Preface

  The Sino-Japanese War (July 1937 — September 1945) forced many saints and workers in the Lord's recovery to move from the coastal provinces to the interior of China. During this time of dispersion, Watchman Nee was burdened to published The Open Door, not as an official publication, but as part of his personal ministry to serve the scattered saints.

  There were nineteen issues of The Open Door between September 1937 and September 1939. The Open Door resumed publication in 1948 under a new name, The Ministers. In addition to news about the co-workers and the churches, a column entitled "The Dynamics of Service," taken from a book of the same name by Paget Wikes, in Issue Nos. 7—13 and a single article entitled "The Worker God Is After in This Age" by T. Austin-Sparks in Issue No. 12 were also included. Since these articles were not written by Watchman Nee, they have not been included in Volumes 31 and 32.

  With the exception of Issue No. 2, which is unavailable, all of the issues of The Open Door are included in Volumes 31 and 32 of The Collected Works. Issue Nos. 1—8 are contained in Volume 31, and Issue Nos. 9—19 are contained in Volume 32.

  In Volumes 31 and 32 repetitive and inconsequential information was omitted, including addresses, lists containing the names of individual saints in transit because of the war, and the addresses of churches in various places. In some cases, repetitive announcements were also omitted. Efforts were made to retain the original headings even when the subsequent information was omitted and to designate the location of the omission.

  In Volumes 31 and 32 there are also numerous Chinese names, both of places and persons. In order to help the reader distinguish between places and proper names, several general conventions have been adopted.

  First, proper names have been presented in the traditional order of Chinese names, that is, family name first and personal name last. In many instances the personal name consists of two Chinese characters which appear as a hyphenated name in translation. For example, Watchman Nee's Chinese name is often translated Nee To-sheng. In order to distinguish between the names of Chinese places that also contain hyphens, the letter immediately following the hyphen has been lowercased in translation (for example, An Jing-tien, Bao Hsu-min, Chen Ke-san, etc.). As an exception to this convention, the more commonly known names of Watchman Nee's co-workers have been substituted for their Chinese names (for example, Witness Lee, Simon Meek, Philip Luan, Faithful Luk, K. H. Weigh, Ruth Lee, Phoebe Chang, etc.).

  Second, in order to assist the reader in distinguishing between places and personal names, the letter immediately following a hyphen in the names of Chinese places has not been lowercased in translation (for example, Fu-Ching, Sien-You, etc.). As an exception to this convention, the spelling of the places that appear on the map of China in Volumes 1, 25, and 31 has been retained throughout Set 1 and 2. It should also be noted that many Chinese places also appear as just one word (for example, Foochow, Chefoo, Shanghai, Peking, etc.).

  The names and places that appear in Volumes 31 and 32 will be consistently applied throughout the remainder of The Collected Works. Due to an editorial omission, the names and places in Volumes 25 and 26 do not always follow these conventions.