 Okay, good morning and welcome back everybody to our second lecture on BC310 Church and Ministry Administration. We have been discussing on the legal side of things, which is also an important part and there's so much information on the legal side because whether we operate as church or a ministry, we need to follow the rules, the rules of the land as long as they don't violate our personal faith in God of course, but otherwise in general we have to follow the rules and for that we need the help of advocates and we need to know whom to go to to get the right kind of guidance. I want to just answer a few questions and then we'll go to our next lesson. Abram's question is, in a place like Vietnam, should the focus be more on the locals or on the foreigners? I think Abram, it's really what, you know, each one has to do what God has called us to do and I personally am not a fan of the rules in Vietnam. I don't know what the rules are like, but let's say for example, in a country like Malaysia, in a country like Malaysia, the locals meaning the, so you have three main races, right? You have the Chinese, you have people from Indian, Indians who have been there and then there are the locals, they're called bumiputras, people of the land. They're all Muslims and so in Malaysia, it's illegal to share the gospel with a Muslim. It's been there, it's a rule and it's illegal for a bumiputra to change religion. So then there you have to be careful, you can freely share the gospel with Chinese or with Indians or other people, but you cannot do it with the bumiputras. That's the law in that land and that doesn't mean, you know, we can never speak to them. I mean, that's a law, that's the protecting bumiputras. So then in that situation, you know, each one has to do what God's called them to do. So you can freely minister to the Indians and Chinese, but be very, being very careful how you bring the gospel to the bumiputras and how they receive the gospel and because they can be severe consequences. So they will have to usually be secret believers and, you know, proceed that way. So I don't know what it's like in Vietnam, I don't know what the rules are there, but my answer would be very simply, each one has to do what God has called them to do. So if God has called you to minister to the locals, do it. If God has called you to minister to the, you know, foreigners, the expats, okay, do it. Or maybe God's called you to minister to both people. So you can minister to both. I'm sorry, I don't have a very specific answer to your question, Abraham. Yeah, thank you. All right. So I've just shared with you the two links of two organizations that says within India that provide, you know, legal advice and help in persecution. Roshan's question is, can you share more books on church and ministry administration? So Roshan, the thing as I, you know, when we started this course, I think last year or year before I forget when we started this course, but I did look around for good books on church and ministry administration. I found books which were very old and I couldn't find a more recent book, you know, a book that has current part, current ideas. That's something that's very relevant to our day, you know, books were written there with, you know, be 20 years ago. It's kind of very old. So that's why I didn't even share it. So to answer your question, at least in my search online on Amazon and other places, I really couldn't find a good book that I can recommend saying, okay, here's like a textbook for church, ministry administration, you know, and it has to be relevant to our day and time with given all the things that are happening. So that's why I kind of wrote out my own notes and I'm using that in this course. So I'm sorry I can't point you to a good book because at least I couldn't find one, a current book, you know, there are old books written a long time ago which kind of feels outdated. So I couldn't find anything new on church and ministry administration, but you know, there are these general management books and so on, which you have to read and then take some good ideas and use it. Yeah, so if I do, you know, if I do come across something good and I haven't searched lately, I did search maybe a year ago and also before we started this course in July. So yeah, at the moment, I'm not aware of any good book. That's current, you know, that should be, it should be up to date and so on. But if I come across anything, I'll let us know. Kennedy, roughly, do you have a retirement age for a pastor in your management or T? No, so we don't, in our constitution, that is for APC, we have never, we have not stated that a person beyond this age has to retire. There is no mention of any age in our constitution for APC, nor do we have a mention of age in our HR guidelines. I mean, I guess we didn't even think that far, because we were all young and we started everything. But I would look at it like this. I would look at it this way. You know, I had planned maybe a, I would say this, so we are in 2022. So maybe about five years ago, I informed the church that, you know, from that time, say, by the time I am, I personally, at around 60 or something, 60, 62, I would like to hand off the leadership to the next generation. That doesn't mean I would stop ministering. You know, I would continue ministering personally. I'm just sharing my thoughts. None of this is written or, you know, put into our constitution. I'm just sharing with you my thoughts on this. You know, we should serve God as long as we can. But at the same time, we need to hand over leadership at the right time to the new generation that they can lead. So that's the thought. At some point, maybe when I'm 62 or 65 or something in that range, I need to be able to hand off the leadership to the next generation. But I will continue ministering, but not carry the responsibility of leadership. But be there to nurture the younger generation, to be a support to them. You know, so those are my thoughts. So to answer your question, we don't have anything written, neither in our constitution, nor in our staff guidelines. But I think it is more of something that what is the right thing to do? The right thing to do is hand over leadership to the next generation, be a support, continue ministering. So God tell your last day