 Okay. Once again, good morning and welcome to BC 309. Our course on Urban Church Planting, we're going to pray and then we will get started. Can somebody please lead us in prayer this morning? Lead the class in prayer. Who wants to pray? Avni, you want to pray? Good morning, Pastor. Father God, we are so very thankful to you for a new morning that has come into our lives, Father. And as we come into your presence, our Father, we ask you to bless us. Bless us with the wisdom that we need today, our Father, to release you, as you release your word upon us. As we learn about Urban Church Planting, our Father, as you're preparing us, equipping us to do your mighty work on this earth, our Father, and this time help us to be true salt and light on this earth. And Lord, bless everyone who is part of this group, everyone with your wisdom, with your favor. Bless Pastor and bless entire team. For all the other needs, Father, we look up to your throne of grace. Continue to lead us, guide us and strengthen us. For all glory, honor and praise belongs to you and you only. In Jesus' name we ask and pray. Amen. Amen. Hi, thank you. Welcome once again. Last week, last week, we... Sorry, my connection, yes. Okay, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Is my audio okay? Yes, Pastor, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. I wasn't sure because I lost connection in between. So last week, we covered the stages of growth and development. And then we talked a little bit about, you know, branching out, having more congregations and churches and so on. So I'll just quickly review that and then we will move forward today just looking at different models of people have pioneered and how they have grown. It's interesting to see different models of church growth, of church planting and church growth. It's not that we should copy these models, but it's good for us to learn from them and then see how God wants us to follow, how God wants us to go about doing what he's called us to do, right? So it seems like this connection is going up and down. Okay, anyway, seems like it's a weak connection at the moment. Okay, let's go forward. Okay, just sharing my notes. So growth and consolidation, we talked about each of these stages in which, you know, once you start pioneering a work, a local church, it's going to go through various stages of growth. And as a person who's pioneering or as your team is pioneering, you need to be aware, you need to be sensitive, and you need to change, you know, adapt your leadership and adapt what's happening as the church is developing through various stages. So you go to the pioneering stage, you go to the organizational stage, you go through a team ministry stage where you're developing the team, then you go through an equipping stage where you're equipping the believers, and then you go through, go into an apostolic stage where now you're thinking about expanding and multiplying what God has started. There is no set timeline according to which a particular church would journey through. We can't say, okay, two years here, two years here, two years, two years, two years, it's not like that. It's just as the Lord leads you, as the Lord enables you, you know, you grow the work that you've started. And then, you know, of course, the goal is to be self-sustaining so that this keeps on happening over and over again. Then we talked about multiplication and branching, so you could plant multiple congregations in the same city. Again, you envision people, you send them out, and you can have these churches function independently, or they can function as one church with many congregations, or you could have satellite campuses with live stream connections and all of that. Similarly, you can plant churches in other cities. A same idea that is you're equipping people, you're sending them out to plant churches, and these churches again could function independently, or they could be your satellite campuses connected on live stream and so on. And then you provide a system for caring for these pastors and leaders. So we covered till then. What I want to just share a little bit now is to look at different, you know, what's happening in church growth models. And of course, we may not go into details into every story. Let me see if there's a question on the chat. Srikumar, you have a question? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I just want to know, like nowadays, like as you said, the online churches are, you know, the live streaming thing is happening a lot. So is it okay that there are some ministries like they are more focusing on the online, you know, thing without a physical church if a pastor wants to start just only the online ministry to whether it will, you know, be successful because it's only online thing. And how you, you know, what's your opinion? I just want to know that. Thank you, sir. So my thoughts, my thoughts are that, yes, it is a means to serve people. You know, it definitely God can use it, even an online church setting where people connect online and, you know, you minister the word online, minister online. God can use it. And, you know, of course, when globally we went through the pandemic, many, many churches were doing that. And so the answer is yes, I do believe that's part of that ministry is has certain benefit. But there is also a lot that happens when we meet in person, which cannot happen online. So online has its limitations, of course, people, it has its advantages in the sense that people from all different places can connect and receive through the ministry. But it has its limitations in the sense that you don't actually get to see the people sit down and talk to them and, you know, the things that can happen when you meet people in person. So if God leads somebody to say, do and to start an online church, well, I would just say follow God, you know, do it. And because it will benefit in some way, some people, it will benefit. It's not like there is zero benefit. There's no benefit. No, it will definitely