 Okay, the recording is on. We are going to start our class. Thank you each one for joining. Let's pray and then we will get started. I think others will join us in the meantime. Okay, Prince, would you like to pray if you're okay? Yes, sir. Thank you, dear Lord. Thank you for once again, Lord. We come before you, Lord. As you're going to learn your word, Lord. Arbenture Planting Lord, help us to understand, give us good revelation that we can understand, Lord, and help us to work for your kingdom, Lord, that we will know more strategy that for your kingdom, Lord, that we can reach to people, Lord. Thank you. I submit all the students to your hand and so forth to us. Thank you and submit all things in your hand. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Okay, thank you. Welcome, everybody. So, we are continuing in this course on Urban Church Planting. We're just talking about different strategies, ways that we could bring the gospel to people, reach people, as we go about planting or establishing a church, a local church, or a ministry in an urban context in a city. Yesterday, we started, let me just share. I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen. Okay, so we, you know, we discussed this yesterday. We're talking about how do we identify and develop strategies. We said we can do it for different age groups. And so we said, okay, let's look at strategies for different age groups. We were talking about children yesterday. And I just shared a little bit about, you know, how for us at APC, we had this opportunity to serve children in schools through the program that we called as Catalyst. So I just shared that with us. Now, similarly, there are many other ministries that are reaching children in many different ways. You could think about there used to be a scripture union that used to go into schools and reach students, children in schools and so on. And so that that also is a very effective way to reach children. So you could think of those ways. Then we decided to, you know, move across, move on to think about the youth. And what we said was, you know, we need to think about, you know, what are the, where are the youth, especially in your, where you are in your city or in your region, in your area. You know, what are the things that the young people are going about faced with. And then based on that, we can develop strategies to reach youth in those centers, urban centers. I just want to share some of the things that we have done here in Bangalore over the years. One of the things that we found useful is to have special seminars related to the youth or topics that would be of interest to them. And right from, you know, I think this goes back to about 2000 and 2002 or 2003 in the early days of our church plan to work here in Bangalore. We started having special seminars for that is targeting the young people, you know, in this age range, 18 to 25. What are the first seminars that we did and, you know, and some of these seminars you can keep repeating because you're always having, you know, a new generation of young people coming through. So many of these topics you can keep repeating, you know, one of the first seminars we did back then in 2002 or 2003 was on, on, on, forget the exact title, but it had to do with dating and marriage. Because, you know, dating is a big thing and at that age in 18, 25, they're, you know, kind of thinking along those lines. And, and then, of course, eventually, you know, when they get a little older, they will start thinking about marriage. So, you know, in fact, our very first seven hours of dating and marriage, we had, we had, it was done as an outreach. So we had it in a nice hotel in the heart of the city. And about 70 youth showed up, you know, it was, for us also, it was quite surprising in those days. And we have, as a church, it was still small and we were still young. And then our very first youth seminar to have 70 young people show up was quite interesting. But then from then on, you know, we've repeated some of these kinds of seminars. And other, other seminars would, you know, we've had people come and talk about some of the young people like social, I mean, the term we would use as social activism. So when we talk, we had people come and talk about what is happening with children being forced into either, you know, begging or sex trade. I mean, not children, but young people be taken and forced into these things. So that was one kind of a seminar that we had. We also had another seminar on more on addressing, you know, delving into the occult, you know, and because people were inquisitive and wondering what's going on in that area. Somebody who could speak on that and different kinds of seminars that are relevant to this age, 18 to 25, you know, what they are going through and what they are dealing with. And of course, you know, you could have people who are accomplished, who've done things in their lives, you know, come and talk. If you had talks on, you know, breaking free from drugs, how do you get out of it? How do you help others come out of it and so on. So these kinds of seminars that engage youth going through this stage, 18 to 25, you know, come and talk about or the effect or impact of social media. Again, talking about social media, you know, what do you do, what not to, you know, how to be careful in that area. So these kind of seminars always engage young people. And of course, in these seminars, you also bring forth biblical truths, biblical understanding on various things. So, you know, in the way you're also reaching them. So in addition to that, some of the things that we did was, you know, coffee, what we call as coffee day events. And we had a very interesting journey in this whole space on doing coffee day events. I remember way back, again, this