 Welcome to the class today. I've just started the recording. So the recording of this lecture is on. Welcome to the class. And yeah, let's just pray together. And we will get started. Could somebody please pray and we will start. Once again. Hello, we thank you a lot for this wonderful day. Let's just thank you that you have been so wonderful to us. So as we learn today, Lord, from our pastor, Lord Jesus, I pray that his spirit to anointing and then he speaks every word. Let that word bring your revelation to us, Lord Jesus, so that we can understand how the church can be organized and organized in Lord Jesus. We thank you Lord Jesus that you are all knowing about and you can give your knowledge to us. So thank you for that, for this day and for the classes they have been in. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray, amen. Amen, amen. Good morning. Welcome everyone once again to the class. I am just going to quickly review some of the things we did in our last class and then go on to our next chapter. Last week we talked about church ministry and organization structure. So I just want to share that same document. Just to quickly review and then we will go forward on what we have for today. Now the PDFs have all been released in the classwork section of the Google Classroom. So you could just download that and follow that. So I'm just quickly reviewing what we did last week. So we talked about organization structure. We went through some of the major types of organization structures, the functional, the divisional, the flat, the matrix. We talked about a biblical, we see this even in the Bible. We just gave one example of how David organized everything around the tapernacle that went on for over 30 years. For 30 years they had a very 24-7 worship happening in David's tapernacle and so there was very organized and there was structure, there was design. You can look at it in depth. We talked about why we must have a well-designed organization. It's going to really help people work efficiently, be productive, and people are going to enjoy working in an organization that's designed well. So we went through some things that would guide us in designing the structure for our organization. We talked about some tests that we could have to see if we're doing this right. We are designing the organization structure right. So we went through some of those tests. We talked about cutting off unnecessary wastage when you're designing the details. We talked more about processes. So if there are intermediary steps that are really not adding value, we gave a simple example of person A sending an email to B and B just forwards it to C and C just forwards it to D, then B and C are not adding any value. They're just clicking the forward button. So we could just go from A to D directly and just save time and make things more efficient. Just one example. We looked at the organization of APC. I just gave you a little idea of how we evolved over the years. So this is our current structure. We have arrived at, and of course, as we grow, we will kind of expand the structure. I've been thinking now about a global structure. So when we want to set up things globally, all that we've been doing right now is locally, meaning within India, but when we want to do things globally, establish things outside India, what would a global structure look like? That's kind of thinking that's going on right now. But this is what we have for what we're doing right now. This is how we are structured. And as we go into the details of each department, that will have further structure. And remember, like we said, the structure that you come up with should serve the mission of your organization. And the reason publications are so important for us, and we have all of these things, because that's a major part of what we're doing, very important part. And so we need to grow in all these areas. And media also is very important for us. And so we have a structure like that, and information technology is structured this way. So this has evolved over time, and it will continue to evolve. We will fine tune it or expand it or do things as needed, and we could restructure as needed. Lastly, I shared a little bit about, you know, for most churches, Christian ministries, volunteers are an important part of the organization, which may not be true in the case of a business entity. But in our setup at a church or a Christian ministry, we do have a lot of volunteers coming in helping. And so how do we, you know, and volunteers can play a take part in multiple areas, you know, and so how do we, what kind of a model will work well. And so we went through the hub and spoke model and showed that in this is this is a really good model for engaging volunteers while you're also having specialized teams like you have your pastors, your IT team, you have your ministry areas, you know, you can engage people in different areas. So we went through all of that. Before we should today, I want to step into talking about administrative policies, guidelines and standards. Just bring in some thoughts on that. Before we go into that, any questions from last week, any questions on, you know, organizational structure, organizational design. Any, you know, any thoughts, any one of you have had. If you want to ask, you can do it before we jump forward. Okay. So let's move forward in what we want to talk about. Another