Church & Ministry Administration | Lecture 9 : BC310-CMA-20260908

Okay. Little planning is going on. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, who has a mic? Can you pray please and we will start the class. >> Let's pray. Thank you Lord. Thank you father. Thank you for giving this wonderful time father God. Lord, as you given this time to learn from your word, Father God, Lord, teach us and guide us, Father God. Lord, give more wisdom to understand each and everything, Father God. Entire session, I just submit into your mighty hands, Father God. Lord, you fill us with your power, Father God. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. >> Amen. >> All right. Morning everyone. Welcome. Today we start lesson number five and um we want to talk about administrative policies, guidelines and standards. So I've I've shared the PDF in the Google classroom. I'm also sharing it here on on in the class classroom. Um and I want to in this lesson we emphasize the importance of having uh policies, guidelines, standards by which the organization operates for every area. Right? And it is important especially in let's say in a city context. Um so I know I I know I understand that you know uh some of the things that we are saying about how we are working in a city uh may be a little different of how things happen in small towns or villages. H but even if you are a church or a ministry that is working in a village small town you have to think about how to apply this. Okay. The important thing is that in any organization we need to have everything written down right the policies guidelines and standards. So policies means look this is what guides or the these are the ways we will make our decisions and these are the things we follow when all of us are making decisions right uh so it's not just in one person's head but it's written down so everybody can read it and everybody can follow it right for example like you uh when we and some of these policies and and not some but all of these policies and guidelines and standards they evolve over time right that means as you keep functioning as an organization these policies or these guidelines these standards you keep improving them over time but I'll give you example you know in our early days as a church um and uh you know when other churches or ministries they would come they'll say hey can we announce our event during a Sunday service uh in those days we used to allow okay some some ministry they're having some conference something okay I we'll announce it but then after some time uh we realized that actually one thing that happened was there was a certain ministry that came and uh it was very well-known ministry and um you know the person the head of the ministry he said you know uh can you give me five minutes I want to make announcement like just talk about the ministry I want to make announcement I said okay five minutes so we have announcements time five minutes he was going on for 15 minutes his presentation is going on I'm sitting the front row he's happily continuing And I don't know how to stop this because in front of everybody you how can you go up and say please stop. So I have to sit patiently. I'm waiting and it's he's going on this presentation. He asked five minutes in good faith. I say okay five minutes but now it's 15 minutes. He's talking about it and uh that is when I said we will not do this again because uh they asked five minutes for making announcement about see they the Christian ministry is only I'm not against the ministry but on a Sunday morning people are coming mainly to worship God spend some time in prayer listen to the word they're not coming there to sit and listen announcements for uh 10 15 minutes something you know like that you know and if we give one organization 15 minutes another organization will come next Sunday you give 15 minutes then give us also 15 minutes why you're doing like you know showing preference to one versus the other and all so we made a policy decision and what was our decision during APC church service we will only announce APC events and as a rule You know uh we have a rule for the media team which 5 + 5 + 5 that means keep your announce announcements to 5 minutes uh five events and uh what is it five five minutes five events and um I forget the word last five is anyway something but basically don't take more than five minutes to do your announcements and uh only in rare cases like when we have a missions report like somebody goes on a missions trip we show a little bit more okay maximum you can go to 8 minutes in those in that case but normal Sunday finish your announcements quickly in 5 minutes there will be of course an intro and outro so that will take a little extra time we understand that but the main thing will be finish the main announcements in five minutes and only five events some but nowadays because of so many events sometimes they go seven and all that it's Okay. But we have a rule that's it. So it's our policy. So when any other organization come and say please can we uh see give an announcement we having some conference we having some book sale or whatever something they're having. So see say as a policy we do not announce anything else except APC events because we want to keep it very short. People are coming to worship God and pray and listen to the word. We want to keep that the focus. If you want, you can keep a stall outside, but bring your own table, bring your own stall. You put your things and clean up after it. If you want, you come and do that on your own. We will we can give you one Sunday. You come and do that. You But we will not announce it because if you say yes to one organization, we'll have to