 Okay, welcome back everybody to our second lecture on PC310 Church Administration Management. We have been talking about volunteer management and we're continuing that. Tiffany, you have a question? So when we studied about the staffs, when something goes wrong, you were telling about the three strike policies. That's how you do it. So what's the case of volunteers if you notice something is happening with the volunteers. How do you actually be corrected and we can't say everyone will actually take the corrections and change it. So how the conflicts in a volunteer sector actually happens and how do we solve it? Good question. Good question again. So church staff, we have like we said, like you mentioned, we have this three strike rule three times and we have to see what action to take and so on. Volunteers, we have to, so at least the way we work at APC is even with volunteers, we are strict. So the thing is this, volunteers, we did not want volunteers to have the mindset that, hey, I'm coming and doing something for free. So you cannot tell me anything. We did not want them to have bad attitude, you know, because then that is a very unhealthy attitude. So we said, so right from the beginning, what we tell them is, if you are a volunteer, you are a volunteer, we respect that, but we expect you to operate at this level. That means there has to be commitment and you have to work in a certain way. That means you have to work with excellence. If there is preparation and to do your preparation and calm, we are striving for excellence in everything. Even if you're a volunteer, this is what we expect. And if you're not able to meet this, then we will have to release you and you try and do something else that does not require same level of commitment. Example, example, you know, for those who want to volunteer in the worship team, the level of, our requirement is very high. That means, example, I'm just saying, before, so the song, the worship leader for that particular Sunday will send out the set list saying, look, we are going to come prepared with these five songs. We are going to do these five songs on Sunday. So the people who are rostered for that Sunday, they must learn the five songs, they must practice their part in the five songs, depending on which instrument they are playing. They should come ready, already prepared for the practice. So before the practice, they have done their preparation, so which may, for example, depending on their skill level, it may take about one hour. Or if, you know, sometimes they may take even two hours, depending on how much skill they are. That means they have practiced for one or two hours before coming to the team practice. So the team practice may happen on a Saturday, for example, or it may happen Sunday morning, one hour or one half hours before the service, whenever they schedule. But for most locations, the team practice will happen on Saturday. So before these people come to the team practice, they have already spent about one or two hours practicing their part for those five songs. Then they come to the team practice. Team practice, the team is practicing all the five songs together. And that will be for one and a half, one or two hours depending on when they practice. So that commitment is there. If you cannot, if you don't come for team practice, you cannot play on Sunday. You can't just show up on Sunday and say, you know, you have to be there for the team practice. Then on Sunday, you have to come early before the service, sound check has to happen, you know, everywhere. So that, so you can't even just show if the service is starting at 8 o'clock in the morning. You can't show up at 8. You have to show up at 7.30, because the sound check has to happen, all those things have to happen. So the commitment is a little higher. That means to sing on Sunday morning, you have actually spent about, you know, roughly about three hours, three to four hours of practice before you can, you know, lead, be a part of the worship team on Sunday. That's going to lead for about 40 minutes. So four hours of, I'm just roughly giving an estimate. Four hours of practice has gone in for that person to be part of the worship team for 40 minutes, but that's the commitment that's required. Now, if they don't do this, and we've had to, and we just say, sorry, you cannot. You know, if the person comes without practicing, they'll just say, hey, sorry, you cannot be part of this team. So at least at APC, what we have done here is we've created a culture where even if you're a volunteer, they're expecting you to do it well. They're expecting you to do it with excellence. If you can't do it, don't want it. Nobody's forcing you to do it. If you can't do it well, don't want it. So the consequence of not doing and not coming on time, not being committed, not doing something with passion and excellence as a volunteer is he will release you from the opportunity to volunteer. Thank you very much. And again, we apply the same thing, that is, you know, first we give a warning, you talk to the, you're supposed to come at 8 o'clock, you came at 8.30, see what happened. Then, or you came without practicing, or you were not doing it properly, you know, one or two warnings. And if they still continue like that, it's