 Okay. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the course PC 309 on urban church planting. We're going to take a moment and then we will want to pray and then we'll get started. Could somebody please pray with us and then we will get started in a while. Anybody could pray? Please go ahead. Thank you for this beautiful day and beautiful time, Father God. In your presence and going through all these classes, Lord, as we are going through this particular class, urban church, God, we ask you, Lord Jesus, as we are learning, as we are pursuing through your work, God, help us to understand, Father God, help us to be with you, Lord Jesus, Father God, so that we can get the things which you want us to get. Father God, we submit, Pastor Asis and all the students to your mighty hand, Father God, be in your being so that we will be in your presence and God. And do what you do, Father God. Thank you. We submit the whole thing to your mighty hand and we ask you to pray in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, so we've been talking about the various stages of growth and development in our course here on urban church planting. Let me just share the PDF. So we're still in lesson number 14, growth and consolidation. We were just explaining, you know, different things that we have to look for as we start pioneering a work and then we're talking about different stages, you know, what happens as that work grows and how we, as leaders and along with the team, how we need to continue to grow the work or nurture the work. Yesterday, we were focusing mainly on stage two, which has to do with the organizational administrative or structural stage. These are just, you know, terms we've given to show what would be the main thing that we need to focus on as we transition. And some of the things that we were talking about yesterday was how God leads us to birth new ministry, you know, as you're pioneering the work and you're getting started. Of course, there will be things that God has put in your heart as a leader and maybe in the team and the initial team. But then God can also, you know, God will surely also send people with different gifts and calling and you recognize them. You know, maybe you create opportunities for them. You let them, you know, take charge of various ministries. So that's how the ministries will happen in the local church that you're pioneering. You yourself or maybe the few leaders with you will not be able to do everything. So you have to, you know, recognize the people God is sending and welcome them and give them the opportunities to do it. The last thing I just wanted to mention or emphasize here as we are moving into this structural stage of the organizational part, things are coming in place, is always think about creating a reproducible model. That means, you know, whatever you're doing in this church that you are pioneering or the ministry that you are starting, created in such a way that it can be easily reproduced or replicated if the Lord leads you to plant more churches or, you know, start branches of that ministry. And typically when we see, you know, when we look at a city, we said, you know, the cities are so big that just one church plant is not going to, you know, serve that many people. You would need many church plants in the city or same thing with the ministry. And then not only in that city itself, but you could also, you also have the opportunity of replicating other cities in that country or other urban centers. So with that in mind, trying to create a reproducible model. That means what you're doing here as you're pioneering the church to be easily replicated in other places. And if, you know, so for example, the way we have been able to do it here in Bangalore is, of course in the initial, initially we started one location, but then it was very easy for, you know, we then planted, you know, one in the south and then later one in, in Bangalore, which was another city is not too far from Bangalore. And then we also did one in the north, that not part of our city, Bangalore. And later on when we wanted to start one of the east part of our city, one of the west part of our city, it was very easy. We just, from the core team, that was from the people who were in the central church. He said, okay, this team, you go and start in the east and here are some of you, you go and start in the west. And they just knew what to do because they just replicated the model, replicated what they were already doing. They just went, the team that went there, they just went in and did exactly the same. That's how we do everything. So it was so easy. And today we kind of maintain some sort of a model, a certain way of doing things across all of these six locations, five in Bangalore and one in Bangalore, we follow the same thing. Now, of course, these are all English congregations, English speaking congregations, so we are able to do that. But the point I want to emphasize is, whatever you're doing in your first church plant or in the ministry that you're starting, do it in such a way that it can be replicated, reproduced. If there's a team of people going from here, they just are very clear in their mind how we are supposed to do this and it can be reproduced. Now, I'm not saying it shouldn't be adapted into a new place. Of course, you can always adapt, but at least you have a good starting point. You've got some good lessons that you've learned from the initial work, which can be used reproducibly in other locations that are similar, like for similar congregations to church plants. So think about that and if you can make it very clear in the