 Hey, good morning everyone. We're coming back after a long time. So let's just begin with a word of prayer and we'll get into our class today. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for bringing us together. We thank you for your grace, your mercies, Lord. We thank you for all that you've done for us, for your faithfulness over each of our lives, God. And even as we come together to sit at your feet and learn, God. We thank you for all that you have taught us through this course. And even as we come to the end of this course, Lord, I pray, God, that you will, Lord, deposit in our heart, Lord, with bear fruit in our lives, Father. We thank you. We give you all the praise and pray in Jesus' name, we pray. Okay. All right. So this class will be the last class. And so what I thought we'd do is we just do a quick review of what we did from the first ministry of the evangelist teacher and the pastor. But before that, in the last page of page 20 in my text book, in my notes, is it page 20? So I know we went through the responsibilities of a pastor, but here there are general responsibilities. We'll just go through that. Right. And after that, we just do a quick review. And then we close our course for this semester. Right. And you can always be free to, you know, post questions. And I know the e-learning students have posted quite a lot of questions. And I was very happy to see that. So yeah, answering all of those questions. Thank you for those questions. All right. So let's do this. General responsibilities of a pastor. And then we'll do a quick review and close this course today. Okay. So general responsibilities of a pastor. Now, we looked at the responsibilities, both that was spiritual and practical responsibilities. Now, remember, when we look at the Bible, Jesus, and even in the Old Testament, we look at the Bible, and it's so much of spiritual, but it's all aligned to being practical also. Right. Azeel Genesis 26 is a sort of powerful chapter. Right. You can read it in your free time. But this, this whole thing of the scriptures being spiritual is also need to be put on into a practical. Now, we start a church, we start a ministry. Next, you know, for 30 years, I'm teaching urban church planting. And so you will learn more about how to plant churches, plant ministries. Right. So there are these general guidelines that we will have to do. And we cannot escape it. We cannot say, Hey, I don't like this. I don't want to do it. No, one of the things that for me personally was I learned the hard way and said, Okay, I have to do this. I have to make sure that these things are done. If I don't do it, the entire church or the team is affected. Right. Okay, let's look at them. General responsibilities, pray and grow in the relationship, in your relationship with God, so that what is undertaken by the congregation reflects in the leading of God. I always say this, there's a cost to the anointing. Yes, there's a cost meaning it's not an amount that we pay, but there's a price that we have to pay. If God is calling us to be pastors and leaders, we're also called to be set apart. We are called to spend more time in His presence, more time in God's Word. It is a duty. It's a responsibility. We have to do it. And it says here that when our relationship with God is strong, it begins to reflect in your public ministry. It will reflect. So spend more time. The number one responsibility of a pastor is not the church. It is not, okay, are there 500 people in the church? Are there life groups in the church? All of that is part of it. But number one responsibility is your relationship with God. Out of that will flow everything else. Now, what I've noticed and what I see is people are more focused on the vision or the calling that people have. That's good. But if the focus is more towards that, the relationship will go down. Always remember, as you grow up in ministry, you get more and more and more and more busy. And it's very easy for us to get busy doing things. And our relationship with God is kept aside. Number one responsibility is to spend time in God's presence. Have a relationship with Him. Now, I really like the word relationship because relationship is not only asking. I want this, I want this. It's also about God speaking, God ministering to us, God speaking into our life. And this will reflect in the congregation. People in your congregation will notice, they will realize, they will accept you, they will catch the vision that you have. They'll walk with it. And I really wish that maybe sometime you guys can come to even our locations which are at ABC East and North-South East West. It's wonderful to see congregation, people in the church, just hold on to the vision. Many of them in our congregations don't know people at central. They don't know the congregation at central. But they're so close to the vision. Hey, we are salt and light. Even though we are far away, we may not even know. And maybe once a year we meet for a church camp. One church ABC, one vision. And people catch it. Right? Two is focus on his family's welfare to ensure that they are cared spiritually, emotionally and physically. Remember we talked about this? We looked at three episodes. What are the three episodes? First Timothy, Second Timothy as Titus. And we looked at the responsibilities of a pastor and overseer as a leader. He should be able to look after his family. If he's not able to look after his family, how can he look after the church? So we