okay, please sit down. Whenever you're ready, you can, or you serve in some area where the requirement is not that stringent. Time commitment is not so. We have to be strict with volunteers also. And I remember, actually, this is a very bad thing that happened. I tried to remember which year it was. So, again, I'll go back to our worship team. One of the requirements that we had put down for our worship team and all this is in writing also. If you are part, so you have, first of all, you have to be committed to the local church before you can volunteer in the, any team that will be committed. So, first, that's the first requirement, you have to be committed to the local church, then you can volunteer in the church. And if you're volunteering, you also need to be faithful to attend the services. And especially for the worship team, there was a time when we had people in the worship team, they used to come to church only on the Sundays, they were rostered to lead worship. On the Sundays, they'd be missing. They won't even come to church. So, we observed this, then I spoke with our worship master, I said, hey, this is very obvious. These people, I'm not saying the whole worship team, certain people, they would come to church only on the Sunday, so when they were going to lead worship. Other Sundays, they're missing, they're not even coming to church. Then I said, please talk to them. I remember, so he spoke to them, nothing changed. Then I got involved, I stepped in, I spoke to them. I said, see, be a quiet commitment to the congregation. Before you can be up on stage and lead worship, you must be committed to this party. That means you've got to be here listening. Plus, the other thing we notice is sometimes they will lead worship. After worship is over, they'll be outside the church. They won't be sitting inside listening to the message. So, we made a requirement, after you lead worship, you must be seated on the front row. You can't be just loitering around outside. No, no, this is not, you're not coming to just do a show. This is part of worship, and you need to be receiving the word of God. You need to be up in front. So, we made these things. And this was a season now. Things are very different today, but we went through this. I think this was back in 2010, 2011 or 2012. I forget which years this was. We went through this. So, we were speaking to the worship team, especially a few people, not all, but few people were, you know, kind of, they're not taking their commitment to the church seriously. So, finally, I called those people separately to the church office one Saturday. I remember that meeting we had. Just those people. I didn't call the whole worship team. I called those people, and then I spoke to them along. There was a worship pastor, others were there. I said, see, this will not continue. And these were experts. I mean, like, they were very good musicians. Like, one person who was sitting there was, you know, was like India famous. You know, like, he was a lead guitarist. He was so renowned all over in India. Like, that level of musicians, they were beautiful. They were all sitting there. I said, see, this in church, if you're going to come and lead worship, you need to become, and this is not the first time I'm talking to them. We've talked to them many, many times, but this was like the last meeting. This is serious. I called these few people in along with worship pastor and a couple others. This is the issue. You know, you have to be in church. If you cannot be in church, please step down from worship team. We don't want to. You know, we're not asking people to come and do a show for us. That's not what we want. And, you know, so we went through the whole thing. After that meeting, that whole crew left. They left the church. Now, these were among our best, you know, worship musicians. I mean, not the whole thing, but there were a handful of them. The whole group, they left the church. Now, one, I felt very sad because that was not the reaction or the response I wanted from them. You know, that I'm not telling them to leave the church. I'm just saying, hey, there's a proper way in which you volunteer, in which you serve. That is your commitment must be first to the local church. You should be here every Sunday receiving the word of God. Then you can be upon stage to lead worship talent wise. They're very great. They're famous. They didn't be invited all over the country, etc. People and they were known. But this is what we require. That was it. That was like the last meeting I had. They left. They stopped coming. Then I said, it's okay. I mean, I've done my part and, you know, so to answer your question, you know, and the thing is, is that we have to be strict. And sometimes this happens when we correct even volunteers. They may leave the church, but that is not the intent. We're not sending them out of the church. We are saying you're a volunteer, but we have certain commitments. You have certain standards. And we will live by that. We will abide by that. And even in the pastoral side, you know, like the example we had, we have a policy here that if you're a pastor, you should not engage in any financial dealing with anybody in the congregation. You know, so that's something I should keep telling our pastor