 Hey, good morning. Welcome. Welcome. I've started the recording, Dave. We'll get started and let people join as they come. Let's start with the word of prayer. Father, we come before you. Lord, we thank you that your mercy is anew every morning. And we thank you for your faithfulness that sustains us, that sees us beyond us since you don't keep a record of us since, Father. Thank you, Lord. I pray that we would live a life that is worthy of our calling. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. All right. Go ahead and share my screen. Dave, I hope I'm audible. They just give me a second. Something's wrong. Yes, we can hear you. I can hear you. Okay. Sorry. I'm unable to share my screen. It's giving me an error. For some reason, I don't know what the issue is, but if you don't mind, I'm going to continue without sharing my screen. And I'm going to request you to follow along in your PDF, where we stopped yesterday in page 31 of your PDF, page 31 of chapter 6. Okay. So, yeah, we ended with this last note. We kind of looked at the culture that is being set and some of the trends that are being followed by our young people and the importance of them. And on the last note, we saw that by 2030, millennials, that's generation Y and generation Z, now will represent 75% of the global workforce. The question we ended with was, will they represent 75% of your church? That's some, that's a food for thought with that. And so now moving into the second section is, now that we have some sort of an insight and understanding of the culture that is being set by the youth and for them, how can we tailor a youth ministry that has maximum impact? So, it is, yes, is one force is one generation passes away and another generation comes, but the earth abides forever. One generation passes away and another generation comes. So, before this generation passes away, can we do something that we can, and how we can impact their lives? So, that's the premise. So, impacting millennials, impacting generation Y and Z. How do we do that? Remember, we are talking about tailoring a youth ministry that has maximum impact. So, the use of technology and social media is one thing. So, when we run a survey which was done between generations Y and Z, in particular, one of the things that they mentioned that defined or shaped their generation is technology. It's something that they can't live without. They need to have it and if you take away their mobile phones or the internet, the net in itself, they feel like they are paralyzed. It's like, they don't know what to do. And so, that's the situation. That's the connect that this generation has with the technology. So, it's not just the number of devices or how frequently they interact with digital technologies. One of the studies say that on an average, a young person checks their phone every six minutes. On an average, a young person checks their phone every six minutes. And it's become a habit. And there's another study done when it comes to habits with those who smoke cigarettes or whatever, who generally smoke. So, it's more than what they inhale. The thing that is hard to stop for them is the habit of bringing their hands to their mouth. It's that motion, that habit that's more hard to break than the actual smoking in itself. That's the study that was done. And so, it's almost similar, isn't it, when you think about that report that says, okay, a young person has to check or look at their phone every six minutes. It's become that habit. And so, that's how connected this generation is with technology. That's just one example of it. So, they are so connected yet disconnected. Their heads are always buried to their phones or their iPads, kids playing games or iPads and whatnot. So, they understand this generation and the younger generation understands technology far more than the generation that was before, say for example, generation Y or the generation prior. Because they did not have such exposure, but the exposure of technology is great in this day and age. So, moving on to page 32 in your PDF, for those who just joined, I apologize, I'm unable to share my screen, but let me see if I can do that now. Because it was giving me some sort of an error. It's still giving me an error. I'm not able to share. I'm sorry, guys. I don't know what the problem is. Okay. There was a, yeah, okay. There's this quote from Benjamin Wendell. He says, who you are online is perceived as who you are offline. Who you are online is perceived as who you are offline. What does that mean? What you show yourself as on the social media platform is what people think you are. If you're going to show yourself as always happy and always happening and cool and what not, and people are going to think, okay, that is who you are, even offline. I like that you are always cool, always happy. You don't have any sad days, bad days. Your life is flying high like a leaguer in the sky. So, that's the message of that quote there. Who you are online is perceived as who you are offline. The two are synonymous, similar, same, and they are not separate. So, your online life is perceived as same as your offline life. I remember the days where, gosh, it sounds like so long ago, but just 10 years ago, social media was defined by Facebook initially, but prior to that, there was another medium called Orkut. It was just a way of engaging, connecting, isn't it? And then it became this marketing playground and whatnot. But the fact is, technology is the new Sunday. Technology is the new Sunday. Why we say that? Because at the time when I was preparing this document, we were going through the pandemic. Pandemic had just hit COVID-19 in April of 2020. And if not all the churches, most of the churches, most of the churches, that's when