 Alright, good morning everyone. Welcome to the session on open church planting. Let's just begin this time with a word of prayer. So maybe any one of us can lead in prayer. Zellie, would you like to lead in prayer please? Yes, your pastor, let's pray. Father, we come before your presence in the name of Jesus. As we begin our class, Lord, you bless each one of us. You bless our pastor so that he can preach the word of God according to will and Lord Jesus. Whatever works proceed of his mouth, Lord. It will bring, Lord, a new revelation inside in each one of us, Lord. We thank you for each of our classmates. You bless each one of us, Lord. You give us the spirit of wisdom and understanding so that we can grasp what you have for us. So the spirit is the Lord. We commit our life, everything into caring to Lordship. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you so much Zellie. All right, so we've covered quite a lot of ground up to now. We looked at strategies of how we can, you know, develop, build churches, evangelism, urban missions. Then we looked at how we are called to target different age groups. You know, yes, God is calling us to do ministry, but we must also be wise, right? We need to plan. We need to prepare ourselves for ministry. So we looked at different areas or different age groups. So you'll get children, teens, young adults, young couples, elderly couples, men's ministry, women's ministry, single adults ministry, you know, there's so much different demographics of areas that we are called to reach out to. Then last class, we looked at very important, the seven spheres of influence or the seven mountains you can use. Both of them are the same synonymous. Now, not all churches, if you look at it globally right now, not all churches, you know, identify or, you know, they keep up with the seven spheres of influence, meaning they don't agree with it. Sometimes some of them say, hey, there's nothing like seven spheres. It's just, you know, we are called to reach out in every sphere. But we must understand that the seven spheres, it may not be written in the Bible, but this is just a way for us as, you know, that we came up with this, the seven spheres is for us to penetrate into the different areas of society, right? So the seven spheres of mountains we looked at was education, arts and entertainment, media, business, government, family and religion as seven spheres, right? And we learned last class that new ways of ministry, new ways of reaching out to all these spheres, all these seven mountains must be encouraged within the church. Now, we must understand that, you know, especially if you just planted your church, you just started, and when you begin with something, you may not have too many people there, right? You may not have everyone sitting and, you know, reaching out to all these spheres. But over time, as the church grows, look at opportunities, right? So I've shared a few examples last class on how, you know, even in the initial years itself, one or two years after APC was founded, we got opportunities to reach out to different places in the city. Then 2008, we got opportunities to get into colleges and schools as a catalyst program. So these are opportunities that we must look forward to, pray for, and once those are open, we get into it, pray, prepare and reach out, right? We looked at the two points. One was the challenge, and two is the process, right? And three was, sorry, preparation. Four was positioning ourselves to what God wants us to do. So today, we'll get into a very important aspect, and I think all of us, you know, as church pastors or church leaders, ministry leaders, we want to see is growth, right? Now, growth is a sign of fruitfulness, right? Growth is not the only sign, but it is one of the signs of fruitfulness, right? So today we look at chapter 14, growth and consolidation. What is consolidation? Consolidation means to strengthen what you already have, right? Now, as a church, once you plant a church or a ministry, right? You're small, but you love to see growth. You want to see people, more people coming into the church. You want to see church growing, volunteer teams growing, new teams coming into place. It's exciting, right? When you see new people coming and getting plugged in, aligning with the vision of the church, it's very, very exciting, right? You feel encouraged, you feel really strong, you feel that, hey, God is here with me and God is going to bring more people into our midst. So that's wonderful, right? If you speak to any pastor in this world, none of the pastors will say, I don't want church growth. Everyone will love to see a church grow, right? So let's look at a few aspects when it comes to growth and consolidation. Now, remember that our focus should not only be on church growth. Church growth is good. We need it, but we must also consolidate, meaning strengthen what we have. We need to focus on those who are already there. There will be people coming to your ministry, coming to the church who are still babies in Christ. We need to develop them. We need to take them to a place of maturity, preaching, teaching of the word. This is all very critical, right? So remember as pastors, don't focus only on church growth. It's one of the aspects of fruitfulness, but we also look at consolidating, strengthening what you already have. Now, just like in the natural, right? There are stages of growth. When you look at a natural human body, there are stages, right? The same way growth in the church happens in stages, right? And we need to be sensitive to what God is doing at each stage in the local church, right? Consolidate what God establishes in the local church community at each stage and then press forward, right? So don't allow, like this point here, don't allow the congregation to become comfortable in a particular stage, right? So for example, you planted the church. Now it's five years down the line. You've got 300 people in the church. Don't allow the congregation to feel that, hey, we've achieved 300. That's a good number. It's now we are growing church. It's wonderful. We have all the teams that are there and make the congregation feel comfortable. Now, when I'm saying comfortable, I'm not talking about the physical comfort of just sitting in good chairs or the AC and all of that. