything. So I still remember Sunday mornings, I would move all the speakers, then go to the place where we have the service, go early, then connect all the mics and put the range of chairs, wipe all the chairs, put the projector, put the hand on the screen. And before that, I had to prepare the slides. We used to use those. Those days, we didn't have computer. We had overhead projector that didn't film. So I had to get all that printed and before like two, three days before getting all ready. So end to end, I had to do. Then collect the offering services over, pack everything, put it in the car, drive home, carry it back home. So end to end, it was like, of course, there were a couple of people who would come and help, but the church was new. Basically, I had to do everything and I would write the accounts. So then, so we didn't have no staff, no staff in the beginning, zero staff. We didn't have anybody. We just started like that. We also started, you know, in 2001, we started with one chair, one location. I think in 2002, we had three locations. So we had Central, we also started APC South, and we also started Delacata, that is a mangrove. So Sunday mornings, 8 o'clock, I'd go to South, APC South. And those days, two, three people will come and go there, do the service. Come to Central, do the service. This was 2002, one year after. And of course, maybe 20, 30 people coming into Central. Then every week, we will send people to, we'll take the bus. They take the bus on Saturday night, they'll go to Delacata, reach there, come back. So that also way to follow. Again, it was just us. We didn't have any full-time staff. I think maybe it was more in the latter part of, mid- or latter part of 2002, somewhere there. We hired our first staff first. But he was not full-time with the church. He was actually hired as an admin for the company. And I would say, okay, half your time you give for the church, admin work, half the time you work for the company. So he was like, but he was on the roles of the company. He was not paid by the church. So that was, he was our first person. But he was paid by the company. He would do admin work for the church. So if we needed something, he would do it. So we started like that. So very, very simple. Nothing, we didn't have any staff. So I think it was only in, again, I may not be correct on the year, but I'm thinking it was 2005 or something, 2004 or five that we hired. So we had a part-time children's church pastor. So he was part-time. We just give him on a radio. He was just posting. But the first people we hired full-time was only in 2004 or 2005, maybe 2005, if I remember correctly. So we were almost saying five years after we started, we had full-time staff. So we hired a youth pastor and we hired an administrator, church administrator. Pastor Jacob was on this as our church administrator first. So the point is it was kind of almost five years later in 2005 that we actually hired full-time staff. So we didn't start off with full-time staff. It was very slow. We started with very basic. And then over time, over time, as time progressed, we were able to create some structure, the organizational structure group. We started hiring more people. There were more ministries started, and more things are happening. So this is where we are today. If you look at the chart. So we have our trustees, the four people who are, sorry, five people who are the board of directors, who are the legal people, legally responsible for all people's trust, the trustees. The advisors, like I mentioned, they are people we just go to when we need advice. So they're not office bearers, or they're not involved in what we do. You just go to them for advice. So they're there. The senior pastor, so me as a senior pastor, I'm responsible, overall responsible. And I have to be accountable to the trustees. So now we are all peers. So I'm not like, oh, I'm fear and trembling with the trustees or they're all like, but they can ask me questions. They can tell me and I will discuss with them. I will ask them questions or any major decisions. I always keep them informed and they may tell me, yes, no, try this, do this. They give the guidance. So for me, that is a good, what to say, a check and balance. So that I can go to them, tell them, especially for big decisions, I don't do it on my own. And it is not good for me to do it on my own. It is good to have this group of people. I submit the information to them, share with them. I can share my thoughts. They give inputs. Yeah, go ahead or check this, check that. Then I have to check and share the information. So it's good to have these, this board of directors or trustees who can oversee me and what I'm doing. And then in turn, I have to oversee others. Now I cannot go down to and check every person's work. I cannot do that. So it'll be mainly the pastoral team. So a pastoral team may not have associate pastors or worship pastors. People are having council responsibility. It'll be mainly our ministry leaders. Those are heading up ministries. And the main people in our administrative teams. So the people are heading up different administrative teams. They will report to me. Now, wherever there are no, like for example, we don't have a head of IT. So I'm actually leading the IT work, overseeing it and telling people what to do. And there may be areas where we don't have people, then I need to fill that role and take care of those things. So basically, under the each