on earth. But in terms of leadership, the right people should be leading at the right time. Any other questions? Okay. So I'm going to change now to another lesson which has to do with execution. So we are planning execution and coordination. So what is important for us to understand here is that whether you like it or not for a church or any kind of Christian ministry, once the ministry reaches a certain level, meaning you've grown, then you can't just run the ministry ad hoc. That means just at random. Because a lot of things need to come together. And so in order for things to happen, there has to be planning, execution and coordination. Or generally, we're speaking, we would call it project management. So you can think of the various activities happening in the ministry. And I just mentioned some things like ministries, conferences, mission trips, special projects, other events, etc. All of these things can be looked at as projects, small, small projects happening in the church or in the ministry. And for each one of these, there has to be planning, execution, coordination. Things have to be run like a project. So every ministry leader, every pastor, in some way is like a project manager. They need to manage and they need to plan, they need to execute, they need to coordinate things so that those areas of ministry can actually take place. So that's the purpose of this lesson to give us an idea, an overview of this whole project management or planning, coordination, execution, so that we can do it well. Now, from a biblical perspective, there are some people who will take scripture and say, no, you shouldn't plan and all of that. So example, people can use what Jesus said in Matthew 6 where Jesus said, you know, why do you worry about Matthew 6, 33, 34? Why worry about tomorrow? You know, why worry about tomorrow? Tomorrow will have enough trouble of its own. I'm just paraphrasing it. So people will take that, don't worry. Of course, we are not worried about tomorrow, but we can plan for tomorrow without being worried. We can prepare for tomorrow, we can plan ahead for the whole year, we can plan ahead for five years without being worried about five years or 10 years from now, but we can plan. And some things just require planning in order for us to execute it and make it happen. Otherwise, they will never happen. And so we need to develop the skill of planning and coordination and execution. Some people may use the passage in James 4, 13 to 17 where James says, you know, what is life? It's like a vapor. It's here and it's gone. Why are you saying I'll go into this city and I will do such and such a thing? You should say, if the Lord wills, I will go, I will do it. It is true that the essence there is, you know, everything in our lives is surrendered and yielded to the will of God. That means whether it's moment by moment, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, we are completely yielded to the will of God. And our life depends on God, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't listen to God and plan with God. You need to do that. And the Bible points us in Proverbs 6, 6, 11, it points us to the ant. It says, hey, look at the ant. The ant doesn't have any leader, but it knows how to gather its food in summer to prepare for the winter. So what's it doing? It's planning. It's getting resources together in the summertime so that it can be ready for the winter. So the Bible says, go look at the ant, learn from it. So we can learn. Even a little creature like the ant knows how to take care of itself and knows how to prepare for the future. And then if you look at a lot of other scriptures and Proverbs talking about the prudent man, it says he acts with knowledge. He understands his way. He considers various steps. He receives correction. He acquires knowledge and he foresees evil. So all of these actions of the prudent man are indicative of somebody who is thinking ahead, who is getting information, who is thinking through on what he's doing. He's not just getting up and saying, okay, today the Lord is telling me to do this and I'll go do it. And tomorrow the Lord will tell me to do something else. I'll go do it. No, he's planning. He's acquiring knowledge. He's looking ahead. He's being preemptive to avoid evil harm. He's acting with knowledge. He's considering. He's pondering his path. So all of this means this is a prudent man. He is looking ahead. So even when it comes to ministry work, we should plan. Look ahead, get information, put things in place, and then execute those things. So many ministries, and I just mentioned a few here, can only happen properly when we plan, and especially when you want more people to be involved. So for example, if I want to go on a mission trip, I can get up and go on my own. But if I want five other people to come with me, then I need to inform them ahead of time. They need to check their availability. They may need to clear out their schedule. Then if you all want to go together, we'll have to book our tickets in advance. We can all travel together, and a lot of other planning has to happen. So that's why we work well in advance. We plan ahead of time. So what goes into project management or running a project? I just want to give us these thoughts to think about. I'm not giving you a full course on project management, but just some things to keep in mind. So a project life cycle. Do you want to run a project? Generally speaking, there's the initiating phase when you think about what you want to do, planning, how you're going to do it, executing, making it happen. Then you need to monitor it. You need to measure and control what's happening. And then in closing, you need to review, assess. So you can learn from this particular experience of running this and use that information in the future to do things better. So initiating the project, planning the project, executing it, monitoring it, closing it out. So what are some success factors in cutting out a project? Well, you need to have a clearly defined objective. This is what I want to achieve. I want to have a conference with 200 people. And this is a team, three days, so many sessions, clearly defined objective, a practical timeline. So you have to have enough time to get everything together, inform other people who are