goes back to the early days of 2003. There was probably only a few coffee day coffee shops in Bangalore in those days. I mean the coffee day brand. And we approached one of them. This was actually the one on MG Road. And we asked them, you know, can we use your space for about two hours? We will sing some songs and we will have a talk for some young people. But we will get into your business. That means, you know, all the young people who are going to come, they're going to buy a beverage and a snack at the coffee day. And so, you know, it was kind of a win-win situation. We needed a venue that we could do our things and they were going to get business. And so that, you know, we started events in coffee day and young people would show up and sometimes, you know, they were friends with church young people who would invite friends to coffee day. And we would sing Christian songs and then we would have a talk on, you know, just a message and special message from the Bible or something that's practical. And so, you know, a lot of young people started coming and we moved from coffee day to coffee day. We went to the biggest coffee day in Bangalore in those days, which was the corner of Cunningham Road. There was a, I think it's still there, the coffee day. We used to have monthly coffee day meetings. A lot of young people just showed up and could come. And at one point we hit about a hundred young people all crammed into that coffee day, but it was fun. It was, you know, everybody enjoyed it. And it gave us an opportunity to talk about Jesus and people could invite friends. And, you know, it was fun, but then the numbers became big, you know, hit over crossed hundred. And then so we had to move into a hall, kind of a hall space that we moved into the auditorium at St. Joseph's Boys High School. So that season of doing these coffee day events was very good. And just have young people come and they would be very open, very casual. We'd talk, of course, with St. Christian songs and preach from the Word of God. So that was an outreach that we did in those days. And, you know, and then what we did was we took the same concept to Mangalore when we were working in Mangalore City. Again, there we approached the coffee day in one of the malls. And it was just once, sorry, over there in Mangalore it would happen. What frequency we did it. I forget, you know, but I think at least once a month we would have these coffee talks. And some of these, you know, handouts that we use are available on our church website. So if you go to our ABCW.org website and see under resources you will see some of the talks that we did. We should give handouts and the kind of topics we've addressed in these coffee day events. And even in Mangalore it worked very well. You know, people could invite friends and very informal casual environment. And we were able to, you know, a lot of people from those coffee day events will eventually end up coming to church. So, you know, if something like this is permissible in your city or where you are, you can think of doing something like you have a very informal space, like a coffee shop that lets you invite young people to come there. And, you know, you'd rent it for an hour or two hours. And you're guaranteeing them business that which was okay, you know, at least 30 people will come and we'll order some snacks and beverage. So they get that business 30 or 40 or whatever number you would have. And then you get to use that space in a very informal way to, you know, talk to them and talk to the crowd. And of course there may be other people who come and they will also be kind of hearing you know what's going on. And so on. So that worked very well for us in those days, both in Bangalore and we also did that in Mangalore. So this was again geared towards reaching this age group, you know, college going students. They are between 80 to 18 to 25. And, you know, you can reach out to these young people through coffee day events and inviting them. Another thing that extended from because when we when we in Bangalore when the numbers were big, we moved to an auditorium. So the other young people and they're all gathering inside our auditorium that we used to use for church once a month. Then what we did was we said, you know, we would take these youth events to college campuses. So something similar to what we were doing with children, we said, we will get into college campuses. So we approached colleges. We used to just call them campus elevates. And, you know, we asked, you know, spoke to the management saying, would you give us time to speak to your college students will come once a month on an off day. I mean, the meaning it's not part of it's not going to affect their college schedule. So usually it'll be like on a Saturday off towards the last or immediately after their classes. Some colleges accommodated an hour for us, you know, they were kind. Some would give us Saturday right after classes. And, and it's okay. Now we tell them, look, we would speak to the college students, things that would be useful for them. We bring professionals and, you know, things, but things from the Bible. Things that would be useful for the young people and the colleges that opened up for us in Bangalore, and we do these campus elevate. So again, we had a team of volunteers would go to different campuses. They would sing us a couple of songs, and then somebody would speak to them on a topic that would be of interest to them. And, you know, and the nice thing is when we do these campus elevates, you know, there is really not much of an expense for us because we are using the auditorium that belongs to the college. You know, you'll have about 600 students or sometimes 1200 students sitting at the auditorium, you know, and we have not spent any