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I do hope that all the churches would practice the small home meetings. This does not mean that we should annul the big meetings, the general gathering of the whole church, on the Lord’s Day morning. I feel we still need that meeting, but we should try our best not to practice in the old way of only one or two gifted brothers speaking, with the other saints sharing only a little. Give up that way. Practice in another way — the way of mutuality in speaking. The elders have to bear the responsibility according to the various situations of their localities, but the principle is to give up the traditional way of having one or two speakers with the rest as the audience. We have been practicing this for some years. Now I feel we have to give the Lord an opportunity to have the freedom to work out His own way, invented and ordained by Him. God’s way is for His children to be gathered into the Lord’s name in mutuality in speaking.
Let the saints have the full opportunity to learn how to speak in the meetings for the Lord. For this there is the need of much labor on the part of the elders. The elders have to consider what to cover in such a big meeting, yet with mutuality in speaking. This is a hard job. We need much labor to help all the saints to realize the new way and to participate in the divine speaking mutually. Do not wait to take this way, thinking you are unable to practice it. If you could not do it well the first time, try the second time, the third time, and the fourth time. We believe that where there is a will, there is a way. In this matter we can quote Philippians 4:13: “I am able to do all things,” especially to carry on the small meetings, “in Him who empowers me.”
I have been practicing the church life since 1932. According to all that I have observed and experienced, the best way to meet is to be gathered with mutuality in speaking. This is the Lord’s invented, created, and ordained way. We have no choice but to take this way.
The truth concerning the small group meetings is mainly based upon Acts, where there is the meeting from house to house (2:46; 5:42; 20:20). House to house indicates every house. I told the church in Taipei to practice this way, yet they did not practice this way absolutely according to the modifier house to house. What they did was to have a few families gathered in one house. They were charged not to exceed ten people and to split into two home meetings when they reached twelve. I believe that for the long run, as we are faithful to the Lord, going on in His invented and ordained way, we all will learn something. Even the new converts should begin to meet in their homes immediately after their regeneration. If they just begin to meet in their home with their spouse and children once a week, this will be a big advance.
The elders do not need to regulate the home meetings. You do not need to tell the saints in the home meetings to meet in order to preach the gospel or to seek after the deeper truth. They can meet at their liberty. This week they may feel led of the Lord to speak the gospel, and two or three will get saved. The next week they may spend the whole meeting for prayer. There is nothing wrong with this. For the elders to interfere with the home meetings or to regulate them is not healthy or profitable. There is no need for the elders to make a decision that this week is a gospel week and that all the home meetings have to preach the gospel. Even there is no need for the elders to make a decision as to where a home meeting should be held. We should let anyone have a home meeting in their home who wants to. They do not need to come to the elders to get their home meeting “registered.”
Some elders may think that the saints have no right to establish a meeting in their homes without the permission of the elders. There is no need of such a control. You may be afraid that they may start a meeting to cause division. But we must trust in the living Lord. He is living, and He will take care of the church. Sometimes our control creates trouble. Some who make trouble in the church — according to our feeling — actually do not make trouble. We should all do our best not to control the saints or the home meetings. We all have to do our best to start the home meetings in our locality.
According to the New Testament, we believers should not get ourselves settled once for all. We need to make a living, and we need housing. I like to see all of you have comfortable houses, but we should always be on the alert because at any time there might be the need for the Lord to move us elsewhere. We are sojourners on the earth (1 Pet. 2:11a). The Lord may want us to stay in a certain place for another year or for another ten years. Only the Lord knows. On the other hand, the Lord may lead us to go to another country, to another city, or to another state.
I feel that some brothers, especially from the Orange County area of California, should pick up the burden to move to where the Lord has a need. Many of you have been under this ministry and the practice of the church life for many years. According to your consideration, you do not know much or have much. I believe, however, that when you pick up a burden from the Lord to go to another place, you will discover that actually, comparatively speaking, you know a lot and can do a lot. Some places need someone who has had some experience in the church life for a number of years. The saints who have been with us in Orange County under the ministry for over eight years have unconsciously and unknowingly had something deposited in them. If some of these saints who love the Lord enter into an environment where their experience is needed, they would be very useful.
The elders should fellowship with the saints often concerning migration. We should never command the saints to go to a certain place, but we should make them aware of the need. We believe the Lord is living. Through this kind of fellowship, the Lord will lead some to pick up the burden, and they will go. When they go to a new place, they will discover that they are very useful to the Lord.
