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We need to be stirred up by the Lord so that we can cooperate with Him to go higher. We have attained to a certain extent, but we have not attained to the extent that we should, so we must humble ourselves to learn something and be improved every day.
In these days we are taking the God-ordained way to have the church life. The big item in the church life is the meetings. Especially, we need to learn how to take care of the Lord’s need in our speaking of His word in the meetings. Those in traditional Christianity do not consider that all the saints are qualified to speak the word of God. Therefore, they have set up a clerical class of people to be the unique speakers. Every Sunday morning in their main service, they have a practice of one person speaking and the rest listening. A Christian could be there for his whole life listening to this speaking and eventually not be able to speak a word for the Lord. This is a poor situation. This kind of practice annuls the spiritual function of the saints and quenches their heart to speak for the Lord.
Furthermore, this kind of practice is absolutely unscriptural. In the New Testament, especially in 1 Corinthians 14, we are told that when we all come together as the church, everyone should prepare to have something to share with the others (v. 26). There is a picture of this in the ancient times with the Israelites. When they came together to worship the Lord, they all brought some surplus of the good land to present to God. The holy word in the Old Testament charged them not to appear before God empty-handed, without anything to present to God (Deut. 16:16). But today most Christians come to their main service with nothing, expecting that someone will be there to speak to them. This is altogether not based upon the Scripture.
About fifty-five years ago, Brother Watchman Nee saw the light from 1 Corinthians 14 that before we come to the meeting, we should have something prepared to present to the Lord and to the attendants. In other words, everyone should have some word to speak to others, to minister the Lord to others, that Christ may be glorified and His Body may be built up. Brother Nee also realized that if we stopped the one-man-speaking practice, we would need something to replace it, or we would not have anything. At that time we were not able to enter into the practice of the church meetings in mutuality revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. Eventually, beginning in 1987 we began in Taipei to enter into the practice of having church meetings in mutuality with all the attendants speaking for the building up of the church. Since that time we have seen a slow improvement among us. This improvement has become an encouragement to us, especially to me.
Some may feel that the new way is all right but not that good. But as long as this new way would not reduce us but give us some increase at a good percentage, we should be satisfied. At the end of 1988 there were approximately one thousand five hundred sixty saints in Southern California. Today there are approximately three thousand one hundred eighty saints here. This is double the number of what we were five years ago. This shows that during the period of time in which we have been endeavoring to take the God-ordained way, we have still had the increase.
Since we are practicing the God-ordained way, the new way, we must learn to speak, because speaking in the meeting is vital for the Lord’s recovery. We all need to be perfected to speak for the Lord. When we speak in a larger meeting, we must speak loudly, audibly. Furthermore, in order to speak we all need to learn something. I have over one hundred kinds of dictionaries that I use to help me in studying the Bible. I have one dictionary on the history of the church, which is very helpful. I am saying this to impress us that we need a learning spirit if we want to be those who speak for the Lord.
Since we love the Lord and love His recovery, we must take the way of having proper and adequate meetings. The first item we must pursue for this is prophesying (1 Cor. 14:1). Prophesying is not only speaking but also speaking rightly, speaking accurately, speaking audibly, and speaking with something rich. This is why we have to learn. If we do not have any learning, we cannot have the riches to impart to others. Our speaking should also be adjusted in its rhythm. If we speak too slowly, we can exhaust others’ patience. If we speak too fast, others will not be able to understand us. I hope that we would exercise ourselves to learn to speak for the Lord.
When I was thirty-two years old, I stood in front of a mirror to practice my speaking and my gestures. I also practiced speaking to members of my family. We love the Lord and many of us are young, so we have a long way to go in our Christian life. If we learn to speak accurately, adequately, properly, and richly to meet the Lord’s need, we will be greatly used by the Lord and bring in much blessing to the churches.
