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By 1984 the recovery had come to a point of being dormant. At that time I felt burdened to go to Taiwan to study our situation. I was endeavoring to bring us into the God-ordained, scriptural way to meet and to serve for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Through five years of study, from 1984 to 1989, the Lord clearly showed us the God-ordained way.
The term the God-ordained way was invented by us, and we saw that this God-ordained way revealed in the Scriptures is of four steps: begetting, feeding, perfecting, and building. We need to beget, to produce, new believers. Then we need to feed them that they may grow. Then we need to perfect them, not by one teacher but through the mutual teaching in the groups. In the groups everyone is a teacher, and every teacher is a student. Through the mutual teaching in the groups the new ones are perfected unto the work of the ministry, as pointed out in Ephesians 4:12. This makes them qualified to prophesy, to speak for the Lord, for the building up of the church. To take the God-ordained way is by these four steps, but how do we carry them out? We found out that the way to carry out these four steps is by the vital groups.
In 1949 we started the work in Taipei with about three to five hundred saints. Within less than five years we grew to fifty thousand. During that period of time, I felt that we needed the groups. Just to have the halls for the district work was not adequate, so we set up groups. We decided to have about twenty saints to a group, but the groups grew to fifty, sixty, and seventy saints. Some even grew to one hundred. The group leaders were very active ones in the church life.
From 1958 to 1984, however, the church in Taipei had gradually dropped the practice of group meetings and unconsciously drifted back to focus on the Lord’s Day message meeting with one person speaking and the rest listening. In every hall there was a speaker to take care of this message meeting. We had drifted away from the practice of the group meetings to a kind of Sunday morning service with one speaker.
We have to realize that a big and top advantage of the group meetings is that they should make everyone function. Our vital groups have not yet reached that standard of making everyone function according to the God-ordained way with its four steps: to beget, to feed, to perfect by mutual teaching, and to prophesy for the building up of the church.
After we released the truth concerning the group meetings, the churches attempted to pick up this practice. But what they eventually had was not vital groups but mostly dormant groups. I became very clear within that in order to come out of our dormant condition we must stress the practice of the vital group meetings.
Recently, I felt burdened to use the term vital groups. My understanding in using the word vital is that a vital group is living and full of activities. You may be a living person, but if you do not know how to take any action, you are not vital. Children from the ages of five to seven are vital because they are not only living but full of activities. Spiritually speaking, we may be living, but we are not vital, because we are not living and full of activities. To be vital is to be living and very active, full of activities. The vital groups are groups that are living and full of activities. If the saints who have the burden to be in the vital groups do not move, do not act, in any kind of meeting, the church is finished.
We have made it clear that the way to produce the vital groups is that each of us must take the lead to be vital. In order to be vital, we first must have a thorough fellowship with the Lord. Then that fellowship will bring us into a kind of realization that we are totally sinful. Then we will be brought into a thorough confession of our sins. Spontaneously, we will reconsecrate ourselves. We will pray, “Lord, now I would like to consecrate myself to You anew.” Then that will bring us into a prayer life. No one can pray unceasingly without reaching this stage. When we pass through the stages of fellowship, confession, and consecration, we enter into a prayer life. It is in this prayer life that we pray ourselves into the Spirit — the essential Spirit, the economical Spirit, the all-inclusive Spirit. Then we learn how to follow this Spirit by exercising our spirit. If this is the case with us, we are really vital. Actually, this is all revealed, unveiled, in the New Testament, especially in Paul’s Epistles.
The overcomers are the vital members. If we read the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, we can see that the overcomers are vital. The overcomers in God’s economy will be the ones who give God the way to consummate this age, to bring Christ back, and to recover His title and right over the earth through Christ’s reign. Christ will reign, and the overcomers will reign with Him as His co-kings. We must remember that to be vital is to overcome.
When we are vital, we will have a burden to contact others. This will not be something done merely because the elders made a decision. The elders may make a decision to divide the saints in the church into groups and call these groups vital groups, but they may be dormant groups. If we merely arrange the saints into groups and call them vital groups, that is something formal. That is just a movement. Eventually, these groups will be the same as the old groups. This is not the way to have the vital groups. We must abandon that way and take the vital way.
We will not be vital if we do not pass through the stages of fellowship, the confession of our sins, reconsecration, a prayer life, and the filling of the Spirit. Also, we need to have a thorough and intimate fellowship with one another. We may come together as groups and yet not have this kind of fellowship. Instead, we are all very reserved. We open up ourselves to a certain extent and no more. We like to cover and hide many things concerning our situation. As a result, there is no thorough fellowship. When there is no thorough fellowship, there is no thorough blending. Then we cannot see the proper mutual intercession, the proper mutual care, and the proper mutual shepherding. This shows that we are not that vital.
In the entire time of my ministry I have not been as burdened as I am in these days concerning how the church should go on. Recently, I became clear that we must begin to take action, regardless of whether or not we feel that we have been adequately prepared. Without any burden of work, it is difficult to have a burden of prayer. The first step we need to take is to contact the saints who are not in the groups that we have. A number of the saints may be weaker and older, and they do not have the capacity to act that much and be in the vital groups. We should not go to contact them first but go to contact the ones whom we feel can be made vital and whom we can bring into our vital groups. The first step in our action is not to contact the unbelieving sinners or our relatives and neighbors but to contact the meeting members who are not yet vital. We need to pray and choose someone whom we can contact.
We may also feel led by the Lord to recover certain backsliding ones. Some of us should pick up the burden to recover them and make them vital. In recovering a backsliding one, we should not talk too much. Instead, we should go to visit him again and again. We should be prepared to take one year to recover one person. In these days we need to go to contact the ones who can be made vital, including certain ones who have backslidden. When they become vital, they may be more vital than we are.