pastor, there will be volunteers and other pastors serving there. So again, not all have assistant pastors yet, but in the future, we have room to grow. As the number of congregation grows, we'll have more pastors serving there in those locations and so on. So we have these locations. And then in the ministry areas, we have some of the staff, some of the volunteers, we also have life leaders and the different ministries that are happening. And then the departments, these are all the functional departments, like accounting, administration, communications, HR. So again, HR, we don't have a person right now, so I'm handling that as well. Legal, we have an outside legal person and other areas. So usually in all of these areas, there's somebody who's leading that, and that person will report back to me. We don't have head of operations right now, but that's looking for people. Like many of these areas, we need good people. So we haven't filled them yet, but we find the right person and we put them in. So head of operations is so bad and so on. So this kind of the overall structure we have, not all these roles are filled, but we hope to fill them. Then if you look at it a little closely, each functional area is broken down further into different areas. People will do different things. Initially, for example, in administration, initially not all roles are filled and one person may be handling multiple roles, but the goal is, as we grow, this is what it will look like. Here's where we will fill up. Same thing with publications. So you can create an organization structure for each area, media engagement, head of IT, information. Before I come to this last diagram, any questions about the organization structure? Do you want any thoughts, clarifications? So here's the overall structure and then if you drill down into each department, it will look further like this. You can break it down further into each ministry area or department area, how it will work. Let me just see online if there are any questions from anybody online. Any questions from those who are online? Yeah, okay. All right. I want to just go to one last thought before we close for today, which is volunteer involvement. So the very, very important for church and Christian ministry is volunteers. Very important because actually if you look at it, our church staff, our team is actually pretty small. We only have, I don't know the exact number, but it's less than 30 people who are full-time staff. So this is small. It's not big and then we have some consultants who work hourly or part-time. So our church staff is actually very small, but most of the work, especially on Sunday in the services is being done by volunteers. So we, again, I don't know the exact number, but we may have, say, around 300 volunteers. So it's almost 10 times more than church staff. The volunteers are the bigger team of people and they are very important. Without their help, 30 people can't do anything. They are not able to accomplish much. So really it's volunteers who are actually helping us get a lot of things done. So the question is, how do we engage volunteers? And I found this hub and spoke model as a good way to get volunteers involved in the church. So I just want to take a little bit of time explaining this model before we close today. And we will have another lesson in the future on volunteer engagement, like how do you work with volunteers and how do you care for them? The issues that there are, usually there's a tension between staff and volunteers, you know, that usually I'm a staff there here. I'm here. You have to do what I say. Volunteers are giving you my type of degree. Who are you to tell me? So that conflict, that sense, you know, you have to manage that very carefully. Otherwise things won't work out. So we will deal with that a little later on. But how we work is, so at the core, very core, is pastors and ministry leaders. So the pastor of the ministry, they are the main person in charge of that ministry, the ministry area. They're giving overall vision direction. But we also have church staff. So the gray areas, church staff. Church staff are also working. And in some areas, the church staff are responsible. Example, media. One church staff is there. Livestreaming on church staff responsible. So the church staff is responsible. But what of the work is being done by the volunteers? One church staff cannot handle that work. It won't get done, not possible. So that person needs the help of volunteers. And the church staff has to work with the volunteers to get the work done. So what we do is, so we form these, what we call a spoke. These are groups, volunteer teams. We call them volunteer teams. So we have many volunteer teams. Okay. You know, welcome team, book table team, ushering team, offering team, you know, setup team, all these teams, children's church, we have teams. And in those teams, mainly there are volunteers. They may be a pastor and they usually is a church staff responsible. So in that team, there's a combination. Maybe one church staff or maybe one pastor, volunteers. And also the other thing is volunteers may want to be involved in more than one area. I like to serve in music, worship. I like to serve in, you know, with media. I like to serve in, you know, they may, a volunteer may want to serve in more than one area. So we have to give them the flexibility. You can't say you can only serve in one area. They may have skills to serve in multiple areas. So