money to get them to come or anything they're there. And we get to, you know, speak to them, share things with them. And then we would leave our resources at the back so that as the students are exiting, if they want to take any of our books or materials, they would do it if they if they wanted to. So it was a great opportunity to reach out to college students 18 to, you know, 21 some 225 through these, what we call this campus elevates. And everything is done with permission. So we go and get permission from the management, tell them exactly what we're going to talk and what we're going to do. And they work with us. So several colleges opened up in this way. Another thing that we also have done our youth concerts. These are kind of gospel concerts, music concerts that are geared towards the youth. So it would be an evening for two hours where we would advertise gospel band and music band. It's basically our worship team, but they're singing. They're providing, you know, music in a in a contemporary style. So it's not the traditional church hymns or songs, but it's more Christian songs, but in a very, very contemporary way. So it's a full fledged band and, you know, with all the things that go with this this concert. But, you know, the young people would come their youth would come just announced position at somewhere near a college, and they would come they would enjoy the music. And in some concerts, we also announced that there will be the preaching of the gospel. And so, you know, it was all clearly stated that this was a Christian concert a Christian gospel concert. They would be a message preach there will be people to pray for you, etc. So it was very clear there was no, you know, we were not doing anything wrong. All clear those who knew it would come they would bring their friends. And so the concerts, the youth concerts were also a way of reaching out to people. And I know we did it in Mangalore at least three years, I think for three years, every year we did a concert. And it was a great way to reach out to a lot of people a lot of college students would show up. And then of course we would we had a way of taking their contact details so that we could follow up with them after the concert. So again, those were that was again another strategy. And we did as a way to follow up with our campus elevates and we started campus groups. These campus groups were basically like the small groups like like a life group. So they would meet in somebody's house that is close to the campus, or in some cases, even in a coffee shop, it'd be a small gathering of, you know, 12 to 15 young people. And it was more like a Bible study, a time of prayer and so on. Much more of a discipling. And these also are working very well, especially in certain parts of the city where we had these groups happening. This was going very well and a great way to reach out to this more of a discipling of the young people. Some other things that that could be done in some places, especially in Mangalore. These things have been done is, you know, youth events, special meetings, like you're going on a picnic and so they would go away out on a picnic. They would invite their friends as well. And the youth, you know, they would have a picnic. They would have a time together. And of course they would, they would be prayer and ministry as well, or within hostels holding Bible studies. So I'm just giving out some ideas. There will definitely be more ideas that you could come up with to think about reaching, you know, strategies to reach youth between ages 18 to 25. These are just some ideas. Let me just pause here and, you know, take your thoughts here. Anybody has any additional ideas that you've seen or maybe you've been part of to reach? You know, young people, we're talking about college students 18 to 25 in urban centers. Any other ideas, any things that you've done or you've seen others do that you think we could add to this list here just to share with the class. Thomas, Dave, Siddharth, Kannan. Any things you've done or you've seen people do to reach college students. So many of us are familiar with Campus Crusade and also with EU, the Evangelical Union. Both these are Christian organizations that primarily work among college students. They have good ministry happening among college students. So Campus Crusade does a lot of these campus groups that they would go into college campuses, reach students and do the small groups with the students, reaching them. So that's a good strategy. The EU does camps and the camps are very effective. That's where in the EU camps there's been so many numerous testimonies of college students giving their life to Christ, the Evangelical Union. They would have these camps where friends invite friends and they would go away to the camp a couple of days. They hear the gospel, they hear the messages and so many young people give their lives to Christ and then they have a good way to follow up with the young people. So we can learn a lot by observing these organizations that work with college students, how they reach out. Both Campus Crusade and Evangelical Union and I see they've shared on the chat about Youth for Christ. So these are good things and so depending on what you are doing or your local church and that you're planting, you can think of if college students are your target or part of your target. We hope you want to reach college students. What are some things we can do? I just said some things we've tried and we've done at APC and there are of course other organizations, other ministries that are reaching out to college students. So similarly the next age group that we can think of are the young adults. So these are people who are in the workplace. So they've come out of college. So they are like 25 plus. They are in the