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Regarding the changing of the system, the matter that I feel most heavily burdened about within is the weakness of the ministry of the word in the meetings. At the present time the new way has proved to be the right way both in the East and in the West. However, all the situations and conditions that were manifested during the experimental period have shown us that the speaking of the word in the various meetings is very weak. We are not asking that the speaking be extraordinary but that it would at least be able to meet the need. Presently, our speaking is not ideal and does not meet the need. In other words, we are like a team that cannot take the field to compete because we are not up to the standard.
I have always been heavily burdened concerning the ministry of the word, and I have been forced to carefully consider before the Lord how to deal with it. For example, consider the church in Taipei. It is a large church with over twenty meeting halls and more than four hundred small groups, yet it is clear that the ministry of the word is lacking and that there is little supply both in the big meetings and in the small meetings. This problem must be solved without further delay. Food, clothing, housing, and transportation are the great necessities of life, but the most crucial necessity is food. It does not matter that much if a person’s clothing is a little shabby or if his house leaks a little when it rains. His stomach, however, cannot go hungry. If a man in a certain place is hungry day after day, sooner or later he will leave that place because he will not be willing to simply wait until he dies. Therefore, the fact that our numbers are not multiplying is eighty percent due to the scarcity of food among us and to our inability to feed people.
Even though you may not have the experience or knowledge to lead a small group, you should be able to pick up some secrets and discover some essential points by simply trying to do it. For example, a person does not have to attend a technical school to learn how to be a carpenter. By practicing carpentry under a master carpenter from his youth, he can gain experience and eventually become a master himself. Similarly, after leading a small group for a while, you should be able to discover some secrets and essential points as you attend the small group meeting. According to my general observation, the fate of the small group depends entirely upon the ministry of the word.
First, all of the co-workers, full-timers, elders, and core members in the small groups should be prepared to bring a suitable word as the food to the small group meetings. However, when you are preparing a word, do not consider yourselves as teachers who are going to teach some students or as elders who are going to visit and edify the saints. If you do this, you will definitely fail. Although you must be prepared, in your attitude you should still consider yourselves as students because there are no teachers or leaders in the small groups.
Next, you should not go with the intention of giving the opening word in the meeting. Although it makes a difference whether the meeting starts early or late, it is not that important. The important thing is whether or not you supply the others in the meeting and bring the riches to them. If the saints do not open the meeting in a good way, if they are only chatting, or if they sing an inappropriate hymn, then you need to properly open the meeting. If they open the meeting properly, you should simply let them carry on by themselves.
Based upon the condition of the small groups, I have realized that our leading and perfecting in the past were too weak. In the past we depended on big meetings with large numbers of people. Now, after the change of system, we have small group meetings with small numbers of people, and no one knows how to meet in this way. I have gone to several group meetings, and they were all like this. The saints were good, but they simply did not know how to meet. The reason is that in the past we were not trained in this way. The saints know how to pray, how to sing, and how to read the Scriptures, but they do not know how to apply these practices once they are in the small groups.
If we had time, I would teach you how to open the meeting, that is, how to use the hymns or the Life-study messages to start the meeting. For now I can give you only some principles. In order to open the meeting in a good way, you should be able to point out the crucial items of the truth that the saints are pursuing during the week. For example, suppose that this week we are pursuing Message 10 of the Life-study of Galatians, and the crucial point is that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. If you know this, then you can take the opportunity to lead everyone to sing Hymns, #499. Once the singing starts, the meeting will open up. Therefore, before you go to the small group meeting, you should familiarize yourself with the message being pursued that week and note the crucial points in it. At the small group meeting you should learn to share the crucial points with the saints. There is no need to read the whole message. Simply grasp the crucial points and feed the saints. You can also use the Bible to open the meeting by leading everyone to read the verses related to the content being pursued for the week. If no one knows how to read properly, and the reading is disorganized and disorderly, or if they do not know how to repeat-read, emphasize-read, or pray-read, then you must be the coach and think of a way to teach and perfect them so that they may learn how to read properly.