minds of people, then it can be easy to reproduce. And we will talk a little bit later about a new church plant. So now we move to the third stage. So as you have started raising up, giving some structure to what is happening, the next stage is to build leaders. So you are now thinking about team. So starting from the past total level. So initially, pioneering, you were there and there was a core team of people with different skill sets who were supporting and everything. You're pioneering. Now, you went into the organization stage, you're seeing new ministries come, the work is beginning to expand very good, but you need to reproduce leadership at all levels. Starting from the pastoral team and the various teams that are there, you need to raise up more and more leaders. Now, depending on where you are doing this pioneering work, the dynamics of what is happening can be different. For us in Bangalore, in the city of Bangalore, for us what we have noticed is our church or the people in our congregation are very mobile. They don't usually stay in Bangalore for a long period of time. A lot of them, let's say, they would come in here as maybe as college students. They would get a job, they would start working, they would get married, and then shortly after that they would relocate. Most of them would travel overseas. So our congregation has been, we've seen that through and through. So numerous people have come in, they've been developed as leaders, and then they go somewhere else. They go to some other parts of the world, which is a good thing. I mean, it's a good thing for them, for their lives and their future, and they are able to serve in other parts of the world, which is wonderful. But that also means we've got to constantly keep developing leaders at all levels. For example, even those who are part of our pastoral team have moved to other parts of the world. So we'll have to raise up our new people as part of the pastoral team. We've then leaders in different ministry areas. For example, there were people who are leading marketplace ministers. One moved to Australia, one moved to Paris, and now there's somebody else leading it. And then we don't know what will happen, and maybe they may move, or whatever. The different ministry areas, leaders are developed, they move. So you'll constantly keep developing leaders. Now, if all the leaders paid at APC, we would have huge, huge numbers of people and lots of things happening. The dynamic is different here. We have a constantly, upwardly mobile, professionally moving people, so which is good. They get trained, they get equipped, they have experience, they have a wonderful experience, and then they move to different parts of the world. But in this stage, your goal is to raise up leaders. And at all levels, so at the pastoral team level, you have to look for people that you want to be part of your pastoral team so that you can have more than yourself, more than one person, you know, ministering and teaching and doing the pastoral ministry. Then you need leaders in various ministry areas. You need leaders, even in all of the volunteer teams and so on. And you need to create this opportunity constantly developing leaders. Now, this is not easy, right? Because definitely you need to have leaders you can trust. You need leaders who when you entrust something, you know that they will do it well. They will be good stewards. They will be faithful to the church and the congregation and the people. And so it's not always easy. And then, of course, you need to be able to provide feedback to the leaders. You need to be able to, you know, correct them, nurture them, so on and so forth. So it's not an easy thing, but it is very important. So your role as a pastor becomes more of nurturing as many leaders as possible and letting them do the work of the ministry in caring for the congregation and so on. Of course, you will have certain amounts of work to do care for the congregation. The people, but more of it is being done through the leaders you are developing. And your focus is on developing the teams, the leaders. And so you're moving more into, you know, what people would prefer to the senior pastor role or that kind of a role where your goal is to nurture more leaders. Now, I'm not spending a lot of time here talking about nurturing leaders. You know, you have a course on Christian leadership. I think this semester or next semester, forget that you will focus on, you know, the whole aspect of Christian leadership. But let me say that, you know, as this church that you have started, your pioneering is developing, you also need to shift. You also need to change in your emphasis what you are doing. Your goal will be, I need to raise up more leaders. And like I said in an earlier class, I think, you know, look at leaders at different age levels. So what helps for me is I think of a set of leaders who are in their 40s. Another set of leaders who are in their 30s. Another grouping of leaders who are in their 20s. So you're intentionally developing leaders, you know, at various age levels. So that, you know, they will mature, they will rise up into higher levels of leadership in what's happening and always have a pool of leaders that you are developing. Okay. So before I just jump into the next stage, number three, any questions on that? Any thoughts, any questions there? Questions? All right. Let's move forward. So from that stage, as a leader and as a team that's overseeing this work, you transition into an equipping stage. Now, of course, when you move into a new stage, remember you don't stop doing the things you were doing before. That