 Welcome, everybody, back to course 310, church and ministry administration. Any thoughts, any questions as we're just talking about David and how we organize the tabernacle and the Levites around the tabernacle? It's just quite amazing, many organized 38,000 men to serve in the tabernacle. Let's look at one more, the next one here. Let me go ahead and share the notes. Let's turn to chapter 25, first chronicles, 25. And here, first chronicles, 25. And I want to read through all the names of the people, a lot of names here. But now, it's talking about the people who were the musicians. First chronicles, 25, 128. In chapter 25, first chronicles, 25, David further organizes these people, these musicians, prophetic singers in different groups. And then he assigns them, and I'm just summarizing what you can see in chapter 25. He has about 288 song leaders. So remember, there were 4,000 musicians that we read about in chapter 23. Now he goes into organizing these musicians. He has 288 song leaders. And then he makes them into 24 groups. So every hour, there's a group to lead the singing. And that's what we have here in chapter 25, first chronicles, 25. For 24 hours, there are 24 groups. He has 24 groups. So you can imagine, every group comes in turn, and they do their leading in worship. So David had a desire in mind. That is, there's got to be constant praise and worship going up from the tabernacle to God. 24 hours, seven days a week constant. So he had that. But in order to achieve that spiritual ministry, which is, I want praise and worship to go up to God all the time. In order to achieve that, he organized everything so beautifully. Chapter 23, we saw how we had put 38,000 people to work. This is not counting the priests. It's just the helpers in the tabernacle. And in chapter 25, he tells us how he organized the musicians. Now he had these groups of singers, and he assigned for every hour one group. So there would be 24 hours praise and worship going on in the tabernacle. And it went on like that for 33 years, 33 years. So think about it, 33 years constant praise and worship going up to God from the tabernacle of David. But he had to organize. And he indeed organized in such a way that that would happen. And I think this is such a wonderful case study to think about, especially when you realize, David was not some MBA graduate or something. He didn't learn about all of this. In chapter 28, interestingly, in chapter 28, first chronicles 28, David gives the design for the temple that Solomon is going to build. So this is a physical structure. David had a tabernacle, which was a tent structure. But now he designs the layout of the temple, the physical structure Solomon is going to build. And in first chronicles 28, verse 19, David tells Solomon, you know, all this, the Lord made me understand that by his hand upon me. In first chronicles 28, verse 12, he says he had these plans by the spirit. So I'm quite certain that the plans to do the preceding things, that is what we read in chapter 23 and chapter 25, which is to organize the whole thing, to organize 38,000 men, to organize those 4,000 single musicians, to organize the 288 song leaders into groups of 24 groups. I'm sure that that idea came by inspiration from the Holy Spirit, just as the plan for the temple came by inspiration from the Holy Spirit. So this is just very, very amazing that the Holy Spirit inspired the, in what we would call as the organizational structure and design, the Holy Spirit gave him that. The blueprint for the temple, the Holy Spirit gave David that. Let me pause to see if there are any thoughts or questions before we move forward. Everybody with me so far? Any questions? OK. All right. So we continue now. Thank you. I see your responses in the chat. We move forward now to look at the, start looking at the practical side of organizational structure and design. So why must we have a well-designed organization? Here are some reasons, so that responsibilities can be clearly assigned to people. And when you want something done, you know who you should talk to. It's very clear. There is no confusion. Who's doing what? There's proper coordination among different roles and functions. There is communication, sharing of ideas, skills, and resources that happen. You can make quick decisions. You can be efficient and productive. And also, you can have a healthy work environment that doesn't put under your stress and create unnecessary conflict. For all of these reasons, and I'm sure there are more reasons, it's important to have a well-designed organization. Otherwise, there's a lot of confusion. You know, oh, he was supposed to do it. And no, no, no, no, he was supposed to do it. And there's one or that person who's supposed to do it. And there's all confusion. Who's supposed to do it? And then what happens? It causes a lot of tension. A lot of causes cause a lot of conflict between people. They're all believers. We're all serving God. We're all working in the same environment. But then because there's a lack of proper organization, there is confusion. And that causes a lot of stress and conflict amongst the people. So really, organization is going to be very important to make sure that we can all work together well and work together efficiently and without stress and together in harmony, unity. It's important. So when you start thinking about organizational structure and design, some thoughts to keep in mind is be intentional about it. Be systematic and plan it out. Don't just let it be haphazard. That is, oh, just let it happen. No, you think through, think through, think through. And hopefully when we go through this lesson and the upcoming lessons, it'll show you how to think, how to design your organizational structure. And I'll share what we're doing here. So you must think through. And then sometimes you need to change. And at ABC, we are constantly