 Okay. The recording is on. Welcome back to the second lecture. Obviously 310 for class. Any questions on just communication? I know it's a very simple topic, I think complicated. But from the context of church and Christian ministry, any questions on that before we move forward? Okay. Go ahead. Sometimes people use the issues that are happening in the church congregation. In there is so much. And I've heard, I've heard things like that. And they feel it's a good example because the church knows it, which has people have seen it. But then is, I don't think it's actually right to use the first or the second word, what the person did in this moment. But I just want to know, is it right or is it wrong? Very good question. So the question is, in our preaching or Sunday, or preaching or, you know, in Sunday services or other public public settings, can we, or, you know, is it right to use examples of, in the names of people, incidents, things that are happening, or have happened as part of the sermon? Now, one is I never do it. I feel it's wrong to use, let me qualify that. In general, I don't do it. So that means, especially when it's, you know, a different, a difficult situation. So I would never mention a person's, a person's name, meaning people who we know, it's okay, we're talking about some historical figure or, you know, some Bible character, obviously, somebody in the congregation, somebody who's there. I wouldn't use that person's name. I wouldn't necessarily talk about that situation in as part of the sermon. So we never do that. The only time you would mention a person's name is if you want to celebrate that person. Oh, you know, John did such a wonderful job. He went on a mission trip. You know, he reached to somebody. If you want to celebrate a person, yeah, do it publicly. And if you really want to, okay, that is a good thing. Right. So yes, if you want to celebrate somebody celebrated, you know, there's something good they did. Yeah, you can mention that. Never to correct, to put people down to expose difficult situation. Never do that. So that's something. So those kinds of matters have to be dealt with privately one on one. Right. Now, what does the Bible say in 1 Timothy chapter 5? The Apostle Paul writes, he says, Do not receive an accusation against an elder, except in the mouth of two or three witnesses. So I'll give you the exact question. First Timothy chapter 5, yeah, verse 19, 20, 21. So he says, do not receive an accusation against an elder, unless they're two or three witnesses. And then he says, those who are sinning, they're new before all that others may learn and be correct. So if, especially like an elder, somebody in position of leadership, if they are doing something wrong, first thing is, I must deal with it privately. If there's an accusation, something wrong, I deal with privately, make sure that there are, you know, valid witnesses in actual general things. But if that person is continuing to sin, if that person is continuing to do something wrong, then I have to bring the matter in because those who are continuing to sin, they're new before all. But who is he talking about? He's talking about the elders, he's not talking about 8-bit church members. We can't just simply say, oh, that person is doing wrong with this person and talk about it in public to everybody. That's not the thing. The context is, if there's a person who's in spiritual leadership who is doing something wrong, deal with it privately, make sure that, you know, there are two or three witnesses, the case is general and you deal with it privately. If that person is continuing to sin, that person is in leadership and they're continuing wrongdoing, even after production, it's going to affect the community. So in that case, he says you address it. So in the last, you know, example, in the last 23 years of fasting, this church, APC, I think only once I've had, only once I've had to deal, address a matter of ability, but that was to explain a decision we made about work. Otherwise, we don't. We deal with it privately. Then we don't mention those things. Now, of course, the things that we do publicly are when we are appointing a new pastor or we are releasing a new pastor, those things, you know, actually this coming Sunday, one of our pastors is moving abroad. So yeah, we will do it publicly. We'll call him on stage, we'll announce and we will thank him. I've been saying, okay, he's served so many years. We are blessing him, he's moving abroad. Okay, so that those kind of things we do publicly. Yeah, but they're welcoming a new pastor released in the past. Or any transition, important transition that's happening. Yeah, those we do publicly. If you want to celebrate somebody, we do it publicly, but we never criticize, condemn, judge, individuals or partners. Because it's very harmful for people, you know, when we do those kinds of things, it hurts people, so it should do the work. Pastor, just a follow up, Christian, for that. Let's say we've had a comment from people or let's say there had been a discussion regarding some matters and if it, do we address the matter in sermon, not mentioning the name of the people? Let's say, for example, one, I'll mention two examples. One, Maria Person has given an interview to church and he did not qualify. And the next time when we talk about excellence and, you know, the importance of being excellent and not able to crack the interview, would that person get hurt or, you know, that is not, we are not mentioning about that person, but what if they try to connect with their incidents and think like that. Another example is this, I mean, recently happened, some people ask about giving holy communion to people who are not baptized. And when the next time any such kind of sermon comes, when we mention it, would that people get hurt? I mean, we are not mentioning anything, but if we address the question, wouldn't that people get hurt? Yeah. So, yeah. So what we need to do is just, you know, kind of use a little bit of wisdom. So if an example like this, let's take the first example, if there is a matter of, you know, like somebody interviewed, they didn't get in, but let's say the next Sunday