this model, the carbon spoke model, so the spoke here. And so that's a hub in the center, the spoke, the volunteer, a volunteer can serve in multiple teams. And one pastor can oversee multiple ministry areas over teams or one staff can also oversee multiple. So they plug them to multiple, right? So it gives us that flexibility. We don't restrict them. The only thing is, if you're part of a team, you do what you have to do, what you've committed to do in that team, right? If you say on 1st and 3rd Sundays, I will serve in the worship team, fine. 1st and 3rd Sundays you serve. If you say 2nd and 4th Sundays, I will serve in a sharing team, fine. 2nd and 4th Sundays you serve. You have to be committed. So the team leader will make sure that the volunteers involved on those days. So this is how we function. So this way, pastors, church staff and volunteers can all work together and it gives flexibility. Volunteers can serve in more than one area. They can engage in more than one ministry area and be involved. Whatever they like, they can do in which way. So I'll just close with this. The hub and spoke organization model for engaging volunteers. There are teams for different ministry areas and you can engage pastors, staff and volunteers. People can serve in multiple ministries. If they're interested in more than one, that is fine. We don't prevent them. And it's easy to add new ministry area, new ministry. Just one more spoke. Something new comes up, we can do it. Who wants to volunteer? So it's easy to keep growing. So we are not limited. You can add new spokes and teams can be assembled and disassembled very quickly. Just last few thoughts. When we're designing an organization, you may think about national or global organization where you want to cover different regions of the world or different cities. You can think about that. What we've shared is only for a local church or ministry. But if you are doing something global, the structure has to support that. And last thought is the organization should be data-driven and should be technology enabled. So this is an advantage we have today that we can collect data and we can make our decisions based on actual data. See, when we didn't have data, you have to think and guess and do some, but now we can actually have data. And based on the data, you can make good decisions. So and technology, we also have technology. So two things we have for our advantage, is data and technology, which we should use when we are making decisions. Now, of course, the Holy Spirit will lead us, but make use of the data, make use of technology and then listen to the Holy Spirit as you are growing, leading the organization. So we will talk a little bit about that, about technology. In this course, next semester, we have a complete course on medium technology. The details of all the technology that we can use. So I'll stop here for this lesson. Any questions? Y'all with me, I hope you're not finding it boring. This is all the other side of ministry that we don't talk about. All good, Pastor. Thank you. Sorry, yes. So the way we are set up now, in our locations, is we have an associate pastor for each location. So the associate pastor is fully in charge of that location. And of course, I will try to go and visit now and then, but they are in charge. Initially, I used to go. So for example, yeah, there was a time when I used to go south at 8 o'clock, central at 10.30, north at 4.30. So it started like that. And those days, everything was very small. Morning I go to south, maybe four people are there, come to central, 20, 30, north, four people. But that's how it all started. And then the numbers grew. Then as the numbers became more, then we handed it off to a pastor, associate pastor. Then east also, western east. So we started west, same thing. West there'll be two, three people. East was a little better because a lot of, when we started, people from central moved to east. So that was a bigger group. Say about 20 people, they all came to start east. But that's how it started. Very small group. I'll go to west or I'll do east. Once it's grown up, the numbers it is handed off to some pastor. So in Bangalore, right now we have five locations. So throughout the year, they'll all be meeting at their own locations, the churches. And there'll be the associate pastors involved. Usually I think about twice a year or three times a year. New year, maybe for New Year, Good Friday, and maybe for Christmas or one other occasion, we may have combined services. Not too often. I would say maybe two or three times in a year, we would have a combined service. The New Year service is always a combined service. So they'll all try to come in one location. So maybe two or three times. Okay. Well organized. Thank you. We're trying to keep improving, trying to keep it better. Any questions from online before we close? All right, let's close in front. Thank you for being on the class today. I'll request somebody online to close in front. And then we'll discuss. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to learn regarding church administration. And Lord, we thank you that we could understand the importance of being in order and to continue to grow more with you or God. We ask that your wisdom and your understanding would rest upon us and lead us forward, God. Let your Holy Spirit guide us. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you, John. Thank you, everyone. God bless. See you again. Bye now.