Church & Ministry Administration | Lecture 7 : BC310-CMA-20260901

Okay. The recording is on and uh welcome to our class today. Let's pray. And we'll get started. Could um one of us please lead the class in prayer and we'll get started. >> Let's pray. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and this time, Lord Jesus. Lord, uh we are submitting this class into your mighty hand, Lord Jesus. Lord, you lead us, guide us and Lord, you equip us with your word, Lord Jesus. I'm surrendering pastor into your mighty hand, Lord. Give them knowledge and understanding, Lord Jesus, and help us to uh get your word, Lord Jesus, and plan properly. Thank you, Father, for everything. Submitting this class into your mighty hand. Jesus' name I pray and ask. Amen. >> Amen. Amen. All right. So, let's quickly review what we did last week and then move forward in our church administration. We are in lesson number four. We are talking about church and ministry organization structure. Like, how do we structure the organization that is going to support the ministry? So, we uh we we give an idea, an overview of different kind of organizational structures. Uh why we must have a well-designed organization, we talked about that. And um then we uh we look at some examples in scripture, you know, uh how Jethro uh advised Moses setting up leaders over hundreds, thousands, and so on. Um and how do we know if the we talked about the tests of good organizational design? How do we know that uh uh an organizational structure is good? Right? How do we Sorry. Uh how do we know that it's it's good? We We gave some questions we can ask. And we look at one simple example in the in the bottom of page What page is this? Page 12. Where, you know, if there is a a process flow where there are people who are really not adding value to the process. Then we should take it out. Right? It's unnecessary steps in the process. Make the process uh simple and smooth and easy. Go from person A to person D just directly. Right? So, rather than unnecessary steps which are not adding value, uh because it'll only end up wasting people's time and uh resources in that. Right? So, we should we think about that. Now, um point number eight on page 12, that's kind of where we um stopped. Uh is the structure flexible enough to implement new strategies? Suppose we want to do something new. Suppose we want to do something even differently. You know, we should be flexible enough to change. And uh this is a problem, you know, especially when uh a structure is too rigid, too strict. Suppose there's a new idea. Uh and then we say, "No, no, no, we can't do it." You know, uh then we say the structure is too rigid. It's not allowing us to adapt. You know, for example, um think of uh external factors like COVID. Right? So, this was a 2050 2020. Right? 2020 Uh end of 2019 was the COVID outbreak and it spread all over the world. By the time of early 2020, it was spreading globally. Right? And uh even for us like here in the Bible College, I think by uh March or something, uh we were getting news uh that all colleges had to be shut down. Students had to be sent home. So, you can imagine in the beginning of the year, students have all come. We finished, you know, January, February and in March, everybody's saying you have to close everything. Everybody has to go home. And then we were like, "Okay, you know, we have That's an external factor. It's beyond our control." So, we told students, "All of you, please go home. We have to follow the rules. You go home, we we don't know what to do next. We'll we'll wait and see." In our minds, we thought, "Okay, this thing will go away after, you know, 2 months and we'll tell them all to come back." We are waiting 2 months. And oh, it's only getting worse. The There are more and more restrictions coming. It's not getting easier. It's getting more restricted. So, we are What do we do? I still remember um we had to conduct a wedding uh in here just in this North Bangalore side. And there were only like 20, 25 people allowed in the wedding. Uh one of our young man in the church. Again, he had planned his wedding, you know, in the beginning of the year. So, he couldn't help it, you know, everything is arranged. But anyway, the wedding was very small. Just family. And after the wedding, Pastor Jayakumar and I, we were we just came up We were standing outside in in the in the venue itself. We were just talking. So, what do we do now? All the students have gone home. There is no sign of uh uh us being able to tell them to come back. What do we do? We are just talking. And in that conversation, we said, "Why don't we just do it online?" No, it was just a conversation. Because now uh uh uh we don't know when students can come back. You know, so why don't we just move online start doing it online? And I think again I forget the exact date, but it must have been in June or something or July some something like that. Because we're getting close to the start of the new semester which usually we start in August, but we haven't finished the previous semester spring every it's just hanging. We have no idea when we can bring the students back. So we're having this conversation and we said why don't we just do it online? Okay. But