The second thing we need is to be vital. We need the proper speaking, the proper prophesying, but we cannot be dead or lukewarm. We have to be vital, which means that we have to be living and active. The second point of my loving word to you dear ones is this: learn to be vital. You should not be passive.
Thank the Lord and praise God that we could have this big blending conference. In this short time, by His mercy and grace, we have covered six crucial points of the major items in His recovery. We believe that we are in the Lord’s up-to-date recovery, and we believe that we are this recovery. But I feel very regretful to say that according to our present practical condition, we are not vital, not living or active to the extent that we should be. It is a certainty that we have the light and the truth concerning the Lord’s up-to-date recovery, which is very rich and very high. However, we have to humbly admit that we are not vital, not living or active to the extent that we are satisfied. Because we are not vital, we deeply feel that our situation is not satisfactory to the Lord either. So we have to look to the Lord’s mercy and grace desperately to get ourselves vitalized and to help others be vitalized. To be vitalized is our need today. Whether we pray or fast, whether we pursue by ourselves or seek with others, we must be vitalized. I believe that we have overcome many items of today’s degradation in the churches, but we cannot escape the condemnation that we have tolerated and still are tolerating the deadness of Sardis and the lukewarmness of Laodicea. At the beginning of the messages given in this blending conference, I gave an opening word concerning this crucial matter, a matter of life or death. I do not know how much you have been touched by that short, opening word. If you have not been touched by that begging word, regardless of how much you would appreciate the following six messages, the outcome will mean nothing to you and to the Lord’s recovery. Today the crucial point is that you have to be vitalized.
To have the vital groups should not be taken as a kind of movement. To be vital, to be vitalized, is an extremely personal matter. It is only possible to be vitalized if you yourself are pressed by the Lord to pursue Him desperately and absolutely in this matter. After being vitalized, you should not have a gathering of many saints to promote or to push this matter as a movement. After being vitalized, the only thing you should do is to seek the Lord’s leading concerning whom you should contact among so many saints. You should absolutely follow the Lord’s leading and even His guidance to contact others and fellowship with them, not more than two or three at a time. You have to give your testimony of how you have been pressed by the Lord to seek Him in the matter of vitalization. You have to initiate a thorough and intimate fellowship with your contact, which will usher you and your contact into prayers of desperation, which will be honored by the Lord.
You should also lead your contact to make thorough confessions to the Lord and also help him to pay the price at any cost as you have done. By this way a small group that is vital, living, and active in the Lord’s interest will spontaneously come into existence. When the number of such a vital group increases to ten or more, you should split it into two groups and charge every member to practice the vitalization along the same track as you have been doing all the time.
Since you have been vitalized and have raised up such vital groups, you should pray for the church and the leading ones. As the Lord leads, you should give testimonies in the church meetings but not in the way of condemning or of promoting or pushing. Avoid the thought to change the church’s way of meeting and service. Do not initiate any movement of changes. Prayer is needed, but any thought for a radical change must be avoided. After you get vitalized, do not despise anyone, especially the leading ones, the elderly ones, and the ones who are used to rendering help to others. Do not look down on the weaker ones, the indifferent ones, and the ones who seem to be without any care for spiritual things. In conclusion, you should not expect to see that the church is altogether uniform and unified according to your view and practice. The church is not artificial by man’s doing but organic in the growth of the divine life with the growth of Christ in the believers.
This is my burden in this concluding word. Please pay attention to these two matters. First, learn to speak. Second, endeavor to be vitalized. Speaking and vitalization are the crucial need among us today for the Lord’s recovery.
W. L.
Today we must admit that the deadness of Sardis and the lukewarmness of Laodicea have come into the Lord’s recovery. We need to condemn the condition of Sardis among us and also abhor the situation of Laodicea. We need to hate these things, and we also need to get out of these things. This is not a common thing but a matter of life and death facing the whole recovery. It is a life and death matter that we all must be vitalized.
