 Okay, the recording has come on. Good morning and welcome everyone to the class today. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will get started. Okay, may I ask, maybe Kiran, why don't you pray and then we will start. Yes, sir. Thanking you for everything. Thanking you for the tea and weekend. Thanking you for your birth and all your words. Thanking you. Thanking you the class. Thanking you sir and all the students. I just want to understand all subject father code and apply to your kingdom. Thanking you for all things. Almighty Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so in this course on urban church planting, we are now in the final section of what I had planned for us to cover. So we talked about. There was the introduction section we give an introduction to church planting. We then talked about the natural and spiritual dynamics that are involved. We then talked about the practical issues related to church planting. So we went through a lot of practical things. Then we talked about the spiritual side to church planting. And then the last section we talked about the personal life, the personal life of the church planter and personal preparation and those kinds of things. So what I wanted to do and then I felt we needed to add one section, which is more on. On how do we look? I mean, we look forward and that's mainly because of what has happened the last two years. You know, because of the pandemic, how we do church, how we do ministry has been impacted quite a bit. We've all had to change a lot of things very quickly, adapt and make changes. And so now, you know, when we look forward, what would some of the things we need to keep in mind as we talk about church, church life, church planting, studying ministries. What are some of the things to keep in mind? So I wanted to talk about that. And then we will do a full review. That means I'll just quickly, you know, take one, one class or maybe three quarters or of a class lecture to quickly review everything we've covered in this course. And then after that, I'm just, you know, we will wrap up the course and I'll just give you time to work on assignments. So I will prepare the assignments put online. So month of November, we'll just basically keep it for that. And if we finish everything tomorrow, then we may not need to have lectures in November. It will be more of finishing of more of me sending you, you know, three assignments and then you can just take time to work on the assignments during November. So in this class, this lecture, I just wanted to, you know, think through with us on, you know, when we look forward, how would the ministry church planting or starting a Christian ministry, especially in urban centers. What would it look like? What are some of the things to keep in mind, especially churches, the church having gone through, you know, almost two years now of the pandemic and so on. Now, I'm going to basically be using a summary of a book that a person named Thomas Rainer wrote. He's like, how would you describe him like, like a church, church planting, church growth expert or, you know, you use word consultant. Somebody was who advises, who works with other pastors and churches and helping them with, you know, basically church planting, church growth, those kinds of things. So he wrote a book, which let me just share this now, I put the PDF on online in the class. So he wrote a book, The Post-Quarantine Church, Six Urgent Challenges and Opportunities that will determine the future of your congregation. So, you know, I thought it was just nice to use this summary to, these are just thoughts to think about, you know, I'm not saying everything will apply to every part of the world. This, of course, was written from a North American church perspective. So a lot of the ideas and thoughts are coming from that background. But I think it is useful for us to just see, you know, what has been said, what has been written and see, you know, if some of these things would be relevant for us. At least to think about as we plan on, okay, after the quarantine, now that we're coming out of the quarantine and we're looking at church or Christian ministry in an urban context, what are some of the things we need to keep in mind. And of course, you know, this person, Thomas Reiner, is a very experienced person. He's helped many churches go through this and worked with them before even the pandemic and then of course during the pandemic. So now he's like an expert and this was good to listen and to see what he has to say, right. So, so he's obviously addressing the same challenge with I think many, many pastors, church leaders, church planters, Christian ministers will be thinking about, okay, after the quarantine, what, what are the challenges going to look like, what are the opportunities going to look like, how can we start preparing for that. And so that's the objective of today's. So just this is just a summary. So it's a quick way for us to learn the main points of the book. So one is, he talks about gather differently and better. So the, the fact is, you know, the, the pandemic forced all of us, all churches to realize that, you know, while in person gathering is important, and church can still happen without the building. You know, we realize that we realize that, you know, to some extent we can use the tools that are there. And, and reach people, serve people, and we could gather in many different ways, you know, prayer groups could meet online seminars could happen online workshops could happen online services could happen online. And so, so the idea is, and then also