important, very important part of in Christian ministry is having administrative policies, guidelines and standards. You know, and I just said some practical things, you know, once I remember when we were somewhere up in the North, ministering and then one pastor came to me, he said, Pastor, you know, and usually during break times and all when they're having conferences, we have the opportunity to interact informally with other leaders and pastors. And so one pastor came to pass, I have a question. And he said, you know, he said, I'm facing a real problem in my church right now. That's okay, or what's happening. He said, you know, I hired a lady who's a member of the congregation to be to work as a in the admin administrative as an administrative assistant to help in with the administration. But this lady. Someday she will come someday she will not show up for work. Sometimes she'll come at 10 o'clock sometimes she'll come at 11 o'clock. And so, you know, things are so loose here. How should I handle it. So, then I just asked some questions. I said, you know, did you give her a offer letter that stated, you know, and do you have a staff guideline that states, you know, this is a role and this is what is expected. You know, she's got to be, you know, what are our work hours. You know, all of those things did you do that. No, no, no, nothing, nothing, I just, you know, I just told her to join and help me. I mean, work as in the administration. So, sadly, many churches and Christian ministries operate in this manner, meaning it's a very ad hoc manner, you know, some, the pastor, the leader was just, oh yeah, you come and work for me. And, you know, and this, they just take people on. There is nothing written. There's no nothing documented. They don't have any policies or guidelines or standards for various roles and functions and especially talking about churches, you know, and everything seems so ill defined. So then people, both the leader, as well as the person who's been engaged to work in the organization, things are not very clear, you know. So that's when you have such kind of things happening when you know people take their own liberty on when to come to work and which day and whatever. So, this is where I mean this is a very small example to show us, you know, this, we need to have certain policies in the organization, certain guidelines, certain standards, and we will go through some thing practical scenarios here. Yeah, so when you talk about policies, operational guidelines, practice standards, what are we referring to, right, we're referring to well documented rules, right. That means these are actually written down. They're not in somebody's head, but these have been written down somewhere, right. That will guide the procedures and the practices of what happens within the organization. So it's written down. It's almost like a rulebook, but we don't call it a rulebook. You know, we call it an organizational policy document or a guideline or, you know, things like that. And it, but it's very important because it tells people, you know, this is what you should do. This how we should do it. Right. And what is the advantage of having something like that. Generally, it's going to establish and we will repeat this. You know, it's going to establish certain things that's going to be efficiency. There's going to be consistency. There's going to be responsibility because it's all been written down and there will also be accountability. That means we can hold people accountable for what happens. So why is it important to have these, what we're referring to as policies, guidelines and standards documented, right. It will additional things and it will provide guidance to people so people have to make various decisions. For example, you know, as a church, as we started, you know, growing, we, we started getting requests from other ministries. So, you know, can you please make this announcement in your during your announcement time and we still keep getting those things. So in the early days, we thought, okay, you know, let's be nice. We'll give them will make an announcement of that conference happening in the city or something else that's happening, you know, and sometimes people say we want to come and make an announcement during your announcements time. In the early days, okay, you know, we didn't, you know, some of these things you learn by experience, you make mistakes and you learn. So this is just giving one example where we had requests from other ministries who would be having various things going on. They want to make an announcement in our church on Sunday morning during the service time during the announcement time. So initially we accommodated those requests. And then I remember one time, you know, this was a well known Christian ministry, they wanted to make a presentation. Okay, I'll give you, you know, five minutes or whatever that was. And this person went on for 15 minutes. You know, I'm making an announcement. Now, I found it a little awkward to stand up there and say, please don't, you know, if it was some other setting, I would have done it. I have done it, but I interrupted the announcement. I said, sir, I gave you five minutes, you're going on 15 minutes. But here on Sunday, I couldn't do that because, you know, this is a well respected ministry, a well respected person standing and talking. And we're in front of all the congregation. I