Today you may still be learning how to serve full time, but this does not excuse you from knowing how to meet in the group meetings. Perhaps some would say that when they were serving full time in the past, they learned to serve in a different way. It is true that in the past I said that if you wanted to learn to serve the Lord full time, you should first start by going to the meeting hall to clean the toilets, wipe the windows, sweep the floors, and arrange the chairs. I was the one who took the lead to do these things. However, I did not intend to lead the serving ones in that way. Rather, they deviated from my way. What I meant at that time was that these matters were the basic exercises and things that we had to learn. However, that was thirty-six years ago. Today, since every hall has at least one hundred saints, is there still the need for you who are full time to wipe the chairs and clean the toilets? If you do that, you are taking over others’ functions. You should let others wipe the chairs while you do other things.
I seriously hope that the elders would not lead the full-timers to go to the meeting hall and wash the windows, wipe the chairs, and clean the toilets. If the full-timers do not even have enough time or energy to take care of the small groups, then why should they be forced to take care of these lesser matters? It is true that the halls need to be cleaned, but right now what we are lacking is not people who can clean but people who can speak for the Lord. Our situation is like that of a school with many students, classrooms, and classes but no teachers. In other words, there are many who can clean, but there are few who can teach. If the chairs in a hall are not being cleaned, this is an indication that the elders do not know how to lead the saints. This is a problem with the elders. If the elders cannot find people to wipe the windows or set up the chairs, then they should invite the saints to a love feast. After the love feast it would be easy to ask the saints to serve. When there is love, it is easy to fellowship about anything. This is a very effective secret. This is not playing politics but helping and leading the saints by warming their hearts.
In 1939 when I was in the church in Chefoo, I would invite some saints to a love feast at the meeting hall on the nights when there were no meetings. We met on the second floor of the meeting hall, and there was a kitchen below the room where we met. I would hire a cook, not to cook meals for me but to prepare love feasts for the saints. For every love feast I would invite up to twenty guests. Eventually, all the saints had been invited to at least one love feast. Of course, my love feasts were not without a price. After being invited to a feast, many saints would do some service.
To take care of services such as ushering and cleaning the meeting hall, we only need to prepare a few love feasts for the saints. Then they will be willing to give themselves to serve and will have the heart to serve. However, the service of ministering the word cannot be taken care of simply by having a love feast. Our situation is like that of a school without teachers. We cannot simply invite a few saints over for a meal and then ask them to teach and expect them to know how to teach. Ministering the word is a most difficult thing. Every Lord’s Day morning the twenty or so meeting halls in the church in Taipei have three thousand people meeting in them, all of whom are like infants crying from hunger and waiting to be fed. If we have nothing with which to supply them and no food to feed them, then we should not blame them if they do not come back the next time.
We have been encouraging the saints to meet in small groups. They are very happy about this, but they do not know how to meet in this way. Perhaps some who were previously in the young people’s meetings learned a hymn there. This may be the only hymn they know. Thus, when they come to the small group meeting, they can sing only this one hymn. Perhaps others do not know how to start the meeting, so they chat about all sorts of subjects. Therefore, if someone does not lead the meeting in a good way, then when the brothers and sisters come to the meeting, they will not know what to do. Consequently, others may receive a bad impression of our meeting and may not want to come again in the future. Moreover, once people receive a bad impression, it is hard to change this impression.
I believe that this is the reason there is no increase in the small groups. Therefore, I would like to train you to lead the small groups. In the past when we practiced having small group meetings, we made some arrangements. We arranged for certain ones to be group responsible ones, home responsible ones, and hall responsible ones. There were at least two responsible ones in a small group so that when one was sick or had other matters to take care of, the other could substitute. However, the saints began to think that to be a responsible one was to have an official position. The situation reached a point in which it was difficult to even assign responsible ones because there would always be eight or ten people competing to be a home responsible one. If we appointed only two people, then the others would get offended and would not come to the meeting for one or two months. Some would even question the elders as to why they were letting a person who was less qualified than they be responsible. Therefore, we do not want to have titles. We do not want any of the saints to act as the head.
However, if no one acts as the head, it is hard to meet. Of course, there are some saints who have a clean heart and do not assume to be leaders. They do not want to serve as officials. They only know to love the Lord and to love the brothers and sisters. Moreover, they know how to serve and also have certain spiritual abilities. When this kind of person comes to the meeting, he spontaneously helps the brothers and sisters and supplies the meeting. As a result, the small group meeting is successful. However, suppose such a one does everything and directs everything. He is the one who calls the hymns, selects the Scripture verses, and speaks the message. Since he is spiritually weighty and experienced in life, the result will be that most of the saints will prefer to go to his small group meetings and not to the meetings in the meeting hall. This would not be a good situation either. This is why we say that this matter of taking the lead is the most difficult point.