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying a place of rest. There should always be this desire to know more, a desire to grow more in the things of God as a local church community to continue to grow both in numbers and in things of the spirit, right? So just as the human body goes through stages of growth, right? The church also goes through stages of growth. Now, as a pioneer, as a pastor, we must be very sensitive to what God is doing in our communities at each stage, right? So first one, let's look at the... Right now, we have five stages here mentioned. So let's look at each stage and build a few points here, right? First one is the pioneering stage, right? Now we looked at it, right? The pioneering stage is the stage where you pray, you plan, you prepare, you have a core team, you establish the territory, the place, you got the vision, you got the mission, you have your first Sunday service, you pioneer the church. Laying the groundwork is the most essential part of a church, the pioneering. Look at this in the natural. If we have to build a 30-floor building, the foundation needs to go way deep down inside. Now, nobody is going to look at the foundation and say, oh, what a beautiful foundation. The foundation is nothing. It's just dug down deep. Now imagine, you know, only after the floors that are built and we see the completion of the building and say, hey, wow, what a wonderful building. Nobody floors, but nobody is appreciating the foundation because the foundation is insignificant. It doesn't look nice, but is the foundation important? Extremely important. Without the foundation, the building is not even going to stand. The building may look good, but with a bad foundation, what's going to happen? It's just going to fall off. It's not going to be a strong building. So just like that, in a church, when you have pioneered a church, think of it as a foundation. Look at a foundation. It's not, doesn't look really good. It's not something that everyone are going to applaud, but that is very important. Sometimes we may feel, okay, you know, I want to be like this church. We may compare ourselves. Oh, this church is, you know, they look so nice. Everything's so nice. The music is so nice. The worship is so nice. The equipment, the sound, the venue, the everything is so nice. The teams, we may want it that way. But remember, you're still in the foundation. You're still in a place of digging down deep. There may not be a lot of applause. There may not be a lot of appreciation, but remember that it is very critical. It is very important to have a strong foundation. Remember what we talked about in the first service? In the first service, lay down your vision, your mission, and what you want to do. What you do in the first service is going to continue throughout. Right? So it is the foundation that is laying the stage, setting the preparation for the things to come ahead. Imagine this. If a foundation is not good, imagine this, a foundation is very weak and there's a fierce wind and this building just falls down. Is it, are people going to say, hey, you know what? This is such a beautiful building. Why did it fall down? No. They're going to say, hey, maybe this building was not built strong enough because you look at the other houses, they are standing. But just a little bit of wind has come and this building has fallen. People are going to question the engineer and the archie, the engineer of that whole, say, what did you do? Why is this building so weak? Did you not go down? Was your foundation not strong enough? Remember this, the deeper you go in your foundation, the higher you can rise up. A strong and a deep foundation is required for future growth. So if you set certain principles right from the beginning, saying, this is what I will do in the pioneering stage is what you're doing. You are setting the foundation of the church. Years will go by soon. We will pass on the mantle to somebody else. But what's going to happen? The foundation is still strong. Look at this example right in the Bible. Moses, God chose Moses. I'm just talking about the importance of the foundation in terms of ministry. Look at Moses, God chose Moses. God told Moses, come on, I'm going to bring the people out of Egypt. I'm going to do signs, wonders and miracles. And he did it. He brought the people out of Egypt. And it was time for him to pass the mantle on. And the mantle went on to Joshua. Do you think the people, the Israelites have seen these wonderful miracles of God? They've heard about it. Do you think they would not have thought, okay, you know what? Even Joshua must be able to do these wonderful miracles. Even Joshua must be able to minister to the people the same way Moses did. They would have thought that. Why? Because Moses laid the foundation. The same way in the church. When we lay a good foundation, that's going to continue on stronger and stronger. If you go to church that is united from day one, you say, hey, we're all united. It doesn't matter what language, what culture, what race, what work or our standing in society. All of this don't matter. When we enter the