you're talking about excellence or something. I think how we communicate it can be, we just communicated saying, you know, for all of us in all areas of life, in every kind of workplace, you know, people do expect excellence. So that means we, you know, because in our minds, it's very clear that I'm talking about excellence, but I'm not talking about that particular incident. For us, those two things are very separate. But we are also aware that there's somebody sitting in the congregation who might have a tendency to make that connection, which is not, we never intended for that. So we can be a little extra cautious in how we communicate that particular point in the sermon. If it's happening, you know, in close proximity to that incident, and it's part of the message, you're, you know, you happen to be speaking, okay, so just give it a little extra separation, you know, from that incident. That means what you're doing is you're being conscious that you don't want that individual or those individuals to think that, even think that you're connecting these two points, but it's very clear, you are not. So just, you know, say, okay, you know, you're making very broad, you're saying it's not just in terms of sitting, but in any situation where we are working is certain how we do want to pursue excellence. The other case when you're talking about communion, I think how we need to say what we need to say that it's okay, this is, you know, this is how we practice Holy Communion. And you know, you can do it again. In a way that, I mean, if people do the connection, it's, you know, it's not intentional, if they make the connection, they just leave it, you know, it's up to them to resolve it. It's not that we are intentionally doing it. Because our conscience is clear, our mind is clear, and we're going to present it in a way that is separate from that particular question or that particular incident. So I think we should not be a, you know, we don't need to fear that they might make a connection, but we can be wise. That means we can try to present it as distant from that particular incident and communicated in that way. I hope that helps. Yes, boss. Yes. Thank you. Now in some cases, I don't even bring it up. You know, for example, I tell you one, one difficult situation. And this happened many years ago. I forget which year, but so we had started our campus in south, APC south campus. We had started it. We were still small at that time. So, you know, I would say the congregation may have trained just 20, 30, something like that. So you're still small. And yet we had the congregations there in south Bangalore. Now what happened was one Friday evening in our primary thing, two men came. They met me on the thread. They said, Oh, we heard that you have a campus in the south of the city church there. And they said, Oh, we, these two men, brothers, they said, Oh, we want to start a ministry in the south. I said, Yeah, good. We need more churches in the south. Because that seems to be a big unreached part of our city. So that's great. And then they said, Yeah, we want to do healing services. So yeah, go ahead. And I just wanted to show some support. So I said, you know, if you go and start a church in the south of our city, be as APC, we will contribute 50,000 rupees to help you start it. It's our gift to you. We will give that to you to help you start a church, our ministry. So I made that commitment, the verbal commitment, saying we will help you. And these are like two people. I mean, I never met them really before this. They just came, they were talking as believers. Then they said, we want to start actually when they told them, first they didn't tell them what sort of church they said, we want to start a prayer meeting. I said, go ahead for it. Then they said, we want to start a healing service. And I said, go ahead and do it. Then they said, we want to start a church. I said, Yeah, go ahead. I made the commitment, you know, we will help you when you're 50,000 rupees will give you. And this was many years ago. So at that time, 50,000 rupees was a good amount to help them get started. And that's it. We prayed, we met after maybe two weeks after that meeting, I got all the information from our church people, people who are, you know, we have, we are congregations still very small. We are just, you know, in the early stages. And get information from people saying, hey, they were these two pastors, they're visiting all our churches, and they're coming to our people's homes, they're giving them prophecies, and they're telling them, see, your pastor doesn't even come and visit you in your house. Of course, I was not visiting people's homes, you know, that is very far away, and all those things. And they were telling people, you know, remove this thing from your house and take it out, and there was so much of confusion. And so at least two families, at least two, and I don't know about the details, at least two families called me and said, Hey, this is happening. How do we, what should we do? And I was so disturbed. Because these two people came in totally, they're going to start a church. I didn't expect them to go and disturb our church people, right? I thought they were going to go and start the church, do a new work. And I always promised to help them. But now the news I'm getting is they are disturbing people in our own congregation, and they're saying these kinds of bad things, putting down all of them. And I was like, Oh, God, what am I supposed to do? You know, it really disturbed me. But here's how I handled it. So for quite a few weeks, I was struggling with this. But I said, I'm not going to speak about this from the pulpit. I will not mention their names. I will not talk about them. I will not talk about this matter from the pulpit. I will just minister Cotsworth, just minister to the congregation, be quiet. And it was difficult, you know, because I knew there were two or three families in the congregation who were being disturbed by these people, disturbed by these people. But I said, I'm not going to talk about it. I don't want to give, in my mind, I think I don't want to give devil pulpit tax. He's not worthy of pulpit