involved, so on and so forth. So the timeline has to be practical. You need a good leader to lead the whole effort. You need a good team with people with the right skills who are committed to the project. You need good management, which means there's constant review feedback and improvement. As things are progressing, there's always review and feedback so you can keep improving while things are happening. We need the ability to resolve problems. There will be challenges and so on. So we need to address those problems. And then we need to finish well. So it has to end well. It has to all come together and the goals have to be achieved. So here are some things that are necessary. So what happens in the initiating phase? So you need to have a plan. What are the objectives? What is the timeline? How much money do you have to spend? What kind of people you need to help you get this project happening? So have a plan. Think about these things. Then usually you will appoint a manager or team leader. Put somebody in charge of that area. So as a pastor, you may not be able to do this yourself. So you find a suitable person whom you delegate this responsibility to. So you may call that person your ministry leader or team leader or whatever name you give. It's fine. And that person is responsible for bringing all the resources together. The resources could be in terms of people. It could be in terms of equipment. So many things. You need to bring all of that together to make that happen. He's responsible for dealing with challenges that come, providing leadership, working with people, negotiating, resolving conflicts, persuading people to be part of this. He needs to be credible. Because if he has credibility, people will participate most occasions. Or at least you can provide credibility to it. He has to be sensitive to what's going on, to the people involved. He needs this leadership style and ethics should be aligned to the organization. And of course he needs to be able to handle pressure, work under pressure, because leading a project, leading a team, there will be some amount of stress always. You can't avoid it. So you look for a person with these skills. You give him this responsibility. And then you also need to bring together the people. So people with the right skills for the project. And you also have a timeline saying, this has to be done in so much. It has to happen this date or whatever. It's a conference and so on. A project T. Then you're planning. So you need to plan for the project. And in planning, what are the things you want to do? You want to have a schedule. So you break the whole project down into smaller sections. I will share with us a little spreadsheet that will help us do this. So you break it all on. It's technically it's called a task breakdown or work breakdown structure. So you break down the whole project into smaller portions. Give them a timeline, put them in sequence. And then you can estimate various costs involved, whether it's the cost for people, cost for buying materials or whatever tools you need. And then you say these are the activities. Break it down further. These are the things that need to be done. So for every task, every project, what are all the activities that need to be done? You itemize it, write it down. These are all the things done. Then you allocate people. Who's going to do that? So there's resource allocation. Who's responsible for those activities? And then as things progress, you also like to look ahead as far as possible to assess what could be risks involved and how you can mitigate them. Some things you'll be able to foresee. Some things may not be foreseen. They may happen as you go along. But you need to have some way of assessing and responding to those risks. So this goes into the planning. You sit down, you think about it. You put it on an Excel sheet or, you know, there are other software tools that you can use that help with planning. I'll just share a spreadsheet to use. Then comes execution. That means now you're getting the work going. And while the project is happening, the work is happening, what are some things we need to look at? You need to look at communications, interactions between the teams or the team members. People need to be able to talk to each other saying, you know, I'm doing this, I'm, what are you doing? Sharing information, working well together. There has to be, the team needs to be kept motivated. Sometimes people can just get distracted. Sometimes people can get discouraged. Sometimes people can get disinterested. So many things can happen. So you need to keep people motivated on the team. You can, we need to have review meetings. You may do it weekly or bi-weekly, whatever works for you in that project. But constant touch what's happening, what's the progress, talking to the people, resolving problems as they arise. There may be purchasing needs. You may need to buy things that are needed for the project that needs to happen in a timely way. Reporting, informing other people who need to be informed, especially those in leadership, keeping people informed. So all that is happening while the project is running, while it's being executed. Then you need to monitor. So while it's running, you're measuring and controlling are we on schedule? Are we behind schedule? Is the quality of work good? So on and so forth. Is the project getting bigger than what we originally thought? Or do we need to make it bigger? Sometimes you do make it bigger intentionally. So the scope of the project, is it expanding? Is it as we had planned? Are the costs kept in line or are the costs increasing? Are people doing okay? Is the quality of the work? We are on schedule. So all of these things you look at generally on a week to week basis as you monitor what's happening in that area. And finally, the whole thing happens, whether it's a conference, whether it's a missions trip, whether it's the launch of a music album, whatever it happens, then you want to review everything. You look at, okay, how did we do? What did we do good? What did we not do good? How can we improve? Where did things go wrong? What did we do right? The estimate was as the actual in terms of costs and people and other things. In the beginning, we estimated so much, what was the actual? Or we went over by so