church, we are one body. We're all one. And so from the foundation stage, you're saying that. Imagine this and a church comes up to 300, 400 or 500 people. There's a sense of unity. Why? Because foundations are strong. Imagine this as a church in the initial pioneering stage. You say, you know, you're faithful with the money that God is giving you. You're being transparent. You're informing the church, okay, this is what we need for. This is what you're giving. This is how much we have received. This is what we have spent it for. You're being transparent and faithful with the money that God is placed in your hand. What will happen? Yours down the line, the foundation is strong. So people will continue to trust. And it's important that we keep that trust because foundation has been laid, right? So build a strong foundation. Sometimes, you know, we are in a hurry to start a ministry because it's exciting, right? Oh, I want to start. Yeah. But when you start, make sure that you have these principles set out. Make sure that as a person, as a leader, set certain guidelines, set yourself, right? Have rules and guidelines that you yourself, you and I should follow. Right? This is what I will do. If this situation comes, this is what I will do. Or if the enemy comes up with this kind of a situation, this is what I will stand with. Right? You set certain guidelines, set boundaries for your own life and don't cross over those boundaries. Remember, as a leader, right? When we start the church, it is our life and character that is very important. Our life and character will speak, right? So this is, you know, we must dig deep and lay a good foundation. Right? Second one, administrative, organizational and structural stage. Now, when church has just begun, you may have 20, 30 people, 50. But the moment you go above 50 people, now I'm just giving an example, right? 50 people. You and I have to assign roles and responsibilities. We need to define systems and processes to make sure that the church is functioning effectively. Right? Understand this, the church is also an organization. Right? It's not a business, but it's an organization. You need to organize it the right way. We must have good administrative skills to handle it. Right? Did Moses and his team have good administration skills? Definitely. Were they able to organize this whole, you know, millions of people? They were able to organize. They had structures in place. They knew that, okay, when this tribe goes, the second tribe will be this. Okay? And this is the trumpet. They will stay back. This is the trumpet to gather the leaders. This is the trumpet to move on. So everything was organized. Right? And even if you look at the Levitical Offerings, organized. It was not like anybody could come and give their offerings. No, there was different kinds of offerings. Very organized, right? There was the guilt offerings, sin offering, pain offering, grain offering. Every offering had certain rules and guidelines. There was, it was already set in place. And you look at the New Testament, in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus himself, he had an administration to help people. He organized them. One of them was, you know, would keep the money. Right? Judas himself, right? Okay. So probably he went to Judas and said, Judas, we just went to, you know, Samaria and we came back. What was the amount that we spent? I'm sure Jesus would have asked, right? He would have kept a track of what's happening. Right? It may not be given in the Bible, but I'm sure Jesus would have done it. Okay. So this is what we have got from the funds that have been given by the people. And this is what we spent on our food and our shelter. And this is the money that we blessed others with. So what is remaining now? He would have had administration, right? Now, it is very important to assign roles and responsibilities for various ministries that the Lord may release in our midst, right? Now, as you assign these roles and responsibilities, right? Now, for example, you've got 50 people in your church. The church is growing. And then suddenly there's an opportunity to start, let's say children's church. Say, okay, we're going to start children's church because 50 families are coming. We have about 10 children. Let's start children's church. What are you going to do? You know, as a pastor, you have to have the right people to teach children's church. We cannot teach in the main church and go back to the children's church. So what must I do? I need to raise up the right people, raise up the right leaders. Okay, for children's church, we will assign two people. These are the two, maybe it could be a husband and wife or it could be just two people who will, two leaders who will look after the children's church. Now, remember that in the initial phase, it's not always we'll get trained people, you know, who've gone through all the trainings now. Look at people, they are faithful. It gives them opportunities, right? And they learn, they grow on the job, right? While they're doing it, while they're preparing, they will learn, right? So, so assign a children's church coordinator. Then your church is growing, you've got 70, 100 people. In those 100, you've got 30 people. Who are you? Okay, so 30 youth, they can't just be sitting in the church and going back home. But we need to have some youth meetings. We need a youth leader, somebody who can recognize, right? What's happening in the, you know, just walk with them, understand them, you know, at their wavelength. So we assign a youth leader. So this youth leader is going to look after all the youth. He can have youth meetings, all the other things, right? And this youth leader must also look, you