Search
In this chapter we will continue our fellowship on how to bring the saints in our locality into the truth so that they will get a solid foundation in the Word. We have seen that the first aspect is the personal aspect. Each saint must have a proper, daily, regular diet of a few verses in the Bible with the footnotes of the Recovery Version accompanied by the Life-study messages. Now we must go on to see the second aspect, the meeting aspect.
We should never forget that the basic factor for our meetings should be the Spirit. The meetings should be in the Spirit. They should be full of life and full of living prayer to bring in a living atmosphere that is full of freedom for everyone to function. We must keep and have these few basic factors in all the church meetings — full of the Spirit, full of life, full of prayer, full of a refreshing atmosphere that encourages people to function, and full of freedom for people to function. The elders and all the ones who take the lead in any kind of meeting should bear the responsibility to pray for this. An elder should not come to the meeting without a proper time of prayer for the meeting. Every elder should come to the meeting after some prayer for the meeting and come into the meeting with a praying spirit. That makes your meeting different.
To be an elder is not a small thing. The children may just sit down at the table and expect something to be served to them. The mother, however, cannot practice in this way. Before sitting down, she should have done a lot of things. Then the entire family can feed on a proper meal. Furthermore, when the church reaches a certain size, at least one or two elders should be full time. This becomes a scientific principle because when the elders are too busy or too greatly occupied with their business or with their jobs, it is hard for them to bear the responsibility of the church meetings adequately. I do not mean, however, that you prepare yourself to come to the meeting to dominate, to control, or to conduct. This is wrong. Do not prepare yourself to come to the meeting in order to conduct the meeting or to control the meeting. You must, however, prepare yourself to come in to bear the meeting. The meeting is just like the Ark in ancient times. The Levites bore the Ark on their shoulders, just like the palanquin in the Song of Songs. The elders should be those bearing the palanquin of Christ. This makes a difference. The church meetings should not be just a Bible-study class but should be full of the Spirit, full of life, full of prayer, full of the fresh atmosphere, and full of freedom for everyone to open their mouth to speak forth Christ. This must be basic.
If we could bear a meeting in such a way, I would propose that we look at the situation of the present condition of the church in our locality to determine what the present need is. The Lord may lead us to pick up a certain book, such as John, Matthew, or Mark. In the church meetings it would be good to continue on a certain book and to go through it chapter after chapter. The principle for the meetings is the same as with your personal study. Some elements, of course, must be very different from our personal study. Undoubtedly, we have to pray-read the basic verses in the meeting, but the leaders and the elders should not let the pray-reading go too long. If the pray-reading is too long at the opening time of the meeting, it kills the meeting. Therefore, the pray-reading at the beginning of the meeting should not be over fifteen minutes. Open the meeting either by singing, by praising, or by reading plus pray-reading. It is better to pray-read for fifteen minutes and at the most twenty minutes. Do not go further. If you go further, the long opening kills the remainder of the meeting.
After the pray-reading, sometimes the saints may have the leading to share something. This is good. You must give them the time and the liberty to share something. However, the elders should always be in control of the steering wheel of the car or the rudder of the sailing boat. The elders should always do this, but they should not control the meeting. To control the meeting is one thing, but to keep the steering wheel in your hand is another thing. This means that you would not let the car go outside of the lane to get in an accident.
To put the steering wheel or the rudder in your hand, you must first get the message into you, and you must get into the message to pick up certain crucial points. During the meeting you have to weigh the situation. If thirty minutes have gone by and it seems that there has been nothing solid to nourish people, you should “put out a dish.” To put out a dish means to minister a certain crucial point that is rich, refreshing, enlightening, edifying, and building. In principle, however, you should not occupy the entire remaining time. Just serve the saints one dish, and let them continue. See what will come out. Many times something will come out in a very positive way. Then you can observe the meeting for another twenty minutes. If the meeting is going on in a good way, let it continue. If you have some more crucial points, do not put them out. You may have some more dishes, but keep them for the next meal, for the next meeting. Let the saints testify freely in a rich way. If the meeting still has not been uplifted after twenty minutes, then you need to minister another crucial point, to serve them with “the top dessert.” Sometimes you do not need to serve any dish, because the sharings in the meeting are very rich and refreshing. You do not need to annul this kind of rich, refreshing sharing. Rather, you have to pray, “Lord, go ahead. Lord, go ahead.” Do not think that you have something. Even if you have something, keep it for the next meeting. In other words, the elders should always be ready to make up the lack in the meeting.