didn't want to cause any ill feeling anything like this. I just had to sit there quiet and tolerated. But in my mind, I was feeling so wronged because out of trust, we had given five minutes. This person is speaking for 15 minutes, you know, which is very unfair because people didn't come to church on Sunday to listen to some announcements. They came to worship God, to pray and, you know, to receive the word of God. So that's when I said, okay, enough is enough, you know, there's no need to be nice in this matter. We're going to put a policy in place and this is going to be a policy. So I typed it out, looked at all the various nuances of that, you know, and I shared it with the person. I've been person in those days at the time saying this is our policy for requests that come from other organizations requesting to make announcements at ABC. The answer is no. Doesn't matter which organization, which church, which ministry, we will not give time during our service for any announcement other than from ABC. So our announcements are going to be very short. Are we going to take only five minutes to do our announcements if there's any special announcement? Okay, we may give two or three minutes extra, but it will be only ABC announcements. That's all. Any other organization, anybody wants, they can come, they can set up things on their own outside and they can do their own, you know, they can have a book table or they can do a display, they can put a banner, but they can come do it outside. That's going to be our policy from now on, you know. So we learned through things, but we documented it, we gave it. So from then on when request started coming in, this was a standard answer. Any request will make the announcement. The answer is no. Because we say yes to one, we have to say yes to everybody else. So we are saying no to all other organizations equally, but we're giving you the opportunity. You can come in and set up your own book table or set up your own desk or whatever you want, your information desk so that when people go out after service when they are dismissed, they can learn about your work, your ministry. And so on, but no distributing handles inside the service, no making announcement inside the service. So that was a policy we put in place. And this happened many years ago and we've been following that strictly, you know, so our admin person knows this is our policy. Right, and they will handle it at that level when somebody comes and asks, they will take care of it. They will say this is our policy. If you want to do it to, you know, set up an info desk outside, you can do it. And these are our reasons, you know, we are doing this fairly. So just one example of policy, you know, that when you face a situation as an organization or church, you face a situation, then you say, Hey, I need to standardize. I need to define it clearly state what our position is concerning this matter. I need to write it down. I need to share it with all the concerned people so that they know what to do when they are faced with a situation like that. So it provides guidance, you know, for the organization, you know, I mean, for the people who need to know it obviously, not everybody needs to know everything, but for the people are handling that matter. They need to know this is our organization policy on that matter. Right. It also clarifies the organization's position on specific issues. I mean, what does what does your organization stand for on certain matters? And what will their position be? You know, again, here's another situation, you know, in the early days, and I'm just sharing all these practical things so you'll know, you know, so you'll understand like, okay, you have to make certain policy decisions. In the early days, I think the first, I would say, five years, six years, you know, we had a lot of international people, that means people who came from abroad, who came to Bangalore, and they, you know, they came as missionaries or whatever, you know, and they came with wanting to do something in Bangalore City. And obviously on Sunday, they would go to a church. So we had in certain cases, some of them come to ABC. And then they wanted to be involved in the church. So, you know, we say people from missionaries from America, mostly those missionaries from the United States, they want to come, they want to be involved in church. And so, yeah, initially, you know, again, we didn't have a policy on this matter in those days, we learned through mistakes, but this was the early days. And so, yeah, okay, yeah, you know, we treat everyone equally and this is for everybody. So we let them be involved in church. But then we noticed several things. Here are some things that we noticed, we observed. One is, suppose, you know, a ministry started, and they were in charge of the ministry. And what we noticed was after two years they leave. So they come to India, maybe they're here on, you know, short term visas or whatever. They come, they work. After two years, they go back to their country. And suddenly, there is no leader for that area of ministry. And whatever they were driving, it just collapses. So that is one scenario we noticed. Another scenario was, we also noticed that some of them came and they started promoting, you know, and I'm just using this term, their brand or their version of Christianity. So they would be promoting, you know, their organizations