benefit the Word of God. As long as the Word of God is being preached and people are being ministered to by the Father, Holy Spirit, it will definitely benefit people. Can it replace the in person fellowship and so on? No, it cannot. But if God leads somebody to do only an online church, okay, I would say follow God. If that's what God leads, leading somebody, there's nothing wrong. Understand the limitations, but do the best you can and let it serve people. Yeah, that would be my response to it. So in that case, what we are learning right now, can it also be applicable in that? Can we do that also? Okay, let me say it like this. Everything that we are learning in this course is being given in the context of in person church. So with, you know, live streaming as, you know, a part of what happens. But the main focus is on serving in the community among the people, so on. So that's what we are covering or focusing on in this course. Some of the things would apply, can be used to an online church context. But I would say, you know, maybe if I want to put a number, I would say 80% of what we are talking about in this course is relevant for in person physical church service, serving people, serving them physically, serving them, you know, through the being there in the community. It's not relevant to online church. But some of some of the things would be useful because the online church, doing a church online, the dynamics are very different. It can be done, you know, but it's different. You're going across regions and territories, you're going across cultures, people from different parts of the world can connect and receive. And so the things we have to think through about and how to serve that kind of a community is different. And, you know, when you talk about evangelism, a lot of things we spoke about will not apply to an online church setting. So I would say, you know, maybe 80% of what we're talking about in this course is relevant to a local church physical ministry. Maybe 20% can be used for an online church setting. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Interesting question and I never thought of it actually about thinking in terms of an online church, so it was an interesting question. Thank you. All right. Let's go back to the notes. Yeah. So we'll talk about some of these churches. And I'll just mention a few things. And, you know, I'm not saying all of them, you know, this just to understand how people started the work and how it grew. Right. So we get some idea, but it's very inspiring. When you when you when you study these, these different, and these are just a few stories. So all of us are probably familiar with the Yodo full gospel church, Seoul, Korea. So back in 1958. Yeah, around that time, 1960, Yongee Cho, you know, he at that time he was dying of tuberculosis God healed him as a 17 year old. And this was just another time of the Korean War and between North and South Korea and so on a lot of things going on. But anyway, in the midst of poverty in the midst of all of those things happening, God raised up Yongee Cho started the church and God, you know, taught him how to grow the church and he he shares this. Yongee Cho has gone home to be with the Lord is passed away. But, you know, if you if you listen to some of his sermons online or read his books, he shares, you know, that the principles that God taught him on how to grow the church. But starting with five people, you know, and of course his he went to Bible college before that and then he came out started starting with five people along with his mother in law. He was supporting him and they started the church. The church grew hundreds, thousands, many thousands, right now eventually 750 people, but that's 750,000 people, maybe more than one million members actually because they branched out so many ways. But anyway, it's an interesting study. First of all, I would like to highlight the principles of church growth, which Yongee Cho shares, you know, how about how we learned the importance of having a big vision, having a strong desire of prayer, being a very important part of how he prayed and how he mobilized prayer. And so a lot of the work that took place there was undergirded by prayer was, you know, prayer was such a big part of what took place. Another important thing that we can learn from the work that took place there is the, you know, what is commonly referred to as a cell church or cell groups. So this was a big thing. And then of course it actually spread like a movement all over the world, but it started there in the sense that he organized it so well, you know, that the cell group leaders, cell groups and then how they multiplied. That was like a major part of the growth of that church. And then later on, when he moved to Yorido Island, started to work there and then, you know, built that facility to seat many thousand people. He was among the pine, I would say the early people to start up, you know, like satellite churches because they couldn't fit everybody in one facility. So they connected many facilities through satellite television or satellite television, that's how they connected. So he kind of showed the way that, you know, you can do this. If you have many, many people, they don't all have to be sitting in the same auditorium. You can connect across auditoriums through satellite. And so, you know, imagine 750,000 people being ministered to, I think, in seven services every weekend, but they're all connected through many through satellite. So they're not seeing the preacher physically. They're sitting in different facilities and everything is, you know, and this is, we're talking about 80s, 90s and of course continued on through the 2000s. So again, that was, you know, in a way showing, pioneering or showing the way how things could be done. Another big part of Yorido Full Gospel Church was the, so we said about prayer. We said about cell group system. We said about this multi-site facility being connected. They pioneered that. Then I think a big thing that