workplace. They are working. They may be the first job or maybe the second. This is getting started in their career and there are also many of them would be looking at getting married sometime along the journey. So that is an important part and some of them would get married and start their family. They will start having children. So that age group that we are looking at, the young adults, they are 25 to 35 age range. So how can we reach them? How can we meaningfully reach out to them? What we have done is again we used special seminars for this age group. Again, things like preparing for marriage seminar. Just the questions that people have in deciding on a life partner. So addressing those kinds of things, life skills, because these things become very important for the workplace. And so topics that would interest young adults. These professional conferences that we do again is very useful for young adults. So they have people who are more established in their professional fields, come and speak. So it of course benefits and attracts and benefits the young adults. Workplace groups again has been a very effective approach. Of course you've got to do this in a careful manner because you cannot use office space without permission. So it's always done with permission. Either if you're using a conference room in the workplace area, you have to do it with permission from the people. Or you could do it outside, outside of the office space, maybe in a restaurant or a cafe nearby. So these workplace groups have also worked very well. And again there are ministries that are engaged in reaching people in the workplace. And then home groups also is very important because a lot of these young people are looking for friendships. Many of them have moved new to the city because of jobs. And for them to get together with other young people, get together with other young couples, you know, mix is very, very, you know, it's a good opportunity to reach people. So these are some things we've tried and we keep doing and these things keep going, we keep on doing it. There are ways to reach young adults. Is there any other things that you want to add in terms of this kind of reaching young adults? I mean, you're talking about people between 25 to 35, they are all starting off in their professional career and they're also, you know, getting married and starting off family and so on. Any other thoughts that strategies for young adults? Anyone? Okay, so just sharing these thoughts here and you can think about, you know, making use of some of these ideas. Now, so they should have a young adults and then you also have married families. So these are, you know, we're talking about 35 up. They are now kind of more or less established as families in the city, in the urban center. What are some of the things that they would need? So a lot, a number of people would love to learn more about marriage and how to strengthen their marriage, how to make the marriage better, so on. Marriage courses are very, very relevant here for this age group. We also do and we have been doing, you know, parenting and marriage workshops. So again, we do using the seminar strategy, but it's really useful, you know, whether it's a marriage workshop or a parenting workshop. So it's a chance for these people in this age group to come to learn to connect. And of course, we, there is a counseling services that are provided. So when people are going through challenges with the difficulties and they need some help, they need some guidance. Sometimes it's for themselves, sometimes it's for their marriage, sometimes it's for, you know, in the parenting side, how do I work with certain challenges with children and so on. So the counseling is available and people reach out for help. And these men and women's conferences also attract people to come when we have certain topics of interest. And similarly for senior citizens, people who are at home or in old age homes, you know, to go visit them, to spend time with them, where they are, they may not be able to, you know, come out too much. So you need teams of people who would go and visit them and reach out to them. So I'm just quickly, you know, sharing with you that, look, this is how we can develop strategies for people of different age groups. And as a church or as a ministry, depending on where you are, depending on the people around you that you're thinking of reaching, you can develop strategies. And of course, you need to have people who can do those things. You know, so as your congregation is growing, you can engage people. It gives a great means to get church people involved so that they can go out there and reach people in and around, you know, the community or in the city, right? And if you do it well, the first time, then when you keep repeating those seminars or workshops or conferences or, you know, people, more people will want to come. The news we get, go around, hey, this is a good thing to go to. There's a lot of useful, you know, information, there's a lot of value coming through. So, you know, the word we get through, people who want to come and you can use that as a way to connect people to the church or to the ministry that you are planting. The second way we develop strategy is when we address specific areas of need, right? So that means you're looking at either part of the city or you're looking at a certain group of people in the city and you're asking the question, you know, what are their needs? And how can I address those needs in a meaningful way so that through that I can, you know, present the love of Christ and present the gospel and give them an opportunity to know Christ. So you're addressing specific areas of need. Now, again, this is not a complete list, but just a few representative things that could be done. One