or not. They're part of APC. We've given them permission to, you know, work, serve a long set of people. But then, through that, they're actually promoting their brand of Christianity. They come from a certain church or thing, and they're trying to do that. So we noticed that as well. And sad to say, you also noticed, and this is like a big ministry from the US that came. And they said, you know, we are on a peace plan, global peace plan, whatever it was called. And it's very well-known ministry, but I was very disappointed when I saw this. They came. They said, we want to work with your leaders and can you give us their names and contact details and all of that. And so we actually hosted a meeting. We invited people to come. They came. They collected all the details. And the next thing we know, they're inviting leaders here to join a church that they are starting in the city, which is a branch of their big church in America. So this also we saw, you know, so I was, I was, you know, I was watching, you know, I was observing all this because we just started here. You know, we're in early years and they're going through all these things. And then there was another thought, another scenario where another large church in the US, they wanted to, you know, fund or they want to give money to a church, a certain ministry and, but then it meant that, you know, they would control or they would control that area. So then what, what, you know, I was very clear in those days, you know, we are, we are an indigenous organization. We are not depending on foreign funds and we want to remain that way. And, you know, and, you know, we want this to be people from here doing the ministry. So, so, you know, all these scenarios were happening, playing out before me. And then we came, then I said, look, you know, we need to define, we need to clearly state how are we going to work when people overseas, you know, western missionaries or people, when ministries come, how are we going to work with them, we need something clear here, because I'm seeing all these things happen and usually it ends up in problems that we need to go and put the fires out and all that. So that's when, you know, of course we discuss with pastors, we thought through on these scenarios and then we said, okay, this is going to be a policy, you know, one is, and we wrote this down. One, no leadership position will be occupied by any, you know, western missionary, all leaders, team leaders, leaders of areas of ministry, ministry leaders will be people, local people from the congregation. That's how we will drive. If people want to come, western missionaries come, they should serve under our leaders. Because if they leave and which usually happens in two years or three years, they'll go back to their country. We want the ministry to continue. So therefore the leadership will always be somebody from here. That was a policy decision we made, right? You know, because after learning, after going through all this, you know, we had to be said, okay, these are the right decisions to make. Then we also said, you know, we are going to be very careful that when they come and work with us, they will follow what we say. They cannot come in here and try to promote their brand of Christianity. You don't want that. We are very clear. We have a culture. There is a vision and a mission God has given to us. We don't want to compromise on that. And then thirdly, we're going to be very careful. We are not, you know, somebody wants to come, you know, a church from the US wants to start a branch in India or whatever. You know, hey, you do it, but we are not interested in that kind of ministry. You know, we will not engage. They are the free to do it on their own. So again, a third policy, all concerning the same matter. So that was clarified within our leadership. So we people knew that's where we stand. But, you know, then what we did say, I guess it's been the last five, some years or so, the incoming of Western missionaries on just declined. We don't have too many people now coming in so that is really no longer, or at least for now, doesn't seem to be a matter of concern. But I shared all this to say with you that sometimes these policies happen in response to things that you see happening with the organization and so on. But you need to clarify where you stand. And okay, then everybody understands. Okay, so this is how we're going to work in this situation. It then becomes basis for decision making that this is how, you know, everybody's going to make decisions. It also provides objectivity, consistency, understanding and fairness in this image. So people know, look, we are not making these decisions out of partiality or favoring somebody. No, it is a level playing field. We are being fair to everybody. You know, we have a policy and we're making a decision based on that policy. So it's equal to everybody. Nobody's exempt, you know, so there's fairness is understanding. And there's, you know, we can hold people accountable to those things. Right. So on having said all that, I want to just, you know, emphasize certain things. One is, you know, there may be a lot of discussion happening to understand a scenario or a situation, but eventually everything has to be written down. So it has to be written down. And you so I will share with you documents that we have which you could use in your church or ministry. You can