know, be accountable to the main pastor, the senior pastor, right? So you've got, now you've got senior pastor, you've got children's church coordinator, and you've got a youth pastor, right? Now, as the church grows, you'll get 150 people. Now, you have about 60 youth. So you understand, okay, the youth leader must be able to, youth pastor must be able to start youth leaders, to have about two or three youth leaders who can also minister to everyone, who can oversee the youth as well, right? So we put processes in place, right? So what happens is even if you're small, 100 people, when you put these processes in place, as you grow, you will know how to handle the situations. You will know how administratively you'll be very strong. Now, hey, this is, and even as you do this, you will understand and learn, okay, this thing work, this doesn't work, right? So you can make improvements, but you set processes in place, right? Then for example, there's an opportunity to plant a new church. So again, you do the same thing what you do in pioneering stage. You set up, you ask the church, okay, let's have a core team, right? Five people go out, reach out, minister to people there, be there to pray, locate an area, plant the church, right? So what happens is even if your church becomes 1000 people, administratively everything is strong, right? So what do we do? Let me give you a few examples. What do we do at APC, right? Now, this is just examples, but you can come up with your own ideas and solutions and ways to be administratively strong. Now, if you've seen the structure, what we have is senior pastor, associate pastors, ministry leaders, volunteer leaders and congregation, right? So that's a structure in place. Now, for example, you know, we want to hire something for an event, right? This is an example, right? We want to hire, you know, tables and we need to order food. We're having a one-day conference, right? So what do we do? Number one, so for example, right? I look after even the men's ministry at APC. So let me give you an example. If we have a one-day men's conference, what are we going to do? Number one, okay, we set the date. We know the date, okay. This is the date, September 15th men's conference. It's already gone out in the calendar, right? So firstly, I need to send the message to the congregation, right? So I'm just giving you a structure, okay? So we have many things in place. You don't have to follow all of it, right? But these are structures which really helped us, right? Over time, it's happened. So first is there's an e-mailer called save the date, right? So an e-mail goes to the entire congregation saying men's conference, September 15th, save the date. That's nothing more than that. Two is it goes out on the Sunday announcements, video announcements. Even as it goes out, then the following week is the message, WhatsApp message to the all the men of APC. The WhatsApp message will include the registration link, the price and all the details, right? Four, the IT team prepares for all the, you know, all the registrations that happen. It goes via online and there's also some who would like to pay in person at the venue. So we leave that option open, right? So registration start. Then in the middle, after a week or so, we send one more message saying a gentle reminder if you haven't registered for the men's conference, please go ahead and register. And then finally, we, you know, a couple of days before the event, we send them an appreciation thing. Thank you for registering for the conference and we just, we send the details. Okay, here is the conference. This is the timing. This is the agenda and everything is set in place. So for the conference, now that I know the conference is happening, I know that I'm going to have about 100 people coming for the conference. So I need to set teams. So we have sound and setup. You have the IT team, you have the media team, you have the graphics team. There's so much that happens, right? So all of these teams are involved for one conference, right? And as a ministry leader, what I do is I send budget approvals, right? So this is the budget for the conference, right? It's going to cost about this much. We get approvals for that budget. So why is all this needed? Everything is done on email, right? It's documented. Why is all this needed? So that administratively, we are strong. We know, okay, this is the structure. The moment we think, okay, there's a conference coming, these are the things involved. And everything runs smoothly. Nobody's going to say, oh man, who's going to do PPT for the conference? No, it's all arranged maybe a month before. We know who's going to do PPT. Who's going to be involved in the food coupons? We know a month before. It's already ready, right? Who's going to be helping with the parking of cars? And we know all teams are set in place administratively. It is organized. It's already set in place, right? Now, I'm not saying that when we started APC itself two, three years down the line, we were so strong. Over time, we were able to come up with these strategies and ideas. But this e-mailer, the WhatsApp bulk messages were done from 2001. 2001, from the time we started, we used to send e-mailer, right? So it's not something new. So we do it even now, right? 