should never be in a place where we are saying, okay, I'm looking after the church, God will look after the family. God will say, stop the church, look after your family first. Right? When if you go, especially in rural areas and villages, they have the whole mindset that God, I'm doing God's work. So God will look after my children. God will look after my family. That's true, but it's also not true. Because when God told Adam, put him in the garden, he said, what do you look after? You tend the garden. And now he's saying, you look after your family. You look at all through the book of Proverbs. He says, train up a child the way you should go. God is not going to come and train the child. We have to do it. Children are like quivers in our basket. Children are like olive shoots in our garden. We have to look after them. Dream. Seek God's vision for the church. Be the primary vision caster. And you learn more about the vision and how to pioneer a church next year in urban church planting. It's really interesting how you plant a church, the starting phase, the pioneering phase, the developing phase and the building phase and all that. So, but you seek God's vision for the church and cast a vision to the people. Four, oversee the teaching and preaching of God's work. Now, if you are a pioneer and you have started the church or started the ministry, oversee the teaching and the preaching. Now, we talked about this, right? Why is teaching and preaching important? Why is it important? Because people can come up with stories. The stories can be completely out of context. Remember the story of the Samaritan? Good Samaritan who comes on the donkey. Remember I told you that? The four legs are the church. So, these are all wrong understandings, wrong teachings and we need to be very careful. So, as a leader, we need to check what is being taught in the church, what is being taught in our life groups. Now, there's a reason, again next year you'll learn about discipleship and small groups. There's a reason all our life groups, right? So, we have life groups all across Bangalore, 39 life groups and all our life groups that meet across Bangalore, everyone discuss the Sunday sermon. They don't discuss whatever they feel like. No. What is discussed is the Sunday sermon. So, last Sunday was the second. First, there's a lot of five, right? So, they have to discuss that. There are discussion questions that are given. They have to discuss that. It's not like the life group leaders say, okay, come on, open the book of buskings. We can't do that. It's not supposed to do that as a leader, right? Because we, why? Because we are overseeing the teaching and the preaching. Now, we know, okay, all the life groups are discussing the Sunday sermon. So, there's no, now, again, this we learned the hard way. These people came back and said, hey, life group leaders said like this. Life group leaders said, this is what God's word is, or life group leaders said that, right? And it didn't make sense, or it's a wrong doctrine. What happens? They came and asked us, oh, this is what the life group leaders said. So, we had to make sure. And so, as a leader, we must oversee, be the steward responsible for the administration of the sacraments. What are the sacraments of the church? Sorry? Breaking of bread, okay. What are the sacraments? What else? So, they are taking in the Lord's table. Yes, what else? What about baptism? Right? So, these are all sacraments in the church, things that happen in the church. In all things, strive to maintain unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Now, this is very important. How we are is what our church will become, is what our people will become. If I am a person who's only gossiping, you will, I will have a church that is only gossiping. That's for sure. If I am a person who's only backbiting, are people like that? Right? So, says here, strive for the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So, always make sure that as a leader, you're bringing unity and peace within the church. Now, you may not like somebody. You may like somebody more. You may not like somebody as much as the other person. It doesn't matter. Our responsibility is to bring unity, to bring oneness. What is discouraging and very disheartening is that usually doesn't happen in urban settings, but when you know you have some rich people coming into church, they say, hey, here's your chair, and here's your water bottle, and you have a separate place for the Lord's table. And it does happen. Now, what is happening? They were sure. The others will feel, oh, come on, I'm not so important as them. So, as a leader, what we set, we have to set it right. I remember this example. Oh, we were in Mangalore, and I think I've shared this example once. He was maybe about 20, 25 people. Now, all of a sudden, one church member, one of our church members, he said, I'm going to invite somebody to church. He is a big leader in the city of Mangalore, and he's very rich, and he's going to come in a BFW or whatever. So, you'll be there for him, and whatever, bring him. He wants to come, let him come. So, he came next Sunday, but full, you know, with all the black cops and all of them, they had come, and he came, and he said, out of the service, people came for prayer. So, they were standing in that. So, this person came up to me and said, pray for him first. He has to go, the black cops are waiting. I said, let them be black cops, white cops, that doesn't