team. Hey, you're a pastor. You want to do business or whatever you want. You do it outside, but don't enter into any kind of financial dealing with any person in the congregation. Starting from me, you know, even I will not engage, you know, especially the time when I was running a business. Within the congregation people, I will not, you know, we will work for people outside, but not because the problem is, as a, you know, if you engage with people in the congregation, something goes wrong, it will affect the relationship in the church. Problem is happening with the business, you know, some business dealing, something else, but something goes wrong there, it will affect you. So let's just keep away from this. Then the VIP did have an actual couple. They got involved financially with some people in the church. It was a big mess, big mess. And I had to, you know, had to make a change, but then when I made the change, they left the church. The Bastille couple was part of our Bastille team, but I had to do it because this was our clear guideline, you know, part of the Bastille team, you must not engage financially with people at the congregation because of this reason, you know, and it actually happened. They got in financial role, it became such a big mess. It was such a problem. And I had to sit and, you know, try to sort it out and all those things, but so we have to be careful, you know, and they said, for whether they're volunteers or we have to have guidelines and follow those kind of things. Okay, yeah. The Bastille leaders, you know, we've seen them for four or five years. That's not all of them. So if we have pastors and leaders who, you know, without informing us, they go and visit people's homes. So here we don't mind. Like we don't, actually, I don't even know who goes to visit's home. You know, I don't know. And we don't mind. Like, you know, our own pastors, our Bastille team, and we have a member care team, they will go and visit and meet people. And I don't care. I mean, I don't, like I want to say, I don't care. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not involved. And I don't ask. And we don't have a policy such that they have to inform me everything. They don't inform me about everything. They're free to go and visit whoever, whatever happens. Even among people in the congregation, our life group leaders, member care pastors, they all go and visit and they have good time. And we're very happy about that. Only thing, if there is any kind of anything goes wrong and news comes, then I will ask, you know, like if somebody goes and keeps asking money from other people or, you know, something goes wrong, usually the news will come. So then I would definitely ask. Otherwise, I don't even know what's happening in terms of who's visiting. Yeah. So there's complete freedom that way, but as long as everything is done properly, it's fine. Only when something goes wrong, then we have to step in. Yeah. All right. So let's move forward in our understanding here about volunteer management, just get into some of the practical things that we do here on page 31. So when we are getting new volunteers on board to join the teams, of course, there's an orientation process. We welcome new volunteers. You know, we introduce them to their teams and usually various volunteer teams have their own WhatsApp groups now. A lot of this coordination happens on WhatsApp right now. So they're introduced to their teams. They add it to those WhatsApp groups. Then we try to help volunteers to understand the values practices, standards, and goals. How we work, right? That we want to, you know, we are committed. We are pursuing excellence. We want to work with unity. So the culture, how we work, you know, we try to get that across. Have them understand. Most of them, if they've already been part of the church, they can observe this. They can see this. So, you know, a lot of it is already there. They can see it. Now, we as an organization, we want to be good in what we're doing. So we don't want people to be turned off. So especially most of the people who are coming, they are professionals. They expect us also to be professionals since we should work properly. Otherwise, they will be, the volunteers will be turned away if they see that we are not very bad in our work. We don't do our work as staff. We don't do our work properly. So we also have, we maintain those standards. We clarify our team policies and guidelines, what you should do, what you should not do, what is expected of them. We go through it. And then also training is provided. So, you know, for different teams, training is required. And so we have these trainings scheduled for them. Sometimes it's just a matter of come and watch us for the next three weeks, how things are happening. Sometimes it is more specialized training so that they can do well. We maintain the quality. Teams are motivated. And we want to keep excellence, right? Take 32, we need to be clear about the skills or abilities volunteers need for different teams. So if the volunteers have those skills, they can of course serve on the team. If they don't have the skills and we don't put them in that team, put them somewhere else where they can actually be useful. So we can't put every volunteer in just every