they realized, like, okay, oops, no, what do we do? Every, all these churches that did not know anything about Zoom, found out about Zoom, and so many other churches who did not know about live streaming found it a necessity to start live streaming, to be connected with their congregation. Right? And so, and for what, two years now, technology has been the new Sunday. It's just an EDM. But you get what I'm saying. Technology only moves forward. It's here to stay, embrace new technology. It's very important that we begin to understand the importance of tech, the power of tech. And it's important that churches have tech savvy people who understand technology, connectivity, you know, and whatnot. So it offers amazing opportunities, communicate with people in new ways, such as phone, email, SMS, create community in new ways, disciple and pastor people in new ways to reach people where they are, create new educational pathways online to help people grow in biblical knowledge. So I mean, the growth has been incredible in the last two years of number of pastors and ministries that have started their own Facebook page or Instagram pages and, you know, started reaching out to people because they've realized that's where people are. So it's not just a means of communication, right? It's, but they've soon realized that's where people are, right? So most often in the Bible, in the Gospel, you'll see, Gospels, you'll see that Jesus went to where people were, right? And we, at this in our day and age, we must realize that people are online. That's where they are. And that's where we need to go and get and reach out to them. Okay. So the first point there is impacting millennials through technology, find out, come up with different strategies, ideas and whatnot on how you can reach out to the youth online. Okay. And the second is relational leadership. Okay. By the way, what we are discussing is how do we tailor a youth ministry that will impact the young people? Okay. After studying yesterday and the previous session about their cultural backgrounds and the way they think, et cetera, et cetera, and how there are five different generations in our society that's wanting to be heard. So now that we've understood everything that goes into that, you know, everything that our young people are going through, now what does the church do? Okay. So everything that we're learning today is a response to what we learned yesterday. Okay. So relational leadership. I cannot stress enough on this point. Okay. So relational leadership. Okay. We are in page 32 of the PDF. For this generation of young people, leadership is not about power. Okay. Look at those words there for this generation of young people. That means the generations before that, for them, leadership was about power. It was about authority. But this generation doesn't connect the same way. Remember, they change, right? So once again, millennials are fundamentally changing the way they understand leadership. They follow relationship and not authority. Okay. They follow relationship and not authority. Okay. Authoritarian leadership style is no longer, is no longer ineffective. Some say it is even fatal to a culture. But so this is an incredible book by John Maxwell called The Five Levels of Leadership. If you have an interest in the topic, in the field of leadership, John Maxwell has a lot of books on the topic of leadership and I would encourage and recommend for you to read some of those. Okay. He's written a lot of materials on the topic of leadership. Okay. So one of the books he talks about is the five levels of leadership. Okay. And that's what we're going to look at. So what John Maxwell says is position authority to the lowest level of leadership. Sometimes in our theology of being the senior pastor, leader or elder, our style gets stuck in this mode. We get confused or misunderstand the difference between relational leadership and authoritarian leadership. But if you come down to page 33, you'll see an image. Okay. That is kind of important for us to follow. Are you all there in your page? Page 33 is give me a thumbs up. I'm sorry. Yes. If you can see that image in page 33 in your notes. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Thanks, Dave. Okay. So you see that there are five levels of leadership. So we'll start at the very bottom. Okay. This is five levels of relational leadership. Your first thing is about position. Okay. He talks about rights. People follow you because they have to. Okay. This is the authoritarian leadership position based leadership is okay. You're a boss and people will tell, will do what you tell them to do because they're not necessarily like you, but because you're in the place of authority in that position, they will follow you because they have to. There's no other go. There's no other option. That's the first level. And we go to the next level. Then you see there's a permission based leadership, which is based a little bit on relationships. People follow you because they want to. You see the dynamic is shifting now. Okay. There are people follow you because they want to follow you. The difference between the first and the second is drastic and then it keeps increasing the production. That is talking about results now. You know, people follow because of what you have done for the organization. Okay. People follow what you have done for the organization. Okay. Can you think of a person that's done something incredible for an organization or a company? Anyone that you can think of, name of any leader? What about Steve Jobs? We all know Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and he's so famous worldwide, isn't it? And a lot of them in his organization would want to follow him because one, they are inspired by