modify it and use it. So it has to be written down. And things have to be simple and clear. You know, it shouldn't be too complicated. Because then if it's complicated, people will not understand it. And if they don't understand it, they won't be able to follow it. It's got to be specific and detailed. That means, you know, cover the scenarios that are being addressed, cover it. And state what is required. And communicate principles and motivations, rather than the methods, you know, see, if you give principle, if you tell them teach people the principle, then, you know, there may be some scenario that happens. Some situation happens if they understand the principle, they'll be able to apply the principle to the scenario to the situation. So the goal is, you know, okay, this is the principle. What is our principle, you know, so example in the announcements thing, there were two principles. One is we don't want to waste, you know, talking about the Sunday announcements. One is the first principle is we don't want to waste congregation people's time listening to announcements. You know, people have come to worship, they haven't come to listen to announcements. So our announcements must be very short, five minutes, maximum seven minutes. That's a principle. Second principle is we want to be fair to everybody. So we're getting requests from so many different organizations. We can't be preferential to one organization wants to make an announcement and say no to other. So equal. So whatever we do, you want to be fair. So give them all the same opportunity. You can all come and set up and for desk outside church to announce whatever you want to announce. So that's the principle. The situations can be varied, you know. Somebody will say, we want to please, please play a two minute video announcement. Somebody will say, please give out our handles. Somebody said, please give us two minutes to make an announcement, regardless the situation, the same principle applies, you know, so they follow the same principle. So explain the principle and the motivation. Why are we doing this? So then, you know, when people face different scenarios, different situations, they know how to apply the principle, what principle to apply and make a decision for that situation. Right. Make this available to people in the organization. So people should know it's there when it comes to those matters, and then reiterate review and revise. So, you know, time over time, things may change. So we need. So one is we need to reiterate means you keep repeating this people remember that this is our policy. This is our guideline. This is our standard. Then we have to review it. That means, okay, is it valid now or do we need to modify it in some way because of certain reasons. So then revise the policy. So policies can be changed. That's no problem. But, you know, it has to be there has to be good reason to change those policies. Okay. So before I go further into, you know, details, we're going to talk, talk about, you know, different kinds of policies in the organization. We're going to talk about administrative policies. We're going to talk about operational guidelines and practice standards. And we will share examples of these things. Before we get into that, you know, are there any questions that anybody has? Is everybody with me? Any, anything you want to discuss, please. You're free to do that. All right. No questions. We will go forward. It runs, it runs following. Okay. So let's move forward. Okay. So, you know, this is just sometimes we have some discussion class, you know, what will happen to an organization that no policies guidelines standards and they will be chaos. People may not understand what to do, or every decision you have to, you know, you have to sit down and have a discussion. You know, so the same kind of decision is being made in different situations and people are having meetings over and over again to arrive at the same decision. Whereas if you have a policy, you don't need the meeting, just make the decision move on, because that's the policy. Regardless of the situation scenario, just follow the guideline, you know, so a lot of good things happen when you have these guidelines in place. Let me talk about administrative policies. That means these are things as an organization. In terms of from an administrative perspective, you know, so this could be, for example, HR policies, you know, when how do you take care of your, your employees, your staff and your consultants. These could be workplace policies. That means, you know, what are, on what basis people take leave? What do they do in different situations? Can they take loans from the organization? Can, you know, different things workplace related, you know, or if there's conflict, have you resolved conflict and so many things. Then there may be policies that guide interactions with external entities. So, you know, how does your organization, Christian organization work with other Christian organizations or other entities? Is there some guidance on that in terms of contracts and lease agreements? So, for example, at APC, our policy is everything has to be documented. We will not take anything, take a lease or without a documented contract and agreement. Whereas I know of some, you know, some churches, they just, okay, they just go have a talk and they, you know, that talk is, is their agreement. And then