22 odd years later, we still do it. E-mailers, bulk messages sent, right? So what happens is there is organized, it is structured. Everything we do is structured. Even if you look at a church service, it's structured. We start at 10.30, 10.30 worship, 9.15. Of course, even as we're structured, we do open, keep it open for the Lord to minister. There are times we may extend, so we're not too stringent on that. But we have a structure in place, right? I hope everyone is getting what I'm saying, right? It's not that you have to do it this way initially, but it's good. It's good to start small. If you have a youth leader, right? You have 20 youth or 50 youth under that youth pastor. Crain the pastor. Let them see organizationally, this is what we will do. In the year, there will be one youth camp and two youth meetups. Camp will be for three days, or two days or three days. Youth meetings will be a half yearly. So what are you doing? You're setting it in place. So you're telling the youth pastor, this is how you should do it. And the youth pastor goes ahead and raises up leaders to make sure all of this structure is followed, right? It may look complicated, but it's really not, right? If you're used to it, you know, you get used to something, you keep doing it helpful. And you know what happens is your work becomes fruitful. It's not like, you know, you have a conference. You have 100 people, but hey, I thought 200 will come. I've ordered food for 200 people. Oh, you know, 100 people are coming. So you order food for 100 people. There's no wastage, right? There's no waste of food, no waste of money done well, right? So new ministries can be birthed by the Spirit in two ways. Look at that here. The Lord gives a vision of what needs to be done. And as you declare that vision, God stirs up people and they step into the role to carry it out, right? So for example, you're at church. God gives you a vision. You know, God is calling us. I feel that God is ministering to us and He wants us as a church to reach out to the corporate sectors. Example, right? Reach out to the corporate. Those who are light in the society, reach out to the corporate. So you begin to put that vision out. Out of the 100 people in a church, God may speak to one or two of them who are in the corporate sector. Maybe I wish I could do something. They'll come and speak to you. You know, I wish I could do something. Is there something that I can do? I'm available. Saturdays, I'm free. Monday to Friday, if you feel there's something that I can do. A new ministry can be birthed out of it. Well, God can speak. The pastor may say, you know, I feel that God is calling us to minister to the home for the aged, to reach out to them, to be a help to them. God can open a door. A new ministry can be birthed. Colleges, schools. The same way, right? So that is one way to the Lord may raise up or send people with certain gifts and callings and you recognize these gifts and callings and give them opportunity. And so what are the two ways? One way is you share the vision. God ministers to people's heart and they come in, you know, they want to align with that. Who is every people in your church and you see the potential. You see the gifts and the callings and the things that they can do. And as a pastor, you recognize it and you get them too. You know, it's not like you're saying you have to do it. You give them the opportunities. I remember this young man in church, this young boy, right? He would come to church and immediately after church, he would run away. So this one day, this is not in Bangalore and another city. And this one day, I decided I need to speak to this boy. So immediately after church, I went up to him and I said, hey, you always run, you know, you're always in a hurry. What do you do? You know, I began to talk to him any reason. He said, no, I'm very shy. You know, I don't like to talk to many people. And he was a young boy and he was very shy because we had a lot of youth in our church, boys and girls. So he was very shy. It's okay. It's all right, right? It's a natural thing to be shy. I could understand that, right? So I said, okay, don't worry. Why don't you come just stay around? Maybe some of them, some of the boys and the girls are there. You can just talk, just get to know each other. Or why don't you come for a youth meeting? And so he came for the youth meeting, right? One of the youth meetings, he stayed back. He really liked it. And what I understood was this boy was a brilliant drummer. He has been playing drums from the time he's six years old, right? There was a drum kit in the church, but nobody was there to play, right? And so after the youth meeting, he just sat on the drum kit and he started playing the drums so well. So I asked him, hey, you're a drummer. He said, yeah, I've been playing for quite some time now. And he was really good. And then we got him to audition. He got through. And he started playing drums in the church every Sunday. Finally, he ended up becoming a youth leader, right? And he started teaching others music. And he was the first one in the church. He would open the church. He would do everything in the church. The first one to run away, right? Sometimes, you know, people will not understand what is there inside of them, right? And as pastors and leaders, we need to be sensitive. You say, hey, this person can. This person has the potential to be, you know, maybe to do the declaration or maybe to start a life group, a cell group or, you know, or to, you know, potential to be a leader in this area. We recognize and we give them opportunities, right? So again, this recognizing, even as we choose people, right? It's important that we train them, right? So for example, what I do is I also look after life group ministries that is cell groups. So all the life groups, whether you are 10 years in the Lord, 20 years in the Lord, one month in the Lord, every life group leader will have to go through the life group leaders training. They have to go through it, right? And go through the life group leaders training and only then they get become a life group leader. We don't just randomly say, okay, start your