came out of Yorido Full Gospel Church was emissions. So they did so much. And they still, of course, have a lot of emissions going on. So, so many churches planted globally, missionary sent churches planted all over the world. So, you know, so just think about one man dying from tuberculosis, got heals and starts up with five people and such a big work being birthed. There are so many important things that we can learn of how God raised up, you know, that pioneering work. And they actually led the way for the whole body of Christ in many ways. Prayer, showing us the importance of prayer, having thousands of people praying, the cell group system, the multi-site facility, the missions work. And also, I think an important interesting thing is the effect or let's say the work they did locally in their own city. For example, you know, starting universities, I think multiple universities having a newspaper coming from a Christian organization. So can you imagine a newspaper in the city that's written or produced from by a church ministry. That means they're influencing society, influencing different spheres in the society. They said they were training institute to technical training institute to train people. So many, many things came out, which can is a great model for us to look at. So while this was happening in Korea, over in South America, in Colombia. This is Pastor Cesar Castellanos. Of course, this came later on, but he had started his work. And, you know, he had a church of about 200 people and he was very discouraged. He quit the ministry, he gave up, he left, he went back to doing some, some job was working. But it was that time that God spoke to him and he said, see, your problem is your vision is very small. You know, you care, refresh your vision and go and start again. So he went back and he started again. And this time he took what he had, he learned from Yorufal Gospel Church, from Yongi Cho. And he adapted that to the work there in Colombia. So primarily the cell church model. So when Cesar Castellanos followed the same model, he called it G12. So that all again became very well known in those days. G12 means groups of 12. So he basically took what was done in Seoul, Korea, the cell church, and he adapted it to his situation, his country, his culture. And then he just, you know, but then it showed that that same concept could be used to build a church. And I think the International Charismatic Mission grew up to about 350,000 people. So again, it's a very big sized church, very, very large work that was birthed there. And again, a very interesting is, here was a man who quit the ministry. He gave up, but then God sent him back and started afresh and God did such a big, powerful work through him. Yes, there bar this in India against a different story. And this was actually a professor in an agricultural university. He was impacted through the ministry from Uppsala Sweden. That was Wood of Life Church, which at that time was being led by Ulf Ekman. Ulf Ekman was impacted through the Rima Bible Training Center in the U.S. and also through, I'm not kidding, through Lester Samro in the U.S. So he was impacted powerfully. He went back to Uppsala Sweden, birthed a powerful ministry called Wood of Life Church. And then Ulf Ekman was visiting Delhi in India. This professor, this, I'm not getting his name now. Sorry, I'm not getting his name. But anyway, he was a professor in Agricultural College. He had gone to attend the conference and he was powerfully affected at the conference. And then he went back to his agricultural, you know, his college campus. Something just started happening. They started a work which was taking place, you know, in a small way in their own home. And the numbers of people started increasing. And they moved to, you know, eventually moved to an open field. And so it was more like a big field of people coming in. And again, there's all people working in the village parts, coming in. And it was more like every Sunday about 50,000 people coming to receive the preaching of the gospel and the ministry of the Spirit. So the model or the work that took place was very different, meaning it was more of a healing, deliverance, gospel preaching, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Among people who, let's say, were, you know, the farmers, those kind of people, those kinds of people. So it was, it was a move of God, but it took place in a very different way. Calvary Temple, I was mentioning this and then we'll have to go back in time. But Calvary Temple, Hyderabad, India, past Satish Kumar. Yeah, so his minister, I mean, his minister, of course, is primarily in regional language, Telugu, a local language. But what was notable among in this, in Calvary Temple is the way they use media. So literally every morning, every evening, past Satish Kumar's messages in the local language, in Telugu language, is basically this blankets all TV stations, all TV, local TV channels, discovering. So I don't know, it's a massive number of TV programs happening morning and evening, just blanketing every, almost every channel possible. So with that and that impact and the good preaching and teaching of the word, Calvary Temple grew to, I think now it's over 200,000 plus people. I don't know what the exact number is, but it grew. The key here was the use of media and the local language and the teaching of God's word, we could say here. Now, Crystal Cathedral, very interesting because this goes back in time. That means Robert Schuller's ministry took place. We are talking now about 1950s and Robert Schuller was a pioneer in many ways. He did a lot of things very differently if you look at the history of that ministry. Because, for example, he was the first to pioneer drive-in church. So we're talking about 1950s. He moved to California into a suburb where people were beginning to, you know, up and coming professionally and so on. And he started a church in a kind of a, I think it was a theater, movie theater kind of place. But he also said, if you don't