uh we had been thinking about you know an e-learning portal and we'd been experimenting like IT team is doing some experiments and all that. So we were playing with that, but Paul I said guys look uh we have to take everything online. We have to. Students have gone home. Again the other question is can students connect from where they are? You know, because our students are from different parts of India. Uh what about internet connection? Will they can they use their mobile phones? Because we can't expect everybody to have computers at home. Can they use their mobile phones to connect? You know, all these questions came up. So okay, let's just try it. Let's just do it. You know, so immediately we set up Google Classroom accounts everything just within a you know, short time. And we sent an email to all our students whom we had sent connect. We're going to finish spring semester online. And everybody connected. So they're all happy sitting at home. Uh but we finished we had to really finish up the previous semester. We finished the class. And then by the time that was happening, classes was going on, we said, "Okay, now how do we even think of enrolling new students?" Right? Because typically in August, we would But now nothing was in place. Everything had come to a standstill. But quickly I said, "Okay, look, let's put up our website." That time APC Bible We didn't have a separate website for APC Bible College. Everything was done through the main website, APC. So within literally within 1 week, then we worked on the media team, IT team. Everybody was working from home. Within 1 week, the website went up. We started running promotions for new admissions. And by the time we started in August, we had students from 60 countries join. So uh that that is one example where when I look back, I see that uh as a team, we were able to adapt to an external factor. It's Nobody predicted this. It just happened. But because all of And all of us were working from home, but we were able to adapt. So we were able to finish previous classes and start a new semester with much more larger number of students than we anticipated. Like what they did was we went up to our like 160 students. And this was all done in weeks. You know, like like I said, like by July, month of July, it's just few weeks. Everything was done. Uh we had students from 60 countries joining us online. And a lot of people were at home. Because globally people were you know, locked under under lockdown. So people sitting at home. So many students joined us, you know, from different countries. And they were all studying online. You know. So that flexibility to adapt, you know, to the situation. and actually we grew because of that. And then we immediately set up the e-learning platform, all those things. So now because of COVID, we have in-person, online, e-learning. It kind of forced us to, you know, expand. Otherwise, we're only doing in-person classes. That's all. But now we could serve more people because we adapted to the external challenge and it, you know, we could also expand. So this is an example where as an organization we need to be flexible enough, you know, to do something new and also do it quickly in in this particular situation. We had happened we had only like a a month maybe to do everything and we did it, you know? So that was something to look back. Um, there are So now we are on page 13. Uh, how could we say that an organizational design or structure uh, is not right. You know, some some some failure, some design issues which will quite definite to fail. Two things. One, if everything is centered around one person. Like, you know, if everything has to be done through the senior pastor. I can't imagine. As it is there's enough work. But imagine like all these decisions that different ministries are making, different pastors. If everything has to go through one person, that is a design for failure. Because how much can one person handle, right? And it will become a bottleneck, you know? Everybody will be waiting for that one person to make a decision. Right? We can't be fast. We can't be flexible. We can't move quickly. So, a design that is centered around one person is a design for failure. You should not have a structure like that. Second is it's the other side. If there are too many independent silos. Silos means they're all working in a closed environment. They're not talking to each other. They're not sharing with each other. You know, imagine Bible College is doing something, missions is doing something else, teen church is doing something else, youth is doing Everybody is doing something else. And they're in their own silos. That means they're all just in their own little closed worlds. There's no communication. That is also a design for failure. Right? Media team will be doing their own thing. Uh video announcement will be something else. There's If there's no communication, it's a design for failure. So, two extremes. One is if it's all centered around one person. Second is if everybody's closed and working in their own closed compartments, it's going to fail. It won't work. There should be close interaction, communication, cooperation between all the different ministries. So, even though there are