life group. No, they go through a training, right? So these are certain guidelines that we have set and we follow it because it's good, right? And last one here, establish a reproducible model so that new church plans can replicate these things and start, right? So if this is what I'm following in this church, when I have a new church plan, I will follow the same way because I see that there is fruit, right? Now, again, when you start a church plan, it's not that initially you'll, if you will have like conferences and all of it, it may take some time. It may take some time to have a youth leader. There's no point of having a youth leader when you have five people in church or 10 people. It needs to grow, needs to come to a certain place, but you replicate the whole thing, right? So one of the things that we do at all our locations is the same. So most of you may have watched our service online, right? The service, the central service. It is the same thing that happens at all our locations. And so, for example, starts with worship. The pastor comes up, the Lord's table. Announcements, it's a couple of announcements we reiterate. If there is baby dedication or anything we do at that time, declaration, the word of God, ministry time close, same pattern. So if you go to any of our locations, APC location, any location, it is the same thing. All the locations have a welcome team, sound and setup team, first-time visitor, ushering team. We follow the same process for the first-time visitors. We have, you know, offering, counting, team, same thing. All locations, right? Why? Because the first one was good. Organizationally, it was good. It was fruitful, it was effective. Follow the same thing at all locations, right? Rosalind has a question. If the Life Group training, is the Life Group training available on the APC website for us to go through? So Rosalind, we have a document for the Life Group leaders training. We don't have the document on the website, but what will happen is next semester, we have a topic called discipleship in small groups. And so you'll learn more on that, right? How to disciple in small groups. So, but to answer your question, we don't have the Life Group training manual on the website. Yeah, so it's only when people or Life Group leaders want to start, we take them through the training, we share the document, and yes. But if you'd like to, I can just email it to you separately, personally, if you'd like, if you really want to go through it, I can send it to you, no problem. So everyone with me, administrative organizational structure, right? This will really set the stage for a beautiful, effective, powerful ministry, set this administrative things in place. Now, what about, you know, areas where you are leading? You may not be a pioneer. It's all right. So for example, the church, there are 100 people in your church and the pastor says, hey, why don't you be the worship coordinator? I want to be the coordinator of the worship team. So then it gives you an opportunity to come up with a strategy, come up with being organized, right? And I'm sure you'll learn more in worship ministry as well on how to, you know, raise up good teams, right? That's a sign of a good leader. Okay, so now that you have everything set in place, right? This is how we'll do it administratively as an organization. This is how we are. This is the structure we follow. Youth leaders or team leaders will always report to the associate pastors, associate pastors report to the senior pastors. This is a structure in place. Now, third one, pastoral team stage, team ministry and senior pastor stage, right? Now, as you, as a leader, as a pioneer, you know, it's so interesting when, and it's such a joy to see your church grow and you see young boys and girls, all of a sudden they're growing into maturity, not all of a sudden, but over time they're growing into maturity and suddenly five years, ten years down the line, ten years have passed. You've got a five-year-old boy, oh, see, you've got an eight-year-old boy sitting in Sunday school. Ten years have passed and this boy is 18 years old now. You see that he's matured, he's grown up and he becomes a leader in the church, right? Now, what must we do? Very important, establish a leadership team to carry out several areas of ministry. As the church grows, the ministries will grow, the doors will open, new ministries start and that's good, right? There are times as leaders we must, you know, you know, here's the thing, we can choose certain ministries and some ministries we can say wait, right? Again, we need to be led by the Holy Spirit for that. But establish leadership teams for the ministries, right? We talked about it, right, whether it's youth, life groups, men's ministry, women's ministry, teens ministry, children's church, established teams. Remember that we cannot do everything on our own. Ministry is not a single, it's not a single-handed work. You need teams, right? Now, why do we need teams? Because if one person is not, imagine this, you are a church of 200 people. You've got about 70 children or keep 50 children in the children's church and if you have one children's church teacher, that children's church teacher is unwell on Sunday and cannot come. What are the children's church do? Playtime. No, we should have a team. So, okay, if they are not there, somebody else can take over. Or picture this, you have sound and set up. You know that you have to go early morning, church starts at 10 o'clock, you should be there at least by 7 o'clock, set up all the equipment. So, by 9, 9, 15, you're done. The worship team comes, there's sound check, 10 o'clock, you're able to start service. Now, imagine you have two people in sound and