want to physically come and sit in the church, you can just drive your car, stay in the parking lot, listen to the message and go. Now, you know, you think about this was back in the 1950s, 60s, those years. And you're thinking, you're telling people you can drive, do a drive-in church. So it's just thinking out of the box. So he kind of did that. But that attracted a lot of people that they would just drive the car, park in the parking lot. They don't have to get off. They can just listen to a message and leave. But then from that, they would eventually, you know, get into the church, become part of the church. Some of the things, unique things that Robert Schuller did was, he was the first one, I think, in those years to actually be on television. At the time, even when Billy Graham was, you know, as an evangelist was coming for very powerfully having these big stadium meetings. And here was Robert Schuller having one hour, a TV program, one hour, where the entire service that was taking place at Crystal Cathedral would be telecast on television. So he was actually pioneering that, you know, from that time, 60s, 70s, 80s on. So which was very interesting because, you know, you're doing something very new. You're doing something that not hardly anybody else is doing in the world. And it is, but it is effective. And, you know, in those days, at least, it was new, you know, having a church service on TV, full one hour TV is called the hour of power. And it went not just in America, but outside, you know, many other parts of the world. So we're also able to watch it. So pioneering, and then of course he built, he built this big, massive building called the Crystal Cathedral became a world famous and all of that. But another important thing about Robert Schuller's ministry was the message. And again, this is a little controversial. It's always, it's all correct. But I'm just telling you how, when he was pioneering the work, when he was starting his work, how he was being sensitive to the people he was serving. You know, to think that, hey, I can tell these people just come and do a drive-in service. Okay, it's different, but at least they're coming somewhere close to church. And from there, they will come in to think about putting the church service on TV. It was very different in those days. You know, for people to watch, you know, we would think, hey, church, you have to come and sit in here. But he's saying, look, I will bring the service to your home. So it was very different. And the third thing which I was going to share is about the message. And this is a little controversial because what Robert Schuller did was to preach a positive message. So today, you know, we talk about Joel Osteen. Many people talk about Joel Osteen. Hey, he only preaches motivational positive messages, but actually he didn't start with Joel Osteen. He started back in the 60s with Robert Schuller, you know, that he, at least in those days, said, I want to present a positive message about the Word of God, from the Word of God. Now, today, of course, you know, would I agree with it? I wouldn't agree with it 100% because I believe we have to bring the whole Council of God. We have to preach the whole Bible. But anyway, I'm just telling you what he did. He emphasized. He emphasized just preaching positively. Like, you know, you can do it. God is with you. Think positive, speak positive. You know, those kinds of messages were constantly what he would preach, which attracted the people. So, Crystal Cathedral became very well known because so many people were coming in California, you know, because of these very innovative, very different things Robert Schuller was doing. Now, I'm not saying it was without controversy. I'm just saying that this is what he did and he had an impact on the culture on it. And not only did he impact that, but from there, you know, Willow Creek, Bill Hybles, they learned from Robert Schuller. They learned from what he did. And that's how they developed the Seeker-sensitive model and so on. So there's a lot of connection happening between generations. Robert Schuller, previous generation, maybe two generations back, then you have subsequently the Willow Creek Community Church. You're just following or learned from what he did and they adapted that. So, you know, that's still number five. Let me pause here. Are you all with me or are you all going to sleep? You okay? Everyone's following me? Yes, but it's that. Okay. Just giving you a little, you know, how different people, pioneered churches and so on. I'm not saying we should all imitate them. I'm just saying that, you know, when they pioneered, they thought differently. They, you know, they affected culture in a different way. And some things went good, some things didn't, but, you know, we can learn. We can learn. So let's go back. So then, yeah, so Crystal Cathedral. Now Calvary Chapel, again, is very interesting story because this happened about the same time. This happened in the 1970s on the West Coast. So very interesting. Robert Schuller and Chuck Smith were both ministering in the same state in California. But Robert Schuller was targeting professionals, these people who are in, you know, buying their, they are living in the suburbs. They are buying big houses, et cetera, and doing well. But Chuck Smith, he, so what happened in the 1970s was in the U.S. And then it spread around the world in different parts of the world was there was a hippie movement. The hippie movement was basically the subculture where these people said, you know, they just dropped out of life. They got into drugs. They just didn't care about anything. And so a lot of them, you know, basically they were living very loose lives as hippies not wanting to own anything. And that movement started spreading, but it started out there on the West Coast in California. And none of these people would go to church because they didn't fit in church. They were into drugs. They smelled bad. They had long hair and they were like misfits in society. But, and