 Okay. The recording is on. Welcome everybody to the class on media and technology in ministry. We're going to pray together and then we will get started. May I request somebody to pray with us? Kiran, if your mic is fine, why don't you pray? And we will start. We'll pray. Father, we come before you through once again and we want to say thank you, Father God, for your goodness, for your faithfulness, Father God, thank you, thank you for all things, Father God, thank you, your promises, Father God, Father God, help us to move forward, Father God, give your wisdom and knowledge to the subject, Father God, that we can understand nicely and apply to your kingdom, Father God, Father God, we just are meeting to your hand. It's an average student, Father God, going to become a pastor, Father God, just give your knowledge and guidance and your revelation, Father God, that wherever we'll go, Father God, we can do ministry, a good ministry, Father God, become a good servant of your Father God. Help us to move forward. Thank you, Father God, thank you for all things. Amen. Amen. Very good. Thank you. Alright, so we are in this chapter on technology platforms or software platforms. And I'm just kind of, you know, showing you different platforms that you could use, software platforms that you could use for different ministry needs. And just for all of us to become familiar with it and then, you know, in time, whenever you need something, you could go and explore using these platforms. Now, last week, we were talking about the content management system. Basically, it is a software system that you could use to do your websites. And if you do it well, if you create a good website using a content management system, you know, or basically if you create a good website, it becomes a platform for you to deliver your content, not only locally, which is your own church or your congregation or people in your city or in your region, but it becomes a platform for you to deliver content globally. Right. So of course, there are certain things that you need to do. We call it, you know, it's technically it's called search engine optimization. That means you have to make your website. That is, that is constructed is built in such a way and it has content in such a way that search engines. That means Google ding other search and by people usually look for things up so that your content is picked up and presented to users and people who are searching for certain things. So, so for example, our APC, our church website, APCWRG has sermons and we've, you know, we've put in sermons from 2004. So that's almost that's about 18 years worth of sermons. And these sermons come along with sermon notes. And then, you know, later on, we had sermon videos and of course there's a sermon audio and this PowerPoint. So every sermon, especially the last, you know, 10, 15 years or so has has a video has audio has sermon notes and PowerPoint. So it's a useful resource. But just putting it on a website is not enough. It has to be searchable. It has to be presented to people when they search. And so there's a way to do it. It's called search engine optimization. And so today, if you search for certain things, the content on APC's website is seen in many different parts of the world. So, of course, you know, we haven't yet, you know, come or be not necessarily on the first page. It may be on the second or the third page and certain searches. So we still need a lot more work to be done to optimize the website and we are continuing to work on it. But our goal eventually is for phrases and search things, search phrases that people use that is related to the content we are putting out. We want to be on the first page so that people find us and then they can use it anywhere in the world. Well, but I want you to think about how what an amazing platform or tool or opportunity we have through the Internet that if you if we build a website and we do the things that are right that are needed. The content we put out can be accessible from any country on the earth. Of course, we're talking about English speaking of the people in that same language. When they search anywhere in the world, you know, when they search for example a sermon on on receiving God's guidance, you know, so whether they are sitting in New Zealand or Australia or some country in South America and North America or in Europe, and they search in English, you know, sermons on receiving God's guidance, you know, then sermons that from APC, APC website shows up anywhere in the world on page one or two or something like that. And then they can access it or they look for a, you know, some book on receiving God's guidance, the book that we have shows up. So think about what an amazing platform this is, right? That if you build your website and the content that you're putting up, whether it's sermons, whether it's the books, whether it's the daily devotionals, whatever, and you're putting it out. And this is available 24 seven that is all the days of the week, all the time. You know, so anybody in any part of the world, you are asleep. You know, you're going about your normal routine, but they are searching for different such phrases. And if you're the content on your website is presented to them, they're going to access it. They may listen to it, they may watch the video, they may download the book. And, you know, you're actually ministering globally