There are four needs among us in these days. First, the Lord needs a corporate overcomer for His testimony. The Lord needs to have the real testimony of Jesus. Second, the recovery needs to be vital today. The recovery needs a revival of morale, a revival of impact, a revival of the dynamic motivation within us, a revival of vitality among us. This is a real need in the recovery.
Third, the churches’ need is for the prevailing increase. We need to grow; we need to multiply; we need to increase in the churches today. Although the Lord has granted us a substantial increase over the last five years in Southern California, based on the length of time the churches here have existed, our number should be much greater than it is today. We should not boast that we now have more than three thousand members in the churches in Southern California. We should labor and endeavor so that the Lord would increase the churches much more.
Fourth, as saints in the Lord’s recovery, we desperately need to be vitalized. Through intimate and thorough fellowship, through confession, through consecration, through prayer, through our being soaked with the Spirit, through our laboring, and through our learning, we need to be vitalized. This is more crucial in the recovery today than it has ever been before. We all have a responsibility, we all have an obligation, before our Lord. We should pray, “Lord, make me vital. Make me vital today for the sake of Your move.”
Therefore, we need a thorough reconsideration of our way. Is the way that we have been going the right way? We need to get on the God-ordained way. From 1984 until now, a period of almost nine years, the Lord has fully unveiled His ordained way to us. However, if we all are honest before the Lord, we must acknowledge that our reaction, our feeling, toward what the Lord has spoken through His ministry has been somewhat dull. The proof of this is that we are still not vital. We are still in our habit, still somewhat in our tradition. We need to be vitalized.
The vital groups should constitute eighty percent of the church life. In the beginning of the church age, immediately after the three thousand were saved on the day of Pentecost, they began to meet from house to house (Acts 2:41, 46-47); that is, they began to have vital group meetings. They did not have the name “vital groups,” but they had the reality. As they were meeting in that way, day by day the Lord added many people to them. On another day five thousand men were saved (4:4), and at another time multitudes of disciples were added to them (5:14). All these were not only added, but they were also contained, supported, and kept as remaining fruit. This could take place only because of the practice of the vital groups. Their primary way of meeting was not in a congregational style with one man speaking. Their main way of meeting was to have vital groups in every home. They could have vital groups because each one of them was vital. It is not a matter of merely forming a group and calling it a vital group. We do not need merely the name “vital group”; we need the reality of being vital.
The vital groups cannot be formed by organization. We can testify from our experience that the way of forming vital groups by organization does not work well. Anything that is organic cannot be formed by organizing. Something that is organic can come into being only in a spontaneous and organic way. We need a drastic change in our concept. We should not attempt to organize vital groups by neighborhood, geography, language, or some other factor. This is not the way to be vital. In forming the vital groups, the first thing that we need is to be vital.
A vital group can come into being only by a saint who is desperate and absolute for the increase of the Lord’s recovery. A vital group begins with one person. It does not begin with nine or ten persons; it begins with one vital saint. We all need to tell the Lord, “Lord, I want to be that saint, a saint who is desperate and absolute for the increase of the Lord’s recovery.”
Such a saint must be desperate and absolute, not merely to be vital; he must be desperate and absolute for the increase of the Lord’s recovery. According to our experience, when we are desperate and absolute for the increase of the church, we have a burden to be vital. If we do not care for the increase but rather are content to see the number in the church remain the same year after year, there is no reason to be vital. We desire to be vital for a purpose, for a goal, and that is for the increase of the Lord’s recovery. For this we need to be desperate and we need to be absolute. To be vital we need to begin by taking this matter as life or death. If we take anything as life or death, we are vital in that thing. We need to be desperate and absolute for the increase of the Lord’s recovery; then we will be vital.
Such a desperate saint would spontaneously contact others by the Lord’s leading and gain some companion or companions for him to have a vital group. A vital group cannot be formed by promoting or by giving a message or by exhorting the saints to form vital groups. A vital group can be formed only by a saint who is vital. By the Lord’s leading such a vital saint will find some others to be his companions. These will then come together to have intimate and thorough fellowship and begin to vitalize one another. In this way the genuine vital groups will be formed and produced in the church life from within. May the Lord give us this kind of desperation and this kind of absoluteness.