matter, let them stand, because they all are waiting. So, he stood in the line. Now, I knew that he may feel offended. I knew that the person who invited him also may feel offended, but he were only three, four people. It was not like there were like, you know, 20 people, sorry, three, four people. I understand that, okay, you know, he's rich and very busy, you know, but it's a Sunday, he can stand. But you know, what happened after that? He came up to me and he said, I really appreciate what you did, because others will run and come. And you knew, and that's what I wanted. I didn't want that special attention. So, we just became good friends. He would come, we would minister, he would come for our Bible study, he would come for our Wednesday prayers. I would tell him, you parked the car somewhere else and you come, nobody, nobody will notice you, because he was quite famous in the city. So, he did that. He told me where one can, and he just come. So, he came. But what happened was, the church members, they were very happy. He said, hey, we are all equal. So, imagine, all of them are equal, and all are sitting together for Bible study. All of them get the same tea, all of them get the same biscuit. No difference. So, that initially itself, in the mind, the church members were, hey, everyone are equal. It doesn't matter who comes. So, it happened again, and some of the church members invited people, and the church members said, you'll have to wait no matter what. They themselves said, what's the big deal? So, what's happening? You're setting the example, and you learn more about the church. Raise up God's people into leadership of his church, equipping, empowering, and supporting them in their God-given ministry. Raise up people into leadership. The day you start your ministry is the day you must think about your exit. The day you start, you must think, hey, I'm not there. Who's going to take it out? Raising up leaders is the greatest gift that a leader can have. Jesus did it. The apostle Paul did it. Good leaders raise up other good leaders. So, that's a very important responsibility of the pastors. Never look at ministry as a one man show. It can never be done. It can be done until the church is 10, 15 people. Even then, you can't be doing PPT and then preaching them. You'll need somebody. Even if you're 10 people, but as your church grows, 50, 60 people, you will need volunteers. You will need leaders in the church. So, when you look at people, look at them, look at their gifts, look at their colleagues, look at how you can use them. Give them opportunities. Give them open doors for them. Put them in. There will be times, you know, you'll have to push them. Put them in the water, make them walk, and they will do it. It happened to me. I'm grateful for that. What do I do? I don't know how to eat worship or I don't know how to preach. I'll just push them into the water. You learn on the job training. So, it's good when you raise up leaders, you push them. That's why in the supernatural hour, I get somebody to sing with me. All of you get a chance. You're used to it. So, over time, you just learn, you learn, you learn. After some time, I'm sure you'll be able to lead two, three hours. I'm sure you're able to do it now, but you'll be more confident. You'll be more, you know, your relationship with God is stronger. So, raise up people into leadership. Supervised the other staff of the congregation to keep the ministry aligned with the vision. Now, again, we learn more on this when we get to urban church planting. But as your church grows, you will have to build teams and you will also have to have full-time staff. Because you cannot have volunteers doing everything. So, for example, if a church is growing up to 50, 60 and you're reaching 100, you will need an administrator. You will need. Why? Because the administrator has to look at many things. One is the funds that come in or if you're booking venues, conferences, maybe one or two people initially. And then eventually you grow. So, you will have a full-fledged staff. And so, I remember when MPC were about eight of us, initially. Now, we have so many people joining the team because there's a need. And even as that need grows, we ensure that all of them, all our staff, all your staff are in one mind, in one core. They're all flowing with the vision of the church. So, one of the ways that we do it is we have staff meetings and we have pastoral team meetings. We discuss and we put forth ideas, strategies. All of them put it. So, the publication team give an idea. The media team gives an idea. And then the sound and setup team gives another idea, worship team. All the teams put in our ideas. We do something called as a SWOT analysis, something like a SWOT analysis. And we come up with plans and how to get better in what we are doing. So, supervised, your staff. Now, supervised means don't be looking at them continuously. What are you doing? Why did you go for a break? How long was your break? Don't do that. Just give them freedom. But then you're ensuring that they're in line. They're doing what has been asked of them. And they are able to work and perform well. And provide spiritual direction for the daily operation of the congregation. This is very important. Now, as your congregation grows 100, 200, you need to be able to provide spiritual direction. So, for example, two of them come and say, I want to start a life view. But there's nobody over here in this area. What do we do? We'll