means, you know, whatever, the good thing, the foundation you laid in the pioneering, those kinds of things will continue. What you did in the structure, the organizational stage, those ministries, the ministry that you started, they will continue. Then the leaders you've developed, of course, they will continue. But now you, number stage number four is where the whole congregation is being mobilized into ministries. Now, that means it's not just about the church planting team. It's no longer about the senior pastor. It's no longer just about the leaders, but now it is about the entire church being mobilized, being equipped, being encouraged. So you're now changing. It's changing now. So the goal, of course, this is what God wants, right? He wants God wants the whole church to come into that place of maturity, where all the things are equipped to do the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ. And so you begin to think of in those lines, it's not about just the leadership doing ministry. How can we get more people involved? How can we get more people mobilized for ministry, men and women? How can they serve within the church? How can they serve outside the church? How can they go on missions? And just do the things that God has called to do. So the goal is to get everyone involved, everybody in the church. So you need to begin to equip the people that way. And then you need to create opportunities that way. And believers begin to minister. Believers are encouraged to minister. How would we do that? Some of the things that we are doing, because we don't stop the stage. We're still engaged in this. For instance, we do weekend schools. So every month, one Saturday, we do weekend schools. And we repeat these topics on ministering, healing and deliverance, on lifestyle evangelism, on understanding the prophetic, on the gifts of the Spirit. We keep on repeating it throughout the year. And we just keep it open. So some people will come and attend. Sometimes they will attend two or three times. But what we are telling is, look, we want to equip every believer in all of these things. We encourage you to come. So believers come and they are equipped. We create opportunities for people to serve in the church. We create opportunities for people to go out on missions. So they go out on missions. We just restarted and resumed our missions work. Just last week, there was a team of three people. They traveled to one of our three churches. They were ministering there. Young people. And they came back. And then, you know, other mission trips are planned for this year. And then more will happen next year. So we just restarted the mission. But moving church people. I mean, you go on mission trips. Whoever wants to go. And the people are beginning to step in and begin to go out. So the goal now is the whole church is being equipped to engage in ministry. Ultimately, believers will be ministering to one another. And to the world outside. So it's missions happening. The whole church catches the vision for missions. And everybody is excited, you know, of being involved in missions. They are willing to go out and share. So that's the equipping stage, right? So getting everybody involved in what's going on. So this will come over time, right? It's not going to happen the first year or the second year. You know, and there is no set timeline for all of these things to happen. As a person who's planting the church, leading the church, you're a new and a core team, you need to be sensitive to, you know, the transition, the church, where is the church? And how do we move them into the next stage? And lastly, you know, hopefully, you know, we say every word we start can reach the stage. We, you know, we just calling it an apostolic stage. That means now you're going to expand and step into new territory for the kingdom of God. That means you're going beyond. So the initial church plant may have been for one particular region. But now you're saying, okay, let's go beyond our own region. Let's go to other cities. Let's go to other cities in the nation. Let's go across and beyond our own nation. It's reproducing the work in the region and beyond. So that's an apostolic mindset. So now we create that in the mind of believers. So believers are also thinking and they're also ready to go to new places. You know, they're not saying, okay, I just want to stay here. This is a nice place. No, they're thinking in terms of, hey, how can I take what is happening here? Take it to a new place where this is not happening. Take it to a new place where the churches need it. Take it to a new place where, you know, God's people need to receive the word. So the whole church is thinking like this. They're thinking they have an apostolic mindset. They are thinking in terms of gaining new grounds, taking new territory for the kingdom of God. Through what God is already doing in this place. So that is a great place to be. If the work you've started reaches stage five and is really strong here. You know, that is a good thing. That's a good journey to make. And from there, you know, it's constantly growing. And a work that is constantly growing and reproducing itself will always keep thriving. It will never die of wine because it's reproducing itself. It's constantly growing. There's always that life that is happening in that church. So ultimately think about becoming self-sustaining, financially stable, and also in terms of leadership and people that are being developed. If that is happening on an ongoing basis, that is amazing. Any thought, any questions so far? All right, a sequence, Christopher's question. So