team. They have to have the required skills and so on. And in some cases, the knowledge and skills can be imparted through training. So we give them the training they need or they can learn it like on the job by actually doing the work. So we give them opportunities for learning practically how to do things. So these are things we think about. Provide them training. And just this is some side note here. Training can happen through lecture training, hands-on training, there are group discussions or somebody coaches or mentors them in what they have to do. So different ways the training can happen. Team leaders also need some guidance on how to provide the training for their teams, how to care for their teams. So we also invest in the volunteer team leaders so that the team leaders can take good care of their team. So that's also something you look at. Is this team leader taking care of doing a good job and taking care of the team? Sometimes if the team leader is failing, we need to help the team leader and help him or her do better. Just as a side note, people learn through different ways visually or listening or by practically doing things. So we need to accommodate all of that in our training. So people like to see pictures, they like to listen, they like to talk, they like to physically do things, they like to interact, they like to think through and some people may just want to work along. So we just have to accommodate various people who like to learn in different ways. And how do we keep volunteers motivated? So that's very important. So we need to help them see that they're actually doing God's work. This is not, you're not doing this for APC, you're not doing this just for some organization or you're doing this for the Lord, you're doing it for his kingdom and for his ministry. So that's very important. Also, we have them see that this is part of our vision, the church's vision. So if they're connected to the vision of the church, they will be passionate about what they are doing. They're contributing towards the vision of the organization. Plus, they themselves are growing. So they are learning something. They are learning some new skills. They are developing their own potential. That also motivates them. It can give them opportunity to serve as leaders and decision makers. Again, they're developing those kinds of skills, leadership skills, decision making skills. And also, generally what we do is, if somebody is volunteering, we always give them the preference whenever we want to hire somebody. If somebody has been a volunteer, we prefer hiring them for full-time positions for the church as opposed to somebody from outside. So that also motivates them. Hey, if I volunteer, and in the future, if I want to work for a church, this is the path that I need to go. I need to be a volunteer and they'll help me be a full-time staff for the church. So these are some things that really motivate them to engage meaningfully. Okay. One important thing is we also are very careful so that volunteers are not overworked or burnt out. So we have to constantly watch, especially if somebody is serving every Sunday, then there's a high chance they can feel hired. I come to church and they make me work. So we have to be careful about that. We don't want to overwork them. So that's what we try to roster them. Like, okay, one Sunday a month or two Sundays a month, you do something. We try to roster them unless they themselves are willing to serve on more Sundays. Right. Now, a few other things. Volunteer management can be done through software. We are not using that yet, but in our church management software, there's the place to have volunteer teams and volunteer teams can work. But our plan is eventually to have that available and manage our volunteer teams through an online church app, through our church app, actually. So volunteer teams and staff relations. So I mentioned this in the very beginning. So this is very critical, how volunteers and staff are working together. So staff should be trained. We try to tell people, staff to be respectful to understand the volunteers. And like I said in the very beginning, we should treat each other with respect, trust, and celebrate each other. Each one is doing something really good, whether they are staff or whether you're a volunteer. You're doing something good. So we trust, respect, and celebrate each other. We should work together as a team. So we constantly keep saying, hey, we are a team. Work as a team, so on. And we need to communicate. So if volunteers feel that they're being left out of the communication, they'll feel like, hey, they're not treating us separately. So that's one reason why we have these common WhatsApp groups where we can communicate freely with volunteers. So whatever information they need to know, we let them know. And so they feel part of what's happening. If there is a breakdown, we need to detect it and address the breakdown relationship. So what are some of the symptoms that things are not going right? One is, if there's uncertainty about who's supposed to do what, this happens very often. The one is, I thought the church staff will do it. The church staff will say, I thought those people are going to do it. They're point fingers at each other. Saying, no, they were