making things better. That means we revise. Sometimes we reassign people. We change their roles. Sometimes we move people across and so on. Why? Because we want to keep improving our structure. We want to keep improving what we are doing and how we are serving people ultimately and how we are serving God. So constantly, we keep looking at how can we do better? And how can we plan, so on? Keep it simple. It should be clear. It shouldn't be too complicated. So the simpler, the clearer it is, the better the structure because then people know exactly what to be doing and continuously improve it. It may have worked for a time, but then you need to change in order to improve the outcome. So you revise the structure, revise the design. Now, how can you tell if the organization design, organization structure that you have is doing well? It's good. Well, you have to ask some questions to check it. So these are things, questions we keep on asking. It's not something you just do once and forget about it. No, you constantly keep checking. So here are some questions we can ask. One, is the organizational design aligned to the people we are serving? That means, see, ultimately, we're doing ministry. We're doing spiritual ministry. We're not just building an organization for the sake of the organization. No, we're building an organization or putting people in the right place and activities and functions so that we can serve people better. So the big question is, are we really able to serve the people well? If not, we need to make changes, right? So that's the big question. How are we serving people? Or is the current design serving the people? Secondly, does it enable people to contribute meaningfully, right? So if I'm in the roles that are given and their people are placed, are they meaningfully giving to the work, towards the work which the organization is doing? And I mean to say that they're able to use their skills and what they're able to do, their talents, their capabilities, are they able to contribute meaningfully? They shouldn't be stifled or they shouldn't be doing something where their real strengths are not being leveraged. So think about that. Thirdly, yeah, so is the organization structure matching aligned with the strengths, weakness, motivations of the people or is there a mismatch? So is there an alignment? Are the right people in the right place? Are they given the right opportunity, the right responsibility? Number four, are the units functioning as they should? So you go down to the smaller units that are in the organization. Is each unit doing really well? You look at the unit, is it being efficient? Then you also look at the interactions and cooperation. So between the units, are they able to work efficiently? Is the communication good? Are people able to interact well? Is it efficient? So you look at that. Number six, is it minimalistic? That means there shouldn't be unnecessary steps or unnecessary hierarchy, right? So for example, I just gave a very simple example here. Suppose there's a person who does the work and this person needs to just finish the work and the person who really needs it is person D. Now, if part of your process, that work has to go to B and then to C and then to D and these people are not really adding any value to it. They're just simply forwarding it for the sake of, you know, yeah, I came to my desk and went through, but they're not adding any value. They're not checking it, they're not correcting it. Then really, these two people are meaningless in what they're doing. They're not adding value to it. Person A might as well send the email directly to person D. But in many organizations, this is the flow. You know, person A does the work it goes to B, person B blindly forwards it to C and C blindly forwards it to D and all B and C are doing is just forwarding. They're not adding value to what's done, but we just need to get rid of that steps in the process. And what really needs to happen is A goes to D directly. You know, I'm just giving one example, but see we have to think through, you know, and see how do we keep it simple? How do we make it efficient? Now, otherwise, this can be a waste of time delay in things that are happening. So keep the structure in the process minimalistic, just what is needed. Of course, you need to have checks and balances so that there is no wastage of resources. So, you know, if there is going to be an expense, it has to be checked and approved, you know, especially when it comes to money and in the selection of vendors, we need to make sure we are choosing the right vendors so that the organization's money is not being wasted. So things like that. So you make sure that there are checks and balances to avoid waste, so on. And then number eight, we should be flexible to implement new strategies and accommodate changes. So if you want to do something, and if something has to be done very quickly, we should be able to do it quickly. Otherwise, we can miss a lot of opportunities. Things can be very slow to happen. So we need a structure that is flexible where new strategies and new ideas and changes can be implemented very quickly. So these are, you know, just some questions to ask constantly. You keep asking these questions, looking at things to make sure that, you know, the organization structure is good and is kept the way it should be. Now, of course, there could be some limiting factors that can prevent change or may dictate your organization structure. For example, external factors like government regulations and government may say you need to have this kind of people in place, these things in place. And so then you obviously have to follow those rules. Or sometimes the trustees are not aligned and they could be in disagreement. That means the office bearers or the directors could be in disagreement on how things should be aligned and that can also hinder