say yes to so many. and so many events are happening so many all of them are good but we don't want to take people's time to do it right so this policy decision was made a long time ago and we've stuck with it the thing is it's a written statement now and we share it with all our staff h especially like the office manager because they'll get a call they'll you know they get an email can we announce this event so our response is the same so whether they approach someone else they approach another pastor or they approach me directly. All of us will say the same thing. It's our policy not to have um announcement of any other event during our Sunday service. But if you want you can have a book I mean a table outside you can give out your hand flyer whatever do it when people are going out not when they're coming in. That is also strict because if we give it to any they will come they'll be lying all over the auditorium as it is after service it's dirty now we have to go and clean it up because people leave it under the chair they leave it on there then we have to clean it so we get when they're going out at least they'll take it to their car and dirty it there you know these kind of things so we just made these as our policy you understanding right so like this through different experiences uh situations uh our policy for different things have evolved and we've written it down. Um another interesting thing was you see like in the early days and so we're going back to the early 2000s there used to be a lot of overseas missions ministries who would come to Bangalore and they will set up they want to set up something yeah and uh they will you know they will uh come they their teams will come they will do ministry here and so on. So in the early days we used to have a lot of these American you know and sometimes other places um these u their ministry teams come they will come to church and they will they'll say you know can we work with you etc we want to do this then we had many different kinds of experiences with those ministries one example would be uh once you know uh one big church in the US uh they said uh they want to help us set up uh like a cafe outreach in Bangalore city. They said okay if you want we'll do it but we don't want any strings attached but their condition was we have to join come under them you know so that means we will become part of their organization I said we are not interested you know so as a policy we will not accept that you want you who want to come here we are already here you want to come and do something you come and do it but to say that we have to come under that church to receive leave money to set up a cafe. It's not something we're interested in. So they said sorry you know we're not interested. Then other other thing we saw was again this these are these big churches in the US. They came um they came they said you know the the the people you approached they said you know we want to do a men's conference. Uh can you help us? Okay men's conference no problem. Yeah we can help you. Uh so we arranged like a men's gathering in fact at the UTC hall where we have our seals you know that's so we arranged the men's gathering I said okay here's a team that has come from this big church very famous church they want to do something for men all please come and uh now I didn't attend that particular meeting but what I heard was they we helped them have host this we informed our people to come because just come and listen be blessed whatever but they collected all the names contact numbers of these people next thing they're saying we are starting a branch of our church from this US church is starting a branch here and they're inviting all these people to come I was actually very upset because they didn't tell me in the beginning right they didn't say that was their actual intent they just said we want to have an event for men so we help them but from there they've got all the context of these people. And I was feeling very bad because uh this is a well-known church for pastors very well known very famous uh but for them to be doing something like this was was bad taste was very bad but I also realized that look if they're trying to do something else our people are smart enough to know that you know hey I don't need to go there but they started off this their own branch church branch of that church they had some meetings then it died you know, but I I was really upset. But that was another learning experience. Oh, okay. These what these people are doing. We had another big uh ministry like from Texas come in. Uh they again those people were attending our church and then they said, you know, we'd uh uh it was kind of strange because first it seemed like they wanted to promote their their version of Christianity, their flavor, you know, they want to do things in a certain way. see they can attend if they attend ABC. But then I saw them okay they started taking our young people giving you know doing all these Bible studies with them uh and telling them how to do things in a certain way. They even once approached me they so we want to mentor you then I said look I I'm not asking you to mentor me because the next thing is they will take over APC kind of that was their mindset you know for whatever reason I said no but then I observed that and I'm just giving you some of these but there are many such examples where we saw all these ministries come in they'll usually be here for two years suddenly they'll disappear and then everything they started will just be gone. So after observing all these things we formulated our policy one if any of these people ministries come uh they can be part of they can attend church. We're not going