seeing what he has done for the organization. Right. So for how far he's grown at his brand, you know, the company is Apple. Because of what he has done, people will want to follow. Right. So that is the production based leadership. Okay. And then you go on to the next level. The fourth level is the people development. Now, the third step is we see that what the person has done for the organization, but in the fourth level, we see they will follow you because of what you have done for them. It's gotten very personal now, isn't it? So if you look at the level one, they follow you because they have to, they don't have a choice. Even if they don't like you, they will do it. It's not great. Work will get done. Yeah. But then there's no joy or there's no like, you know, that inspiration or motivation to follow you. It's like, oh, man, I will, I want to follow Dave because he's amazing. It's like, you know, I follow Dave because, yeah, you know, he's my boss types, you know, from that all the way to level four now, people will follow you because of what you have done for them. Right. So in our context as church leaders or youth leaders, what some of the one example that I can think of is that shows that reflects this point or what we have done for them is I'm reminded of the parable of the shepherd, right? The lost sheep, how the shepherd goes leaves the 99 and goes after the one. And that one will always remember what you have done for that, for them. Right. And so that builds relationship. Okay, we are getting into the zone, this bubble of relational leadership is, are you willing to go after the one? Okay, so that builds the relation to leadership and doesn't end there. And the last, the final, the pinnacle is the respect level in your leadership. People follow because of who you are and what you represent. Okay, now it's gone from, it's, it changes everything, isn't it, in this level? It's the pinnacle. It's no longer about what you do for the organization. It's no longer about what you do even for the individual. It's now, it all comes down to it says, it's the level of respect because people will follow because of who you are and what you represent. What are the two things that defines who we are and what we represent? One in the character, in our character. This is a beautiful old saying that says your anointing will take you up, but it is your character that will keep you up there. Right. And God will elevate or promote you. But if your character is bad, you're going to have to fall, isn't it? And that's, I'm reminded of King Saul, where God anoints him, he chooses him, he elevates him, promotes him to a level from a tribe of nobody to a king of a nation. But then what was his downfall, his character, right? And what he believed and what he stood for. And then your values, everything that goes into what you believe in, what you represent. Do you represent integrity? Do you represent purity? Do you represent honesty? Do you represent faithfulness? Do you represent generosity? Do you represent mercy? Do you represent forgiving? All of that. And people will see is like, okay, you know, his character is amazing. Okay, you need not necessarily be the best orator, the best person who knows English very well or speaking, being able to speak very well. Or you might not even preach very good sermons, et cetera, et cetera. You might not be a very good teacher or whatnot. But people will see your character is true. And your values, they, you know, they will follow you because you are a man and a woman of integrity, right? So that's the five levels of leadership. And all it connects to is a relational leadership, and which is so crucial in our journey as youth leaders, right? You guys with me? Okay, I hope you are. One of the book recommendations that I would have, I would do at the moment is this is a book called Turn the Ship Around, Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet. Okay, L. David Marquet. He was, he's a retired captain from the US Navy. He talks about relational leadership in a very different view in his book called Turn the Ship Around. When he took over that ship, that particular ship in the Navy as the captain, that ship amongst the fleet of ships was known as the worst ship that had the team and the crew, everything. They had a very, very bad, it had the lowest reputation among the fleet in the fleet of Navy. And it is, and this, and the book is all about how this captain, he turns the ship around as a figure of speech, saying how he changed the culture and how he impacted, motivated and inspired everyone, you know, in that ship from being the worst to being the best in the Navy. And we're talking about US Navy, right? It's pretty big. So that book is amazing. If you want to learn again, grow more in this thing of leadership, I would encourage you to do that. So there's a quote from the book. He says, leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers. So powerful words there, isn't it? Leadership should mean giving control. It goes against everything that we know of leadership, right? Authoritarian leadership and positional leadership is all about I am in control. I am in control. It's me, and I tell you what to do, isn't it? I need to have control over my team, the people that I'm leading. But here he's saying leadership should mean giving control. You give control to the people. You let them make decisions, right? You let them make the hard decisions or whatever it is that builds the team, their character, and then rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers. Okay? So this is an incredible book. I can't recommend that book enough for you to read. So when you can, and if you, I'm not sure if I have it, I should have it. If you want to let me know, I'll send