the structure. And more importantly, I think, you know, we have to wait for the right people and also the money for to hire the right people. So sometimes if you can't find the right person or you don't have the money to hire them, then we just have to wait and make do with what we have for the moment. You know, for example, at ABC, there are some roles that we haven't been able to fill. You know, and so we just have to wait till, you know, we find the right people or we can pay what people would want for that role, things like that. So we just wait until we find the right person, so on. Also, we have to be careful that there is no cultural clash within the organization. We'll talk about organizational culture a little later. That everybody should be of the same mind, you know. Otherwise there will be cultural clash or sometimes there's politics at play within the organization. Two different pastors want to show who's more powerful or whatever and those kind of things and they hinder, you know, a proper design of the organization. So these are things that could, you know, affect the organizational structure and design. So we have to be careful, but to the best we can, we should design the structure in a way that really serves the ministry. Let me just share with you quickly, you know, how APC is organized and how we work. But before that, let me just pause for a moment. Any questions? Any thoughts here? Any questions, everybody's okay? All right. All right, so. Okay, sir. Yeah, good. Okay. Let me move forward. How is APC organized currently at the present? All right, so like I said, we have trustees, we have an advisory board, people that we go to for help. Then there's a senior pastor who's overall responsible for the ministry, the whole organization, so on. Then we have the spiritual side of the ministry where we have associate pastors who are responsible for each associate pastor is responsible for a location. Then we have a worship pastor who's overall responsible for the worship that happens or the worship ministry at the church, a youth pastor and children's pastors. And under the pastoral team, so this make up the pastoral team, we also have associate ministers, that means people will be involved in preaching and teaching, but they may not necessarily be a pastor or a church, but they all form the pastoral team. Under that, we have people who serve as volunteers in their locations. And the volunteers, of course, are further broken down into volunteer teams. And we will talk about those teams a little later. But they are volunteer teams and the volunteers. And right now we don't have assistant pastors, but this is something we constantly keep open for. That means if we want to groom new pastors, what we do is we have them join us as assistant pastors and then from there, we kind of train them and then they take on some responsibility. But that's kind of just a road map for us to keep nurturing new people. So this is our pastoral team, the team that's involved in this ministry of the local church, the locations. So right now we've divided five locations in Bangalore and one in Mangalore. We all function together on these six locations. We function as one unit under the pastoral team and then there are all these volunteers who serve. Then the other major part are the various ministries that take place through APC. So yeah, this would include our Bible College catalyst, which is our outreach to schools, our college outreach, Christian professionals, Christian arts, our Chrysalis counseling, women's conference, men's conference, our missions, member care, and life groups. So these are the various ministries, things that are happening through the church, not necessarily limited to any particular location. These are just the ministry and the work of the church. And so here, now this position is open. Then this pastor for church ministries, we don't have that any person heading it, but we have ministry leaders. We have people who are responsible for these ministries. Now, and these ministry leaders, and some of the pastors also handle one area, one or more areas of these ministries. So we have them here as well. The pastors also handling these areas. Eventually, when these areas grow big, then we would appoint a ministry leader to take care. All right, so what we're saying is here, on the left side, we have pastors, a pastor team, we have various locations, volunteers who are serving at the locations and volunteer teams, which we will talk about later. And then we have assistant pastors. There's a way of training them up for things. So we invite people into be part of this from time to time as we see God leading us there. Now, in the different ministries of the church, right now we don't have an overall in charge of all the church ministries and we would like to fill that. But what we do have is we have ministry leaders that means people are responsible for each one of these ministries. Some of our pastors would also be responsible for these different ministries. And the ministry would have church staff and they would also have volunteers serving them. And sometimes life group, and we do have life group leaders and so on. So for example, our Bible college, Diana Nancy is our Bible college administrator. So she would be the ministry leader for the Bible college and she reports directly to me as senior pastor because this position is not filled yet. So all the ministry leaders report directly to me. So now she, Diana Nancy is responsible Bible college. Now she has people who asked church staff who help with the running of the Bible college. So example, we have the wardens for the hostels. So we have Kiran who's a warden for girls hostel. She'll also help in the running of the physical college. Things that happen on a digital basis. There's their IT people who come and help. And as we need, we can add more staff here to help