Some of the elders may think that this is not easy. This is correct. To be an elder is not so easy. This may encourage some of you to resign. Actually, some of you have to resign. You are like a mother hen occupying the nest without laying any eggs. It is better for you to move out and let some “young hens” come in to “lay some eggs” for the children. I am being honest with all of you. We must realize that the Bible does not give us the term for the eldership. In the United States the terms for the presidency, the senate, and the congress are clearly defined; the terms are four years, six years, and two years, respectively. If you are not very competent in governing, the people may not reelect you after your term expires. There is no term, however, concerning the eldership in the New Testament. This really bothers me because some elders have been “inaugurated” into the eldership for a lifelong term.
If I were occupying the nest without laying any eggs, I surely would go back home to sleep, to rest, or to go to the mountains for some good sightseeing and some fresh air. If I stay on the nest without laying any eggs, I delay the saints. If one hundred saints are under your leadership and you do not lay any eggs, they will get delayed. I do not like to see you moved off the nest, but I would like you to exercise to begin to lay eggs tomorrow. Then everyone will be happy, and everyone will be peaceful in the church life. If you are there on the nest without laying eggs for two years, who could be happy? Then you may say, “If I would not be the elder, who would be or who else can be?” If you go away, you would see that some can be an elder. You must consider the real situation. The folks of your family were nearly starved to death without the proper meals being served.
In principle, I hope that you would take my word to help the saints in their personal time to get into the Word and also to bring the church meeting into such a living way and, even more, a rich way. The result will come out in many directions when the saints are saturated with the truth. The Bible indicates that whenever we are filled up within, we will utter something (Eph. 5:18-19). When the saints are filled up within, they will speak something. Their utterance may be the preaching of the gospel, the teaching of the truth, or the ministry of life. Even now we may encourage the saints to preach the gospel, teach the truth, and minister life, but they are empty. They have the heart and the desire to speak something, but they have no word to say, because they are empty. They are not full. Even if some of you try to preach, you will realize that your preaching is not that full. You may try to teach, yet you discover that your teaching is not that full. You want to minister life to people in your neighborhood, to your cousins, and to your in-laws, but you do not have the riches of life. How then can you minister life to others?
Therefore, it is basic to have the saints getting into the Word personally every day and to have the entire meeting entering into the truth. Meeting after meeting and week after week you will see the accumulation of the truth go onward. I believe that this is the proper way. This proper diet will kill all the germs on the negative side. Then there will be very few problems in the church life because the germs will have been killed. So many saints will be healthy and strong because they received the nourishing diet. This holy Word with the Spirit as the content does everything for the church — it produces the church, builds up the church, heals the wounds, swallows all kinds of darkness, and nourishes, strengthens, and enriches. This is the basic thing. If we could just do this one thing, the church would be wonderful.
First Corinthians 14:26 tells us that whenever we come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, or has an interpretation. Brother Nee once said in a message that probably most of the seeking readers of the Bible would think that while believers are coming together and meeting together, the inspiration from the Spirit comes to them, and each one has something. Many understand this verse to mean that while the meeting is going on, the believers have something after the inspiration of the Spirit. Brother Nee said that this is wrong. The predicate does say that this one has and that one has. However, the predicate does not indicate that you are going to have. It indicates that before coming to the meeting, you have something already. This is just like when you are going to have a love feast. Before coming together, the food has already been prepared, and then you come with the food. When the time comes for the feast, each one has something.
Based upon this principle, all the elders and the seeking ones who bear the real burden of the Lord’s testimony should be charged and encouraged to pray much. For instance, let us say that tomorrow night we are going to have a meeting covering Romans 8:9-11. There may be two Life-study messages covering these three verses. All the elders and the seeking ones should get themselves prepared before coming to the meeting. They should read and pray-read the verses and look into the messages to get the crucial points. In every message there are crucial points. They should pick up the crucial points, especially the points concerning the life supply or concerning the unveiling of the truth. These seeking ones, especially the elders, should prepare themselves in this way. Then when the meeting begins, you have to keep the meeting open to everybody. Let them function. After ten or fifteen minutes nothing may have come out, which indicates that the attendants are not that rich. There is no need to blame them. The elders and the seeking ones who really bear the responsibility of the Lord’s recovery in their locality must make up the lack. We must advise the seeking ones that sometimes they should bear the responsibility to give the meeting a good start, but they should not continue to occupy the entire meeting. They need to strike the match to start the burning and then keep their hands off the meeting and let others do it. If after ten or fifteen minutes nothing good has come out, then the ones who bear the responsibility, especially the elders, must do it again. By this way no meeting will be so empty, but every meeting will be a rich meal because it is under the hand of the elders and the seeking ones.