they had their own kind of music. Yeah. But somehow Chuck Smith opened his, it started off, of course, by him opening his house and opening his house to these people, these hippies. And he adapted the music to them. Like, you know, we said, okay, you guys like to play the guitar. You like to play drums. Now in those days and talk about the 1970s, church was still very traditional. There wasn't, you know, people, people were still playing the organ singing the hymns. They were not no drums, no lead guitar, no electric guitar, none of that in the worship of the church. But Chuck Smith said, what's keeping us from using those instruments, having worship that will, that these hippies will feel comfortable with. Right. So these people started coming to his house and then eventually they moved to another place. They started a church with all these hippie people and hippies and they like to use drums. They like to use electric guitars. They like to use having that kind of music. And that's how, you know, what today we call contemporary Christian music. It actually started there in reaching these people, you know. And so they were writing their own songs, you know, one of the hit songs in those days from the hippie, from the hippie modus. The title of the song was, Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? And they were singing it and they had a lot of other songs like that. But anyway, so eventually what happened was Calvary Chapel was formed. So out of this work that Chuck Smith was doing with the hippies, Calvary Chapel was formed and lots of hippies started getting saved. So this was called, became known as the Jesus movement. Just Jesus movement because these hippies were into drugs. They dropped out of life, living, you know, all kinds of things. They started getting saved and it spread. And so Calvary Chapel started opening up all across the U.S. So many, many churches started opening up and they were singing this kind of music. So drums, electric guitar, keyboard became part of the worship in the church in Calvary Chapel. They started singing different songs, not the hymns that the regular churches were singing and it spread all over the U.S. And so Calvary Chapel became like a movement with many, many churches serving mainly these people. But from Calvary Chapel came what, out of that came, and I haven't listed it here, came the Vineyard Church movement, John Wimber and others, you know, who headed up the Vineyard Church. But they came out of this, you know, they were all, you know, came out of this thing. And many, many people know Vineyard Church and what happened. They also spread many, many Vineyard churches all over the world. They also began to write music with, you know, contemporary music and after that came Hillsong. So they all trace, you know, the connection you can trace back to this one. What happened here with Calvary Chapel and how music, different kind of music was introduced in the church. The key things that we can take away from here is how he adapted. Basically he created a church for the people he was reaching. They could not fit into the regular church. So he said, okay, we will make church something that you would like to come to, which is we will have your music. You don't have to wear shirt and tie and suit. You just come with your tone, jeans and whatever, just come the way you are with your overgrown hair and whatever, you know, just, he just welcomed them. So this was a big learning, you know, for the church as a whole, that, you know, we need to, if we want to reach a community of people, we can't be so strict on certain things, which are, you know, like the kind of music. This was, this changed, you know, today we are singing contemporary music thanks to what happened here in the 1970s. But they faced a lot of opposition from traditional church. They were criticized for using those equipments, you know, drums and electric guitar and all of those. They faced a lot of difficulty for doing that. But really, all he was doing was he was trying to welcome these people in to the kingdom of God, you know. And God was changing their lives. God was bringing them out of drugs, bringing them out of all of, you know, the things they got, they got into. And so it's just a big learning for us. You know, it's just a change a little bit. We see other church models. We see Billow Creek, Bill Hybles. So Bill Hybles somewhere in the 80s, 1980s, he actually learned from Robert Schiller. You know, so Robert Schiller was, although he doesn't, I mean, when Bill Hybles was leader now, he's no longer the leader, but the influence was there that he saw what Robert Schiller was doing. And so Bill Hybles said, okay, you know, I need to make church that is relevant to more sensitive to or more welcoming to people who are just seeking. You know, so they're not people who are ready for a Bible study, but they just want to explore Christ. There's something similar to the way Robert Schiller was ministering. And so Bill Hybles came up with the Seeker Sense to model. The Sunday services were very light, no strong Bible teaching, more on just talking about general things of life and how, you know, from the scriptures connecting it, but making everything very sense accommodating to people. And again, he saw great success in the sense that, you know, the numbers grew. There were more than, I don't know, I don't know what the number was. Numbers grew like 20,000, 30,000 people, big camp is not so on. And then a lot of other churches started doing that same thing. They became, so that became known as the Seeker Sense to model. Many other churches started copying that model. And yeah, it did have a certain amount of success. But it had its drawbacks. The drawbacks was that people were not being discipled. They were not being established in the Word of God. So that had, they came to know about that, you know, 30 years later. So early 2000, 30 years later when they look back and they evaluated the lives of the people who had been part of the church for that