There are four basic requirements that we must take care of in order to become vital and to be sustained in our vitality. We must be definite and absolute to fulfill these requirements.
The first requirement is for the intimate and thorough fellowship that we may be blended together. The basis of our blending, the foundation of our blending, is our fellowship, and our fellowship must be intimate and thorough.
When the Lord was ministering in the four Gospels, He went about contacting people. Surely He was vital. Surely He was absolute and desperate for God’s increase. He contacted some young ones and they were drawn to Him. They lived together, ate together, and did everything together. They had a wonderful, intimate, and thorough fellowship with one another day after day, and the Lord was speaking to them. He was blending them together. As He spoke, there was the training. Even in His silence, He was training them.
Shortly after the Lord revealed to them that He was going to be crucified, James and John asked Him if they could sit on His right hand and on His left hand in the kingdom. When the other ten disciples heard this they were indignant (Mark 10:35-45). It seems that they did not gain anything during the Lord’s earthly ministry, but something was built up within them. After witnessing the Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension, they and others who followed the Lord became different persons.
In the evening of the day of His resurrection, the disciples received the essential Spirit of life (John 20:22). Before He ascended, the Lord told them to return to Jerusalem and wait there until they received the promise of the Father, the outpoured Spirit (Luke 24:49). Because they had witnessed the Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension and because they had received the essential Spirit of life, they were in one accord.
Acts 1 tells us that the one hundred twenty disciples prayed like one person in one accord (v. 14). They stayed together, ate together, prayed together, and did everything together for at least ten days. Surely they had an intimate fellowship. After ten days of prayer, the Spirit was poured out upon them on the day of Pentecost (2:1-4). The day of Pentecost was a day produced by ten days of this kind of fellowship and prayer. Among us there is a shortage of such an intimate fellowship.
We need to have an intimate and thorough fellowship in Christ as the element and sphere by exercising our spirit with much and thorough prayer, concerning our status, spiritual condition, and present situation in and with the Lord. Such fellowship is the flowing, the current, of the oneness. We need to have this kind of fellowship for the sake of being blended together into one accord. The way to be blended is by much and thorough prayer, as fine flour of the wheat, with all the members of our group, with the Spirit as the oil, through the death of Christ as the salt, and in the resurrection of Christ as the frankincense, into a dough for the Lord (1 Cor. 5:6-7a; Lev. 2:1-13). If by the Lord’s mercy we are able to experience such a blending, we will be absolutely different from what we are today.
The New Testament tells us that we, as the many grains of wheat (John 12:24) become one lump (1 Cor. 5:6-7a) and eventually we become a loaf (1 Cor. 10:17). After we become a loaf, we mean something and we are something in the hand of the Lord. The loaf is the group. At the Lord’s table, we often praise the Lord for the loaf, the bread, yet in actuality we may not be a loaf. As the grains of wheat, we have not been ground, broken, and blended together. The way to become a loaf is to be blended together in the groups by the intimate and thorough fellowship with much and thorough prayer.
The second point is that we need to have a thorough confession of our sins, transgressions, defects, wrongdoings, etc. We need to confess the sin of individualism and individuality. We also need to confess our sinful nature, its defilements, its attachment to the contamination of the world, and its oldness, asking for the Lord’s cleansing with His precious blood. All of these things concerning our sinful nature related to our fallen human being and our natural man become real hindrances to the blending, so our confession is a real need for the vital groups. We need to have the thorough fellowship, and we also need to confess all of the hindrances that we may be blended together into one accord.
We also need to make a thorough consecration of ourselves and of all that we have and do to the Lord. In order to be vital persons and have the vital groups, we must be desperate. We need to be the vital persons, the overcomers, to rescue the church from its degradation. The Lord will gain what He desires through His overcomers.