that in some cases, church facilities could be used for more than just worship services, it could be used to serve the community in other ways, you know, some churches, I'm not saying everyone but some, some churches who had their buildings, and they opened up for, you know, helping people with needs during the pandemic, whether it's giving them food, clothing, assisting people in various ways during the pandemic, not, so the buildings were used, not just for church services, but they were used to serve the community in, you know, in different ways. So that is something we can consider continuing, you know, where possible. So, so gathering differently and gathering better. The second thought is to seize the opportunity to reach the digital world. So, again, this was a learning, and like we mentioned, we were forced to move online. And, and so a lot of churches have developed to certain degrees, different, different degrees, the ability to reach people in the digital world, that means those who are online. So, we must continue using this opportunity. And so, just for helping us understand, he categorizes, you know, people in three kinds of groups, there will be those who are digital only, you know, so there are some people who have, who have been connecting to church online, and they may continue online. You know, they may not come back, come to in-person gatherings. Some of these would be people who are physically unable to come. You know, maybe they're elderly, or they are, you know, shut in there for various reasons, they are unable to go out of their homes. And so for them, they will continue only online. And so we would need to think of ways and, you know, how do we continue to serve these people, right? They will, so we are not going to be able to move them to attend church service. They have become comfortable with the online service and also it's, they may have some other limitations that keep them from coming to the in-person gatherings. So, when you're doing a work in a city, you're planting a church, you're starting a ministry, you're doing that. Well, there are going to be people who will want to or who will connect just online, digital only. And then you have another group of people who he calls as digitally transitioning. That means they are connecting online and they've started connecting online, but slowly they will be open to attend in-person, right? So we need a strategy to serve these kinds of people. That means they have connected or they may connect to us online and then slowly they will, you know, we need to encourage them. They would be willing to come and worship in person. So we have to think about them. So even in our church planting or ministries that we plan to start or will start in urban centers, we need to keep these kinds of people in mind. And everybody or the remaining, remaining part of the group will remain as dual citizens. It's kind of funny he uses this, but it is interesting that is they will connect both digitally and in-person. That means they will come to the Sunday services, they will come to in-person gatherings like workshops, seminars, different things. But as an whenever they need, they will also engage digitally, you know, because people have become used to, you know, watching things online, whether it's YouTube videos, whether it's really content online, listening to content online. They've become used to it, especially in the last two years because we were forced to do that. So every person really is going to be connecting with the church or with the ministry as a dual citizen. That means we cannot get rid of this digital connect. We cannot. It's there to stay. And so everything we do as a church or as a Christian ministry must keep this in mind that people are going to connect both physically and digitally to the church or to the ministry. So we have to be able to serve them in both ways. We cannot just say we are moving only in-person. No, the digital will continue even in time to come. And very, very importantly, he talks about praying for each of these three groups. That means, you know, even as we get do our work in such a way that we are engaging with people both in-person and digitally, it's going to make us very busy because, you know, it's almost like you're reaching your force to reach multiple congregations. So the work has become more. We can't think of only, okay, people come and meet me and everything will be in person. No, everything we do, we have to think in both these terms, in-person and digital. So obviously work is going to be more. We have to pray for all of these people. We have to pray intentionally for people whom we are going to reach online digitally. And so very, very correctly, Thomas Rayner encourages us to prayerfully seek ways to engage in missions in the digital world. That's very important. And he warns us not to get trapped in digital busyness, you know. So the digital world is very engaging, but it also can really take away a lot of time. So be careful of that. Pray more and think of how to reach people in both these areas. So, and, you know, there are some thoughts here that you could think through on applying each of these ideas. So basically says, think of the different communities that you would reach since the pandemic, how you can use social media, how you can reach non-Christian through the digital world. Thirdly, third important thing we have to keep in mind as we move into a post-quarantine world, whether we are doing church planning or starting any kind of Christian ministry, is to reconnect with the community around our church, the local church. So while