to tell them not to attend church. It's up to them to come and attend. But a we will not give them any role of leadership here at APC. If they want they will work under our leaders but they will not be given because what will happen is a couple of things one is they they will promote their brand we have to do like this or after two years they'll just back and go away then suddenly that ministry who lead it you know so these kind of secondly we will not come under them because many of them are trying to establish their branches here and all of that we we don't need it we are fine we started before you we continue after you so you know we don't need that we're not dependent on them. So these were some policies we formulated internally in how we will relate to overseas ministries who come into India right we're here you want to come and worship with us it's fine but we have clear boundaries on what we will allow you to do and uh you know to what extent we will work with you because we've had we've seen all these things happen over so many years right and of course now the whole atmosphere has changed the political situation has changed uh if they come on visitors visa and they want to preach, we'll say no because they can preach, they'll take the next flight and go away, we will get into trouble because we uh you're not allowed to be preaching technically on a visitor's visa. You need a you know the right kind of visa to come in and do these things. So all of these things and so we we you know we began to have okay this is our policy how we work with overseas ministers minister you're getting it right. So over time through these experiences through these learnings we began to formulate a policy and in many cases you know we have to write it down and share it with all our team members so that we all say the same thing. You got it? So that's as far as policy is concerned. How we do ministry. Then guidelines you know uh guidelines means uh guidelines is not dictating the decision. It's just saying hey think about these things when you're doing. So we have guidelines example volunteer team guidelines or uh we have guidelines for every ministry area you know uh starting from greeters to book table to ushering to everything one by one. be written guidelines. So when we um want to when the team leader wants to look up how am I supposed to do it they can go and read it they'll understand okay this is how I'm supposed to operate this team guidelines standards are well you have to follow this standards like you must follow so standards are for example media team right um uh in terms of like what font what font size what the graphic size so it's mainly for different teams for the work they are doing they have to follow these standards so that uh even if the person changes if a new person joins they will continue the work the way it should be right so we have policies guidelines standards you got it right so for example APC books there is a standard way a book so any APC book you take it will look the same. Like there's a standard font that we use. The book cover is always black and white. So, so don't even think about putting color, right? Why? We want to keep it cheap, right? Because the moment you introduce one color, cost of the book will go up and we giving for free. So, and yeah, they're reading what is inside. So, the color doesn't matter too much, right? So just do black and white, different shades of black, gray, gray. You can play with that. Play with your black and white as much as you want because the cost is the same. Don't introduce any color. It's a standard inside book how it is laid out, the font size, everything is standard. So any person who works as part of the publication team, they follow the same standard. So all books look uniform, right? So that's where standard comes in. You have to follow the standard. Um uh and and all of these things are written down. Okay. So I'll just run through some of these things. Um I kind of explain the whole lesson to you and then I'll show you what where we've got. So the importance why should we have these um policies, guidelines and standards. Uh it uh it provides guidance for the organization and people who are working in the organization. It clarifies our position on specific issues. Um for example like we do not receive money from foreign organizations. It's a known thing right at no point can we bend that rule right? The only way anybody wants to give it has to come through a bank in India. That's it. Okay. So it's our position and uh that's the way we are. We don't have FC for reasons we don't want to get into any kind of trouble from beginning and we wanted to set a model where as a ministry all the work done in India will be funded by people from Indian bank accounts from beginning. So it was our standard our policy it becomes a basis for decision making. um there is uh consistency fairness in decision making and um we can hold people accountable to this like nobody can say oh I didn't know we gave it to you in writing we said this is our guideline this how are we for you right so uh it helps helps in all these reasons why we have to have everything in writing so everything must be written and available okay It must be clear, simple, detailed. Uh look at various scenarios, people in the organization. Uh we we we put everything in writing. Okay. So let me just uh share with you. Let me just pause and share with you. So if you go to apcwo.org/guidelines, you will see our web page where we have put all of these things available. So I'm sharing that with you apcwo.org/guidelines right. So we've also made it available online because you know many other churches other ministries when they ask