afterwards, you know, it becomes a problem because they forgot what they said or what the other person said, and it can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. So for us, everything has to be documented, everything has to be signed. That's part of our policy and in what we do and, you know, things like that. So, administrative policies, how, you know, how does the organization work as far as taking care of administrative procedures, right? So, for us, also when we hire somebody, we give them an offer letter. We tell them to read our staff guidelines, only if they say okay to that, do we, you know, bring them into the organization? So that's part of our policy. That's how we work. Without that, you know, we, you know, without having something documented like that, we don't, you know, we don't take on any person. So let me just, yeah, I will share some things, some documents. And here is our staff document. I think, yeah, I have shared this with in the course work section. Now this document keeps on changing, meaning changing means we keep adding to it. It's been growing over time. We keep refining it. Maybe there are some areas we haven't covered. So we add to it and so on. So this, this is a document we give when somebody wants, when we are taking somebody to work with the organization. So they read this document or they see this document even before they join us as a staff or consultant. We send it to them. Everybody gets, they get a copy. Please read through it so that you know how to work in the organization, right? So this saves a lot of misunderstanding later on. So what is this document? I'm not going to go through everything. I'm just showing you a high level. Now what does this document contain? We tell them this is our vision. We tell them these are our core values. Now this is our destiny. This is what we are joining into. We have something on code of conduct. How do you conduct yourself as part of this organization? This is important because we are a Christian organization. Therefore, we expect certain ethical standards and model standards and biblical standards. So in most organizations, they would have ethical standards. But for us, we also need biblical standards because we are a Christian organization, right? So we have a code of conduct. Then what is our procedure for hiring of somebody who wants to resign? Or if we need to terminate them, how would we do it? What kinds of staff people work with us? We have staff and consultant. The work hours, you know, when do people have to work? How do we pay their salary and reimburse them for any work related expenses? What are the leaves people can take when they are working? What are some of the benefits they can have? Then there are some other things that we felt are needed. We included this when you interact with church members. So again, here we had problems. Problems in the early days, you know, if a person was working for the church, who's money from somebody who's member of the congregation. Now people in the congregation, they may say, oh, that person is working for the church, they may have some pity and all that. And they give money, you know, and they borrow money. But then that if they don't return that money, it puts the whole us, the church staff in a very bad light. You know, so we had to say, you know, we have to put some things here and then how people interact with church members. And, you know, and I used to receive complaints. So so and so is the staff and they're behaving like this and so and so. So, you know, I see them up on the stage and they're behaving like this. And so, you know, you should come back. The congregation is, you know, pointing it back on me. So then I had to say, OK, OK, you know, we need to have something here to guide the interaction of staff, the church members and so on. You know, that we, you know, counseling, we can make, since we have a counseling department, we make that available for our staff. How do we do performance reviews? You know, how do we evaluate? Now, this is a challenging area because it's not like a professional organization where, you know, you can say, well, you have to bring in sales of so many, such amount or you have to do, you know, whatever. The metrics are very different here. So it's an area we're still learning. Yes, we don't find too much out there, but we're still learning your performance. How do you do bonus calculations? So that's documented. So then, you know, in the past, we've had people wanting to take loans from the church. And they say, you know, I'm facing a financial need. Can the church give me a loan? In the early days, we used to, you know, people want to buy a bike and we used to give them a loan to buy a bike. And then after some time, it became a little too much because we had more staff and the next thing to think about is what if 10 staff want to take a loan from the church? You know, that becomes a problem because, you know, it affects our finances. And so then we had to make a decision, okay, we won't give loans. We will only give, you know, so much salary at once, one or two months. I don't know what it is, but, you know, that's what we will do. And so we had to standardize everything to be fair with all our staff using office resources, then taking care of the spiritual work related. We have certain standards for communications. I'll get to that. Right. So another area that we had to come