I have been in the Lord’s work for more than fifty years. Before we changed the system this last time, I considered many times before the Lord how we would accomplish such a change. Now the change is being accomplished before our eyes. The way that the Lord is leading us on is the best way. This is not something that we dreamed into being. Rather, it is the cumulative result of our many years of experience and observation before the Lord. Regrettably, there is one troublesome matter—the number of people who can speak for the Lord is too small, and the ministry of the word in the meetings is too weak. Being able to speak for the Lord is not a matter that can be developed instantaneously.
Even though this is the case, I still feel very hopeful because of all the full-timers here. Therefore, after considering this matter before the Lord, I decided to set aside time to give you some training. I hope that after you have gone through the training, you will be able to meet the need for the ministry of the word in the group meetings. This is my burden. For me to lead one small group would not be difficult, but for me to lead four hundred groups would be difficult. At present there are one hundred full-timers. The least I can do is to set aside some time to teach you all to lead one hundred small groups. For this reason, I hope that each of you would attend a small group meeting and attend the same one regularly for your exercise and learning. Starting from today, you should not wander from group to group, drifting everywhere. Rather, you should attend the same group regularly. As to the other three hundred groups, you must leave them and let others work on them.
When you go to a small group meeting, you should not have the intention or the attitude that you are there to teach. You should have only one real burden—to be a saint attending the small group meeting and learning to lead the small group meeting. It is worthwhile to learn how to lead a group meeting. The most crucial aspect of a small group meeting is the opening of the meeting. Do not open the meeting hastily, and do not compete to be the first to open the meeting. You should let the saints open the meeting. If they do not do a good job of opening the meeting, that may waste only five or six minutes. Then you can give a good opening word to help them have a good meeting. You should not speak much unless it is necessary. If you use a Life-study message to open the meeting, and the saints follow by reading the message but read in a disorganized way, then you can speak a few sentences to help them. You should not set out with the intention to teach the saints, but you should take the opportunity to educate them when you have the chance. Everyone likes to learn. Even though some of the saints have been saved for many years, they may not know how to meet. Thus, you need to teach them little by little. You may not succeed immediately, for they will not learn immediately. You may have to teach them a little at a time. If you teach them a little at a time, after three or four meetings they will learn.
Besides this, you need to learn to contact the members of the small group individually. For example, you may visit the home of the one who will be hosting the next meeting. When you go, do not go with the intent to teach him. Rather, go spontaneously before the time of the meeting. You do not need to make an appointment; simply go before the meeting begins. If the meeting starts at seven-thirty, you could go at six-thirty. When you arrive, you do not need to say, “I have come early to visit you.” If he asks you why you are early, you can say, “Praise the Lord that He gave me the feeling to come early.” Then you can talk with his whole family, taking the opportunity to observe their condition, to fellowship with them, and to render them the appropriate help. You could even teach the head of the household how to open up his home and how to receive the saints when they come.
You should not forget your status and your work. You are full-timers. All of your time is for the Lord and His church. Therefore, you should not be inflexible in deciding the place and time of your meals. If the meeting starts at seven-thirty, you can eat earlier in order to make it to the meeting at six-thirty. During the meeting, if you see a saint having difficulty, you need to find an opportunity to contact him. However, do not approach him as a preacher or a teacher. You have to show concern for him and cherish him in a spontaneous way. After the contact, you may arrange to have a meal with him for fellowship before the next meeting and to attend the group meeting together. Never tell him, “I can tell that you are having difficulty, so I want to invite you for a meal and for fellowship. I hope that this will help you.” Rather, you should share some of your testimony with him in a very normal way or read a portion of the Word to him for him to receive the real help. This is to do the real work.
You do not need to take care of those who are in other groups. Simply endeavor to labor in your group. In this way, in less than half a year the saints in your group will surely be on track. The direct and indirect effect or influence will be indescribable and immeasurable. The number of people in your group will quickly increase, and you will be able to form another group. I believe that through this kind of fellowship you can understand what is the proper way to work.