different leaders, even though there are different people, we should work as one team. Right? Not as, you know, 25 different independent departments. So, these are two structural problems, design problems, which will are sure to cause failure in any organization. So, we have to find the right balance. Yes, there have to be leaders, there has to be departments, but they have to work together. Other things we need to keep in mind when we are looking at organizational structure, like I mentioned, there could be external things that force us to change. You know, like these government regulations and so on. Um external factors. So, for example, uh there was a time when I'll just mention some of the We had We APC as a church We had We were involved in what we would call as social work. Right? Or social missions. We were helping Christian hospitals. We were working with Christian hospitals, especially uh EHA, Emmanuel Hospital Association in India. Uh these are all mission hospitals that were started like 50, 100 years ago by missionaries who came. They spread all across India. So, we were working with them. We were also planning to start work in the slums. We were planning so we actually had one full-time person. Um I'm thinking like 3 years back. Uh he had joined us to build this social action side of things. You know, like how do we bring in education programs for children in the slums and all of those things. So, we wanted to do this kind of work also. And to care for the people that they needs. So, we have been doing this for many years. But in recent times, government started catching or causing problems with organizations that are involved in these kinds of work and they're saying, "You're doing this in order to convert people." So, organizations that are having they're working with children that are feeding uh poor or even medical or hos- education here in India, governments you're saying you're doing this in order to convert It became a big problem. And for us especially because we are a religious organization. So, when we start getting involved with the the social this kind of work, government will directly say you're doing this to convert people. And so, uh I think like yeah, I think it's about 3 years ago even our auditors advised us. They said, "See, things are changing. You'll be questioned. Why so much money is going to the medical mission hospital? You are a Christian organization. You're supposed to be preaching to some of your money is going to uh medical mission hospital. Why?" And so, they will use that to use sponsoring conversion. Uh so, they'll start questioning all these things. If your money some of your money is going to help people in the slums, is going for helping uh you know, give education like directly like that to people uh the the poor children. So, in order to, you know, because of this an external factor, the religious thing, the anti-conversion laws and all, they said better you just stay focused on doing religious work. That's it. So, we had to close those things down. You know, we closed up we had to apologize to, you know, EHA because we had made lots of plans. You know, we had to be lots of things were in progress, but we had to pull all of that back. Close everything down. Uh because of the political situation and the problems being caused. Yeah. So, I'm giving that as an example where we had to restructure a part of what we are doing. You know, the whole the whole organization didn't change, but one area of ministry, we had to close it down. You know, so so that sometimes the organization may need to be reorganized because of external factors like this. Right? So, we can expand, we can close. I remember when the tsunami tsunami happened, uh yeah, this was many years ago, like 2003 or four something like that. We got in, we helped. You know, we could do that work. When COVID happened, we could help. That was 2020. But since that time, we have actually closed down all this social work, right? So, reorganizing may some maybe sometimes due to external factors. Sometimes it could be due to internal. You're not getting the right people or if it is going against the organizational culture of if you find there are uh internal politics and so on, and these things can really hinder the organization. Right? So, we have to be careful even in the church organization not to allow these internal politics to come in. You know, so I mean, sometimes, you know, we see some very sad stories. Uh example would be like the father must have been a pioneer. He started the church, started the ministry. Let's say he has some children. And uh towards the end of his life, children start They're all into ministry, then they start fighting with each other about the same ministry. Like one person wants one piece of the ministry, other person wants another piece of the ministry. And uh I think I've seen it multiple times in multiple uh you know organizations where it's very sad actually a father has worked hard he's laid a good foundation he's built a ministry he has some children and they are the cause for dividing up the ministry because each one wants to be in charge and so then they have to divide the ministry and it's very sad I've you know and sometimes we like in