tax. I'm not going to give the devil any time on the pulpit. This is a disturbing thing, but I'm not going to give the devil pulpit tax. This pulpit tax is sacred. I'm just going to speak about his word blessed people born. And I didn't know how to handle it yet. So I'm just saying, Oh, God, what do I do? How do I handle the systems? But I remember that these two people when they came, they had used the reference of another senior pastor in the city. So what I did was I called that senior pastor was a good friend of mine. So I called him and I said, Pastor, the two people, they came, they mentioned your name, they said they came from your church. They, you know, I just gave a little background. I'm going to ask, do you know them? What do you have to say? Then he told me, he said, Oh, they're causing a lot of trouble. They caused trouble here and they got out. And they mentioned the name of another pastor. So I also called that verse and asked them, you know, these people have said this, this, what actually happened. So he also gave me an update. Then I knew that these people were actually causing trouble. So the only action I took was I informed them that I will not, because that they have caused this trouble, they're causing this trouble, which is not right. I will not be giving the money that I promised. So I've been through that. I said, see, I didn't expect you to go and trouble our own church people. I expected you to go and start a new church and I was willing to help you do that. But this is what you've done. You've gone and you're disturbing people in the existing church. That's not right. And so I'm going to go back on my word. I'm not going to give that money that I promised to you. So please excuse me from it. That's the action I took directly with them. I did not say anything to the congregation. I didn't discuss this matter with the people. The individual families complained to me who reached out to me, I just say, you just stay firm in church and continue growing. That's it. I remember one Sunday towards, you know, while all this was going on on Sunday morning. In my mind, I was saying, God, why is this happening? What is the real cause behind all this? Why is this happening? I remember that Sunday morning while I was in South on the campus there. I was coming forward to the worship. I just got over. I was coming forward to pray and suddenly in my spirit thought throughout the words, divine order and the message that came to me was, whenever we violate divine order in the church, we cause confusion because of this kind of problem. I received that in my spirit. Then I went back to the New Testament. I said, okay, we got to sing something about divine order. And I started searching. I said, hey, is there anything about divine order in the New Testament? And then I saw Paul to the Corinthian church, two Titus, and even in the book of Revelation, Paul mentions, he says, when I come, I will set things in order to the Corinthian church. To Titus he says, Titus, I want you to set things in order among the churches in peace. So then I understood that there is something called divine order, that there is a way in which, as churches, we should function. And when we violate divine order, we cause disturbance in the body of Christ. And that's how the book, I wrote a book out of that all divine order. So the book came out of that whole journey and struggling. But the, so I learned through that. But the thing that I resolved to do was, I will not talk about this from the full points, because I don't want to talk bad about these people. I don't want to mention their names. I don't want to speak bad about them. I handled it privately. And everything went smooth. And I learned, I received a revelation through that difficult experience about divine order. And I learned from it. So that's an example where there was something disturbing going on, the congregation was disturbed. But it was a resolve not to address it in public from the full points. Just handle it privately and keep focused on doing what God wants us to do. And then eventually, all the everything's decided in, they, those two people, they left that place. They really did not even start a church. Within couple of weeks, they left. I don't know what happened after that. So, yeah, that's just an experience. Pastor, just one more question regarding communication. Let's say two individuals among the congregation, if they have a misunderstanding, and one person lets us know, do we interfere or not? Or how do we stand in that place? Yeah. So I think our first step is trying to see if they can solve it amongst themselves. That's the best. So somebody comes to you and says, hey, this is happening between us. There's a problem. Then we can advise this person saying, hey, try to apply the principles of the Bible. And what if we try to peacefully resolve the matter? If you cannot, then what if you can come and meet me and I can help you intervene? So the first step is to see if they can resolve it between themselves. If they cannot, then it's good that both come and as a pastor or if you need leadership to be involved. This is Matthew chapter 18 where Jesus said, if you haven't been against a brother, you go and try to go and tell them and settle the matter with them. If that you cannot settle it, then you take it to the elders of the church. So we're following the Matthew 18 principle and we try to resolve it there and whatever is decided, they have to follow. If they don't follow, then the person who's not following is answerable to God and Matthew 18 actually says, okay, you kind of send them out of fellowship. So I think it all depends on the seriousness of it and what the matter is. But I think step one, let them try to resolve it by themselves. That doesn't happen. Then let them bring it to the elders of the church according to Matthew 18. And I remember one serious case that happened in our church which was here in Bangalore was about two businesses. So there are two people, they're both part of the congregation. They're both having their own businesses but they were working with each other and then there was conflicts. Now these are two brothers, people who believe