In your church life no service should conflict with the meetings because the church meetings are the full-timers’ work. The other saints come to the meetings simply to attend, but you who are full-timers must come to serve. Therefore, you need to study how to minister to others in the meeting what you have received of the Lord and also how to care for the saints’ individual needs. I do not mean that you should go and take care of everyone. You should simply take care of one specific person. Week after week you should take care of individual people, one by one. The number of people you take care of will naturally accumulate over the years. If you perfect one person every six months, then after five or ten years you will have borne fruit a hundredfold. We must have this view for our work.
Do not seek to be great in working for the Lord. Do not dream of becoming a great evangelist who holds campaigns and leads hundreds of thousands of people to be saved. That is not necessarily the way of the Lord. The Lord’s way is to save people one by one. He says in the Bible, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). A single grain of wheat cannot produce hundreds and millions of grains in a short time. Rather, each and every grain multiplies—one thirtyfold, one sixtyfold, and one a hundredfold (Matt. 13:8, 23). The result is that a little multiplication accumulates to produce a great abundance. Today I am very happy because there are over a hundred full-timers here. It would be a tremendous thing if each of you went and earnestly led and worked on a group.
We have been promoting the small groups for eight months already but with no result. Generally speaking, this is because no one knows what to do, and due to our complacency everyone simply lets the time go by week after week. Therefore, to this day our situation has been unremarkable and ordinary. Nothing new has happened. If all of us had known how to work for the Lord and had endeavored to work well, then during the past eight months, our numbers would have at least doubled from one hundred groups to two hundred. However, the situation has not been so.
It is actually not that hard to carry out the small groups. We simply need to learn to adjust as the situation demands. Those who have been trained by me can testify that what I teach in the training and what we do in actual practice are sometimes different. This is because in the actual carrying out of what is taught, we sometimes have to adjust due to practical needs. A good coach teaches his students according to regulation, but at the same time he also teaches them that when they are carrying out what is taught, they need to be able to adjust according to the demands of the situation. For example, a boxer may box with his coach during practice in a particular way. However, if he uses exactly the same movements at a competition, he will lose. If his coach were to box in a competition, he would not box in exactly the same manner as he boxes while practicing. Instead, he will adjust as the situation demands and will win. This is the coach’s wisdom.
Let us use driving as another example. We must follow the traffic rules and regulations when learning to drive. However, when we are on the road, we need to be able to adjust to the conditions on the road. Otherwise, an accident might happen. This is the challenge. When you are teaching someone to drive, you should give him some teaching materials. If you do not give him any materials containing various principles, then you will not be able to teach him. It is good to teach the regulations during the class and during training, but when it comes to the actual driving, the driver must learn to adjust according to the situation and apply what he has learned to the appropriate environment. The same is true with translation. A word can be interpreted many ways, and one needs to make the best judgment based upon the context and logic of the facts. For you to begin working on a group, I can teach you only the principles. You have to endeavor to get into the details and to put them into practice. Then the results will be unlimited. In doing anything, you cannot be so rigid. It is the same with leading a small group. You need to adjust according to the situation, and you need to properly apply what you have learned.
This situation is a perfect opportunity for you. I have given you the way and the principles. You need to hold on to these, be diligent to carry them out, and learn to adjust according to the situation. I believe that if you do this, you will see some results, even if your results are not complete.
As ones who have come out to serve full time, you should serve in the new way ordained by God. Do not think that to serve full time is to learn to stand on a platform and give messages. This concept is wrong. In the past we could not maintain the Lord’s Day meeting without someone giving a message. However, now we are not depending on you to give messages on the platform. Rather, we want you to contact people. If you are willing to spend five years to attend as many church meetings as possible and to learn to serve, using half of every day to learn the truth and the other half to work, then the future of the Lord’s recovery will definitely be bright.
There are many ways by which we can work. We can work by contacting the members in a small group or the saints attending the meeting. It is not necessary for others to give you a charge and a commission. Rather, you should already have this view that your work is to happily and voluntarily contact others and then to fellowship with them in a normal way by either inviting them for a meal or visiting them in their homes to cherish and help them. If you would do this for months and even years, the result would be inestimable.