One brother talked to me about his health problems, and I told him that according to my consideration the best environment for his physical problem was Flagstaff, Arizona. Eventually, this brother picked up a burden to move there. By his moving there, there is now a small church in Flagstaff. After moving there, this brother became very useful to the Lord. Many of the Orange County saints have been with us for at least five or eight years. They have been faithful in attending the regular church meetings and the ministry meetings, and from these meetings they have picked up something solid of life and truth. Something has been imparted into them. If they remain where they are, though, they may not be of much use to the Lord. If they go to a new place, they will be very useful.
On nearly every college campus in the United States, there is a Chinese Christian group meeting together. Most of the leaders of these Chinese groups are ones who were with us in Taiwan. They were considered to be the “weaker ones” among us, but when they went out, they became the leaders of these groups. This shows that the attending of the meetings of the church really means something. We all need to pray that many of the saints would pick up the burden for the spread of the Lord’s recovery.
The Lord’s recovery is in need of more full-time workers. Throughout the years in the United States we did not promote this, yet a good number of brothers were raised up by the Lord to take the full-time way. However, we need many more full-timers. According to my observation, a number of you who are elders should go full time. The Lord knows who you are. Just be faithful to His speaking and His leading to go full time.
When I went to Taiwan in October of 1984, there were very few full-timers. Now in Taipei alone there are at least one hundred full-time workers. Recently, they went to the city every day not to preach but to speak the gospel. Also, some individuals from the small group gatherings joined them, mostly in the evening. Within three weeks and with the help of the college students who were on vacation, these full-time workers brought in eleven hundred and four people, and all of these were baptized.
Without time we can do nothing, and our body is fully in time. Romans 12:1 tells us to present our body. Actually, this means to present our time. If you do not present your time, how could your body be presented? You may say that you will present your body and reserve your time, but your body goes with your time. Thus, there is the need of a good number of saints who are ready, according to God’s sight, to go full time.
There is a great problem concerning full-timers that demands our attention — the matter of how to make a living by going full time. The strangest thing concerning this is that from Paul’s time up to now this problem has never been solved. The New Testament does not give us any kind of resolution to this problem. Paul was the foremost apostle (1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 12:11). He did the top work, and the result and the blessing he enjoyed from his work were all on the top. He was highly regarded and respected by all the churches. Such a one, however, was forced to make tents not only to feed himself but also to feed his co-workers (Acts 18:3; 20:34-35). Surely Paul was much wiser than all of us. Why did he not exercise his wise mind to tell all the churches who were under his ministry to donate a certain portion of their proceeds to him? If he had done this, he might have been rich. He would not have needed to make tents. Those of us who take the full-time way or who are going to take the full-time way have to see something here. Paul never made such a resolution. You may wonder how you can live if you go full time. My answer is this — just live. Do not say anything to anyone about your need; just live. If you cannot live, go back to work.
All the denominations have their regulations concerning ways to raise funds to take care of their workers. The China Inland Mission was famous for not having a set system of paying their workers. They trusted in the Lord for their living, but their trusting was corporate, not individual. All the offerings would come to the central office of the China Inland Mission’s headquarters. These gifts would be distributed to all their missionaries by percentage. Every missionary had to be fearful and trembling. A certain missionary living in the interior of China did not know how much money would come into the central office. If very few offerings came, this missionary might have cause for much concern. Therefore, the China Inland missionaries all prayed to the Lord, trusting Him for their living. All the missionaries of other denominations were different from the China Inland Mission. Their missionaries were promised a certain allowance to take care of the needs of their living.
Our practice in this matter was not exactly the same as that of the China Inland Mission. Brother Nee was the first one among us to take the full-time way. He just lived without any promise from anyone or from any church to support him. He lived by faith, and he even told his parents not to take care of him. Those of us who went full time after him followed his pattern. I must testify that to take this way was really hard. We never made any arrangement for the church to give us a certain monthly allowance. I began to be full time in 1933. It was not until 1946, by the time I had gone to Shanghai, that the church in Shanghai gave the full-time workers a certain amount of cash every month. Before 1946 I never received any regular supply from any church, even from the church in Chefoo, which I was directly taking care of. Within the five years I stayed in Chefoo, I cannot remember ever having received some material supply from the church. You may wonder how I lived in those years. I just lived. Sometimes I lived by poverty. Sometimes I lived by my family’s suffering. But I never made a demand on the church. I did not tell the church that I needed a living because I was serving there full time. As full-time workers, if we are short of something, we only tell God and tell our poverty. This is why we have surely seen and experienced some miracles regarding the Lord taking care of our living.