in a very passive way and means through the website. But that's what's happening. And I will show you some results that we are seeing on the APC website. You know, we've had over 3 million downloads of other things, our sermons and books and all that from almost every nation. So, and we're just trying to improve all of that. So then it becomes more and more visible to people in every country in every English, you know, English speaking country, so that when they search, they can use a resource. It's an amazing platform. Right. So this is what you can do if you have a good website. And last week I showed you the content management system. And when you set up your sermons, you can set up your books and you can, you know, you set it up in such a way that when people search, they find it. And then you can use it. They can use it and it's all free. So they don't have to pay money to use it. They just go ahead and use it. Okay. So now I just want to go into a few more, you know, there are several different things that I just want to share with you. The next one that I just want to talk about is the church app apps. Right. So, you know, you could create an app. Basically an app that runs on the mobile phone. Right. So, some of you know that we have a church app, the APC church app. I have it on my phone. And so the church app, of course, the website is there, but nowadays a lot of people are, you know, familiar or they like to use an app. So the church app creating an app that runs either on, you know, the most people have Android phones or if they have iOS, that's okay. The app becomes a very useful tool to deliver content to people in your community. Right. Or anywhere in the world. So the APC church app. I don't, we don't have a count of, you know, of how many downloads there are, but it's definitely more than 10,000. And I'll tell you why we don't have exact count, but this church app. So we are using the church app to deliver our daily devotionals. So every day people can listen to daily devotional and a lot of other, you know, our sermons, a lot of other things are available on the church app. So people can actually go and use this app for a lot of things. And, you know, we provide what is called as a toolkit. So they can access the toolkit, make use of a lot of free resources that are there and so on. So you can design your church app however you want. Now there are two ways you can go about either you can have some software developers develop your own app, develop, you know, an app from scratch, which is a lot of work, but that's one way of doing it. Or the other way of doing it is you just use existing platforms that are there that you can, through which you can quickly build an app and release it to the public. So the platform, the people who host you the platform, they will take care of everything for you. So that's what we are doing. And I just want to share with you the platform that we are using so that in the future, if your church or your ministry decides that hey, let's create an app for our church or our ministry. And, you know, let's put out, you know, for whatever objective you have. Maybe you want to put out content or maybe you want to do registrations and administer conferences and all of those kinds of things. A lot of different things people use an app for. So I'm just going to share about that a little bit on how you can use a platform to deliver your app. So we have what is called as customchurchapps.com. So that is the platform we are using to deliver our app. So, you know, we did not build our app on our own. Instead, we are using this platform. So if you remember customchurchapps, they will help you know, you can develop your an app very easily. And they will take care of delivering so many big, you know, famous churches. Hillsong, so many others are using the same platform to build their app. And then they have lots of features. You can manage your events and your volunteers. I mean, right now, we don't use that, but there are other things that they are providing that you could use. So even our live thing is on the app and so on. So they provide lots of features that you could use for your church app. So basically what you need to do is you sign up for them, sign up with them. They have a simple pricing. Where is their pricing? I don't know if they show it here. They have their price. I'm not sure whether they, what is it? I forget what is the pricing. It's not very, I can't remember the amount we pay on a monthly basis for them to manage this for us. But it's not, you know, it's not very bad. So you can send push notifications as well to people. You can make contributions online, a lot of things that you could do, right? So how does this work? So you sign up with an account with them and then they give you access to their portal, a console, right? So you can log into their console. So I'm just showing you the console. So if you log into their console, this is where you can update. You basically set up the app, what you want, and you can update it, right? So this is our All People's Church console. So this is how we set up the app, right? So you're just using these simple forms. You can set up, you know, how you want your app. So we've set it up and we want these things in the app and so on. So, you know, any developer, so you can upload all these things. You can set up all the banners you want. And that's how you build