we have been using online and digital medium to reach people wherever they are, which means the church could be in one location and you could be reaching or serving people in various parts of the city or even the country or even the world, once you move into this post-quarantine world, the neighborhood church, the people who are serving the community will become very important because people are going to rediscover, people are going to reconnect in the community. Because people, okay, we've missed each other, we need to connect with people, we need, you know, we need to get together so community becomes important and we should not forget that the community around the church is very important. Just because we have been thinking digitally, thinking about online, thinking about these things, it is so important to reconnect with community and, you know, even for us after we have opened services, now it's been for one month, just maybe five Sundays, one of the things that even I have encountered talking to people is that people have really missed, at least the people that I've spoken to, people have really missed that personal connect. And it has, for many people, it has left them a little disoriented, you know, in the sense that this online church and all of that was okay for a certain period of time, you know, people knew it was a necessity, that was the only thing we could do, but it left, I'm not saying this is going to be true for everybody, but for many other people that I've spoken to, it left them a little disoriented, you know, in the sense that they were longing for that personal connect just to meet people and worship together and talk to people and, you know, so this will be true everywhere, you know, because we are, we need those connections. And so it is so important to reconnect with the community, both the church community as well as people around the community. And one of the things Thomas Reyner says is, he refers to as neighborhood churches. That means people are serving their immediate neighborhood, the people around, they will become very important because, you know, like we said, people are longing for that. They want somebody to care for them, somebody to mentor them, somebody to, you know, just journey together through the life, through life. So we must, while we are thinking about reaching more people and so on, we must reconnect with the neighborhoods, homes, with people, make it personal, because people are longing for it, they're looking for it. So as we need to do that and also it makes the church be more outward focused, looking to reach people in their neighborhoods, cities, towns, communities. So that's another important thing for us to keep thinking about. So think of some of the ways your church can be of more positive influence in the community. Think about, you know, so, you know, the slow erosion as people are slowly dropping out of church because of this lack of connect. But, you know, if that's happening, then we can think of how do we reach out to those people who have been slowly dropping out of church because of a lack of connect. And think about the comeback of the neighborhood church and how can, you know, how can we leverage this in a very positive way, basically to connect with people in our immediate communities and neighborhoods because people are longing for that. So that's the third thing. Fourthly, we've already mentioned this, but we need to pray and seek God even more. Just as during the pandemic, and there was definitely more prayer, prayer for people, prayer for the challenges that we were going through, we need to continue with that prayer, right? So that's the next thought that is presented to us to continue with that prayer, to continue, you know, in those intense seeking of God. And don't let that go down. And also, because of the pandemic, people were forced to pray or meet for prayer in very innovative, it's a different place, mostly people met for prayer online. One of the things he suggests is how about continuing that, you know, that form of prayer, if it's possible. Surely we want to meet in person and pray, but we can think about that online prayer, continuing that mode of prayer whenever it is useful. But the whole point was the pandemic forced people to increase in their intensity and commitment to prayer. And so let's sustain that and keep building on that and keep going to new levels. So thoughts here, think about prayer ministries that took place in your church during the pandemic. Think about whether they are still present today. Think about church members who may join you in praying for your church and community. Think about technologies your church used during the pandemic and the ways those technologies can be used for prayer ministries today. In other words, you know, continue with that. Number five is to rethink of using the facilities that are there for new opportunities. So the idea here is that if churches or those churches that have church facilities, if we can think of new ways to serve the community, serve people, then we can, you know, we can rethink of how these facilities can be used to serve people. So some thoughts here is think about how we church facilities were used before the pandemic and how that is changing and might change more. Think of ways that you church may partner with another organization in the using of those facilities. Think about how digital streaming services during the pandemic might change the future of your worship services in your physical facilities. So, you know, just leveraging the church facility and keeping it in line with what we're