If the elders and all the seeking ones come to the meeting without this kind of preparation beforehand, they are leaving the entire meeting to fortune. If you come to the meeting without being prepared, you may offer a two-second prayer, such as, “Lord, have mercy upon us and enrich the meeting.” Actually, you have left the entire meeting to fortune. When you see that nothing good is coming out in the meeting, by that time you will have nothing to minister. This means that all of us have come to a love feast, and nobody cooked anything. Everybody came empty-handed. You have left the love feast to the “god of fortune.”
You may say, “Brother Lee, do not say this. Did not the Lord use the five loaves and the two small fish to feed the five thousand, and still there were twelve baskets left over? Why couldn’t the Lord do this?” According to your observation, you may feel that I am short of faith and that my ways are too practical. The apostle Paul, however, had faith, but the real situation forced him to make tents to take care of the needs of himself and the needs of his co-workers. Did he not have faith? The Bible never teaches us to have the kind of faith that does not require our labor. This is the teaching of superstition and the teaching of Pentecostalism. They have a kind of faith in which eventually they lie to people and build up false miracles. One brother who was a missionary in Indonesia told us that the so-called changing of water into wine during a revival he attended was a great hoax. We do not need to pretend in this way. The Lord may perform a miracle, but I never heard, in the entire church history, that the Lord repeated the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. Also, we see in the book of Acts that the believers had everything in common for a short period of time. This did not work so well for a long period of time, so when the apostle Paul came on the scene, there was no longer such a practice. You still have to make a living by yourself and work with your own hands. If you do not work, you should not eat (2 Thes. 3:10). To work properly, to gain more so that you can take care of the needy ones, is the proper going on for the long run in the New Testament.
Do not think that to get yourself prepared for the meeting is not scriptural. It is absolutely scriptural, but it depends on what way you prepare. If you go to the concordance and to the Scofield Reference Bible to pick up some points and some verses and put them together to get yourself prepared to give a long message, your message will make everybody sleepy. This will be the best sleeping dose, and this is empty and killing. According to our practice so far, we have the holy Word in our hand, and by the Lord’s mercy He has given us a publication that always opens up the Word. Why would you not use this? We need to use these two things — the Word and the “opener” to get ourselves prepared.
We cannot expect the entire congregation to prepare in this way. At least, however, we should expect ourselves, the leading ones, the co-workers, and the ones who take care of certain meetings, to prepare for the meeting in such a way. Our responsibility, our obligation, and our duty is to get ourselves prepared for the coming meeting. I believe that if we would practice in this way, every kind of meeting would be rich. It would not be like some of our experiences in the past, because in the past nobody actually bore the responsibility. The church meeting is actually the meeting of the elders and all the serving ones. If the elders and all the serving ones get themselves so prepared, the meeting will be rich. When the whole church comes together, this one may have a psalm, that one may have a teaching, and another may have a revelation. They will not have it by instant inspiration, but they will have it by “pre-readiness.” You must prepare yourselves before the meeting time. Through our experiences we have the way to prepare ourselves. To prepare yourself for the meeting is to get into the Word and to get into some messages that can help you to enter into the truth. This will be a rich preparation for you to take care of the meeting, and eventually the meeting will serve a dual purpose — to nourish the saints and, for the long run, to educate the saints.
While the issue of nourishment is forever, the nourishment itself remains only temporarily. Once the truth has been constituted into someone, however, it will remain there forever, and its remaining is its supply. Our need for the long run is this kind of education with the truth, which is really something solid, living, and existing. We need this. Do not expect to have an overnight success, which is like a factory making artificial flowers. Overnight you can produce many flowers, but in a genuine nursery or garden it takes time to grow flowers. Do not pick up the thought that we could do a quick work. You may have the thought that within two years a great number of people will be added to the church. Most of these people, however, may be empty. This is mushrooming. We must take care of the church in a way of growing gradually by life and by truth.