up with the policy was, well, I'm part of APC, I'm serving here, but, you know, maybe some were also involved with another ministry, you know, or maybe they were involved with another ministry before they even came to APC. How do we manage that, you know, because that person is a staff is working here at APC, but they may be also working for some other Christian ministry, either as a volunteer or doing something to help them. So, you know, we needed some clarity on that. So again, these are, you know, scenarios we went through and therefore we came up with certain policies to manage those kinds of situations. Right. So, and I'm not going to read the document. I'm just giving this as an example to show that all of this has been documented and it's given to, you know, somebody who comes to join the organization. It's a staff and consultant guideline. So we put it down so that they are very clear that, you know, when you come to work here, this is how we all work together. These are our policies. These are how we, you know, these are some of the things that guide us when we make decisions. So very quickly, let me just touch on a few other things and then I will keep some time for questions. So then there are operational guidelines. That means, like, you know, we said in a Christian organization, you may have all into teams. You may have different kinds of teams doing different things. And then you may have interaction between among teams or between teams. Right. So how do these people work together? Again, this all evolved over time. And so, you know, what tasks need to be done? How should they be done? And so on. And similarly, this goes down the practice standards means it goes into a little bit more detail like, you know, graphic design, what should go into graphic design and the videos and our books and so on. So these things have evolved over time. And let me just, sorry. Let me just go to a web page, apcw.org slash guide. I'll share that with you in a minute. Okay. Let me share this. Kiran is getting tired. All right. So you can see this. So in our website, apcw.org slash guidelines. So, you know, over time, we wrote, you know, we wrote guidelines for various things like book table, you know. Okay. How do you arrange books on the book table? You know, the unit, they need to come a little early. They need to set it up. They need to keep books there. What if you go run down, you know, stock on the books? So we had to put that in place. Now, these things didn't happen on day one, you know, these, all of these things, you know, evolved over time. So we had to write all these things down. We had child protection policy in there. You know, remember, there was a time some years ago in Bangalore, children but at risk, even in schools. So that became a, you know, a very serious problem in the, we've seen the newspapers. And so we had to write this down how, and we had to, you know, we write now every week. We, we share this with all our children's church teachers who come to teach, you know. So like this, they're different guidelines that guide different teams that are serving in the church. And you see, you know, various things. So there's our promotion policy. I had talked about it before. And so on. Right. So all of these things are related. Now you're welcome to take it and use it to modify it and use it for your ministry. But, you know, a lot of work has gone into establishing or writing these up. Then we also had to put down, you know, certain guidelines for areas of work, like, you know, design guidelines or for a search engine. These are work specific. These are standards. And then these are, of course, role descriptions, you know, what do these people do in the organization. Right. So all of this has been documented and is made available to people, primarily our staff and volunteers for them to go and access at any time. If they have any questions and we use it as part of our training. Now all of this has been on hold for the last, you know, since the lockdown, we've not been using it. But, you know, once things go back to normal, we will go and, you know, begin to use these documents. We just talked a little bit about practice standards. So we talked about three areas. One is administrative policies. Second is operational guidelines. And third is practice standards. What do we mean by that? You know, it means that in every area of work, we have to follow certain standards now, especially in things that go public. So one big area for us was graphics design, you know, because the person is creating graphics. Of course, we want it to be, you know, very good. We want it to be contemporary. But we also need to standardize certain things, you know, right from the kinds of images we use, we can't use any kind of image, you know, the images have to be aligned to what is biblical. What is represent, what is, you know, what is accurately representing us as Christians. So we can't just randomly use any images in our graphics. And I remember, you know, there used to be a time that I should get a lot of feedback, you know, one simple thing, you know, this must have happened some, you know, at least two, three years ago. In one of the graphic images and for what I don't know, the promotion, there was an image of a person. It showed his hand, but he had a tattoo on his hand. And it was a cross, tattoo of a cross. So immediately somebody you saw it, whether