doing. We are going to continue with digital streaming online. So if the facilities can tailor towards that ministry in an ongoing manner, also if the facilities we have can be used in partnership with other organizations. So rethink of that. Now, I haven't really put too much thought into it. You know, APCB don't own any buildings as yet. But this definitely is something to think about for those churches who have their own facilities. If you can see, you know, ways by which you can use that to serve people and also tailor the experience inside for an online audience. And the next one is make lasting changes that will make a difference. So the fact is, as we get into a post quarantine world, there are a lot of the changes that we must be forced to make. And some of these changes we don't even know as yet only as we start moving in in a month after month. We are going to begin to understand what are the changes we need to make, what are the things we need to do differently to adapt to just a new way of things. The new ways in which people are beginning to engage, interact and so on. But then as we make these changes, it is important that we do things that will last and that will make a difference for the long term, right? So whatever comes, you know, make sure that prayer and God's word, you know, remain the focus, remain it. The most important things, make sure those things remain important. You know, the preaching of the word, the discipling of people. They keep those things important, even though we are going to be making changes in how the services are done and so on. Make sure that we keep these things important. Now some of the things he does list out here is, you know, sometimes people refuse to change. Sometimes they don't see the urgency to change. Sometimes they fail to get people, influential people in the church involved who can influence other people in the church to change. Sometimes there's no clear vision. Sometimes people can get discouraged because they don't see, you know, short term wins, they don't see progress happening. So people get discouraged. Sometimes we fail to communicate to the congregation, to people, what we are doing, where we are going, how we are going to go forward. Or sometimes we're giving too much attention to those who are opposed to change and we let them override the change. So there's some things here to make sure that we don't keep ourselves from moving forward from making changes that need to be made. And let's see here now. I think, yeah, the key thoughts here are think about how receptive to change a church was during the quarantine and not the lessons you can learn from that period. Now, how did people react and respond to the fact that we had to move to online services? We have to move, you know, giving of offering online. We had to, you know, in many cases minister to people online, people wanted counseling, when people wanted prayer, you know, we did a lot of that online and, you know, people were receptive to it. So could some of these things continue? For instance, you know, as of now, we have continued to do all our giving online. We haven't moved back to the old form of, you know, sending a basket around or a bag around for people to put online, put offering into the bag. I just feel that, you know, giving online is because people have been used to it now for many, many months. It's a good thing for us as well because everything goes, the money goes straight into the bank account and there is no need for, you know, the manual process of counting and account writing down and physically going to the bank to deposit. Now, yeah, there may be some people who want it, but that's the physical offering bag. But if we can just continue with online giving, it will reduce the amount of work and just also make things more secure because it goes directly into the bank. Now, think about, you know, online meetings. And now, of course, we want to meet people in person, but in order to save people's time and all of that, we could, you know, wherever necessary, we could do meetings online and people will be open to it, you know, it's a change but that change has become permanent, but it's a beneficial change For instance, on Saturday, I did a meeting with our children's church leaders and we did it online, you know, in the past I would say, oh, let's meet in the church office at this time and they will have to spend, you know, maybe half an hour, sometimes 45 minutes just to get to the church office for that meeting. But now it is so simple, you know, we all just connected online and we spent an hour discussing things, planning for the future and it all worked out fine, you know, so people are used to that and so, you know, there are these changes that can benefit us, benefit people which we will continue, but then we don't want to lose out on the core things the core important things of, you know, God's word of fellowship and so on. So think about some of the beneficial changes that have already taken place and you can continue with these things, don't have to necessarily go back to old ways and think about some way that your church may face some of its greatest challenges in the post quarantine world, so what could become a challenge in the future? So we had to think about those things. So I like this nine summary, nine points that is made, which we will go through. So to summarize, some things will never change in the post quarantine church. That means, you know, what's important like the word, Jesus, the word of God, prayer, all those things. Those things will never change. But what should we be thinking