To be such people we need to put aside our personal interests, our care for the necessities of this life, and make a strong resolution and an absolute consecration to the Lord. Second Timothy 2:4 says that no soldier entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please the one who enlisted him. If we are going to be vital persons, we must clear away all earthly entanglements.
In the Old Testament, there is the principle of the Nazarite. This is the principle we need to take today. We need to make, with much and thorough prayer, a Nazarite’s consecration to the Lord (Num. 6:1-4). In the Old Testament, one could be a priest by birth according to the order of Aaron. But if the priesthood became degraded, the Lord made a provision for others to become priests by voluntary consecration. During a time of degradation there needs to be people who voluntarily consecrate themselves to the Lord in an absolute way as Nazarites.
John the Baptist was a Nazarite (Luke 1:15). He was born as a priest, but he did not function according to the principle of the order of Aaron. He functioned according to the principle of the Nazarite. This man was used by the Lord to change the age. He ended the Old Testament priesthood and was the beginning of the New Testament priesthood. In order to be the New Testament priests of the gospel (Rom. 15:16) we need to make a Nazarite’s consecration to the Lord.
Also, we need to pray unceasingly that we may be brought into the infilling and outpouring of the essential and economical Spirit. The secret to being filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly is our prayer. We need to be desperate in our prayer.
An example of this is seen in Mark 10 with the blind beggar who desired to see. He did not pray a composed prayer in a religious and formal way. He cried out desperately to the Lord by saying, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (v. 48). Then the Lord said to him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” He responded, “That I may receive my sight!” (v. 51). We do not need formal, religious, composed prayers, but desperate prayers in which we tell the Lord directly what we want Him to do for us.
We need to pray, “Lord, make me vital! Make me living and active! I want to be a factor for the increase of the Lord’s recovery.” We also should pray desperately, “Lord, fill me up. Transfuse Yourself as the Spirit into my being, my constitution, and pour Yourself out as the Spirit of power upon me.” In order to be brought into the infilling and the outpouring of the essential and economical Spirit, we need to pray unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17) by exercising our spirit (1 Tim. 4:7) to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16).
After we become vital and are grouped together in the vital groups, we need to do something. First, we need to pick up a burden, and then we need to take action to contact people. If we are vital, we will realize that among the churches in Southern California there is a desperate need for the proper increase. For many years among us the rate of increase, especially among the Caucasian people, has been too low, yet it seems that not many of us have been touched by this matter and not many have picked up a real burden. If we are vital, the Lord will be able to burden us in a definite and particular way to meet His need today. The Lord has a great need to have the proper increase in the churches in Southern California, especially among the typical Caucasian people. Today we need to put away so many things that are occupying and preoccupying our hearts and pick up a burden for the increase of the church. If we are vital, we will have the capacity to be burdened by the Lord. We need to be unloaded, we need to be released, and we need to be vitalized so that we can be burdened by the Lord for two things: the increase of the churches and the building up of the organic Body of Christ. This is the Lord’s burden today, and this should be our burden. Nothing should occupy our hearts but what is on the Lord’s heart. Today the Lord desires to see the churches in Southern California have the proper increase, and He also desires to see a real building up in the churches as the organic Body of Christ. The Lord will do this through the God-ordained way. Therefore, we need to be burdened and vitalized to take this way absolutely and desperately.
After we pick up such a burden, we need to take definite action to go and contact others, either sinners or Christians. To be vital is not only to be living but also to be burdened and very active for the Lord’s interest. Once we are living, we also need to be burdened and we need to take action to contact people. We should make a list of those who are unsaved among our relatives, friends, colleagues, and classmates, and we should begin to pray for them in a desperate way. While we are praying for them, we need to exercise our discernment according to the leading of the Spirit to select two or three from our list for us to work on for their salvation. We should have the loving concern of God’s heart for the salvation of sinners, and we should be burdened not just to save souls but to convert sinners into members of the Body of Christ for the carrying out of God’s economy. The Lord may lead us not only to contact sinners but also to contact some Christians who are seeking, backslidden, or dormant, and gradually, little by little and step by step, to lead them into the church life. We must believe that there are some people in our sphere of influence who are being worked on by the sanctifying Spirit to separate them unto the Lord. They need us to pick up a burden and to take definite action to go and contact them.