is for people who are coming into the city looking for jobs or they may be coming into the city for education and to provide them this community that cares for them. You know, so they may have left family in some other part of the country and they've come to Bangalore and they come to the city either for education or for work and to be able to reach them and let them know that look, there's a community that cares and loves. So if you can help with the transition, maybe help in finding jobs, help in finding, you know, just especially for students, okay, they need a place to stay like a paying guest or a hostel. If you can help in that, then it becomes an opportunity to connect with them and from there, you know, you can reach out. So that's something to think about and I've seen this happen, especially with our Nepali church who did a lot of this and they were very good in doing this and taking care of people when they came into the city, either for education or for jobs. Some of the other areas that could be addressed but it does need, you know, it does need specialized kind of help. So in the case of suicide, in the case of drug addictions, in the case of job seekers, some people can give them some guidance, in the case of those who need financial help, those who can give guidance, you know, so these are things you can think of. Now, in the case, say, in suicide or addictions, we usually guide them to people who can provide that kind of help. You know, in the case of job seeking financial guidance, then, you know, we engage church people, church people are there who can provide that kind of assistance. But in some areas we need to guide them to other organizations that provide that kind of assistance. But these are things that you can think of again here and working with slums and homeless people. We've done some work with slums but usually there are organizations that focus on it and are able to do a good work in helping people in the slums or homeless people. And, you know, we just back them up, we just help them. In some cases we encourage people from the church to go and work with them to address these kinds of needs. Right, so we can think of this, you know, as the Lord leads and gives you opportunity, you can think of strategies that address areas of need. A third one would be strategies that address different spheres of activity when you're looking at different areas. Basically we're talking about education, the area of arts and entertainment, media, business, government, family, religion. You can have, you can develop strategies that reach people who are in these areas. You know, so for arts and entertainment, you know, if we are able to, I mean, both two approaches. One is to host events where these kind of people who come and participate or to send teams to engage in these things. Teams from the church have gone and they have, you know, taken part in art events. So, you know, of course it's an event that's open to many, many teams, but then to have a church didn't go there and do something that's from the church. It's an opportunity to present the message. It's also an opportunity to let people know that the church can be involved in these things and, you know, make an impact. So in art, and we've also hosted art events so that people could come, they could invite their friends and come be a part of that event and then experience or be exposed to what, you know, what the church has to say in that area. So these kinds of events would be useful in connecting to people in this manner, you know, spheres of activity. Think about what they're doing and reach out to people in that area. Our Christian Professionals Conference helps people, you know, in the area of business, you know, in that area. So you could invite people, professionals to come and attend and be a part of those, those events. Okay. So, you know, we, of course we need skilled people, qualified people to engage in these areas and as God gives you people in your congregation, you can encourage them to reach out to people and, you know, look at ways you can reach people. In those activities. So number four is by making use of tools, whether print, the internet, television, music and performing arts and so on. You know, so you, we've done quite a lot of this, like you're putting handbills in the newspapers and covers a certain area so people know you are there, your church is there or you're having a special event. You can advertise on social media, Facebook and YouTube and those kinds of things, promotions. You can advertise on local cable television. We did this in the early days. We would have scrolling ads and people would call for prayer and we could make those advertisements and, you know, so use various tools that we can reach people and let them know that you're there. Okay. So, let me pause here. So what we've done is this, in order to develop strategies to reach people in the, in the city or in the area where you're working. I'm just giving you ways by which you can think about strategies. One is by age groups. And so, you know, you assess and what are we doing for people in different age groups? What are their needs? How do we address them? Then you can think about special areas of need that you see around you, right? So people around us, what are their needs here? Can we develop strategies to address those needs? Or you can think about activities, businesses, professionals, you know, people are engaged. So you look at that and say, okay, you know, what are things happening around where we are planting the church or doing the ministry? Can we develop a strategy to reach people based on their activities, what they're doing? You know, if you're near an example, if you're near a sports stadium, hey, there are people coming here for athletics and