about as we get ready for doing church planting or Christian ministry in the post quarantine world? What should we be thinking about? One, keep things very, very simple. That means stay focused on what's important, do a few things well, both digitally and in person. So rather than trying to do a lot of different things, do a few things, but make sure you do it to serve people who are online as well as in person. Secondly, in a sense that we need to be intentional about reaching our communities. That means make every effort to reach the neighborhoods, the communities where people are. People are going to be looking forward to that and getting to churches that are close to them. So he also talks about the neighborhood churches. So the idea is, you know, these churches, neighborhood churches, churches that are serving effectively in their communities will become very important. So think about that. Number four, multi will multiply. That means he's talking about the multi site movement. That means a church having multiple campuses or locations. So he said this will continue because of the fact that people are wanting something close to them in their communities, in their neighborhoods and where they can connect. And also technology allows for this. You can have multi site churches, multi campuses and so on. So this will continue. Leaders, staff and leadership, we will need to focus more on digital proficiency. That means even as pastors as leaders, we will need to be able to use digital digital technology for ministering to people. So that will be an important part of how we're going to serve people. We need to have proficiency. We need to be able to use digital technology to reach people. Number six, there will be stragglers. That means people who once were part of the church, but because of the pandemic, they have become disconnected with the church. Or, you know, they're kind of now on the fence. They don't like really read heart to zealous for worship and so they're called stragglers. They will also, they will become a subject of outreach and focus. That means how do we get them back? Right. These people who are now on the fence, they've kind of become felt disconnected with the church because obviously nobody was there. I mean, the connect was not there. And so we need to reach out to them and focus on them. Digital worship services. So now we need to think about making sure that our services are serving people who are connecting digitally. So that will continue to be important digital worship services because like we said earlier, there will be a group of people who will only be able to connect digitally. They may not come in person. So our services should be tailored for them. The training of people for ministry will also change because of course we do need the core core training. But we also need training on practical things on, you know, on like we're saying, how do we leverage technology? How do we, you know, how do we lead through change? How do we manage? How do we lead a church in the congregation through these times, these kinds of things? So the training we have to give to people will also have to adapt to, you know, to what is being, what is required in this new time that we are entering into. And then he also talks about that, you know, as we have more multi-site churches, we will also need more pastors to take care of these new campuses. And these pastors will take care of the new campuses. They don't have to be in the same, carry the same leadership responsibilities as the main leadership pastor, but they will just be campus pastors. So they don't have to necessarily be strong leaders, but as long as they can pastor a venue or a campus, you know, that is fine. The leadership is provided by the main pastor. So, you know, we will need these kinds of pastors as well. So that in a sense is what some of the thoughts that are shared in this book. I'm not saying this is a complete answer to everything that we will face. But I think it's a nice effort to get us to think on some of these things that will change and will be different as we begin to move into a post-quarantine world. And as we think about starting churches, starting ministries, doing ministry in the urban centers, I think this book captures a lot of important thoughts that we could use. So let me pause here and see if you have any thoughts and comments on this about a post-quarantine world and some other things that are shared in this book. Any thoughts, any comments? Kiran says online meeting also best. Kiran, why do you feel online meetings are good or are the best? I'm not sure if Kiran heard my question. Sir, in person also is good but a different part, online meeting, we can connect different state, different parts. So I said, sir, online meetings are good. You can connect to church services anywhere else and yeah, that's true. So online gives us that tremendous advantage. We can connect to a church service anywhere in the world and be a part of it, true, true. Any other thoughts here based on what we covered today on, you know, doing ministry, especially by thinking in terms of church planting and Christian ministry in urban centers, in a post-quarantine world. Any other thoughts anybody wants to share? Kanan, Dave, Aaron. The thing is, in person is better but regarding the post-quarantine, before the pandemic, we didn't have digital system. We didn't have recording and other things. And yet we know we have a lot of members who are not in Nepal, I mean, who have gone out or moved out of the country for different various reasons. They've gone for work, they've gone, they've