your app, okay? It's a pretty straightforward thing. Any developer can help you set it up. And it's very easy. So literally within, you know, one or two weeks, you can get your app ready. Then they will, once you're ready, they will push it out to the app. The App Store and the Google Play Store. And once all of, I mean, there's a little process involved to do that. They will do it for you. And then once they push it out on the Apple and Google Play Store, then once it's ready, then people can download from, you know, from the App Store or Play Store. Google Play Store and get it on their phones. So they will do that for you, right? So, but this is where we do it. And this is where we update, you know, on a daily basis. You know, for us, we're updating it on a daily basis. Every day we're releasing a video. And weekly, our sermons are also made available. You know, we update the sermons weekly. So these are two things that are updated in the app on a regular basis, right? Now, they would also give you some information. But sadly, we're not able to see all the data because for some reason they, their data is, it's not up to date, but you'll see that I'm just waiting for the data to come. They will tell you some, some insight into what people are doing with the app. Let's say, so there's more than 10,000 unique users of the app. So many launches, so many iOS launches, 1.25 million interactions and so on, right? So, you know, we could see now on a regular basis what is happening. But this data is not always very accurate. They have some problems there going on. But they give you some amount of data, you know, on what's happening. So in terms of the downloads, they're not able to give us correct data. But, you know, somewhere over 10,000 downloads and so on. So, but you can go into seeing, you know, what are the people watching? What are the, what is the media people are watching? What are the screens they are using? So obviously, it's this daily devotional video that people are watching regularly. And then there are the things. So, this is, this is how we have set up our church app. We are using custom church apps to set up our app. That's the home page. And we just updated on a daily basis. And then it's there. People can use it, right? So just keep this in mind. If you want to have a church app or you want to app for your ministry, you can set it up and they have a lot of features. You know, there's a lot of versions of the Bible that they make available, reading plans, and so on. Okay. Which they can use. I forget how much, what's the amount, but let's see here. Okay. So monthly cost is less than $100. It's about $75. Yeah. So it's about $75 a month, which is what the cost is. Okay. So that's the church app. And you can think about using the church app, like how we are doing, which is to deliver content. Or you can also think about using the church app for registering for events, conferences, those kinds of things. And somebody who has some software knowledge, they can set this app up for you and you can run with it. You can use it. And it's easy, right? Any questions on church app? It's just a very quick walkthrough. Any questions on using an app for church ministry? Any questions related to that? It's clear? Okay. So that's, you know, about how you can get a church app running for your church or your ministry. The next thing I'm going to change and talk about is making use of e-learning platforms, right? So of course it is something we started doing only recently, but I just want to talk a little bit about that and show you some options so that, so now what about e-learning? So, you know, if you want to provide the teaching and content to community, whether it's a church community or in a larger sense people beyond your church community in a very structured way, you can make use of e-learning platforms. Okay. Now, you can do it. Actually, it's pretty easy to do it. Now, either you can use a host or platform and use it completely yourself, or you can use already existing platforms. Just set up an account and start using it. And I will show you both. I will show you both. So there are free e-learning platforms that are available. Okay. And there are several options. Two of the, actually, there are three really, you know, what to say, good platforms. One is OpenEDX. It's an e-learning platform that's an open source. There's another product called Moodle, which also is being used widely. That's another platform. And there's a third platform. I'm forgetting its name. I think it's called Canva. Is it Canva? No. Sorry. I'll get its name correctly. Anyway, there's another, which again is being used very widely by universities and so on. So we are using the OpenEDX platform. And this is a free product. So you can download it and you can set it up. And, you know, you can deliver your content through that. Now, of course, there is the student view, the way a student sees the platform. And there is the teacher view. That means how the teacher sets up the lectures and whatever. They want to give assessments, things like that. So the online learning platform is a very useful tool or a software thing that you can think about to help maybe people in your own congregation if you want to do some courses with them. So the advantage is people can do it at their own pace and at their own time. Now, of course, you can run Bible study classes like every Wednesday