period of time, they realized that the Seeker Sense to model didn't necessarily, I mean, it drew people to Christ, but it really didn't disciple them in Christ. And so they had to make changes which they did and to emphasize more on discipling people and so on. And around the same time, that is in the 80s, 90s, we see the Seeker Sense to model also spread globally. A lot of churches in the Western world began to imitate that model. But purposed to be in church, Rick Warren became well known, Saddleback Church. So he gave a little bit more structure to the discipleship process. So he said, OK, if I take people through this model, the purpose is to disciple them, you know, to move them from the crowd to the community, to the church, to being Christ disciple, to being a leader. I take them through this process or this model, a clearly defined model. I can have a church that disciples people. That was an interesting thought. And so this became again a very, so he pioneered the church. He demonstrated the working of this model. And of course, it became well known all over the world. And so many churches around the world follow this purpose driven church model. It works and it has some success. Then all of us familiar with Hillsong, Australia. You know, some bad things have happened along the way with Villa Creek. And so I'm not I'm not focusing on the negative sides, you know, but anyway. So Hillsong, Australia, again, over here, the main thing was worship. You know, many of us are familiar. It was back in the 80s when Dalin Jack and others from Hillsong church started releasing music that began to impact the church globally. Now, remember by this time content, this music, the style of worship began to be called contemporary Christian worship, but the history goes back to Calvary Chapel to vineyard church and vineyard music. Slowly you had integrity and integrity, Jose and others. They started playing, you know, using more instruments in worship and from there Hillsong, Australia picked up and the music they released was wonderful, powerful. It saw the growth of their church and blessed the body of Christ globally. But for worship music to come out of a local church and bless the body of Christ, I think that's what Hillsong will be known for. Of course, there are other things happening. They have their university or they have their conferences and all that. But the major major work Hillsong church did was to release worship music that blessed the body of Christ. By this time, very quickly I just mentioned these two and we'll close. By this time, people started exploding the use of satellite church and live stream and so on. And so, Marcel at one point, Marcel church is no longer there today, at one point Marcel church was a very powerful church and not a path but a very fast growing church in the US and they leveraged satellite campuses. So very quickly from their main campus, they would live stream and they opened many, many campuses in different places. So it grew very fast from to about 14, 15,000 or something like that using the Internet. So Marcel pioneered the use of the Internet in terms of the sermon being available online and in terms of setting up satellite churches. So for example, in those days, I'm talking about the 1990s, Mark Tyskel, his sermons were like among the top sermons downloaded on the Internet. Today, of course, things are different, but they pioneered. So he would preach, the sermons would go online, hundreds of thousands of people would download it and listen to it and then satellite churches were established. So we saw, okay, that the Internet could be used to grow the impact of a local church. And then Elevation Church, again, they really pioneered or not pioneered, but they built upon what was done before them in live stream and satellite campuses and also in worship music. So today, Elevation Church is known for all of these things and they have satellite campuses, more than 15 campuses, I think, that are live streamed. Their worship music is impacting globally. But remember, all of these churches are building upon what others have done and it's just growing so on. So that's a lot of focus on North America, but similarly we're seeing explosive church growth in Africa and what's happening there. Maybe we'll pick this up tomorrow and go from here. All right, let's pause here. Let me give a few minutes for some questions before we close. Everybody here, any questions? All right, let's close in prayer. I hope all of you are with me. You can follow me, just giving you a little overview of what's happening. What happened to recent church growth? Could somebody just close in prayer? Thank you. Anybody wants to pray? Let's close. Father, we thank you for the class for today. But thank you for realising the weight of responsibility on our shoulder because the history shows that you have a trend in which you are making a progress and ultimately that you come from a church that is spotless with our wrinkles and then have such things. So therefore Lord, we ask for wisdom and understanding where we fit in the history of the times so that the responsibilities that you are giving to us henceforth will be suitable for it, well prepared and will finish strong in the mighty name of Jesus. As Paul said, a crown is waiting for us. That will be worthy of those crowns at the end of the day. And we will hear that good and faithful servants as our accolades of righteousness. Thank you Lord for everyone here. We commit them to their days. It will flourish and to be abundant in the name of Jesus. We thank you for Pastor Ashes. We thank you for the great things you have led inside and great things he's doing around the world. He blesses him and his family that they will prosper and be in good health in the name of the Lord Jesus. Thank you Lord, in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone. Let's see what's tomorrow. God bless. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Bye now. Thank you. Thank you. See you tomorrow. Thank you Pastor. Thank you.