a PDF of it to you. Lead from authority but not with authority, okay? So the next point is lead from authority but not with authority. The saying people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care is truer today than it ever has been before. So leading millennials is more about being the guide on the side, not a sage on a stage. Okay? Leading this generation of youth, of young people, is more about being their guide or their friend. You know, you have to be their pastor but then you be their pastor not from a place of authority, you know, of saying you have to do exactly what I tell you. If you do this, then you are that, etc. But no, you're their friend, you guide them, you share with them, you have that conversation with them, you build that rapport, that relationship, right? It's about sitting next to rather than in front of. Okay? And that's what friends do, isn't it? They sit next to you, they put their arms around you and they say, okay, tell me what's going on in life. That is what this generation is actually expecting. It was not the same with us, with me at least. I don't know about you guys, but it was a very different culture when I was the youth, when I was a youth. Okay? So moving into the next section, page 34, it's another we've understood relational leadership. The next thing is how do we design or plan our programs and our events? Sorry, guys, my notes went to a different page altogether. Okay. So page 34, we're revisiting the point that we mentioned in the last chapter about how this generation of young people are time poor. That means they have a lot going on in their life. So if they want to come to your program or your event, they need to see value, right? They need to see value. Only then will they come. Otherwise, 24 hours a day is not enough for them. So what do millennials get from attending a youth service that they can't get online? It's one of the questions that we need to address. Okay? What do millennials get from attending your youth service that they can't get online? Is your youth service or youth meetings is it so normal that they can get the same thing what you're giving them even online? Right? So that's the question we've got to kind of start with. We need to regularly review what's working, what's not working and what needs changing. We need to ask these hard questions, guys. We need to, you know, review, you know, for our own sake, for the growth of your ministry. You know, you need to get reviews and feedbacks, you know, asking this question, what is working? You know, and then you make a list. You have this team meetings and whatnot. Okay, what is working? Okay, you know, this time of worship is working. This time of games is working. You know, this is not working. You know, the snack time at the beginning is not working. I think we need to have snack time at the end of our event, of our program, etc. Small things, details like that, you know, and what is not working, what needs changing. Can we do something differently? So one of the things that we do at APC after all our youth meetings is we have this small review process, okay, post event review. Some of the questions that we ask is, okay, you'll look at it in your notes. There's no fancy words, nothing. You come together as a team after the event or a one day after the event. It's very important that you do it immediately when your memory is fresh of everything that happened in the event. Okay, so you ask this question, okay, good. What are the questions? What went well? What were the positives? The wins? What made this a success? Who did great? You know, what did we do this time that made things better, etc., and then bad? What went wrong? What didn't work? Why were we not on time? Why didn't we start on time? And you address that. Did we forget anything? Was our goal, was our mission? Was it confusing to the audience who came? So these are the simple questions that we will address after all our pitch stops at combined youth meetings. And this kind of helps us plan better for the next meeting. Okay, I hope you are with me. So once again, just to recap, we are talking about everything, how we can tailor effective youth ministry to impact our youths. Okay, so far, are you guys with me? Any questions? Anything that you want to share? Do you have your youth weekly, Pastor? So the way it works at APC, it's a unique situation here because we have five locations in Bangalore. We have the North, South, East, West, and Central. So now that after the pandemic, we are restarting in-person meetings, I have to, I would like to be in all the locations week after week. So because of that, now because of that, you know, one Sunday, I have to be at North, the next Sunday, I have to be at South, because of which we have this monthly meetings only once a month. So now the plan, what we're trying to do is have simultaneous youth meetings at different location happen on the same Sunday, like give responsibilities to the youth leaders of that location to host it. You know, so that way, we don't have to have, we can have more than just one once a month meetings. So that's the weekly youth meetings. But we have something called Pitch Talk, right? Pitch Talk is something where a combined youth, it's a combined youth meeting where youths from North, South, East, West, Central, they all come together in one place on a Saturday evening. That's, that happens once in two months, or depending on the availability once in three months. So yeah, that's the situation. Yeah, so after this pandemic and then this lockdown, I find it very challenging and very hard to have regular youth because of the, I don't know, I think it's very, very challenging now, since they have already been used to being online and doing both kind of