in the same church. They have their own businesses. They were doing something together and then there was conflicts and it escalated. I think it even, how far did it go? I can't remember now. I think there was some police complaints. There were some legal issues. So it kind of really went and this is between two people and so finally they reached out to me and then I said, okay, the Bible tells us to do this. I know it's a big issue. This was involves money. It involves business. It's gotten into some complications. I know it's there but let's see if we can sit down and resolve it. So both the CEOs came and we sat in the church office. They came with all their information and we did what Matthew 18 told us to do. Sorry, we listened to one side, listened to the other and this was of course a business matter. So there was a lot of money involved and all of those things and then we said, okay, our goal is to resolve this matter. And just to sum it up, one party had to repay. I mean, there was some misunderstanding or things and so on. So we said, okay, this party has to repay so much amount. This person was willing to forgive certain amounts. This party should repay. How can they be established a payment plan and we say, okay, this is how we're going to repay. It's the schedule. This is how we're going to repay. Let us settle the matter here and that's it. So that's how we handled it and it worked out fine, meaning not saying they became friends or anything. The matter was resolved. Now, it would have been nice if the relationship also was curable but it did not happen. At least the matter was saying and it didn't escalate into some legal fight and all that. The matter was resolved, whatever was had to be paid was settled. I held them accountable. I said, you have to send me an email to show that this thing has happened. So that was clear but the relationship is something we cannot force and to my knowledge, they went the separate ways, which is a decision they made. So to answer your question, we follow matter 18 principle and do our best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you best. Any answer on communication? Just a question. I didn't expect all these questions. Okay, let's go forward. So now we change our focus to culture, lesson number 10. So we want to focus on the organizational culture, the culture of the church as an organization. So we can look at it as the culture of the church as a community that is the culture of the congregation or we can look at the culture of the organization. Right? So now we are looking at the culture of the organization. So if you're talking about the ministry administration, the administration part, it's we want to talk about the culture of the organization. That means we have to be careful to maintain a good working culture in the organization and time and time again, we will read, if you look at Christianity Today, the Christian magazine online, online Christian magazine, it happens almost like every year, there will be some reports of abuse inside a big Christian organization. People were not treated properly and sometimes it surprises us. You think like, okay, such a big Christian organization, sometimes a big Christian church, but inside the organization where people are working, people are serving, doing ministry, they're actually experiencing abuse, they're experiencing hurt. And when it comes out in the news, it's very shocking that we would think that, hey, a Christian ministry must be having a very healthy, joyful, compassionate culture where people can be very happy doing serving God and doing ministry. But when this kind of news comes or whether it's a Christian ministry or a Christian church, and then we realize that this doesn't happen automatically. We have to guard and we have to intentionally create the right kind of culture within the organization. Otherwise people can get hurt and people can, it can be very bad. Even inside a Christian ministry or a Christian organization. So we need to talk about this, we need to be careful to maintain the right kind of culture, work culture within the organization. So that's what we will talk about in this list. So when we talk about culture, basically they're talking about common values, common practices, how we all work together, how we all relate with each other. So it can be described through jointly held beliefs. That means we all believe certain things. There are values and practices that we commonly follow. We have certain ways of behavior and thinking. We all seem to follow that. We have certain way of doing things, how we do it. So these are things that actually shape our culture. The culture within an organization. And so even within the Christian ministry or within the church organization, we have to be careful about these things. So for example, God is giving an example. We all hold the common belief that we need to honor and respect one another. We also hold the common belief that we need to honor and respect our leaders. And these are biblical things. But if that belief that we have to respect our leaders is taken too far to the point where, example, we put our leaders on a pedestal, that creates an unhealthy culture. See God told us, you respect those who labor among you. But he didn't say put them on a pedestal. So you respect them, you honor them, but don't make them like next in line after God. Or if my honor and respect for leaders share puts me in a place where I'm being misused or abused by the leaders here, then that's an unhealthy culture. So here's an example where a belief, a jointly held belief, especially in the Christian context, where the Bible is teaching to honor those who labor among you, honor those who minister to you, the Word and doctrine. So the Bible's teaching honor, respect them. Yes, it's a commonly held belief. We all have the same belief. It's part of our culture. But if it is taken out of context where either I'm putting the leader on a pedestal or allowing the leader, because I'm honoring the leader, the leaders abusing me, that's a danger. That's a misplaced part of the culture. And like this, we can look at many examples where a commonly held belief or a practice or