our own city we've seen it other cities other parts of the world so I think it just happens everywhere when these internal politics you know cause the structure to fall apart and so we have to protect the organization from these kinds of things now let's look at APC right how how are we structured and how how do we work right just I'm using this as a case study for you I'm not saying this is the only way to structure a church or a ministry I'm not saying this is the best way this is what works for us now before we get into that I want to make also say this that uh we didn't start with a big organization structure right we started small right and then over time as ministries were being birthed we began to build the organization and the structure of the organization so we didn't start with some big thing and we started very small and then we added people over time right so you look at the organization chart today generally this is you know this on page 14 you see the the chart this is kind of how we are organized today right But this has grown over time. Um so, at the top, we have trustees. I mean, these people are legally responsible for the organization. And the approach we've taken is we like some of our pastors to also be the trustees. The reason is then they really understand what the organization is doing. They can keep everything aligned, right? Uh and then uh we have an advisory board, as I explained. These are people we go to to get advice and input on special topics, special matters, where they are experts. You know, if it's uh accounting or if it is uh right now, a lot of work is being done with the building project. So, we need uh people very good in that area or guiding us, advising us, you know, with with all of that kind of work. So, that's kind of a that's the advisory board, where we go to people who know the subject to give us guidance. Then, there is the senior pastor. And he is responsible for overseeing all the other areas of ministry. If you look at the the uh the left side, so we have locations. So, uh so, we have many locations in Bangalore. Um each location has an associate pastor. And there will be people serving in the uh various other roles, like worship, youth, children. Uh we may have an assistant pastor. Uh not all locations have an assistant pastor because uh you know, as and when we we we appoint them. And it's a way for them to grow, you know? So, they'll start off as assistant pastor, and then they will grow up. And then we have also have volunteers who are serving there. So, every location has this same kind of structure, right? And in every location, we follow follow the same format of the worship service. Almost same. There's a small variations, but the same format. Um the same message is preached in these locations. Uh the uh video announcements that are run there are the same. So, although we have many these locations, we function as one church. Right? Uh and the pastoral team is one pastoral team. Right? So, although there are associate pastors for each location, they they are one pastoral team. Then, we have various church ministries. Right? Um and each church ministry is has a ministry leader. In many cases, the ministry leader would be a pastor themselves. Right? And as the that ministry grows, we will appoint somebody else to do it. So, many times these ministries start They start by a pastor maybe led by a pastor, and later on we will give it off to some other person. Right? So, these ministries, you know, you can say like example, the Bible college, the Catalyst, which goes to the schools, uh college outreach, or we call it Campus Cell, which just goes to the colleges. Um the Christian professionals, counseling, women's, men's conference, uh missions, member care, life groups. So, like these there are so many different ministries. Uh some of them are led by pastors, some of them are led by other individuals. Right? But in times past, some a pastor may have been leading it. For example, if you think about APC missions, in the early years, I was leading it. So, I would, you know, lead this the church planting, helping go and start these outreach churches, send people out. Then, that I handed off to Pastor Nancy. So, she was our missions coordinator along with other things that she was doing. She was a missions coordinator. Then, when the number of churches grew and the number of people came, then we said, "Okay, because Pastor Nancy is also doing other things, she won't have enough time to dedicate to missions." So, then I think it was last year, uh we brought Shikha. Right? So, Shikha is now focused only on APC missions. Right? So, it's gone It's taken off my plate. Taken off Pastor Nancy's plate. She does it. But, Shikha reports to me in the sense I will oversee and you know, set goals and and guide that, you know, and review what's going on and all the the things. But, day-to-day things, she's a she's every every month calling the pastors, checking, um exploring the new churches that need to be All those all those things, she will only do track you with. So, many ministries started like for example, Catalyst, which is the ministry to schools. Uh so, they started in 2008 where you know, I got a call from one of the schools saying, "Hey, we