You must realize that your work is not like a carpenter’s work, which cannot reproduce itself. What you are working on is something that reproduces itself. Today you may be laboring on eight people, all of whom can reproduce. In the beginning the Lord created only one couple, but the issue of this one couple has been a continual multiplication and increase. Now after six thousand years there are billions of people. If in the beginning the Lord had created a chair, today there would still be only one chair. So do not view your caring for eight people as a light matter. It may be that one of them will become a leading apostle and be greatly used by the Lord. Who can say that this will not happen? I hope that you would all be in this new, God-ordained way, endeavoring to learn how to serve.
It is a big mistake to overemphasize a particular service and to neglect the church meetings. This is acceptable occasionally but not for a prolonged period of time. Since the meetings are your work and service, in scheduling your time you should make sure that your particular service does not occupy the meeting times. You have to meet because the meetings are your work. Of course, one of those meetings should be the small group meeting. I hope that every one of you would diligently labor and care for one small group.
Since I have not observed your specific services, I am not quite familiar with your situations. Thus, I can give you only some principles. I believe that these principles are right and are according to the ideal concept as well as the proper spiritual theories. First, regardless of whether we are serving with the junior-high, high-school, or college students, the first goal should be to get people saved. We should get people saved in an aggressive way. Following a person’s salvation, we should not bring him to the meeting hall to mop the floor or wipe the windows. Instead, we should lead him to preach the gospel and encourage him to lead others to salvation. This should be their service, even their primary service. After getting a student saved, we should not bring him to the meeting hall to join a service group. That would be wrong. Even if a person has the time and the heart to join a service group, this kind of leading would be wrong. These newly saved ones, because they are students, should be encouraged only to endeavor to preach the gospel to get others saved. This should be their service.
We need to have a proper view of the church life. When we arranged the specific services, we pointed out that the students should attend the meetings at the hall that is closest to their school. Therefore, when a student gets saved, we have to do our best to encourage him to do this. We should introduce him to the hall that is closest to his school. In this way he will become one of the saints belonging to that hall. This will also make it convenient for the students to come together for fellowship after school. Of course, this matter will not be very easy to work out because the junior-high students and the high-school students have very tight study schedules. Most of them also live at home and must go home after school. It is also hard for them to go out during the weekends. Regarding this point, we must be flexible and know how to adjust according to the need of the situation.
For example, first we must bring them to the Lord’s table meeting. It would be best if they could attend the Lord’s table meeting on the Lord’s Day. If they cannot do so (for example, if their parents would not allow them to come), then we can arrange to meet at an appropriate time during the week after school and lead them to break bread at a saint’s home near the school. We have to learn to lead them to remember the Lord properly. Whether we do this or not will make a big difference. We need to lead them to come together to break bread and teach them to understand what the breaking of bread is and what its significance is. This is part of their church life.
When we do this, we need to learn to adapt to others, helping them according to their situation. As a parent, I probably would not allow my children to go out on the Lord’s Day because they already go to school six days out of the week, so it is not so suitable for them to go out on their day off. Therefore, in order to adapt to their situations, we could have a meeting to remember the Lord on a weekday in the early evening at a saint’s home near the school and lead ten or twenty of them to break the bread. By doing this, we will bring them into the church life and make that meeting a part of the church. This will give them a deep impression.
Concerning the service with the college students, we should not use the worldly ways too much. Instead, we should try our best to avoid them. I understand that a certain way may appear to be quite good, but in reality it may not necessarily be good. Let us use the recent gospel meetings as an example. On the invitation and tracts someone used the expression gospel speeches. This is improper in two ways. First, the term speeches is too worldly, and second, it is somewhat dishonest to use this term, because in reality we are not giving speeches but preaching the gospel. To say that our gospel meetings are for giving speeches is too much. If we are so accommodating, then as we go on, what seemed like a slight error in the beginning will result in a big mistake in the end. This is what I am concerned about.