have them. Okay. Let's pull up the database. Let's say who's there. If nobody's there, it's all right. So, what you can do is two of you meet or you can meet online. See if you can get a group together. Something you're providing direction. You're giving ideas. You're giving strategies. So, for example, also conferences. So, when we plan it in a way that, you know, December, we don't have many conferences. Why? Because we know that everyone are probably traveling back to their hometowns. And Christmas is a time when you can do a lot of events, but we don't do conferences. We just do events within the church. So, provide spiritual direction in that way. Be responsible for Christian counseling or referral to other Christian counseling agencies. Now, as a pastor, people will come and ask for counseling. This is one area where I really learned so much. And for that, I went back to God's word. I realized in my initial days that I can't just give some random answers. Because people are coming and they have life issues. And they're coming to you because they trust you, because they want some kind of a help. Right? And if I say, you know, don't worry, God is with you. That's not the answer. Right? So, to get back into God's word, this is the source of our wisdom. And at the right time, in the right way, God, the Holy Spirit will minister to us, to help us to give us, give them right counsel. I can share with so many instances where people have said, you know, maybe I'll give you one instance where this young boy was part of our church and he was saying, you know, I'm very sad. He's going through a season in his life, just feeling very lonely and depressed. I don't like social media. I don't want to do anything. I just want to be at home. What can we tell? If I go out, people don't like me or I don't like people. I feel lonely. College, a lot of friends, I have a lot of friends, but I still feel lonely. What can we do? What can we say? Hey, don't worry, God will fill your heart with his love. You can say that, but it's not going to serve the purpose at that time. So, we must understand what to speak, when to speak, how to speak, what we need, the word of God to minister to them. And over time, there are some counseling that sometimes you need professional counseling. So, it goes over months of professional counseling. But when it is in your ability, please go ahead. So, for example, you know, people come up to me and say, you know, my children are like this. I need your help. I'm able to help them because at somewhere that I'm going through it or I've learned, but if there are older senior citizens who come and say, you know, these are the challenges, I'm able to help them through God's word to give them something. But it becomes more real when it's anointed with the word of God, right? So, depend on God's word in everything, look to God. And over time, you see, when you start your ministry, people will come up to you and ask you questions. You know, the Holy Spirit will put the right word into your mouth. He will do it. And you see, people will be blessed. People themselves will say, hey, because you know, the pastor said this, his word touched my heart. His word ministered to me. Because of that, I'm able to stand up again. And you'll realize that, hey, it's not about me. It's the word that you have spoken. Right? So, be able to give good counsel. Now, over time, see, I do understand that, you know, we, as a church grows, as pastors, we'll be busy. Right? So, something that we have is, one is the Christmas coming. And two is something that we recently started called the life coaching. Right? So, we have life coaching leaders across all our locations. So, for example, if I am in need of spiritual growth or marriage and family or parenting, whatever it is, so I can, I can be connected to a life coach who will speak into my life. He's, he or she has gone through that whole season. Or for example, if somebody, if it's about workplace, right? So, somebody who's in the IT and in the workplace, gone through that most of their life in the corporate world, so they speak into our life. Right? So, these are two areas that we are trying to, and of course, as pastors, when people come and speak to us, we give them Godly counsel. So, over time, when you start ministry and you start your church, you can always have teams and have people who can, you know, provide Godly counsel, but you need to make sure that, you know, they're probably trained in that. Right? And finally, conduct services that is weddings, funerals, all the other practical things that has to be done. We should be available for that as well. Right? So, I know we did it quite a lot in this entire course. So, I just repeat the assignment and then quickly do a review and leave the floor aside. Okay, I'll post the assignment on classroom. Sorry, I missed to do that, but I'll do that. So, the assignment is you can choose one teacher or one evangelist, one pastor, a life or gone to be with the Lord, doesn't matter. But what I want you to do is gain insights from their ministry, from their life. So, for example, you're choosing a pastor, right, or a teacher. So, you're talking to a teacher, you say, okay, how did you know that you were called to be a teacher? Right? And if it's somebody who's not, who's gone to be with the Lord, but if it's somebody who's you're checking online, read about them and read about what they did, how God called them, how they figured out, okay, this is what