want Can the church come and do something?" I said, "Yes, yes, yes, we'll do it." How are we going to do it? Uh we need somebody there. And that's the time Pastor Selina joined us. So, she joined us really uh to head up Catalyst ministry. Right? So, she started the Catalyst She started going to many schools, doing that. So, since that time, 2008 till now, it's a good What's that? Uh 14 No, 16 years. She's been leading Catalyst. And then, we added children's church to what she was doing, writing the children's church curriculum, all of that. Yeah. Uh like that, so different ministries, uh you know, somebody will start it. Uh when it grows, when it needs a dedicated person, we bring a dedicated person and say, "Okay, you manage it." Because then it's like a full-time responsibility. Right? Same thing, Campus Elevates, you know, I started that I think we started off first in 2011. And then uh Pastor Nancy led that for some time. Then we handed it off to Sam Matthews. And then now Ravi is handling it, you know. So, it's taken off other people's plate and we have one person just focused on it because we want to grow. And I think we're hitting about 30 colleges now. Uh we've gone to 30 colleges and trying to establish the program in that number of colleges. So, it's gone from what used to be like five, six colleges to many more. Uh as the ministry grows, uh we need people who are dedicated to oversee these ministries, right? So, that's how we grow these ministries and then we appoint people so they can Um there's one problem and then same the operation side. So, the admin the last box here is the operations and this all of this is the administrative work. Which would be things like accounting, office administration. Then we have the digital um content management, the HR, IT, legal, uh publications, events, all these things, which are administrative, organizational side. Um So, here again, the same thing happens, you know. Uh many of these areas I used to handle to some extent. When the work got more, then it's okay, let's appoint somebody. Let somebody handle it. Uh and they report back to me, right? So, for example, accounting, finance, um so, we used to have a part-time person who would come. Then from 20 end of 2019, we had a full-time person. Or actually, yeah, around 2018-2019, full-time person uh for accounting and for all these areas of ministry, right? Um we had different people. Now, um the problem here is that too many of these people are reporting to the senior pastor. It's a little big problem. Okay, not a little problem, a big problem. So, what we need is we need another strong layer after that where uh a lot of these people can report to. So, we are looking, for example, a head of operations. Like this person should oversee all these departments. Right now, all these departments are reporting uh to the to the senior pastor. It's not good, but we would like to have that head of operations, but we have to find the right person. Like we can't just appoint anybody. Uh it'll it might disrupt things, right? So, until we find the right person, we just wait. We keep going the best we can. Similarly, all these ministries are reporting directly back to the senior pastor because we don't have one pastor for the church ministries, right? So, they're all reporting directly. And ideally, we want one pastor who'll oversee these ministries, but until we find someone like that who can think through on this, uh it's it's going to be like this. So, that's a drawback that I see, you know, in what in the way we are structured right now. Um and uh but we are looking you know, we look out for right people. When we find the right people, we take them on and we So, uh when we talk a little bit later on human resource, I'll explain to why it's important to have the right person. Like we just don't want to hire anybody because then it could cause a lot of problems, right? So, once you find the right people and you bring them in, you can delegate those roles, so on. Now, within each team uh within each area, you will have further, you know, teams and people responsible. So, you see some of these things. Uh for example, in publications, we have Hannah, who's the head of publication, right? She oversees all the work, so I don't get directly involved. There used to be a time I it was I had to do all this, but as things grew, we definitely needed a full-time person. So, once Hannah came, Hannah, you take charge. So, she oversees everything. So, we have book translations. So, again, now it's further divided. Under Hannah, there's one person who's in charge of translation work. So, Mayola, she will handle all the translations. So, she has to coordinate. Now, we have translations I don't know what the number is, but like uh maybe 50 Indian languages. And I think it's four or five foreign languages. So, coordinate all that is like one book has to be translated in all these languages. Yeah, and make sure it's done. Then it goes up on the website, etc. So, there's one person who does that. Then there's another person who does who's in charge of the physical book distributions. So, Ashok is in charge. There's a warehouse. There's somebody working under him. So, the physical distribution of the