Second, I hope that we would focus on the truth in carrying out the gospel work. For instance, consider one of the hymns that someone composed. It says, “Having Jesus, I have a song, I have love, I have the way.” These kinds of words, along with the melody used for this hymn, will surely touch the young people, but the truth is lacking. Always keep in mind that the power of the gospel depends on prayer and the word. For the preaching of the gospel to be powerful, we must pray. In this way when we speak about sin, we will be able to shake people’s hearts and move people to tears. I would love to see many young people shedding tears and repenting after hearing the preaching of the gospel and some speaking about sin for ten minutes. This is the best and most proper way. Paying attention only to outward ways in order to stir up people may not be wrong, but it also may not be very good. These ways cause people to be excited, but there is no truth in them as a foundation. If we depend only on these ways, our work will be like a castle built in the air—something empty, vain, and without a foundation.
We have to be trained in our speaking. If we are speaking about the existence of God, then we need to “hammer” the knowledge of God and the consciousness of God’s existence into people. If we are speaking concerning sin, then we need to prove to people that the nature of sin and the consciousness of sin are within them so that they will be convicted. One time George Whitefield spoke about the lake of fire. His speaking was so intense that a man in the audience grabbed on to the nearest post and said that he feared terribly that he was falling into the lake of fire right at that very moment. Such a person would surely be saved. If we pay attention only to stirring up a person’s emotions, singing that Jesus is our song, our love, and our way, then this person may get excited and even be baptized, but soon his excitement will vanish, and nothing will remain in him.
The work of the Spirit follows the Lord’s word. Without the Lord’s word, there cannot be the work of the Spirit. The Lord has given us the Bible, which is His word. Fifty years ago we had a co-worker who, before he was saved, always despised Christianity. One day, due to a certain matter, he went up to a mountain and entered into a temple. He saw a large Bible lying open on the table of sacrifice. Out of curiosity he walked over to the Bible to see what it said. He saw that the Bible was turned to Psalm 1, and after reading it two or three times, he was captured by the Lord’s word and was moved. No one preached the gospel to him or said anything to him. He was convicted by the Spirit simply by reading the word of the Lord. Ultimately, he rolled on the floor, wept, repented, and was saved. This kind of salvation is genuine. Those who are saved in this way are more trustworthy than those who are brought in through gimmicks.
If we take a shortcut or a cheap way, eventually our work will come to nothing. If we have the assurance that we can still labor on and plant seeds in those whom we have brought in, then perhaps it is all right to use a certain way. Using music that makes people very excited outwardly will not work. Do not say that all young people enjoy music. This should not be our excuse. To use a hymn at the beginning of a meeting and then to sow the seeds of the truth along with it is acceptable. We must by all means sow the truth into people. Otherwise, their salvation will not be solid.
For the preaching of the gospel, we must spend time and energy to get into the truth, to have thorough prayer, and to labor in the Lord’s word. We cannot depend only on the outward things. This does not mean that we cannot use outward things as means or instruments. For example, the hall used for the meetings is something outward, and the microphone that amplifies a person’s voice is also outward. However, using these outward things requires careful consideration. For example, I may use the microphone to preach the truth to you, or I may also use it to sing to you. In both cases I am using the microphone, yet what a difference there is! Consider the gospel camps or outdoor camps as another example. We may use these camps as a way to contact people. However, when we employ these things, we must stay within a limit and not be excessive or go overboard. To illustrate, it is normal to eat rice using a bowl. However, suppose you invite someone over for a meal, and since you are particular about the kind of bowl you use, you put out a bowl with beautiful patterns but with no rice within. How then will the guest be satisfied? You must put rice into the bowl. This is the limit.
Whatever the Lord has established has great significance and value. Many people consider the breaking of bread to be a light matter. In reality, however, this is a very serious matter. Throughout the ages the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations have all paid great attention to this matter. The Catholic Church depends heavily on the mass to retain people. If the mass were taken away from the Catholic Church, they would lose half of their congregation. The mass is the meeting for the breaking of bread in the Catholic Church. Even though many matters in the Catholic Church have been confused, this matter of bread-breaking is still highly regarded. We also need to regard this matter instead of disregarding it. We need to bring a person to the bread-breaking meeting, preferably at the meeting hall on the first Lord’s Day following his baptism. If in the long run he cannot go to the meeting hall that often, we should find a place for him to break bread according to his need.
Generally speaking, we should find a suitable home near the school of the newly saved students so that we may bring them to the Lord’s table meeting. This is the proper church life. The students’ primary service is to preach the gospel. It would be marvelous if there could be a home near each campus so that we could have the breaking of bread with ten or fifteen people. Of course, it would be the best if we could bring them to the meeting hall, but if the circumstances do not allow this, then we should know how to be flexible and accommodating and not so rigid.