services. But now calling out to have a critical service. What would you suggest? What kind of programs or some other things out of not just speaking to just be having a service, but what, what do you think it's good to do with the youth? Yeah, so yeah, I think I can only suggest what's, so once the pandemic hit, we started our weekly Zoom meetings, our youth meetings. So from the second, from the third week of March 2020, okay, going March 2020, third Friday, from then every week at Friday at nine o'clock, we had our youth meetings, you know, week after week, after week, month after month, for almost two years, we had our online youth meetings. And we didn't know how long it's going to go on, right? But now that, you know, we are exiting the pandemic, we've started our in-person meetings. Now I've just reduced the frequency of online meetings. From meeting every Friday at nine o'clock, we are doing it once a month to reduce the frequency because people are also going back to offices, you know, and we've started meeting in person. And because of the time crunch, we've reduced the frequency of it, but we've not completely stopped the online meetings. It's very important to have the hybrid kind of a meeting. You have the in-person meetings as well. And also you have the online meetings as well. So you keep both the options open, you know, and then if there are those who come online for your Zoom meetings or online meetings, you could encourage them to, you know, to join our in-person meetings as well. But just be patient because people, like you said, I, two years is not a joke, no. It a lot has happened in two years, right? People have lost their jobs. People have lost their loved ones, their family members. There's a huge, it's, the lives have changed drastically. And it's led to people becoming very comfortable, you know, with just attending services online and so if we were actually having this discussion in our past meetings as well regarding, you know, bringing back, how do we bring back people to church from attending in-person services? APCC, we've been doing live streaming for 10 years or more than 10 years, actually more than 10 years, right? We've been live streaming on YouTube for over a decade. But watching the live streaming every Sunday was really not an option. It is like, okay, if I'm traveling, if I, if I'm not well, if I really can't make it to church, then I will stay back home and watch the live streaming. But what the pandemic has done now is attending, watching the live streaming of the service is the same as attending in-person. Services, it's changed our thinking. That's how people are thinking. There's no difference. There's no need for me to go in person, spend the money, wake up early, you know, all of that. While I can watch the same service, experience the same thing at the comfort of my place, it's changed a lot of things. So I think we need to continue to encourage our people and be patient and not be too forceful, pushy, yes. You know, and that's where they need, like we just discussed right, the point of they need to see value. If you're asking them to come to this in-person youth meeting, they need to see, why do I have to go there, right? If it's the same thing with for people wanting to attend church, okay, why do I need to go to the in-person service? Why, what will I get there in the in-person service that I will not get online? And so you make these different things, you plan different, you know, fun activities or whatnot. Going to in-person, you actually get to see each other, you know, you worship together, just hearing one another. It's wonderful, isn't it? So like, yeah, you design certain activities, programs that will attract the youth. Thanks for that question, Dave. Does anybody else have any, any other questions? And does anybody have anything that you want to ask or share? There's very few of us, so Kiran, Aaron, anything? Is there any challenge? What you said is a true buster, last term. Can you able to, hello? I can hear you, I can hear you, yes. Can you hear me, Buster? Yeah, yeah. What you said is earlier, there's two ways people behave in life, the practices have completely changed. Sorry, Thomas, your voice is breaking. Hey, Thomas, sorry, your voice is breaking, we are not able to hear very clearly. Sorry, Thomas, I think something, there could be a connectivity issue. Sorry, some issues in the mic. Okay, so just to very quickly, yes, Thomas, you want to try saying, speaking, Thomas? Can you hear me, Buster? Yes. Yes, Buster. Oh, what we are discussing, what you, the last two years, that's absolutely true. Every church has this challenge to get back the people. In these two years, in the Holy Communion also, that is home, it has through the life. The gathering importance, generation for generation, the gathering importance in these two years and becomes comfort. I think we need more, sometimes we lose patience, but we need more patience and plan something to get back the people to change. That's the biggest challenge today, the ministers of God is facing. We hope some of the fastest sense ever, the church congregation hundred become like that. So, this two years, we made such a big impact. Yeah, yeah, we hope for things to get better, change. So, yeah, I think we will have to be patient and just continue to seek God for his plans, his strategies, his, you know, ask for his wisdom that we need, how to impact people's lives better. Okay. So, these three points that we covered today, I want to stop here and I will continue with the rest of the course next week. But, yeah, I hope some of these points help and help you plan your services a little better. Okay. So, I'll stop the recording now. Thank you all for joining and I'll see you again next week.