We also must remember that whenever we speak in the meeting, we should speak in the Spirit. Today we are in the New Testament age, but even David in the Old Testament age spoke in the Spirit (2 Sam. 23:2). David’s speaking in the Spirit was not a kind of inspiration. This is the religious thought. I beg you all to drop this thought of inspiration. Inspiration indicates the degradation of God’s people from the living God to a religion. If we serve the living God and this God is the Spirit, we should be in the Spirit all the time if we mean business with Him. Even in the Old Testament times the psalmists and those like David were all living in the Spirit. Therefore, whenever they spoke, they spoke in the Spirit. This does not mean that they were indulging in the flesh like King Saul. He was indulging in the flesh, but God used him to demonstrate something, and he received some inspiration. This was Saul, but this was not David.
If you have been working, living, and acting in the Spirit throughout the whole day from morning to evening, when you come to the meeting, you will speak in the Spirit. If, however, you are busy with family things, with money, with your bank account, with business, with jobs, and with interviews, your talk to people will not be in the Spirit at all. It is possible that as one of the elders, you could be such a person, but you cannot be absent from the meeting. You have to go there, and you have to sit in the front row in order to take care of the responsibility. When you come to the meeting in this way, you are not in the Spirit but in death, and your coming in brings in death. This is not the Spirit and not of life. Then you may feel obligated to speak. When you speak something, that kills the meeting or at the very least lowers down the meeting because you are not a person in Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul’s speaking concerning dealing with marriage life comprises forty verses. In verse 25 of this long chapter, Paul says that he has no commandment of the Lord, but he gives his opinion. In verse 40 he says that what he is speaking is according to his opinion, but he also says, “I think that I also have the Spirit of God.” Here is a man telling people his opinion, yet he is still in the Spirit. Whenever such a person opens his mouth, the Spirit comes out. This enlivens the meetings. The same word out of one person’s mouth may be a kind of enlightening and life-giving word, but out of another person’s mouth that word may be a kind of killing. It all depends on whether we live in the Spirit or whether we live in something else. If we do not live in the Spirit yet we expect to have a living meeting, that will be just an opera or a drama. That will be just like something in the theater, a performance with you as a performer. At least a number of times our meetings were just like a drama with no living reality.
Therefore, when you go back to your locality, you must call a meeting, not of all the saints but at least of all the serving ones who have a heart for the Lord’s recovery, to have some fellowship with them to consider and to reconsider the situation. We must have a change. I do not mean that we have to have a radical change, but we must have a kind of advancing change. We should not be contented with our present meeting. This does not mean that our meetings are not good. Comparatively speaking, they are quite good, but we are not satisfied.
The elders and all the serving ones must come together to pray and to fellowship. Every one of these serving ones must be charged, including the elders, to bear the Ark of the Testimony on their shoulders. This group of faithful ones may be between ten and twenty-five saints. Before every meeting, these dear saints should be living in the Spirit and should get themselves fully ready to bear the Ark. The meeting is the Ark, the testimony. We need some faithful ones like the Levites to bear the Ark. The most devastating thing to me is to come into a meeting with no one bearing the Ark. You also must realize that the Ark cannot be carried on by one person. There is the need for coordination. To bear the Ark needs a team. I came to the meetings a few times with the sensation that no one there was bearing the testimony. There were just performers. The church decided to have a Wednesday meeting, and all the elders and serving ones are obligated to come. Then they come without a burden and without the Spirit. They come to pray-read the Word and then to speak something. It is devastating when no one bears the Ark. This kills the appetite for the saints to come to the meetings.
When you elders go back, you must have a time with the serving ones. If the elders make themselves a special, particular group, they are sectarian. They should not be a drop of oil in a bucket of water but only drops of water. In some churches, however, I have noticed that the elders are a drop of oil and could never be blended together with the water. They are a special rank, a special class. You must kill that class and annul that rank. It is a shame among us that there is a class and that there is a rank. If you keep this special class, you should not expect that your meeting will be living. You must be water. What I mean by being just water is that you are not anything in particular. You are just a brother. The church is not yours, and the meeting is not yours. The church belongs to the saints, and the meetings are the saints’ meetings, so you must be one with the saints. Some of the saints are still young, yet a good number have grown up, and they are serving and bearing some responsibility. It is better to have a time together with them. Get with them to reconsider how to take care of the church and the church meetings. If you do this, I believe that you will see something positive.