book. Then uh there's another person who's in charge, Lydia, who's in charge of the the whole database and the book distribution. The requests come in, uh the addresses have to be entered in the system, they have to be dispatched. Coordination of all that. Uh the digital distribution side, making sure the uh the digital versions of the books are distributed through digital channels. So, it goes through many different channels globally. There's another person responsible for that. So, like that, publications department is also structured, organized, different people, and they all report to Hannah. Then I'll check on Hannah. Hannah, how was things going? You know. So, and we plan, we discuss, and then that's how for example, whole publications things happen. So, like this, under each area of ministry, things are structured. And the head of that ministry is given full freedom to structure whatever they want or to hire the people they want. So, if Hannah wants to hire somebody, she can make the decision. She just has to tell me that, "Hey, we need this person to do this work, so we want to hire a full-time person." And if it makes sense, I'll say yes, right? And then that's how that area of ministry will grow. Okay? Same thing for media, IT, etc. And the last thing I'll talk about and then we'll take questions is all of this. So, now we look at the hub and spoke, which is We have staff. We have consultants, and we have volunteers. Right? So, staff are full-time people. That means they work um at least 40 hours a week, full-time. So, we have a little over 30 or 30 35 staff. And they're full-time with the church. Then we have uh consultants. Consultants means they work hourly. Uh they can work how many ever hours they want, right? Uh whatever time they able to and they're paid for that. Then we have volunteers. Volunteers means they are giving their time freely. Uh again, whatever number of hours they can work. And then in addition to that, we have also our outreach churches. That means churches around the country, pastors, are also supported by us. And some pastors may have one or two assistants working with them. Right? So, they have their own teams. They're all supported by APC Bangalore. Right? So, this hub and spoke model is only for APC Bangalore. The outreach churches are not in this. How do we structure ourselves? At the very center, our pastors and ministry leaders. Right? And they are supported by the gray area, which is the the the uh church staff. So, the pastors are supported in their work by the church. So, when a pastor uh example, um Pastor Paul is in charge of men's conference I mean men's ministry. So, he wants to have a men's conference. He will tell the media team, you know, "Hey, uh you know, we're having this men's conference. These are the dates, these are the speakers, the theme. Please get the promotions done." So, media team will have to do that. They will do the graphics, they will do the video, they will work along with the IT team to send out emails, WhatsApp update websites, all of that. So, all that happens, right? So, the pastor any pastor ministry initiates the work. The staff support the work. What needs to be done? Then there are volunteers. So, when the conference men's conference happens, we need volunteers there. You know, right from the registration desk to ushering, worship team, uh lots of things uh volunteers are needed. Right? So, pastors, church staff, and volunteers have to work together for that particular area, men's ministry. So, that's that round ministry area that you see. Right? So, um in every ministry area, pastors, staff, and volunteers are working together. You got it? Now, this hub and spoke means we can create many spokes, as many spokes as we want. Right? You want to start a new ministry area? We can start. Right? Just get you know, the pastor, staff, and volunteers work together. And some volunteers may work in multiple areas. It's fine. It's up to them. Uh some staff will support, you know, multiple areas. It's fine. So, this hub and spoke model uh allows us to grow as well as uh you know, there's good coordination between all the teams. And so, this is how we function cooperating between staff uh pastors, staff, and volunteers. Did I get it? So, every ministry uh pastor is in charge, but the staff support volunteers work, and everything is coordinated. All right? So, let me pause here, and um please ask some nice questions. how we are structured, right? Uh we will get more into this tomorrow. But so far, what we've done, uh any questions? Oh, it says I've lost my connection. Is my connection okay? Online students, you can hear me? Oh, okay, good. >> Yes, sir. >> Yes, it's saying it's trying to reconnect. Okay. Questions, please. Go ahead. >> Pastor, um so in the design for failure, right? Uh you said that it like it shouldn't be revolved around one person. But of course, like like you said, when there's no one there, everyone reports to that person. And then of course, um how does it look practically? Can you break down what that looks like, mm, please? >> Yeah. So, like example of what's happening right now at APC, you know, it's not we are not at the best place that we should be at, uh simply because we don't have like a