us we say hey you can go here and you can use it right just modify it and use it. So um the reason we put it online is anybody can access it even our own people we just tell them go here you can read it. So you you see here our volunteer team guidelines and training documents right. So ushering guidelines, booktable guidelines, uh connect team various teams, these are guidelines, right? All these are PDF documents so people can download it. Uh some of these are training documents. So if you want to train a life group leader or somebody we have all of these guidelines documents and then there are guideline documents for our staff people who inside the office who are doing things for them and then uh below that are role description. Now now we have not filled all these roles but um for different roles we have the role description. what are you what is expected of you right so we put all that here so anytime any person working uh they go and look up okay this is what I'm supposed to be doing as my role you all with me okay so uh we we let people you know any church asks us to say hey just take this and modify it and use it you just change it however you want uh we also have our training documents Um, yeah, let me remember media. I think it's called uh I can't remember this thing. Let me Okay, let me just get that right page here. One minute. Um, let me find that page. Um I'm just trying to get that um media team training page APC guidelines volunteer All right. Um, sorry. I should have thought about this earlier. Anyway, just give me a moment. I there's another another page that we have where we have training documents for our media team. Uh I just want to give you media production. Where is that link? Sorry. Just give me a minute. I will search for it. Okay, it's media skills training. Let me share this with you. All right. So, in addition to that, apcwo.org/guidelines, there's another page, apcorg/media-skills-training, right? You can see it. You can all see it on your screen. Media-skills-training. Um so there we have all the training documents for these are mainly for the media team. Okay. So so when we want usually when they conduct uh media team training uh they will go and reference these documents uh and say hey you can read these documents etc. Okay. So for um for both uh from a guidelines perspective, let me just put it here. Uh so we have I'll put it in the chat. There is that and there is also um apcw.org/ guidelines. Okay. So anyone can use it. So we we have it online and uh we share it with our our teams and also with um uh anyone who wants to um use it. Okay. So let's go back to the PDF. Um so what we are saying is you know it's important for us as an organization that everything must be written and available right? Right? So people can read it. They know how we function and so on. So what will happen in an organization if there were no policies, guidelines and standards? What do you think will happen? There'll be chaos. Everybody will be doing their own making up their own rules. Monday morning one will be one rule. Tuesday it'll be another one. So every day people be making up their own policies doing this or even different ministries may be making up their own ideas. They may be even contradicting each other. Correct? But if everything is written down and we say this is what we follow then everything you know everybody knows every it's it's fair to everybody right. So when you come to the administrative side for our staff uh so when we have our staff and consultant guidelines again it's available in that apc.org/guidelines ology/guidelines document. Uh so when a person is joining us for work, right? Either as a staff, full-time staff or as a consultant, we give them this document. We tell them you read it and if you accept it, you sign it, then you can join start work, right? Why is that? Because in that document, we tell them about our policy. We tell them about how many days leave they get, when they can take leave, how they have to apply for leave, what are the benefits they get, everything is all written down. It is the same for all the people, all the staff and the consultants. Okay? So nobody can say, "Oh, I didn't know I only get 30 days leave or yeah, that's all we get, you know, or this I'm supposed to apply for leave." Yeah, you have to apply. And these are this is how we do our work right so it's all written down s same thing for our workplace policies I explained to you our ex our interaction with the external entities um also uh before we sign before we take a place for rent again we put everything in writing h see one mistake I I and I've kind of run into this many times you know when when pastors is they want to rent a place for church. Uh they don't sign a lease. They simply take you know not too long ago one pastor met me and what happened was uh he he needed a place to rent. So one of his congregation people said uh I have first floor on top of my house. Uh you can use that place for church. This pastor was so happy. Oh God has provided. So what he did he collected money in the church they did the full interiors I think he spent four five lakhs doing the interiors like they put the fans painting this that and all then and so he put a lot of money into it and it was not like a big charges starting after a few months this man who said you can use the first floor he said I want the first floor back what's the pastor going to do there's no lease agreement Nothing nothing written down that you know you're giving this for me for lease for so many years nothing so he has invested so much money painting the place doing all this thing few months later he's saying I want the place back how is he going to take everything