I was once assigned by Brother Nee, the leading one in the work, to move my family from Chefoo to a big city in north China, a port city close to the old capital of Peking. The cost of living there was very expensive. I moved there, and no church gave me any support. The assigning work did not say anything about my supply. That was our practice. The work, the ministry, only assigned you work to do. They never cared for your need. That was our way.
I moved there first by myself, and when I looked at the situation in that big city, I realized that in order to travel and visit others I needed a bicycle. I had only a little over forty dollars in my pocket that I kept to move my family, which included my wife and three children. I needed a bicycle badly, so I prayed to the Lord. I still remember where I kneeled down to ask the Lord to meet my need. In that prayer I was so clear that the Lord was telling me from within to go to buy a bicycle although I had only a little over forty dollars, which was just enough to bring my wife and three children to be with me. Later, a certain brother went with me to visit another brother. After visiting that brother, we two brothers went to a food market. When we came out of the market, we saw a new bicycle standing there. I told the brother with me that this was the kind of bicycle I wanted to buy. Immediately, the owner came out, and I asked him where I could buy such a bicycle and how much it would cost. Then he told me the place and the price. We brothers went to that store, and there was such a bicycle for sale there, already assembled. The salesman told me the price was thirty-two dollars, including tax and license. I paid him the thirty-two dollars and took the bicycle home.
After coming back home, I was happy that I had a bicycle, which would be so useful to me in that big city. I went upstairs to the very place where I initially knelt down to pray and gave thanks to the Lord. While I was giving thanks to the Lord, He asked me to count how much money I had received since He told me to buy the bicycle up until the time I paid the thirty-two dollars for it. My prayer for the bicycle was on a Saturday when a certain brother came to see me. We had a long talk, and when he left, he told me he had a letter for me. Actually, it was not a letter but an envelope, within which was ten dollars. On the next day, the Lord’s Day, I received a two-dollar gift from the offering box. The very next morning, Monday morning, I received some registered mail from another city. This mail contained a postal money order for twenty dollars. The other brother and I went to the post office that same day to cash that money order. It was on that Monday that we also saw the bicycle I purchased, and I had not counted the money I had received from the Lord as gifts. When I added the amounts of ten dollars, two dollars, and twenty dollars, and realized that the Lord had supplied me with thirty-two dollars, the exact amount of the bicycle, I wept before the Lord. How faithful He was! This is one example among the many ways the Lord took care of my practical needs. The Lord sovereignly arranged for me to see that bicycle and supplied me with the exact amount for it. The Lord is truly marvelous! This was one of my experiences concerning trusting in the Lord for my living.
My family and I lived in that large city for one year up until the end of 1936. At the end of the year I received a cable from Brother Nee asking me to come join him for a co-workers’ conference. I went to this conference, and afterward I visited quite a number of cities. I traveled during January and February, not being able to return home until some time in March. I left my home and my family without much money. By that time I had four children. One day when I was gone, my wife realized that the next day they would have nothing to live on. My wife was not the kind of person who contacted people frequently, so she had no person to pray with. She asked only our oldest child, who at that time was about seven, and his sister, who was five, to pray with her. They knelt down by the bed and prayed, “Lord, we are in this situation, and You know that we do not know what to live on tomorrow.” It was winter at that time. That evening it was snowing heavily. About ten o’clock at night an older sister came in a car to our residence and knocked on the door. She came in and told my wife that something was bothering her, telling her to come and see my wife. Then she said, “The Lord told me to come with this,” and she gave my wife a large sum of money to take care of her and our children. This older sister had never had any contact with me. She only came to the church meetings. Neither had she had any talk with my wife before that time, and she had never come to visit us in our house. But late in the night, under heavy snowing, she came urgently. Was this not a miracle? That was the way we passed through to be full time for the Lord.
In conclusion, we who take the way of being full time have no right to ask the church to give us anything. Whether the church would give or would not give us something is up to the church. We have no right to ask or, needless to say, to require or demand others to supply our need. We have only one right — to trust in the Lord in suffering poverty.