Diana Nancy with the running of the college. So like that, different ministries has one person responsible, for example, missions. Nancy Ramya, who's a pastor here, she also is a ministry leader for missions. So she handles our missions. She has people helping church staff who would help her. So we had a lot of people part of the India care project we're helping. Now that India care project is coming to a close so that that would be disbanded. But from as needed, we would add church staff. We also have a lot of church volunteers who would work under her to go on these mission trips and so on. So like that, different people are involved. And then we have, you all with me so far? Yes, yes, yes. I'm just checking and making sure I'm still connected. Okay, thank you. And then we have the completely administrative side, right? A lot of support work happens. Now head of operations, we don't have somebody there but we're looking for that. So right now all the department heads report directly to me but eventually they will report to this person who can take care of all of this. So every department has a head. So, and that person may have additional church staff and where needed volunteers helping in these areas. So there's an accounting person, Geethu, she handles our accounting. Now she has people from outside an accounting firm who would come and do the accounting work every week, an auditing firm that comes and does the audits and so on but she handles all the payroll and all the payments and everything day to day she handles it and so on. So she will report directly to me here because right now this has not been filled. Then off as administration, we have three people here. Communications, one person handles emails that come in. HR, there's one person who does all our hiring and taking care of people and so on. IT team, I think there are about five people there. Legal team, there's one person who is outside. He's not, you know, we just go to him when we need. Media team, I think there are four or five people there. Publications, there are three people and plus a lot of translators. Regional language and international language. So the translators are not full-time staff. They just, we just pay for their services. They help translate our books but then full-time staff I think are three people here for our books. There are two people here who handle events and services and so on. So like that, all these departments have people in them. They'll be ahead of a department, church staff and then volunteers serve with the church staff under the department head. Now eventually each of these departments will grow. So this is what they will look like in the future, right? Right now all positions are not filled but we have an office manager. We have somebody handles communications and we have two people as office assistant. So they are in that filling, in that position. Same thing with the publications. All positions are not filled but we have people who are handling English language, regional language and foreign language editing and distribution, so on. But all these positions where we will eventually fill in time to come. Same thing with the media and digital engagement. These positions are filled but yeah, these positions but then this is not filled, head is not filled. So we will, we're continuing to look for people and as we find the right people, we'll put them there. Same thing with the head of IT, right? So I will pause here and I will explain this next week. It's very important to understand this hub and spoke model. But any questions so far? I'm really sorry for dropping out in the middle. I didn't even realize I had dropped out. Any questions? So I hope that today we've got a understanding that the better we are organized for the local church and the ministry, the more efficiently we can work. Also the Holy Spirit can give us insight into how to organize the work we're doing. Each one of us would be doing different ministries, different work and Holy Spirit can give us ideas. Of course we can learn from what others have done. We can see what others have done and see how they work and that can give us ideas. But eventually for each local church, each ministry we need to put the structure that is best for what we are doing, okay? We will continue this next week. So maybe just quickly review and also talk about the hub and spoke model where we can engage volunteers in what we are doing. Okay. Any thoughts, questions before we wrap up for the day? All right. Okay, everybody's already quiet and all right. Okay, let's take a moment to pray before we dismiss. Can I please request someone to close in prayer and we can dismiss. Who'd like to pray? Sir, shall I pray? Okay, please go ahead. Father, we come to you. Thanksgiving and praise. Thank you for all the teaching we have received this morning so powerful and please act with us, Holy Spirit God in whatever places you have placed us. Father, help us to organize and Father put into place different things with the help of the Holy Spirit God and give us the people, Father and also equip us to identify Father people, the right resources so that we may all work together in the advancement of the kingdom of God and kill our so powerful learning different areas and the order you bring. We commit ourselves and we thank you, Pastor Ashish and the way you have blessed him and grant him in the insights and also gave him the grace to put them into practice so that many generations can learn. Father, we thank and praise you and bless the ministry at APC and bless all the people who have gathered here, your children, Father, thank you Lord, equip us, enable us and help us to be faithful to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Pastor Ashish. Amen, thank you everyone. I'll see you again next week. God bless, bye now. Thank you, Pastor Ashish. Thank you so much, Pastor Ashish. Thank you.