head of operations, we don't have a pastor of church ministry and so on. So, it's not the best place, but how it happens now right now in practical is um I will have to meet with all the pastors and all the ministry leaders and also the heads of all the other ministries. So, there's a lot of, you know, that coordination meeting interaction happens. So, example, we do a lot of it through email or we use we use an online collaboration tool. We it's called Mattermost. It's like a message It's like almost like instant messaging, but separate from WhatsApp. We used to use WhatsApp, but then many people use WhatsApp for their personal thing also. So, we we said, "Okay, you keep your WhatsApp for your personal thing. All church-related thing will happen on this separate app called Mattermost." So, it's like an internal communication tool. Now, we use that. I'll show it to you later. And we use that for our internal communication. So, a lot of communication happens through uh you know, that. And then here's what I do. Uh one is monthly meetings. Uh so, we have pastoral team meetings as a group as a pastoral pastoral like the first Saturday of every month. So, this Saturday we'll all meet. We'll sit and talk. That's just to build relationship between our cells as pastoral team. And if we need to discuss things, we'll discuss. But then I also meet with the pastors individually to review their areas of ministry time to time, usually on a monthly basis. I'll have one-on-one meetings with all of them. So, that's going on right now. Uh schedule different ones. And so, this is why I have to put date and time. All right. So, I said, "Okay, you So, so today after this after the Bible college, I go to the office and from 1:00 to 6:00 one after the other meetings, right? Like I'm meeting with different people. Uh and in between that I have to fit in our congregation people also like people in the congregation want to meet. So, there'll be meetings with staff, there's also meetings with church people. But, I have to have one-on-one meetings with all our pastors, ministry heads to ask them, you know, discuss with them what they are doing to give them guidance, to check on their work. Uh to, you know, to keep it going. So, that's one. That's the monthly meetings. Then every 6 months we do thorough reviews. Uh so, that's kind of like a document. So, everybody has to fill a document of what was What did you accomplish in the last 6 months? Uh the progress. So, we do those 6-month reviews. And uh as part of that review the main review would be happening in December where we are reviewing the whole year, plus we are planning for the coming year. So, every December, every pastor, actually every staff fills their documents, called a performance review document and a planning document. They plan for the next 3 years. So, they we review the past year and we have a plan for the next 3 years. Each staff does that. I said, "Okay, this is what we're doing." Then we go over it. Then they'll meet with me. I I'll review that. So, it is a lot of meetings, meeting with people, our staff one-on-one discussing this. So, it takes a lot of time. But, that's the way, like I said, it's not the best way right now. Uh but, that's what we have to do. And uh the goal is if I if we find good leaders we can delegate a lot of this. Like, hey some a leader will take care of all of the administration that I don't have to worry. I can just talk to one person and he can talk to all the other 25 departments. Um like that, you know? Um, that would be the ideal. We're working towards it, but right now the arrangement is like this. Um, we have to oversee all this. So, so it means, for example, if somebody has to do what I'm doing now, uh, they need to understand a lot of things, like right from accounting uh, to IT, to media. So, I'm very strict with all these people, like they can't just say something, get away. So, I have to keep learning all these things, right? Uh, because as IT team tells me something, I say, "Hey, this is what This is the way it is." So, I need to be up-to-date with technology. And it will be up-to-date with the media. Um, and guide them, direct them, drive, tell them because it has to be done right, you know? So, it means, uh, I need to understand all these areas. I'm not doing the work, but I need to know enough to question, to ask, to guide, direct, plan, um, in these areas. Um, uh, as well as the ministry area. So, all the pastors, you know, I need to say every area of ministry, guide, check, so on. So, um, it is not the ideal situation, but I could say we're in the progress of growing. So, hopefully this will look different in in in due time. That there'll be others who will handle it and things. So, the goal is to transfer this knowledge to people and let them handle these things. >> Uh, thank you. I have a follow-up question. How would you maintain, you know, good communication within the entire organization even when you delegate? Like, even if you achieve the goal of having someone else oversee everything? >> Mhm. >> There could potentially be maybe a disconnect between, you know, smaller ministries or, you know, from the senior pastor or the leader. >> Yeah. >> How do we balance that? >> Yeah. So, that's