on Facebook or Instagram, took a photo, sent it straight to me and saying, So is APC promoting tattoos? Oh, no, that's not the message we want to give, but that's the questions that is coming back from, you know, somebody who saw it. So immediately contact, you know, graphics person say, Hey, you know, please Photoshop the tattoos, take it off, resubmit the image, put it out there. You know, this is because this is the impression somebody outside is getting when they see the graphic that's been done, you know, it's a very small thing, a minor thing. But it is sending a wrong message, a message that we as a church don't want to send, you know, and so I had to tell them, you know, so please be careful and be very careful in the graphics are using all these things. So like this, we keep learning, you know, and so we have to have standards, you know, the graphics we use the font we use what images we use, you know, it has to communicate a certain message to the people and we have to be very careful, because people could, you know, come back sometimes it's a very, very sincere mistake. I remember one book cover one of our persons had done this was some years ago for a foundations book, I said, you know, just take a picture that shows something being built up. So what he took he did took a picture, which had pebbles. So there's a big pebble, there's a smaller pebble, there's another smaller pebble, there's another smaller pebble. So in his mind, that picture was representing something that was being built up. So he designed the book cover we even printed the book. And then after that somebody gave feedback, hey, this, this image is the image of some Eastern practice that represents some sort of an Eastern, you know, religion or mysticism or form of worship. And I didn't even know what it was. You know, I didn't even think like that, it's a book cover. Then we're, oh, no, we already printed so many books, it has this cover and be sending a wrong message, because the, it's just stones on top of each other. And I said, no, no, no, let's get a picture of what I meant was somebody laying a foundation. So it has to be bricks, it has to be cement. So we had to change the book cover, you know, but I'm just giving a simple example where, you know, we have to, we have to have standards of practices that say like, you know, you need to be careful. So today, you know, so we have a QA process where we have to check our videos, check, check what, you know, the graphics before they go out. And one of the things we had to check is make sure that, you know, all these things are so some of the images I myself, you know, if it's a book cover, I check it myself. And these are some of the questions I will ask, you know, is this image okay. And is this image communicating something in fact just maybe month or two ago, I was reviewing videos that were being done for our e-learning portal. And I had to correct certain things. I just, hey, don't use this image because it's sending this kind of a message. Or, you know, there was a simple book, you know, used in one of the short videos of the e-learning portal. And I said, what kind of a book is it, you know, look closely, because you never know somebody will look into the image. And if there's something written there, you know, the person doing the video thinks it's a Bible, but if they don't look at it. And I say, if you're not sure it's a Bible, then don't use that image because, you know, there's something written there may be in Latin, it might mean something else and we'll get into trouble later. So change that. You know, these are, you know, these are, you know, so we have to have standards in everything, graphics, videos, everything that's being done. So what we have established over time, and this hasn't happened overnight, but over time, in every area, there are standards. There's a certain way in which a work product is done. The team members hold each other to that standard. And if it's not adhering to that standard, then it is discarded, you know, basically right now everybody does according to the standard. Okay. So our time is up. We will continue this on Friday as we talk, you know, about policies, guidelines and standards that have to be established inside the organization so that things function well. Okay. Sorry, I didn't keep any time for questions. I spoke the whole time. Yeah. All right. So we'll pause here, but you know, we will have time for questions next class. Okay. Okay, can we close in prayer please? I'm sorry I spoke the whole time I didn't give any time for questions. Time is up. But anyway, let's pray and dismiss and we will take questions next class. Okay. Could somebody pray and dismiss us please. Anyone can pray. Loving Heavenly Father, we come into your presence of Father God. Thank you for this wonderful day a lot. Thank you Father God. Thank you for helping us too. I turn today as a class of Father God Jesus and help us to align with the word of God and help us to align with the policies that we have in the organization of Father God Jesus. Help us to walk in truth and integrity of Father God Jesus and keep us away from all the distraction of Father God Jesus. Thank you for everything. We take complete control over the state of Father God Jesus. Amen. Thank you everyone. Thank you for being part of the class and see you again. So God bless. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.