come to the church and we will do Bible study. You can do it like that. Or you can say, you know, hey, I'm putting this online. Go and listen to it and do the notes. Go to the notes and do the assessments at your convenience whenever you have time. So if you have a Bible study every Wednesday, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., if people are not able to make, come to that Bible study, they will miss out on it. But if that same Bible study is put out in a structured way through an e-learning platform, you know, if they cannot make it on Wednesday, they can listen to it on Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday. Any other day, any other time, they can go through those lessons and they can be a part of that learning process. So using an e-learning platform is very useful. So one option, like I said, is you can host the e-learning platform yourself, which is what we are doing. Or you can use some existing platforms that are already available and you can deliver your course through that. One platform that is being used, udemy.com. So one platform that's being used by people to deliver courses is udemy. So I will share both with you. So let me first, let me share my screen. Let's walk you through our platform and then also share about udemy. So this is our e-learning platform. Now some of you may already have logged in and you already have accounts on it. So it's just under the APC Bible College. We are hosting this. This platform is just basically built using an open source. It's called open edX. It's an open source product. So it's available to anybody who wants to use it. So we downloaded open edX. This is the product. And then we set up our own courses and so on. So what we are seeing here is the student view. So those who want to come as students and those who want to study courses, they can come in, they register once, set up an account, and they can sign up for any of these courses. And then they can go through the courses at their own pace. Now of course, we can run the courses as we want. We can run it with a start and end date or we can run a course without any end date. That means people can do it however and whenever they want. So for instance, the foundations is, doesn't have a start and end date. People can just start anytime, finish anytime. Whereas these courses, our Bible College courses, we want people to finish. They're following the same course as we are doing. So they can go in and do these courses. Anytime, but within the start and end dates, they have to finish the course. So what we are doing is all the courses that we are teaching in the Bible College, the same things are being made available through the e-learning platform and students will use it. Now you can see the numbers here, about 910 students from 77 countries. So it is giving us an opportunity to serve these students. And these students, they may be doing just doing one course or they may be doing two courses. It's completely up to them how they want to study. So this is one way of doing it. That is you set up your own e-learning platform and you can do it. Now just to give you an idea of, so this is a student view, just to give you an idea of what it looks like as a teacher. So if I go to the, this is the teacher login. So if I log in as a, you know, the way I have to set up the courses and et cetera, I log in. So this is where I can manage the courses that I'm teaching now. So, sorry. So these are all the courses that are being run right now. And these, for example, this is the course, media and technology course that we are doing. So this is where I can create, you know, these sections that students are able to see, right? So it's pretty, very simple. You know, we can create these sections and for under each lecture, sorry, under each lecture, we can add notes. We can add video, a lot of things we can do. We can create assessments, a lot of that. Okay. So it's very easy to set up. Maybe I should just have a log out of this. This is the live version and I can go, I just play with the, this is the development version. So this is not the live version. I can just show you. Sorry. So here I can do anything I want to do. This is the development version. You know, if I just, just want to show you, I can add a new section. I'll come. Students, you know, I can add, I can add a new unit. So this is where, you know, I can add a component. I'm not saying you have to learn all this. I'm just showing you. It's pretty easy that I can add a discussion. I can add a text announcement, whatever. I can add, you know, text. I can add question answers section and to add question answers. It gives us, you know, so many, I can do a check box question dropped on multiple choice. I could do that. I could even add a video if I want. So all of our lecture video, this is how it's added. And, you know, you could update that. So it's very easy, I mean, to set up and to work with this as a teacher, you know, all our pastors, teaching assistants, they work here. They, you know, they're able to set up the course here on a daily basis. And this is how we, you know, we run the courses by setting it up and it's pretty easy. All our pastors know how to do this and teaching assistants also help with this. Right. So this is one way that is you can, you can run, you can set up open edX and you can set up your courses and you can run it. Okay. So that's one way. That's