I was sick for two and a half years with tuberculosis during the time that the Japanese army invaded China. China was in a hard situation in that year of 1943. The war had been going on for over six years already, and the economic situation of China was really poor. I was very sick, and I needed a lot of good care. My wife and my children were in a hard time. She and the children began to eat the kind of food which at that time was only good for feeding the pigs. The poorest people in north China sometimes ate this kind of food. My family was also forced at times, by being short of supply, to eat that kind of pig food. And in north China we needed coal to burn in the stoves for cooking. My wife went to the seashore like the poor people to pick up things that were carried to the shore by the tide. The waves carried a lot of things that would be good for fuel. When my sister got to know that, she advised my wife not to do this since only the poor people did this. But this was what we suffered in order to serve the Lord with our full time. We only have the right to tell the Lord our need, and we only have the right to tell our poverty.
When I was sent to Taiwan from Shanghai, the church in Shanghai did not give me one dollar. Brother Nee personally gave me about three hundred dollars, and that was all the money I had when I went to Taiwan. When I went to Taiwan, I took my wife, eight children, and two maids. The older maid had served my family for three generations. She was a widow, and it was hard for us to leave her. The second maid, a younger sister, served my family in Nanking for some years. She was a divorced young lady. When we were leaving Shanghai, she cried. We were the ones who brought her to the Lord. My wife and I decided that as long as we could go to Taiwan, we should also bring her. We brought these two maids with us, not for help but out of love. Therefore, we had twelve people living together in one place. The three hundred dollars I had were good for us to live on for only three months. This was all I had to go to Taiwan to begin the work there. I never told any co-worker what I needed. I never told any church what I needed. You all would suppose that I should have been the second one, next to Brother Nee, among the saints who was highly regarded in the recovery, yet this was my financial condition.
If you demand, require, or even ask others to supply your need, this is absolutely a shame. This is not only wrong; this is a shame. If you cannot go this way of being full time, go back to work. On the one hand, I encourage so many of you to go full time, but on the other hand, I would advise you that if you go this way, you only have the right to tell your need to the Lord and your poverty. Please go back to do a regular job if you cannot take this way. Whoever goes full time should be clear that we have no right to ask anyone to supply us. I came to this country and worked so hard for the church in Los Angeles in 1964. For that whole year the church in Los Angeles probably only gave me no more than eight hundred dollars. I know this because in 1965 I asked a brother to take care of my income tax. He told me that for the whole year of 1964 the church in Los Angeles had not given me over eight hundred dollars.
On the one hand, this way should be carried out by the full-timers. But on the other hand, all the churches, with all the saints, should be faithful in giving. These are two sides. The churches with all the saints should be careful, should be diligent, and should be faithful in giving to take care of the need. Paul says that all the people working for the gospel have the right to live from the gospel (1 Cor. 9:14), but not according to the traditional way. We are here for the Lord’s recovery. Even though we do not practice having all things in common, we do practice our faithfulness for His unique purpose on this earth.
I believe that the elders should teach the saints concerning these kinds of things quite often to bring them to a full knowledge of the Lord’s move. I told the saints in the church in Taipei that out of twenty saints there should be one full-timer. If your church has one hundred, you should have at least five full-timers, but not officially or legally. The one who becomes full time has no right to ask any of the nineteen to take care of him. If I discovered something like this, I would advise that brother to go back to his job. It is a shame to tell the supporting ones how much you need. This is begging. We take the way of living by faith. You go this way of being full time because you believe the One whom you serve is the living One. You do not trust any human being. All the saints should be faithful to give, and the entire church should endeavor to take care of the needs of the full-timers. I encourage many of you to be full time, but once you do, you have no right to ask any church to support you. That is a real shame. Furthermore, every church with every saint must be faithful to make more money for the Lord’s sake. We believe that the Lord is living and that He is real. Someday we will stand before His judgment seat, and He will judge us (2 Cor. 5:10). Let us live such a life that is termed the kingdom life. We should really mean business with the Lord.
If the church feels that it does not want to take care of a certain brother because he is not faithful, it does not need to. Neither does that brother need to go full time. He should go back to do a job. He should not take a way that forces others to talk about him in a negative way. This is too poor, and it is a shame before man and even before the angels and demons.
We should be glorious; we should be dignified. I would never beg. To beg is a shame. For over fifty-three years I never begged. Rather, I spent my money splendidly. When I gave, I gave splendidly. People wondered where I received the money; the Lord has always supplied me. I suffered poverty, and my entire family suffered poverty to the uttermost because of His sake. Today we are happy about it. This is our way. On the other hand, we must remember that the saints and the churches should be faithful to the uttermost in giving to Him for His up-to-date move.