please explain second Timothy chapter three, verses 16 and 17. So any particular part of this verse that you want to explain, Christopher, the offer of proof and for correction. Yeah, so the word reproof simply means to give evidence or conviction. You could use another word for the proof as conviction and correction. Correction means if somebody is going off track, going off the path, you bring them onto the path. So the word of God serves for doctrine, establishing people in the right teaching, doctrine for the proof, which is to give them conviction in their hearts about what is right and wrong, what is of the spiritual truth, conviction, and for correction, just get them back on track. So that is part of what we need to do constantly. So through every stage of what we're doing, we're ministering the word. And as the word is being ministered, it will serve different purposes in the lives of people. It will establish them in God's truth, doctrine. It will establish them with the conviction of the truth. It may correct people. It also teach them how to live right inside. And then people are equipped to serve God, to do every good work. So the ministry of God's word is very important. Anything else? Any other questions so far? Okay, class is very quiet today. Let's go forward. Fine. So we talked about different stages of growth and development. I think the point I would want to emphasize is that as a church plan, or as a person pioneering or leading the pioneering work, you need to understand or discern where the congregation is and keep moving them into the next level. Keep taking them up. The tendency is for people to stay comfortable where they are, especially if you've reached stage two or stage three. Everybody, okay. Yeah, everything looks good. I think they're happening. That's very comfortable. To stage four and five are the uncomfortable stages. Because now you're a challenging believer saying, believers who can't come and just sit in the seat, you have to be equipped to do the ministry. Oh, that's very disturbing because everybody likes comfort. We can come and sit here nicely and let's enjoy the worship and teaching. But the moment you say, hey, we've got to equip you to do the ministry, that's really uncomfortable. And then apostolic is, guys, we need you to leave. We need you to go out. We need you to think of taking new ground, impacting new things. That's again really uncomfortable. So really stages four and five are uncomfortable. So as a leader, you need to gently move the church from stage to stage and intensely direct the work and effort to the ministry to growing the church into an apostolic church. Lesson number 15. So now this is kind of a continuation of the last point of the apostolic stage where you can think of multiplication and branching. And hopefully every work you pioneer, whether it's a local church or a ministry, will multiply, will branch out, whether in the city or across into other cities and towns. But then for that to happen, what must you do? You've got to equip people. Remember, it's going to be through people. Without people, you cannot have additional congregations. So equip people. Envision them. Let them know that they can do the ministry. They can preach. They can teach. They can do it. Send out church planting teams. Empower people. Let them go out. Let them do it. And send them out. Now for new church plants, there are many ways you can do this. You can set up or you can encourage people to plant churches. You can build the plant churches that function completely independent. That means they're on their own. You just support them, help them get started and function independently. Or you can have a model where you function as one church with many congregations. That's kind of what we are doing in Bangalore. It's one church with many congregations. And as the Lord leads, we could plant more congregations. Or you can use the satellite campus model where, you know, it's one pastor who's preaching through connectivity, through connection, live streaming across many campuses in the city. That also is possible. But, you know, we chose not to do this here, the third one, because we felt that doing the second approach would give opportunity for more people to participate, more leaders to be raised and so on and so forth. So we intentionally chose a model where every church has its own associated pastor and teams and people are leading. So we can have many more leaders raised up. The satellite campuses that here just one person preach in all the campuses, the emphasis too much on that one pastor. If one is wrong, we just chose not to follow that model. So there are many options in which you can have multiple churches in the church plant in the same city. You find out what works well for you, how the Lord leads you, and then you can plant additional congregations in the same city. Then you can also think of planting churches in other cities and towns. Again, for this to happen, you have to equip people. And for us, the Bible College has become a major way by which we plant churches in other cities and towns. Every church that we have started across India, outside of Bangalore, is pasted by somebody who studied with us here or was trained with us here. So that's how we plant churches. We choose not to adopt churches, but we choose to equip people and then they go out and they plant churches. So again, we do the same thing. We equip the people. We do this to our Bible College. We envision them, then we send them out. And then we, of course, we give them the option. You can work as, you can set up as an outreach church. You can be a