how we are doing it. The other way, which actually is an easier one is there are online learning platforms. You know, there are many of these examples. Udemy is one. Right. So, so what you can do is you can go to Udemy and you can set up an account here. That means your church or your ministry can set up an account with Udemy and you can start delivering your courses here. Right. And there are some organizations that are already doing it. I'm talking about Christian. Now, of course on Udemy, you know, they deliver courses on everything, all kinds of topics, all kinds of topics. So, you know, they can do technology, business, all of that. But in this, there are people who are also delivering content, Christian content. Right. So let me just search for a course on gifts of the Holy Spirit. So somebody is delivering a course here on Udemy, on gifts of the Holy Spirit. You see, they're even charging for it. They're charging 500 rupees for it. So it's prophetic ministry by this person, Dr. Stuart Partico. Right. About 403 students. So he's running this course under religion and spirituality. He's running this course here. Right. And it's very easy because, and there are, you see, there are other courses available here. Anointing gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know, so, and the good number of people are registering. Right. Dream interpretation, hearing God for yourself. So, you know, there are a lot of people who are running courses on Udemy. Right. Bible Bible courses. So that's another option. You can, you know, I mean, you as an individual or your church or your ministry can set up an account on Udemy and you can deliver courses through Udemy very easily. So you don't have to host anything. All you have to do is enter your content through the, you know, the administrative console that they give you. And it is available to students all over the world. So you can get started very easily. And you can also charge them a certain amount of money. And of course, part of the money, some amount will go to Udemy and the rest of the money will come to you. But this is a great way to set up and use an e-learning platform. Okay. So there are two options that I showed. One is what we are doing ourselves, which is we are hosting the platform ourselves, which, because then it gives us full control, you know, we can monitor all the students and we can run our courses. We're running a full Bible college through this. Or you can use a publicly available platform like Udemy and you can set up your course and you can deliver your course through that and make it available for people. Okay. So that's it. I'll stop with this. So today, what I shared with you was two things. One is how you can have a church app and set it up very quickly. You can use the platform, custom church apps, set up your church app, use the church app to serve people. The second thing we talked about today is e-learning platform, how you can set up an e-learning platform for your church or ministry. You can use Open edX, which is the open source software. You can set up yourself and you can deliver courses through it. Or you can go to an existing platform like Udemy. So you don't have to do any programming or anything. We just set up an account and then you start delivering your course through that platform and you can reach hundreds, thousands, many, many thousands of people through that course. Okay. So two things that we covered. App, church app and e-learning platform. There are a few more things I'll share with you maybe for a couple more classes. Then we will be able to wrap up this course and I'll do a quick review of the whole course. Okay. Any questions on these two things? Church app and e-learning platform. Any questions? Gannon, Dave, Kiran, you're okay all with me so far? Good. So let's close for today. I see your comments in the chat and it's fine. Thank you. We will wrap up for today. We'll continue this tomorrow. I'll just share some other platforms that you could use. Things that analyze your online work and so on. And just for you to be familiar so that in the future, at any point, if you feel like your church, your ministry wants to use any of these, at least you know where to go, how to get started. And you can tell some technical people to get this going for your church, for your ministry. Okay. Let's close in prayer. Gannon, if your mic is okay, can you pose in prayer, please? Maybe Gannon's mic is okay. All right, Dave, I don't know if your mic is okay, but Kiran, then you'll have to pray for all of us. Okay. I see your mic is okay. No problem. Kiran, go ahead. Just close in prayer, please. Okay, sir, we'll pray. Father God, we want to say thank you, Father God, to the subject, thank you, Father God, to your wisdom and knowledge, Father God, easily we can understand, Father God, Father God, help us to move forward and apply to your kingdom, work, all media, technology, Father God, help us. Thank you, Father God, all things. Rest of the days are meeting to your hand, take care of every side. Almighty Jesus, name be praised. Amen. Amen. Okay. All right, Dave, I see your comments. Thank you, everyone. No problem. We will meet tomorrow morning. We will continue with revelation. I'll study in revelation, and then after that, some more on media and technology. God bless you. Enjoy your afternoon. I'll see you again. Thank you. Thank you, sir. God bless. Bye.