I mean maybe he can remove the fence but all the other things it's it's money is gone right so that's the problem when you don't have things written You know, so if you're going to take a place in on lease, you're going to you sign a contract, you put it down in writing, make sure everything is clear, then you go forward, right? So even in these kinds of things, you know, we have to be careful, put everything down in writing. So administrative policies have to have been writing operational guidelines like we said volunteer team uh how teams have to work together those things have to be in writing so that teams can uh operate well explain how tasks uh should be accomplished uh and so on right and the standards you know the standards for every every area so I have a question every Sunday You see the lyrics come on. Did you notice something about lyrics? I I'm talking about central. I hope all the other locations are also following it. They're supposed to be following. But did you notice something about lyrics? What do you see something the song lyrics that come on >> all in caps? >> Uh sorry. Uh we mentioned the song and the songwriter. Okay, that is one thing. What else did you notice? Aunt is always the same. It is always in caps. Notice it. So that's a standard. It has to be followed. If it's not followed, then you'll get pulled up. Why you didn't put it in caps? It's a standard. Now the reason we put it in caps is because you know there are some words which has to have like capital G for God. It has to have capital G. Holy Spirit has to have capital H and capital S. So when we used mixed case many times we were making mistakes suddenly God will come with small G spirit will come with small s to solve that problem put everything in caps so you won't can't go wrong there put everything in caps right so like that through all our mistakes we learned right okay let's solve the problem um uh so and that's a standard you're supposed to follow right and uh But now and then sometimes the people don't follow you got to catch the thread and pull them up. Hey, you have to make it all in caps, right? So I'm just giving some examples like that. So uh graphics and so on. So even our graphics they'll have a certain style. Uh we can't just throw in any colors and make it goddy and all those things. So there are standards that are for where we follow how we put our dates. So again if you notice how we put dates on graphics have you noticed anything how we put the dates suppose we have an event happening how we put the dates rather than >> ah so we don't put number right we put date and the month short form and then the year if if the year is needed otherwise it'll just be the date and the month so we use the international standard Why? If you use Indian standard, we put day, month and year. If one American sees it, he won't know what it is, right? Because there they put month, day and year. So they will get confused like the foreigners, people in the western, they'll get confused. So just put it in international standard. put it as day and the month short form like M A R N O V D C then everybody understand no confusion right so all these little things we follow the standard so you will not see a graphic with a date in Indian format it's not allowed because we are recognizing that there will be people from other parts of the world who may be looking at this and it should be clear to them also you getting it right So all these things are standards we follow right okay and these samples we've given uh in as a guideline and so in in in this context uh you know some other thoughts we can think about is um if the church is dependent on the leader and if the leader has everything in his mind and for everything you have to go to the leader cuz only leader knows policy it's not written anywhere. So everything has to be referred back to the leader and if there are so if the ministry grows big it'll be very difficult if the leader steps down or changes policy will go with him only because it's all in his mind right so that's why we have to put everything in right saying discuss and so even if leaders change etc at least the organization will continue in a certain way right um and there is uh the hierarchy the most important is like These are our policies. Then we have standards. Then we have guidelines. So they override. Standards you can't change. It has to be like this. Guidelines. There is some flexibility. It's just a guidance. Do it like this. Right. Um so there are some core policies which will not change a statement of faith. We wrote it once and that's the way it is. It is like kind of set in stone. We're not going to change the statement of faith. It's something we always will adhere to, right? Uh and so like that are different uh there are certain core policies. I'll explain to you for example when it comes to church offering right the whole workflow and we'll have a separate lesson on finance but that whole workflow is written down when money is collected in the location on a Sunday that has to be counted by two or more people so it can't be one person sitting and doing the counting it has to be two but usually there'll be more than two people sitting and counting the money. Everything has to be written in a notebook in the certain format like by denomination. It has to be signed by two people at least. It has to be put in a sealed envelope. The envelope has to be like the the breakdown has to be written on the envelope and signed in sealed. So you have a notebook, you have the envelope sealed with the same information as in the notebook. That envelope has to reach the church office. In the church office, they will be again dialing looking at it. Right? Then