things like that. So can we do something there that would be tailored for them? You know, and we will be able to reach people in that manner. So think about activities. And then lastly, number four is make use of the tools that we have today, especially in urban context. There are many of these tools that we could use in newspapers, television, social media, so many things. So can we use those tools to get the word out to access people and let them know that, you know, that the church is there, the church is offering certain services, the church is available to help them and so on. Okay, so I'm just giving you how to think about the strategies. And I just talked about a few things that we have done and that people have done. But you pray and you ask God, God give us strategies. Now, what are new ways we could reach people? And even right now, I'm praying, you know, I'm just saying, God, you know, we've gone through this pandemic, are we going through it? How do we restart things after this pandemic? You know, we're going to get back, let's say slowly, you know, get back to the services. Slowly, people will maybe, you know, end of the year next year, people are going to get back to hopefully some sort of normality. But I'm just saying, God, how do we reach people? Like, you know, because a lot of things that we have done the last year and a half or almost two years soon have stopped, you know, we can't do those things. And so it's like, okay, we got to, you know, just get back, how do we get back? How are we going to minister to people? How are we going to reach people? It's kind of what I'm praying right now, just trying to understand what God would say and to get new strategies. You know, we are not very sure how and when everything is going to come back. But then the thing is, we have to continue to reach people. How do we do it? What would be the new, you know, areas of need that we have to be speaking to? What are people going to be thinking about? You know, and how do we address that? I'm talking about thinking about our city in that context. How do we address people in our city? What are people in our city? What are they facing? What are they thinking about? Right now, I'm just kind of praying about those things, you know, praying, just waiting on God. And then he will give us ideas. Okay, these are the things you need to start doing. And, you know, it's good that you start early. So then you can prepare and position yourself, get ready, you know, to carry out those strategies. When things open up and the opportunities open up, you should be ready and to go out there and serve people, reach people. And things that God has put in your heart. Okay, so I know that, you know, we have all gone through quite uncertain times. Ministry has not been the way it used to be. There are challenges. But what I want to just leave with us is let's start praying and seeking God for strategies that we can use. As things, as we progress, as we move into, you know, things that happened before us, you know, God will give us ideas. He'll say, get ready for this. Prepare yourself for this. This is how we're going to be able to reach people, you know, as things begin to open up and people start moving about and you have, you're able to connect. This is what you should be doing. These are the needs that you need to be addressing. So God will give you those ideas and then you will be, you know, if you and I prepare ahead of time, we'll be there to reach people. Okay, so we're going to pause here. And next week, we will talk about the seven mountain assignment, which kind of builds on what we were talking today on, you know, how do we target those areas of activities and how do we prepare the church to do that, especially in an urban context. It becomes very important in urban context because the church should reach people across these seven spheres of society. So we'll talk some practical things that we can do to prepare the church, the church plant. So you've got a few people. How do you prepare them to reach the seven spheres of influence? Okay. Any questions? I know I've spoken a lot. Any thoughts, any questions you want to share or ask? No questions. I don't see anything in the chat. Okay, you're all fine. Thomas, go ahead. You were saying something. As to what we have discussed today, for me, it's a new church on one or two years ago. So so many things that is there to take to learn. And what you said about, you know, adults and the youngsters, how we can reach. These are, I can take and I can apply this, I can see the results. So I don't have any questions, just I'm taking and learning the things. Okay, good. Very good. Yeah, just to stimulate your thinking and then definitely as you go forward, God will give you ideas for these different age groups and you can make use of it. Very good. Anybody else? Any thoughts, any comments? All right. So let's pause here for today. We close in prayer and next week we will talk about seven mountain assignment. And kind of move forward from there. Okay. All right. So, yeah, who wants to close in prayer? Maybe Dave, would you like to close in prayer and we will discuss after that? Okay. Have any father we thank you for today. We thank you for the listen that we've learned about Jesus. We thank you for this opportunity and this timing again. And we can look for you and everything that we've learned today. Help each one of us to keep it in our heart and all these things is something that can help us in our future or help in the present. We ask your spirit to take us through every situation, every condition of our life. Amen. Amen. Amen. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for being on the class today. I'll see you again soon. God bless. Bye now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.