I want to do. Just learn from them, right? So, for example, if you look at Biddy Graham, his first few meetings, nobody came. There were some 10, 15 people who came. How many? 10 people came. First few meetings. But how did he know that his source is calling and how did he flow in that? So, you can just read, try to understand what happened to him. How is his ministry so successful, right? Already become so powerful as a leader. What does his daily habits, what did he do, right? What are the areas he could have done better? You can just write about it. So, if it's a one-page description, also, it's all right, right? And then you choose an evangelist, you choose a pastor, you write about them, right? And that will be your mark. But even as you write now, don't just read, copy paste the whole thing and paste. I don't do that, right? You can write in your own words if you want, right? You want to write it in a piece of paper, write it in paper, take a photo, post it in classrooms. It's more meaningful that way if you feel, or if you just want to type it out on a WordDoc and send it in style. Okay? Words, right? There's no minimum, there's no maximum. Minimum is 10 words. Maximum is not more than 500 because I won't read it too much. Okay, so let's just quickly go through this entire book. So, firstly, we looked at the five-fold ministry. Now, I want each one of you to share your thoughts. What are the five-fold ministry? Those online also can share. What is the five-fold? Yeah, I trust you. Okay. What is the five-fold ministry for? So, one of the things that we looked at was in the first chapter, three things. The five-fold ministry was to, so that all of them will continue in the unity of the faith, will come to the knowledge of God, will come to the perfect man, full measure of Christ, which means this five-fold ministry was given for the body of Christ, for the growth and the benefit of the body of Christ. So, even as we serve, always keep the body of Christ, the church, the ministry in your mind. You're not doing something for yourself. You know, we are not building our own kingdoms. We are not building our own ministries. Yes, it can be, but the bigger picture is it's God's kingdom. The raising of people to be like Jesus. That is the goal that we have. How do we do that? Through all these events, programs, all of that. So, there is an anointing for each ministry gift. We looked at that. So, there is gifts and there is function. So, many people can function as evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers, but there's a gift also which God gives. You are going to be an evangelist. You are going to be a pastor. So, there's a ministry function, ministry gift, but for both, it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit and you've got to depend on that. Then we went and we looked at the evangelist. Jesus is our example. He was empowered. He had a different varied audience. His message was always repentance, forgiveness, love, the kingdom of God, his methods, preaching, teaching, followed by science wonders and miracles. He traveled around. He faced challenges. There was unbelief. People had, there were demonic encounters, oppositions from other leaders and he also was supported by people. Then we looked at very importantly the evangelist in the early church. Philip was first called the evangelist. He breached in all cities and then we also see the apostle Paul functioning as an evangelist. Although his main gift, his ministry gift was that of an apostle to go out, plant churches and keep moving about, but he also functioned as the evangelist. We briefly looked at the restoration of the ministry of the evangelist. So God raised up people, George Whitfield, John and Charles Wesley, D. L. Modi, the healing evangelist of the early 80s and 90s, D. L. Osborne, Renard Bonke, Medihan, all of these, and then Teddy Evangelist. Then keys to doing the ministry. So we see there, we follow the biblical pattern, develop the supernatural, develop the ability to present the gospel, maintain a passion for souls. That's important. Ministry can get boring. If we don't maintain a hard attitude, ministry can get, oh, another day, another 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. class, it can get. So we need to stir up, keep maintaining a passion for Jesus, passion for people, a passion to serve. Because that's what the enemy, what does he do? He wants to kill, steal and stop. Who wants to steal the joy? So we need to be on our God at all times. And as a teacher, Jesus was so powerful. He preached, he taught it wisdom. He used three things, three common ways of teaching. What were they? One was metaphors, which are speakers of speech, hyperbolts, which are exaggerations, and then used parables. And so even in our teaching, you can use these three methods or three avenues of bringing in your examples or your teaching method. You can use these three areas. Then we looked at the teacher in the early church and some of the some stern things that we looked at do and then teach, teach the commandments. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. Develop the ability to teach well, always teach true doctrine. Stay away from false doctrine. Develop the ability to understand scriptures in light of the context. So you're studying the scriptures. There are some things that you may not understand. Stay over there, pray, ask God to give you the wisdom. Go online, get different thoughts, understand and make sure that what you're teaching is a right theology. That's very important. Ensure sound doctrine. Teach with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom. Applying your knowledge, what you've learned. Applied, teach it with the wisdom. Then we looked at practical keys of doing the ministry of the teacher, that is to develop a wide range of topics. Don't say, we cannot say, I don't like history. You may not like, but you got to go back to history. If you're teaching old estimates, or you have to go back to history, or you have to go back and what about geography, you have to understand the places, what is there, the cultures, so many things. So develop this range of being able to minister and to learn and develop yourself in all areas. One of the areas that I really enjoyed was faith and science. One of the series of faith and science, I was truly enjoying it, because science is not my strong something. At the moment, I began to, because I knew I had to preach. So I did a lot of studies, and I was so happy that I could learn, because I don't know everything yet, but there's so much that I understood that faith and science is. So develop that ability. Don't look at something and say, oh, this is boring. I don't want to learn. You tell yourself, hey, I want to learn this. It may not be exactly related to scriptures, but it is something that if you have to learn, learn it. Practice before you teach. Keep revelation fresh. Stay fresh in the word of God. He tells you, read Matthew chapter 5. Don't say, oh, I already know Matthew chapter 5. Someone on the mound. I know the whole sermon. Read it again. When you read it again, keep it fresh. God will minister. Especially when you go to the Old Testament also. There's so much to learn. So keep your revelation fresh. Stay fresh in the word of God. If there are places where you feel, okay, you're not understanding, not learning, go to places that you can learn. So, for example, you're studying Old Testament, take a break, go to the New Testament. This is what I do. Just go back to the New Testament, read something that you're encouraged and then go back. The Bible is not going to run away. It's going to be that you can always come back, come back, study it. And one good habit as a teacher is to make notes. When you are preparing, make notes, make bullet points, make notes. So when you're teaching, you know, okay, this is the point I should give here. And you learn this in homiletics. So make notes. Very important. So you know, okay, as I'm teaching, this is what I will say here. This is the point I can use here. This is the example I can use here. And these are the questions I can ask my students. Be prepared. Then we look at the pastor all through the Old Heaven New Testament. You see the pastor as the shepherd, the chief shepherd. The shepherd, we talk so much about it. The shepherd is the one who protects, who speaks, who knows, he leads, he is willing to give his life for his sheep. The shepherd knows the sheep and the sheep know the shepherd's voice. We are his sheep. We are to know our chief shepherd's voice. Then we also looked at the responsibilities and rewards of the pastor. We looked at those three episodes, Timothy, 1st and 2nd Timothy and Sidious. So I want to encourage each one of us, and even as we close this course, whatever God has called you to do, give it your best. Give your heart, your soul, give everything that you have, and the Lord will bless what you do. Another important point is, don't compare your ministry and your calling to somebody else's. It may look nice, it may look exciting, but if God has called you, and you know that God has called you for a certain thing, be faithful there, and give all that you can. Give your best. If you are young here, you have an entire life ahead of you, and so just give all that you can. Go back to the world, dive into this world, spend time in the world. When I became a believer and I was learning, I didn't have access to Google and all that. It was not as much as what we see now, but now you have so much. You go to Google and you just type in concordance or a Bible study. For verses, you get a study. We can learn so much from Bible study tools. So many Bible study tools of men, sermon central, and there are so much we can learn. So it's all about, now it's available, it's all about us using it. So I want to encourage each one of you. Step out of your calling, even as you step out. Depend on the anointing of the Holy Spirit. When you depend on that, every day you'll wake up. Every time you'll be high, every time you'll be low, feel what's happening, but God will enable you to press on. His anointing, His presence will lead us. So we close this course. Thank you for joining. We go for an online. Thank you so much. And I will post the course notes on, sorry, the assignments online with a due date, so it didn't take your time to do it. I really enjoyed teaching this course and I learned so much. I'll see you at the next semester. Shall we just close? What a prayer. I request one of the students, if you can please pray and close. Anyone? Sorry. So, I believe that the same thing has been said to all of us, I believe that we will remember and we will be able to follow what Jesus taught, and that we will be able to accept the Bible and what God taught. And in Jesus' time, we will be able to help. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Have a good week and have a good time. I'll see you next semester. God bless you all.