only it'll go and be deposited. Even in the deposit, it has to match the notebook, the envelope and uh deposit in the bank. Everything has to match right only then that offering is correctly uh closed you understanding so very strict process we follow but I'll tell you stories later on in spite of being so strict things people have made made ways through it right you'd be surprised but this is a process it is a written thing this is how every location will have to function you know it has to be written there in a notebook signed sealed money has to come in and this whole thing happens. We every week you know this is followed. So uh things like that we have to be very careful about written policies and so on. Okay. So last question bottom of page 20 is this legalism? What do you think? Are we being legalistic if we have these policies and guidelines? Um how do we accommodate for I want to be led by the spirit in this situation? What if some offering person says God led me today to take some money from here and give it away to somebody can he do that? cannot no because we have to follow this because today one person says God told me to take you know 5,000 rupees and give to that brother then somebody will take 10,000 rupees and give to some other brother and no money will come to the office everybody will be doing as they wish right so we uh so we're not against giving to people we're not against uh you know following God's leading but in this matter this is the process we follow it's a written guideline you bring it to the office and from the office if this person is in need we have a process let them contact the church and they say I have a need we have a generosity fund from that fund we will help the people so there is there is a way to help uh someone who is in need it's not like we are not you want to help somebody in need but simply somebody sitting in central you know after they collect the option they can't just take it and give it to anybody else like that's not allowed right so we have to uh have guidelines policies and yet at the same time we have to fulfill you know how god leads us and so on right so if some if somebody says oh you have these guidelines you have these policies you're So legalistic what would you say but you have all these guidelines but you are following all this you can't you just everybody be led by the spirit and what will happen how will you respond to that why you want these guidelines yeah we have to maintain integrity how we all follow the same thing and we're keeping everything fair, clear, nobody's suddenly doing something behind somebody else's back, nothing. So, it's all on the table. It helps us maintain integrity. What else? How will we explain this to somebody? Because somebody say, "Oh, why you have so so many written guidelines? Yeah. So another thing right um like we go through these experiences and then we learn but we shouldn't forget that otherwise we'll keep repeating our mistakes right so having gone through all these experiences uh seen the good side and the bad side then we document it we put it down in writing okay let us do like this so that we don't make those mistakes again Right? So having these policies, having these guidelines, it is a good thing so that we don't keep repeating our mistakes. Understand? Anything else that you can think about? Why should we have these guidelines? Or somebody will ask why should you have guidelines? Why should you have policies? How would you what would you say to them? accountability right that's also an important thing all of us you know uh we are accountable and uh on what we gave the guidelines we have these standards we have these policies so if somebody doesn't follow those guidelines we can say hey please follow this be accountable to it right otherwise uh there's no form of accountability you Uh so for the sake of accountability also we need to have these guidelines uh in the organization right I have another question this works fine in the city now you go to village hali they a hali you go to some hali some village there's a church there ministry there that pastor says How I can write all these documents? How how will a church in a village apply this? My question, how can they do this? A small town, small village, but sometimes even village can be big. They can have hundreds of people, right? How will they adapt this for the village or small town? What are your thoughts? >> Training. >> So the pastor has to train his people. H example, he says, "Hello everybody, our service starts at 10:00." And when we say 10:00, we mean 10:00. Don't come at 11:00, right? It's a policy. 10:00 we will start worship right like that. So he has to train the people and maybe he can put some little things written you know like uh to read if they for the people who can read he can read it or maybe has to repeat it. Hey this is how we do it. This is how we do worship. This is how we do things. Right? So even in a village I think having some policy some good guidelines right is useful there they'll have to repeat it by word of mouth or if they can write it somewhere you know so people are reminded the these are this is how we do our work right so while in the village the number of guidelines may be few they are not as complicated as a city church but I think that is also important in a village that that the the pastor will communicate to the people this is how to work okay any questions on this standards policies guidelines what's your question okay online uh everyone's Okay, followed. Any questions? Okay, so let's pause here. Uh we'll meet again tomorrow. We will get into the next lesson. Um and any questions you're most welcome to ask. Thank you everyone.