part of APC. So it'll be APC called by that name of that city, whatever. Or if you want to go and start your own church, work independently, that's fine. You know, we can help them do that as well, release them to do it. However they want. So all our outreach churches are churches that carry the name APC, APC by the name of the city. That helps us, of course, when people ask us, you know, do we have a church here that we just pointed to that particular church in that city? So we can plant churches in other cities. And then, of course, there is a system for oversight and nurture. So every month, all our outreach passes, they connect online. That usually happens on the third Saturday of the month. So we all connect online. And of course, Barton and Sieg oversees them. And so they have a time for fellowship. And then once a year, we bring them all to Bangalore. They come and then we spend time together again in conference in the word of God in prayer and so on. Then from here, we send people into all these churches to minister. So there's a lot of spiritual oversight and nurture that we give to all of these churches that have been planted in other cities and towns. So they are strengthened. They are empowered. Of course, they are all financially supported from our church here in Bangalore. So we help them financially and they grow. So you can think of what model works for you. But the point is, when you have pioneered a church, the goal is to grow it and then see how it can be reproduced in your own city and also in other cities or towns across the country. Okay. Any questions so far? Everybody with me so far? Any questions? Okay. So now we have journeyed through the natural aspects so far. That means starting from, you know, we talked about doing a survey of the place to how do you go about getting in there? What are the things you look at in getting your work started? How do you, you know, do the initial launch? How do you reach out to people? What are the strategies you can have for evangelism in that area? How do you, especially if you're in an urban setting, how do you equip people to impact or influence the seven steers, seven mountains? And then also how do you take that work, which you started, into further stages of growth and development? And then how do you branch out and plant more churches? So we went from doing a survey all the way to planting branch churches. All of this we talked about from a practical side, a practical way of doing things. And there are various things that go into doing it. Now we are going to transition. We're going to move into a totally different section, which is the spiritual side. What are the things you have to look at spiritually? How do you, you know, while you're doing all these practical things that we said, you know, you're doing your survey, you're finding the place, etc., etc. That's the practical side. But then there is a spiritual side to the church planting, to growing the church, to nurturing it and going forward. So we will get into the spiritual aspects next week. And then after we cover that, we go on to the third section, which is the personal life of the person who's going to pioneer. I kept that purposely towards the end because hopefully when we close this course, you will, you know, that would be the most important thing. That is, how do I get myself ready to be a pioneer? Somebody is going to start a work and because that requires certain, you know, certain preparation so that you can be ready to start the work. So I'm going to pause here for today and we will pick up next week and talk about the spiritual aspects of pioneering of church planting. How do you do that? What are the things we do in the spiritual side when we go into starting a work? So we're going to close in prayer if there are no questions, no comments. We will close. Everybody okay? All right. For those of you who may be planning, you know, maybe your plan is that after you finish, you know, your time of study with the Father College, that your next step is to start over, maybe plant a church or maybe start some kind of ministry. I want you to look at this section that we just gone through, you know, from chapter one till this lesson number 14, the practical things and then see how you can work through it for the ministry or the work that the church, that you want to pioneer. You start working on it, start thinking about it and say, like, this is what I can do and, you know, start praying over it. And then when you get in the spiritual side, you start working on the spiritual side as well. Okay. May I request somebody to please pray and then we will close in this. Somebody to pray with us at the time. Thank you. Anyone? Dear Heavenly Father, we pray to acknowledge what you mean. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We are praying at this point. We are praying. Thank you for leading us through all this class. Thank you for teaching us all the wonderful insights, Father. Thank you for each and every moment of your divine knowledge and leading Father. Thank you. I pray for the life of Pastor Ashish. Through him we are being blessed Father. Thank you so much. And thank you for every good things in our life. Let this all teachings remain with us through the end so that we can serve you and with you for the Father, according to your Holy Spirit. Thank you so much for this, for everything. And I give all glory and honor to your Holy Name. Thank you so much. I ask this prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you all. Thanks for being in the class today. See you again soon. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.