much, or we came within by so much. So you look at the estimate was as the actual. And then when you do the review, you can use that information for future corrections. I'll take some time for questions. This is a little, maybe I should say, technical, but hopefully it's useful for all of us. So there's some different ways that you can run a project. These are called project management methodologies. There is this classic method, which is called waterfall and linear, you go step by step. There's another method, it's called agile as crumb, where you kind of do it in short iterative cycles. Or sometimes you can do a hybrid, a mix of these two and other ways of doing it. So waterfall is so similar, for example, if you're doing a software development, it'll go, you do the analysis, you do the design, you do the implementation, you do testing, deployment, maintenance, kind of like our waterfall sequence. So it's a linear step by step sequential way of doing things. In an agile or a scrum project management, again, these are usually spoken of in software development space. You do it in short iterations. So you get some work done, check everything, go to the next. So for example, suppose we are releasing a music album with six songs, right? So on the end, the album is going to have six songs. But each song can be done in iteration. That means you go through a songwriting, music composition, you plan for the video shoot, do the video shoot, then there is this whole process of editing, composing everything, putting it all together. And then you, you know, you may want to release a song then, oh, sorry, I go like this. Yeah, you may want to release a song then, or you may want to just release a teaser and keep people looking forward to the full album. But then you go to the next song. It goes again, the same thing happens in the songwriting and all of that. And then you can create everything, compose a song, ready for release. So you go through like this, you go through six iterations, you get six songs ready, and then you launch the album. So that's just one example where you're going doing a creative method. Or you could do the waterfall method where you write all the six songs, compose it, you know, you're ready to record all the six songs, you record all the six songs, then you produce all the six songs, then you, you know, you announce all six songs and then you launch the album. But that used to be the way they used to do it in the old days, you know, when album came out, all six songs came out. That's how they used to do it in previous times. These days it's more like, you know, they, they release songs one by one teaser so that there's always people are looking forward to something new and then finally the album comes and so on and so forth. So people are doing it, you know, differently, different ways. But these are just ideas of how you want to go about your project. So, right, so generally, project overview, what's the objective cost, time resources, have a roadmap, how do you want to go about it? Break it down into smaller projects, tasks, have a timeline, again chart, I'll show you one now, where you can put them all in sequence, how they're going to work, look at the collaboration communication that's happening, the planning and the schedule that's taking place, reporting, and you may want people to, you know, submit their time, how much time is being spent so you can monitor that, what are the resources and materials being used and while the project is happening, if there are new ideas, you want to capture those ideas to help improve what's happening. I've just mentioned here some tools, you know, you could use a spreadsheet, you can use a lot of other project management software is available, Microsoft Project or Open Project Software. So we have this installed at EBC, so you could use any of these. A lot of our people just use plain spreadsheets to do their work. So I just giving you examples of, you know, what a project would look like, these are just things we think about, suppose you want to release an album, okay, here's your problem statement, you want to host a Krishna conference for two days, here's your problem statement, how would you plan for that project? You want to run, if you want to run a two-month short term by the college, now all these are real things I gave to our people so that they're all planning on these things for next next year. If you want to set up a resource center, how would you go about it? What a whole secretion leaders conference, how would you go about it? And so on. So very quickly, let me just share with you and I've put this up on in your classwork. So this is just a small and easy to use spreadsheet, right? It's not a very complicated one but I've just made it available for you, right? So and you can use this if you want, some of our staff are using this. So, you know, you can set up your project and you plan, you know, week by week, you can plan, these are your tasks. So these are your phases, you can break it down into a sequence of your overall project, you break it down, you put down the tasks that need to be done, assign it to somebody, you know, whoever needs is, you know, is going to do it. This is your start date, end date, you can monitor your progress here and so like that you can have many phases and so on. You can of course expand this as you need and you can also have your cost time, what are your one-time purchases, whom you're going to buy it, what's the cost or other recurring expenses, so on. So this is a simple spreadsheet that you can use to run projects, manage your projects and, you know, just can make sure that things happen well and I encourage, you know, encourage our staff to do this for various, areas of ministry and projects that we are running, okay? Let me just take up these questions that are in the chat. Yeah, I see a comment. Roshan, what are the specific law where nonprofit organizations can get tax exemption, which you read in the last one? Okay, so it's called 12A, right? So first you register the entity as a religious trust, then it also, you also have to have 12A registration, so 12A registration. So if you have 12A registration, then that means you have permission to be tax exempt. You're a religious organization and you don't pay taxes on the contributions