supposed to do it, though they were supposed to do it. This is what happens. So it's very important to very clearly say, hey, this will be done by these people. This will be done by them. Make it very clear. There's no confusion. Then sometimes if they're not being cooperated, they're going and working off on their own instead of working together. Then it's a sign that, hey, something has gone wrong. Or if they're not open to each other's ideas and suggestions, staff don't want to listen to ideas from volunteers. Volunteers don't want to listen to ideas from staff. Then that's a sign that things are not going right. Or if they're not sharing information with each other. If you're not communicating directly, they're going around each other. Or if they're using language like us and then it's us. It is them. They are doing like this. We are doing. Then it shows that something is wrong. Or they are, you know, protecting their own territory. This is my dear. Don't come near. You can do with your work. So these are all indicators that things are not going right. So we need to then address these things, basically sit down, talk to them, explain that, you know, we need to work together as a team. We need to be together and so on. So some questions, you know, that we can ask and keep looking at, you know, our volunteer team leaders doing what they're supposed to do. Are they following the guidelines? Are they, you know, being good testimony? Are they serving passionately? Are they feeling burnt out? Do they feel any tension between staff and volunteers? Are they feeling part of the community? Are they just feeling like they're, you know, making them work without appreciating them? So last few thoughts here. We do review the work of volunteers and if you're watching and yes, you know, we maintain the same standards for staff and volunteers. We expect you to behave the same thing. And if anything goes wrong, we tell you that things are not right. What we do is we try to appreciate our volunteers throughout the year. You know, one is every Sunday we say thank you to them. Also, once a year, we have a special volunteer appreciation day. That's close to our church anniversary day where we host all our volunteers for a good meal. And we give them a gift. So every year we think of some gift to give them. I mean, this is just a way of saying thank you to them. It's not like we can pay them for their work, but just to say thank you. So we have a good meal and we give them a gift. Just to say to all the volunteers, thank you. Some other thoughts, you know, people can even volunteer from different places because of online facilities that are available. People can volunteer across cultures. And when we are having people volunteer across cultures, we need to sensitize them to the local culture and customs. So that, you know, nothing of that is hurt in any way. So that's about what I wanted to cover on volunteers. Let's see if there are any questions, points for discussion here. Any thoughts, any questions from anybody? Volunteers, engaging volunteers in church. So when it comes to hiring people, like, you know, when you want to bring people for full-time. When a volunteer comes, when somebody who's been serving as a volunteer comes and says, I want to join the church full-time. For me, I feel very happy about that. Because we have seen that person. We know that person very well because, you know, if they've volunteered for two, three years, we can really see, you know, their passion, their commitment. We know the person very well. So it makes it very easy for us to hire them or to say, yeah, come join us full-time. And also for them, they have understood our culture. They understood what the church is about. So it's not a hasty decision. You know, it's not like they've thought about it. And so when a volunteer comes and says, I want to join the church full-time, it's always a very welcome decision. As long as we have the opportunity, we usually bring them on board. We take them, give them response. But it's much easier than when you're hiring from somebody from outside and you don't know them. You don't know how well they work or if they commit and so on. So that's also a big benefit of having volunteers. Because you already see them, then it's easy to take them on as staff. And almost all our church, not all, but many of our church staff have become staff like they used to serve. Then they joined us full-time. Okay. All right, let's wrap here today. I hope these thoughts on volunteer management have been useful. You can go to the notes and then try and apply them in your church, in your ministry. And let's close in prayer. May I request somebody online to please close in prayer? Let's pray. God, we want to thank you for this morning. Thank you for the lessons that we learned this morning, God. We pray to God that we would be able to apply this in our local congregation and also to help people who are in need of Jesus together, help us to serve you in more diligent ways to God in the days to come. We pray to God that let your kingdom be established and through each one of us God. We thank you for this time. In Jesus name we pray. Thank you. Okay. Thank you everyone. Have a good rest of the day. I'll see you again next week. God bless. Bye now.