set up. How much can two people do? You've got speakers, you've got mics, you've got stage monitors, right? You've got the mixer, you've got to lay out all the cables. There's a lot of work. And if they are not there, say, they say, hey, I'm traveling this week. I'm going out to station to my hometown. And you've got one person in the sound and set up team. What will happen? It's going to be chaos, right? Number one thing, raise up ministry teams. Raise up teams. If you look at what the apostle Paul did, we're talking about this in the book of Thessalonians, the letter he wrote. See Paul, first missionary journey, he chose Barnabas. And then from there, he built teams. Second missionary journey, Paul, Timothy, and Silas. Paul and Silas later joined by Timothy, right, teams. And then they further on went and built other teams, right? So teamwork is important, right? So one of the things that we always do is, if you have noticed, if you've watched online, if you see our video announcement that says volunteers needed every now and then we put it up because there are volunteers needed. We have at APC, we have about 350 volunteers across all locations, 350 volunteers. You may be wondering, what do they do? They do a lot of work. The most of it are done, most of the work is done by the volunteers, right? So we just, we go there, we preach, right? And then we minister to people, but a lot of the background work is done by the volunteers. If not for them, we'll not be able to have an effective experience in the church, right? All the teams involved. So when you start teams, when you have team, new ministries and new leaders, train your leaders to form teams. Because if we don't train them, the leader will feel, I can handle this on my own. He or she may be able to handle it on his own, but there'll come a time that ministry also will grow and then we must have a team to handle it. But he cannot say, okay, this is what I will do. I, you know, since I can't, I'm not there. Today we'll not have service. We can't say that. We must be strong. We must be able to form teams. And as you form these teams, the founding pastor goes into the senior pastor role, right? So he gives overall vision, growth, direction, okay, what to do. And now this stage may happen after three years. It may happen after five years. It may happen after 10 years, right? But it, but it will happen, right? It will happen as a founder, as a pioneer of the ministry. There'll come a time, right? That new ministries will start, new locations you may start. And then you'll move into this place of bringing overall oversight, right? If you look at what Moses did, right? He did all, you know, he was doing a lot of things and then his father-in-law came and said, why are you handling all of this? Don't you have teams? Don't you have leaders who can handle all of this? You must be more, you know, towards preparing and hearing from God and doing the ministry side of it. Why are you doing all these small things? People have, you know, the Israelites were fighting with each other. They had problems, what problems? Small problems. Now these small problems, they're coming to Moses. He took my things or she took my things, you know, small things they are fighting for. Moses is standing there and trying to solve these problems. That's when Moses' father-in-law comes and says, why are you doing this? You appoint leaders and you go and be in God's presence and you give overall vision and overall direction for what the Israelites must do, right? So it's a biblical thing. Continuously create opportunities and rooms for developing leaders and who are committed to the vision that God has given. Now here's the point. For senior leaders, pioneers, spend time nurturing new believers, right? It involves time. It involves patience. It involves being able to speak into their lives, right? So for example, we have a new leader, right? The church has 150 people appointed a youth leader and he does something wrong, right? So how are we going to nurture them? How are we going to correct them? Are we going to say, hey, this is a big mistake. You're out of this role. Because of opportunities, hey, they're learning. They just step into a new role. So we nurture them. We train them. We develop them, spend time with them. Now, all of these efforts is something we must do. If we want a good team, we have to speak into their lives. We have to build them up, right? We have to be able to come to a place where they are willing to hear because they've seen our lives. They've seen the fruit in our lives. They've seen the ministry working. And so be able to understand. This is the last point and we'll close. The more trust you give, the more faithful your leaders will be, right? The more you trust your people, your leadership, the more faithful they be. If you keep treating them like school children, did you do this? Did you do that? No. Give them responsibilities. Give them the role that they have to do. Give them the training that they require and tell them, hey, this is what needs to be done. And help them to get it done. Put your faith in them. Put your trust in them. Jesus did that to his disciples. And we'll see, we'll pick up more from next class and we'll continue on this. But yeah, so thank you so much. I know I've been talking a lot. I don't get time to hear from you all, but we'll definitely take some time, one of the classes to just hear your thoughts as well. Thank you so much for listening through this class. God bless you. Have a great week ahead. Yes, Rosalind. If you can just share your email address. I think I should have it. So I'll email the document. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a great day ahead. God bless.