important, right? Because uh okay, we can say something uh do it like this, but what actually gets done may be something different, right? So, we need to have um like feedback mechanisms. Uh we need One is of course we have to observe. So, I observe what's happening. Like when I go to Sunday services and all my eyes are open, I'm looking at everything. Uh book table, is it done properly? Greeters, hospitality, everything I'm watching. Because I could say here, do it, but if it is not actually being done, so I need to see, right? So, when I walk into the Sunday service, I'm not just keeping my eyes closed and you know, I'm what I'm looking at everything. What do And if something is not done properly, uh you know, I will talk to them, right? So, one is like that. But of course, I can't see every location. I'm only going to one location, so I don't know what's happening at this. So, the second is we do surveys, right? Where we let people give us feedback. So, every month, for example, there's a volunteer survey. Basically, it's an opportunity for people people to tell us, "Hey, is everything okay? Or is something not okay, right?" So, that way even though, you know, I'm not physically present at all locations and I will not be able to uh this survey is an opportunity for everyone to say something, right? And uh we also have the volunteer calls. Um they can be on the call once a month and say something, like, "Hey, this is not going properly. That's not going properly." Right? So, there's this feedback mechanism that comes. And at the same time, we allow congregants to give feedback. So, we have this open email feedback at ABC. So, anybody from the congregation can send an email and tell us something is not going properly. And now and then we'll get an email if people see something. Uh you know, there's not enough tea or no biscuits or something that anybody in the congregation feels is not right, uh they can give us feedback. And then that's how we know that uh well, even though we have a certain goal, it's not happening on the ground and so we have to fix it. So, these are kind of things we do. Mainly we need a feedback system. You know, only then we will know whether everything is fine or not, right? I look at this question from the chat. It says, "I'm from Varanasi uh district of UP. I've also registered a trust with the UP government. Through that trust I want to do social service and ministry. Um and during which there's a problem in the ministry. People say that you are a Christian, you get money from us. People say this. What should be done in this situation? Hmm." So, you've registered a trust. Um okay, so is it a religious trust or is it like um a public charitable trust? Um >> Sir, both. >> Okay, I can't hear Rajesh. Sorry, 1 minute. Uh I'm not able to hear your voice. Hmm? Oh, it's um Oh, it's a religious trust. So, you have one trust. It's uh uh uh yeah. So, yeah Rajesh, it's a problem uh especially given our current, you know, I mean, it would have been fine it was like maybe I would say like 10 years ago, something like this would have been very fine. Nobody would trouble. Um but given our current situation, it is a problem uh when we are trying to bring in the religious aspect and the social aspect because like you're you're experiencing people question it, you know, why are you doing both? And maybe you're doing this social in order to convert people. And then the other question is, "Where's all this money coming from?" And so on. So, the best thing to do, Rajesh, if it is possible, keep your current registered trust as one thing. Uh keep it as a example. You could keep it as purely religious, which is you do the church work, the ministry, keep it for that. And that will be done in in a particular way, which is you'll have Sunday service or Bible studies, you know. And if it's possible, if you form a separate trust with a separate name, everything, purely for social work, you know, uh like whatever kind of social work you're doing, keep it that. So, you'll have two organizations. One is purely religious, one is purely social work. You can be the responsible person for both the organizations. And keep all the accounts, money, everything separate. So, especially given the current political situation, you know, they don't see any money going across organization these two organizations. So, they can't say that you're doing social work in order to, you know, convert people. And this kept separately. And also keep in mind that when you're doing social work, it has to be open to people of any religion. So, that's the criteria. Religious work, yeah, you can say it's for Christians, it's for believers. Social work means uh we have to treat everybody equally. Like if you example, you're giving education, uh all kinds of people will have to be able to come and receive it. So, that would be the way forward given our current situation. Uh if it's possible, otherwise, uh best is keep one organization focus on one aspect of work, build it strong, and then you see later on in the future you could start a second one separately. Yeah? Okay. All right, we'll pause here for today. We'll pick this up tomorrow. I will take it forward, and any questions we'll answer as well. Thank you.