On the average each of our groups has about eight persons. When you bring one to your group, this does not mean that he is vitalized yet. He is still not vitalized, but he may like to come to your vital group meeting. When we bring two more to join our group and we reach ten saints, we should divide our group into two groups of five each.
Sometimes the right person can get someone revived just by one contact. A certain brother may be working on another backslidden brother for three years without anything happening. But someone else may have one contact with this backslidden one, and he may want to go to your group meeting just through that one contact.
Previously we said that we need to wait and consider when the time is ripe for us to bring a new one to the group meeting. In these days I feel that we should not wait. If they want to come to our group meetings, bring them in. When we reach ten saints in our group, we should divide into two groups of five. When a group of five brings a new one in, they should all work on that one to fully recover him, revive him, and make him vital. This is a mutual work.
Perhaps a brother who is being recovered would come to our meeting and ask, “Why has the church become so dormant?” One of the saints may say, “I confess my responsibility. The church became dormant because of me. But, hallelujah, just three days ago I got revived.” This is a kind of teaching and fellowship. Then the others may share their experience concerning being revived or the need to be revived. This is our mutual meeting, our vital group. If the five members of a group work on one saint in this way, he can be recovered and made vital. He may return home from the meeting and tell his wife how impressed he was with the functioning of all the saints and how he was touched by the Lord.
We should preach the gospel in the same way. We can bring our gospel contacts to the group. When they come to our group meeting, we must learn how to behave ourselves so that we do not stumble them. They may not know how to ask questions, but we can ask questions for them, and all of us can function to answer them in order to help them get saved.
Each of our vital group meetings presently has about eight members. When we gain two more and reach ten members, we should divide. We should use one evening each week to come together and bring our new contacts to the meeting. Regardless of how many contacts you have, bring them into your meeting. Then you need to learn. Do not learn to be dumb. Learn to be active. Learn to be vital, to speak. Do not be fearful of making mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, you will never learn. If no one among the five persons in the group says anything, this will be a dormant and dumb meeting. All of us must learn to be active and not be concerned about making mistakes. We all have to function, and we must be prepared to make mistakes and learn from these mistakes to be perfected. In these days we need to pray desperately with a real burden. Now is the time for us to fight the battle and gain those in the church who are not yet vital.
I believe that the way to help us be more vital is for us to contact others. If we wait any longer to contact others, we will never be vital. Every week we should set apart one day in which we contact others. We also need to have a vital group meeting one evening a week in addition to the regular meetings of the church. We still should attend the Lord’s Day morning meeting and the prayer meeting.
We must set aside one day each week for the sake of gaining others. If we have the burden to recover someone who has not been in the meetings for a long time, we need to pray for him. We may even need to fast and pray. Then we will receive the Lord’s leading to contact him, either by phoning him or going to visit him. If there is a will to gain people, there is a way to gain them. We believe this. We must ask the Lord to give us someone to gain for Him. We cannot be idle. We must gain someone who is not yet vitalized. We must bear a burden to vitalize that one, to make that one vital. Then we will realize that we first need to be vitalized.
After we have finished contacting all the non-vital members, including the backsliding ones, we can begin to contact the sinners, including our relatives, neighbors, and colleagues. We have to pray and ask the Lord to give us someone to labor on. If we have such a desire, the Lord will give us the proper persons. We need to pray desperately as we take action with the Lord to contact others. We should tell the Lord that we do not want to be dormant and that we do not want others in the church to be dormant. We need to be vitalized by the Lord and then go to vitalize others.
We have to make our group meetings so interesting. If our vital group meetings are full of truth, are living, and if we intimately love one another in the group, this will be a big attraction. We must have a living, active vital group. Then we should do our best to bring in the middle-aged ones.
Brother Watchman Nee stressed that the priesthood in the New Testament is universal, so he encouraged all the saints to serve, to be priests. We have not yet had a complete success in this matter. After I came to the United States, the Lord showed us that we need to pray-read His Word and call upon His name. We also began to practice having a time in the meeting for the saints to share after a message was given. This helped to bring the saints into more functioning. But the most prevailing way to bring all the saints into function is for them to enter into the group meetings in a living and active way.
Our groups should not be dormant, lifeless, and cold. If our groups are like this, no one will want to attend them. We have to keep our group meetings so interesting, so living, and so attractive. People need a proper social life, but to be social in a worldly way leads to sin. The church social life in the recovery leads to light, to the deeper and higher truths, and to the divine life. I believe that if we could get our practice exposed to others, they will be attracted. The group meetings that are living, attractive, and full of activities will be used by the Lord to gain others for the increase and building up of the church.
Everyone should bear a burden for the vital groups. Do not despise your burden and your portion. If a new one comes into a group meeting, and all the members of the group meeting speak, he will be surprised and attracted. Our group meetings must be living and active, with all the members in the group speaking.
According to my experience, the most attractive thing is the thorough fellowship. In your vital groups you must always practice the thorough, intimate fellowship. This brings in the mutual care in love. If a new one comes to our group and sees this kind of intimate, open, thorough fellowship and mutual care, he will be inspired. He would say that he has never seen people who are so one and who love, open to, and care for one another so much. He would say, “This is the place where I should be. I have to be among these people.” This kind of intimate fellowship and care for one another attracts people, so we have to practice this.
We must do everything we can to strengthen the vital groups. We should spend every drop of our blood, every bit of our strength, and every minute of our time to strengthen the vital groups, making the vital groups so beautiful, so high, and so attractive. This is the only thing we should stress to get people. A number of things can attract people but not so effectively as the vital groups.