resettled themselves outside. And this, when we, because of the pandemic, our church moved into a digital world. And before we, actually we were, we didn't want to record, we didn't want to upload on YouTube or Facebook because of some security issues. But because of the pandemic, we are forced to do that. Not only for third service only, but it helps us to reach all those people who we have lost contact with, who have went out and sometimes they wanted to have the service where we weren't able to just on the phone or talking to phone. It's not enough. But because of this, I think it did help those who are not currently in Nepal or those who cannot go to a service even when they are in outside of Nepal. When they go to different countries, they have different rules and regulations. Like in Middle East, we have service on Saturday, but their holidays is on Friday. In some major countries, the holiday is on Sunday. So because of that also, but because of the pandemic, it gave us this opportunity to move the whole church into digital world. It has helped in the area that I mentioned. I think in the upcoming days, it definitely will help our church. Even though we are not yet physically open, but it really gives us some kind of prospectus to look forward. That's very good to hear. People who are in different parts of the world could reconnect back to the home church. That's wonderful. And of course, during especially during the pandemic, it's going to be a source of spiritual encouragement and strength. And so there's that reconnect that's taking place because you've moved things online. That's really good. And now you can continue, you know, continue serving and ministering to them wherever they are, which are part of the world. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. So I see the question from kind of when do we reopen in-person classes for the Bible College? Kind of be both thinking of January initially, but we were, you know, we just we didn't announce it. We had to make a final decision just from a safety perspective because, you know, in our Bible College, it's a dormitory style. We don't have individual rooms for students. So it is something we have to keep in mind. Now, there are certain colleges that have opened up, but from what I've heard, you know, they do weekly testing. And they have separate, they have basically rooms where two or three students are there. So even if one of them is unwell, you know, they can quarantine safely. And they're not allowed to go out of that room for, you know, until they recover and all that, which is something we cannot do, given our hostels, our dormitory style. And we don't have individual rooms for students and things like that. So that's one reason why we are, you know, not hurrying into this. So we will this week, I think we will make a final decision. We wanted to wait till October to see especially also what the government is doing, what is what permissions the government is giving to educational institutions, things like that. So based on that, we will also be able to make our decision, because of course we have to be aligned to government permissions and regulations. So the thing is, there's a lot of testing, you know, some colleges that require students to be tested regularly and all of that. So we don't want, we can't keep pushing our by the college students to go do all that. So that's why we are thinking what to do. So most likely, most likely we will send an email will announce it, but most likely we'll continue with online classes next semester, just because of the reasons I mentioned, and then get back to in person classes in August next year. Most likely that will be the decision, but we will decide when we when we have a meeting and then announce it. Okay. All right, so, so what we will do tomorrow is tomorrow. We will do a quick review, or we'll do a review of the entire course. Just go away everything sort of fresh our minds on it so you know you can we can take that with us and you know, I know right now, you may not be able to apply these things immediately because, you know, churches are just getting back and now the ministry is just getting back, but you know, keep these things in mind. And then, you know, in the future, when you have chance to get into get back into ministry personally, you can apply these things to the work you're doing. And then there will be a review of the course. And with that, we will finish, and the member will be a time just for assessments, which I will create, and you could finish that off by the end of the month. So okay, let's close and we will dismiss please. Yeah. Is your phone okay? Can you pray? I can't hear you, I think. It's a little noisy, you couldn't hear it. But yeah, Dave, would you pray and we will close and dismiss please. Thank you for today, once again, Lord Jesus, we thank you that we had this opportunity to be in this class, learn from you. Yes, your son wrote Jesus, your appointed son wrote Jesus, whatever we've done today, whatever all those challenges that we are about to face, which is not like Lord Jesus. We give our life and everything that we have into your hand, Lord Jesus. You have each one of us, Lord Jesus, as we move ahead, Lord God, because you're wisdom, you're revelation, you're understanding Lord Jesus. So that we can respond in every situation occurring to your will and your understanding. I pray that you be with each one of us the rest of the day and help each one of us. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. Kind of no problem. Thank you, Karen. God bless you all. See you tomorrow. Bye now.