We need to contact people in the principle of incarnation. According to this principle, God and man live together, speak together, and do everything together as one. If we contact people in this kind of living way, they will see in us a living expression of the reality of God’s New Testament economy. Whenever we speak to people, we should always minister something real of Christ to them. We should never give them any impression of any kind of involvement with any kind of religious formality. Many people today are seeking after God, but they do not want to be involved in organized Christianity. They want something real, something living, and something vital. If we minister something real of Christ to them, the seeking unbelievers and the seeking Christians will be attracted. They will be attracted and they will be gained by our vitality. Today people will not be gained in any other way. This is the unique way for the Lord to gain people today.
In our contacting of people, we should not expect to have a quick result. Rather, we should set a definite goal with a strong determination to gain at least one remaining fruit yearly, with inexhaustible patience and unceasing intercession. In 1986 and 1987 thousands of people were saved and baptized in a quick way in Taipei and Orange County, but not many of them have remained to become living members of Christ. In recent years, because we still expected a quick result and did not see that kind of result, many of us became discouraged and dormant regarding the contacting of people. This shows that we do not have the proper concept concerning the way to gain the increase.
To gain the proper increase through the practice of the vital groups, our concept needs to be revolutionized. We need to see and practice the way of fruit-bearing revealed in John 15. The real fruit-bearing in the Christian life is just like the vine. The vine does not bear fruit every day or many times a year. The vine bears fruit only once a year and only in a particular season. The fruit-bearing by the vine is both yearly and seasonal. As the living branches of Christ, the true vine, we should bear remaining fruit once a year.
According to John 15:16, we have been chosen by the Lord and set by Him to go forth and bear remaining fruit. Fruit-bearing is our destiny, and to bear remaining fruit every year must be our definite goal with a strong determination. However, in order to do this, we must not be loose or idle. Before the season for fruit-bearing comes, the vine tree is not idle. On the contrary, it is producing the fruit. While we are waiting for the season to come, we need to produce the fruit. We need to live a certain kind of life. First, we need to abide in the Lord through unceasing prayer in intimate fellowship with Him (vv. 4-5). To abide in the Lord is to live in the Lord under all kinds of suffering. The vine suffers for many months before the season comes to bear fruit. Like the vine, we should expect to bear fruit only in season and through much suffering. Second, in order to bear remaining fruit, we need to labor diligently and pray desperately and unceasingly. We should exercise ourselves to always have two or three persons under our care so that one of these could be remaining fruit at the end of a year. As we labor on these people, we should not be anxious or be in a hurry concerning their progress. Instead, as we labor on them, we should enjoy Christ as our inexhaustible patience. We must keep in mind that the vital groups need to gain the proper increase through much prayer and labor. As we pray for people, we should not be discouraged or disappointed but should have the full assurance that at the proper time the Lord will answer our prayer and fulfill His word to us. If we live properly prior to the season of fruit-bearing, we can be assured that at the end of every year we will have one or two as remaining fruit. This is the God-ordained way of fruit-bearing. May the Lord carry this out fully in all the vital groups.
Once a vital group is formed, the group members should meet together once a week to fellowship about and study every case of their candidates to find out the best way to take care of each candidate and the best helper or helpers to catch the candidate. We need to consider all of our acquaintances, and we need the proper discernment in our consideration of whom we should labor on. We should spend our time to labor on those whom we consider to be promising and not waste our time on others who are not open. In our group meetings we should pray and study our candidates for the gospel together. We need to consider people’s condition, especially spiritually, and then act appropriately to meet their need in the gospel. If we do this, we will gain a clear vision of what their situation is, and this will lead us to contact them in the right way. We need to decide how we should visit a certain person and who would be the right one or ones to go.
