Is Cheap is really cheap?

Have you ever wondered how much does it cost to run an airplane from Jakarta to Surabaya?

- I don’t have the fact of how many KM from Jakarta to Surabaya but if it was taken by how long a railtrack from Jakarta to Surabaya it’s about 820 km long. (http://tinyurl.com/ypjwfc)

- Most of Indonesian airlines are using either an old Boeing 737-200 or Boeing 737-300 or Boeing 737-400. For this example I will take Boeing 737-300. Boeing 737-300 has 137 seats and the fuel consumption for this airplane it’s about 547 Liter/ (100) KM. (http://strickland.ca/efficiency.html)

- Oil price? Well to be honest I don’t have the fact on how much a Jet Fuel cost in Indonesia but I would assume it would be the same as in any other countries except maybe the tax differences. I would have thought too unlike commercial petrol – jet fuel isn’t subsidized by the Indonesian government so it’s pretty safe to make assumption that the price is almost the same. On March 2006 for a barrel JET FUEL (not a crude oil) it costs about USD$87.44. Remember that 1 barrel = 159 liter.

Based on these assumption the journey from Jakarta to Surabaya consumes about = 820/100*547 = 4485.4 Liter/Journey.
4485.4 /159 = 28.21 Barrel/Journey
And it will cost about = 28.21 Barrel * USD87.44 = +- USD2466 for a journey to Surabaya from Jakarta.
Thus it costs about (assuming 130 people on board) = USD 2466 / 130 = USD 19 dollar / person which equivalent to (assuming 1USD = 9000 rupiah) = RP 171000 (171 thousand rupiah)

Well of course this is naïve assumption, in the reality the fuel consumption is usually higher. I remembered that My Honda Civic Fuel consumption is about 6Litre / 100KM it is according to Honda but in the reality it consumes much more than that due to traffic condition and the age of the engine. Of course when it is new its fuel efficient but as it starts getting older its performance decreases.

Finally, not surprisingly a lot of airlines still offer cheap airfares ticket. But at least we and you know that if we could get a ticket for less than 200 rupiah for the trip from Jakarta to Surabaya, it’s only cover the fuel only and not the maintenance of the fleet it’s self. So the fear factor is still there :P

Good Church Governance

Introduction

You may be curious why I written this document. I would have thought that there are 2 reasons: First, at the moment I am looking for a position in non-profit organization where I could utilize my skill to help other (and I know that the easiest way to give is to give money J ). A second reason is that I worked in ‘Accounting’ firms where the terms ‘Audit’ and ‘Good Corporate Governance’ are heavily used.

Moreover, I always encounter the repetitive problems when I worked for non-profit organization e.g. church. The classic problem is that most of the church project was overtime and over budget. I remembered that when I was in Michigan, I was involved in church choir for Christmas but closer to the event we were not ready yet so at the end we need to rush our practice. If this was to happen in a professional company of course it won’t be tolerated.

I worked in the company where my boss is really concerned about time because time = money. I remembered one day in the meeting where my boss told everyone in the meeting that he didn’t want to call for a resource from Sydney unless everyone in the Melbourne is fully utilized. And I thought to my self, if a professional company handles the project with professional manner, why can we handle the ministry with professional attitude too? After all we work for God. Shouldn’t we give HIM the best of our best?

Lastly, I have seen a lot of unpleasant truths coming from great Christian preachers. I guess that I won’t disclose the “name” of those great Christian preachers that I mentioned above.

Problem

What if a senior pastor in your church come to you and say that he has been told by God to pray the sick? Will you believe what he has been said to you? What if he has been told to order you to go to Africa for a ministry? Will you believe it? The answer is always relative and it depends on your relationship to your senior pastor. I guess what I am trying to say in here is that there is no consistency in handling way thus we have no way to tell whether it is the truth from God or not. See the problem?

At this stage you will preach me that they should go back to the bible as their source of truth and not to believe human kind as they are still human as well. But the question is if one man interprets the bible differently how do we know which one is the truth? I guess this is why the doctrine comes to play to synchronize what people belief. Although it is not a bullet proof but the doctrine pretty much tells us how we should interpret the bible.


Solution and Implementation

We have seen the number of great Christian preachers failed over the year. Number of churches are lacking of accountability. After all I perceive church as the same as public listed company. It is the congregation money and run by the professional? Am I wrong to say this? I guess I am trying to defend my self here. I used to tell my friend that! IT IS NOT FREE TO COME TO CHURCH. If you think that it is free to come to church? YOU ARE WRONG. It is because someone that sits next to you has paid to support you to come to church. So don’t hold others back!

The solution to all these problems, I believe it’s the word “AUDIT”. We always hear the term audit in a public listed company but to be honest we rarely hear the term “audit” in the church community. AUDIT is the answer of lacking of accountability whether it is financial matter related or an attitude or anything! Just like any other companies the church has political problem. It is part of human life to have “politics” in an organization.
Well the idea of “auditing” in here is to check whether we are on the right track.

At the moment I am reading the book called “Consulting Demons”. The author has been working in a top consulting firm namely BCG, Mckinsey, etc. In the book, the author mentioned that there are 2 top reasons why a company wants to hire external consultant. Well to be honest I am quite surprise to his answer because when I was a student I always thought that consultant is an expert in the field but in the reality it is wrong. The first reason why company wants to hire external consultant is: to repress internal politic, as you may be well aware external consultant is external people, they are not binding to their client company politics thus they could work efficiently. The second reason is that an external consultant could devote their 100% time to do the job so it’s not because they are expert or anything.

However I realized that if we are talking about how to implement good church governance or audit and what should be done, I would say its not that easy especially in the “Third Wave of Holy Spirit Church”. The term “Third Wave” church was first coined in 1980 by theologian called Peter Wagner. It is part of Neocharismatic movement. Why I say it is difficult especially in the “third wave” churches it’s because they don’t have strong doctrine on how they believe the bible. For instance, Bethany and other charismatic churches might have different opinion about the bible. Although they claim they believe the bible but the way they interpret it might be different. It’s not the same as Catholic or Calvinism or Armenism movement where they have strong doctrine.