given to you. But then, of course, remember, you'll have to pay the tax deduction at source, TDS, that has to be paid. Now, if it's an NGO, we, if that means it's a social organization, then you have an ATG tax exemption. So that ATG is not applicable for religious organizations. It's only for social, non-government organizations ATG, the donors get tax exemption. You know, so example, if it's a mission hospital or some other social NGO type work running a school or, you know, something you're doing to serve people and you get an ATG, they won't give ATG for a religious organization, but for a social organization. They can, then it's even the donors get a tax benefit. Okay, so this is within India. Kennedy, what does it take on benchmarking and how to manage unforeseen circumstances? Yeah, I think benchmarking is a good thing. If it's done in the right spirit, that means, you know, I, I try to look at what others have done or maybe even what we have done previously, how can we improve on it? What are the lessons we can learn? How can we do it? We're doing it in the right spirit. We're not doing it out of competition. We're not doing it out of any wrong motivation, especially when you're benchmarking against another Christian organization or entity against what they've done. I think it's good to learn from other organizations. So for example, our graphics people, our media people, they look at what is happening, what is being done by other Christian organizations who are more on the cutting edge of things. And we learn from them. We try to adapt good ideas. And then we use it, you know, in our work, whatever's relevant, of course, because we have to make everything relevant to our context. So that's a good thing to do to learn from other people being done in the right spirit. And how to manage unforeseen circumstances. Yeah, I think we all have to just depend on God for wisdom, and then get his guidance and take right action, you know. And there's nothing too hard or too difficult for God. So things that are not known to us are not a surprise to God. They're a surprise to us. But we can always look to God and he will give us the wisdom, the grace to navigate through those unforeseen situations and so on. It could happen in so many shapes and forms, but none of it is too much for God. And I think if you just stay anchored in him, draw wisdom from him, he will help us navigate through these unforeseen situations. Okay. So next week, we are going to touch on just a few things. I'm not going to get into too many details. So next week, I'm going to talk about leveraging technology. How do we make use of technology? I'm not going to get into the details. That'll be done in a separate course next year when we talk about media and technology. But the next lesson is just to give us a little motivation that we should use the technology. Then I'll just close with a few thoughts on pursuing excellence and innovation and also on establishing continuity. So it's going to be just probably a one hour lecture next week. We close with these thoughts and we should be done with the course. Any questions on this whole project management thing? And I just went through it very fast. But the whole idea is that any area of ministry should be managed very well. So recently, in fact, last week, I spoke to all our staff, our pastors, and I said for each of your areas of work, ministry, have a growth plan. That means from where we are to where we should go, have a plan, write it out. How are we going to get there? What are the strategies you're going to use? How are we going to execute? And so on. So that means we're telling each one to plan ahead. You look ahead five years, 10 years from now. Should the Lord tell you what do you want to do in your area of ministry and plan it out? What would be the expenses, etc. So work on it. So this is something important for us. We don't just get up and randomly do things. Now we have to plan and we go through the steps that we spoke about and put it down, write it down, think through. And then as you start executing it, of course, you will keep improving. And at least you stay on track towards what God has called you to do. Any questions? Okay. All right. So let's close in prayer next week. We will do one hour. I think we'll be done in one hour next week. One hour will be done. I'll get your assessments ready. And with that, I hope this course has been useful for you and makes you think about doing a good job in whether you're running a church or a ministry. Run it well. Make the organization well and strong so we could serve God well and service people well. All right. Could somebody please close in prayer? Yeah. So will this course end next week? Yeah. So next week, Thursday, will be our last lecture. Yeah. That's it. Then it'll be just the assessment that I will put up online and you can take the rest two weeks to do it. No problem. Thank you, Maggie. I appreciate all your comments. Thank you very much. The course has been helpful. Thank you. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will dismiss. Could somebody lead us in prayer, please? Asha, you want to pray? Is that, you raise your hand? Disappear. Yes, Master. Okay. Go ahead. Dear God, thank you so much, Lord, for teaching us what is financial and for planning and helping us on what we do with God. Thank you, Lord, for teaching us and quickening us and strengthening our lives, God, that we should not sit and listen. But what we have listened, Lord, we need the doers of it and understand that this is the things that you have taught us and encouraged us to know to be a steward of everything and be faithful with a few things, Lord. Thank you so much, Lord, best of our students and each one of you, the students, Lord, that have a wonderful day, I think. Thank you, Lord, for everything. Great. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. Thank you for all the comments I see. We'll meet again next week, Thursday, for our final lecture. Have a great week. God bless each one. Thank you, Master. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. God bless. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. God bless. It's all again. Thank you, Master. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Have a great week. God bless. Thank you. Bye now.