In Luke 19 the Lord likened our church service to a kind of business. He charged us in verse 13 to do business until He comes. We need to do business in and with the Lord by studying how we can gain people. Thank the Lord that we can bear the burden with the Lord in the vital groups to gain the increase for the Lord’s recovery.
After a candidate is gained and baptized, the vital group members should do their best to bring him or her to their group meeting and help him or her to participate in the fellowship of the group meeting and learn how to function in the mutual teaching and mutual perfecting. After a person is gained and baptized, he must be raised up to be a living member of the Body of Christ. Today what God needs are not merely saved souls but living members so that His Body can be built up to the fullest extent. Some may have the concept that if they can help someone to be saved and baptized, that is sufficient. However, God is not satisfied until every saved and baptized one is a living member who can be useful for the building up of the Body of Christ.
It is not easy to raise up a newly baptized one to be a living, functioning member of the Body of Christ. This may require two years of diligent and patient labor. Today in the Lord’s recovery there is no better atmosphere in which the new ones can be raised up than the vital groups. If we endeavor to bring the newly gained and baptized ones into the vital groups to be with the other vital members, the new ones too will become living and functioning members. Therefore, we need to make it a priority to bring our newly saved ones to the vital group meetings.
We also need to help the new ones to participate in the fellowship of the group meetings. This fellowship is the flow of life among the members in the group. In such a fellowship, the new ones will be nourished and cherished by the vital members of the group as nursing mothers. The apostle Paul considered himself a nursing mother in his care for the young believers in Thessalonica (1 Thes. 2:7), and we need to follow his pattern. The vital persons within the group become the mothers who can nourish and cherish the new ones through the fellowship in the group meetings.
The newly saved ones also need to be helped to learn to function in the mutual teaching and mutual perfecting. They need to be equipped and perfected, according to Paul’s word in Ephesians 4:12, unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ. This kind of equipping and perfecting takes place mainly through the mutual teaching. This mutual teaching is one of the major items of the vital group practice. The mutual teaching can be carried out through the mutual asking and answering of questions. The new ones need to be helped to participate in the mutual teaching through the asking and answering of questions in the vital group meetings. The members of the vital groups can ask and answer questions regarding matters such as God’s economy, the Lord’s recovery, justification, reconciliation, sanctification, the confession of sins, the exercise of the spirit, and the ground of the church. Many matters can be brought up in the atmosphere of the vital group meetings, and through the mutual teaching by all the group members, an all-inclusive teaching can come forth that no single member could give by himself. This will render the best perfecting to the new ones in the crucial matters related to life and truth. We should not underestimate the capacity of the newly gained ones. Recently, two young churches have been raised up in Russia in the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Within six months some of the newly gained ones in these two churches were able to speak forth the truths with a certain measure. If we are faithful to learn how to impart life and teach the highest truths in the proper way, eventually the newly gained ones will become perfected and equipped.
In the group meetings we must also take the opportunity to instruct and guide the newly saved and baptized ones to gain others and to prophesy in the church meetings. Before we can help the new ones to be fruitful, we must first become patterns to them by being fruitful branches ourselves. We need to help them to see that our goal is not merely to win souls but to convert sinners into living members of the Body of Christ. We should not delay in bringing our new ones into this matter, because they are able to gain others immediately after they are saved. Finally, we must bring the new ones into a vision that prophesying builds up the church (1 Cor. 14:4). We must also help them to learn to prophesy by practicing to speak the Lord’s word.
We all must rise up to be vitalized and endeavor to rid ourselves of any kind of deadness and lukewarmness. The only way to accomplish this is to be desperate and absolute to practice all that the Lord has shown us concerning the vital groups. The vital groups are the only thing that can renew the Lord’s recovery and bring in the prevailing increase.
6 brothers