a way of thinking or way things are done, if they're not kept in the right place, it can actually lead to a very toxic culture, a culture where people can be hurt, people can be abused, and the culture becomes very toxic. It's unhealthy. So our beliefs, our practices, our way of thinking should be kept in the right place. That's very important. That's how we can maintain a healthy culture. So in a large organization, we need to understand that there could be some cultures. That means there's an organizational culture, but locally within various groups, the culture could be a little different. The dynamic of the culture could change over time. We do external internal changes. And what we're after is that the culture of the Christian organization and the culture of the congregation, we want to have a true, genuine Christian, totally kingdom culture. So that's what we should be watching about caring about and working towards. So why is culture important when you talk about it within an organization? Why is it important? Because it affects all the employees and it affects the employees' experience, you know, working in the church. How do they feel happy? Are they able to do their best? Do they feel valued? It affects their outcome to some degree, of course. Productivity depends on their skills and knowledge and all that. But culture also influences their productivity. You know, if it's a healthy culture, people feel more energized to serve them. It also affects how the congregation is served. The staff are very happy. They will cheerfully serve the congregation and also protects the organization from negative influences. So the culture is like the organization system. If we have a good healthy culture, if bad ideas try to come in, it will automatically protect the organization. So I don't know. This is our culture. This is how we do it. We will not entertain that negative idea, the negative influence in our culture. So it's very important that we create a good culture in the organization and of course also in the congregation. So the principles we learned today will apply to both. Let me just cover one more point in the middle pause for today. So our next question is, what shapes the culture? How does this culture shape? And in a lot of research and writing about culture, one of the things that you will find is that leadership, culture starts with the leadership. That means it actually goes top down because if whatever the leaders model, people will tend to follow. So this is one thing that doesn't go bottom. It's one thing that comes top down. So the leader or the leadership to a large extent, they influence and they shape the culture in their organization or in their sphere of influence. So people are watching whether it's a main leader or it's the leader of the team or leader of the ministry. People are going to be influenced by whoever is the leader there. So leadership is very important. So how does leadership matter? The leadership, the leadership's behavior must be always consistent to the culture that we want to produce, the values that we want in the organization. So if the leaders at all levels, starting at the top and the leader at every level, they model, they embody the values that we want to see in the culture, then people begin to reproduce them. They begin to see the same thing. So we must be reproduced of our own kinds. So example, if the leader behaves like a celebrity, example, the leader behaves like a celebrity, what happens? We create a celebrity culture. So everybody thinks this is how we have to treat the leader and become a celebrity in mindsets. Then what happens is, if there are junior leaders, the junior leaders also behave like celebrities. They expect the same kind from those who are under them. So we create a celebrity culture. We begin to put people on pedestal and all the negative things that come from a celebrity, especially if you're having it in a church context, you're having it in a ministry context. It's very unhealthy. Maybe a celebrity culture will pass when in the entertainment industry or the music industry or something, but in the church, that's not part of kingdom culture. It's not part of church culture. In the church, Jesus has taught us to be servants. He said whoever wants to be a leader, that can be a servant. That's the model Jesus set for the church. So celebrity culture in the church or in Christian ministry, it is an anomaly. It is something wrong. It is unacceptable because it's not something the Bible embraces. The kind of leadership is about servant leaders. So the leader has to embody that. If the leader walks as a servant, then all the other leaders will also walk as a servant. As servants, you will create a culture where people are ready to serve. They don't mind doing anything because the leader models it. Everybody will follow that. So that's the first thing you must understand. In an organization, culture comes top down. It starts with the leaders and whatever the leaders embody, that's what is going to become part of the culture. So as leaders, we have to very consciously think what is the culture I want to have in the organization. It starts with me. I have to embody that. I have to model it. Then I can create that culture in the organization. So with pause here, I'm going to talk more about this next week because it's a very important part of church and ministry. If we get this wrong, then the organization suffers. People in the organization suffer. So we need to really understand this problem. Any questions before we close or any comments? Anybody wants to say anything? Let's close in prayer. Thank you for your patient listening. I hope all of these things are useful for the ministry. Please close in prayer. Lord, we want to thank you for this morning. Thank you for the word we received a God. We pray a God that our communication and our culture would be according to kingdom standard and we would be able to bring your truths to people and also in our way of communication help us to be models of God. And we ask that help us to see your kingdom being established in our place of thought. We give you praise. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.