My dissatisfaction with the co-workers is that they are too rigid in their work and do not know how to be flexible. All the worldly people who do business must learn to be flexible. The Lord Jesus said, “The sons of this age are more prudent in their dealings with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Once I heard a true story about a brother among us who owned a women’s hat shop in Hong Kong. One day a celebrity came to the shop to buy a hat, and this brother waited on her. She looked at a number of hats but was not satisfied. This brother immediately said that there were better ones in the back. He then took one of the hats that she had examined and went to the back of the shop. He took off the ribbon, pressed the hat into a different mold, put on a new ribbon, and brought it back out. He said to her, “This hat is the best one.” After she saw it, she bought it, paying a few times more for it than the original price.
I hope that the co-workers would learn from this story. The sons of this age are more prudent than the sons of light in worldly matters. The reason the co-workers are not doing well in their work is that they do not know how to make adjustments according to the demands of the situation. Some co-workers blame me, asking why I changed after going to the United States. Actually, I have not changed; my ways have changed. This is just like the fact that the hat in the story did not change, but the mold into which it was pressed and the ribbon that was tied around it were different. I am not being proud, but I ask you, What is the present condition of the work of the co-workers who rebuked and opposed me in the past? They have not produced one church. There were two who opposed me the most—one took the lead to accuse me of teaching heresy, and the other opposed me in a refined way. The two of them, one wild and the other refined, have been opposing me for thirty years, yet neither has produced a single church. However, while they have been opposing me, I have been preaching the word for the last thirty years and have produced five hundred churches.
I have no intention to boast. There are over one hundred churches in Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines, that were raised up through the sixty topics of Crucial Truths in the Holy Scriptures. There was one Chinese-speaking brother who moved there from Fukien when he was very young. After he was saved, he read Crucial Truths in the Holy Scriptures and felt that it was very good. He then translated it into Visayan, which is the local dialect of the Philippines. One day he told me that it was through this set of books that he raised up one hundred churches in Mindanao. When I visited the Philippines, he told me that the saints in Mindanao are now reading the Life-study messages. In South America, Brazil also has fifty to sixty churches now, and in Central America there are one hundred churches. All these churches were raised up in the last twenty years.
Dear saints, we must be those who “bring life to a dying business” and not be those who “bring death to a thriving business.” Sometimes I feel that the co-workers are like the latter kind of people. I do not mean to criticize. I truly hope that the younger generation would change the tradition and be wise and educated in the matter of working for the Lord. What is the church life? The church life is not something stiff and dead. For a meeting to be considered a part of the church life, we do not have to bring the saints to the meeting hall. I am not saying that we should not bring people to the meeting hall. What I mean is that the church life does not necessarily have to be experienced in the meeting hall. If there is a saint’s house near the campus with a living room that can take up to fifteen people, and that saint is willing to open up his home for the students, we can bring the students to have the Lord’s table there, and we can care for the students there.
Regarding the one hundred of you who are full-timers, besides leading the students to break bread and preach the gospel, you also need to lead a small group meeting. You need to visit each home of the members in the group so that the group can bring in people. Thus, not only will your busyness be meaningful, but it will also produce obvious results. This should be your church life. In this way the students who break bread in the homes will be specifically cared for as well as properly perfected. Spontaneously, they will be brought into the church life and become part of the church. This is the kind of view and the way of serving you should have.
Of course, whatever you intend to do, you need to fellowship with the elders first. You have to explain everything to them and receive their confirmation. I would say to the elders that your view has to be broadened. Do not focus only on the numbers, and do not say that everyone who is saved must come and meet in the meeting hall. Actually, they can go anywhere because they have been saved by the Lord and are in the Lord’s church. I hope that the number of students living the church life under the care of the full-timers would eventually be greater than the number of saints living the church life in the meeting hall. The elders should not care whether or not the full-timers bring the students to the Lord’s table at the meeting hall. The crucial thing is that they must do their work in a proper manner and gain results. I am not saying that the older saints and the working saints are not precious. Nevertheless, for the future of the Lord’s recovery, our burden is still for the students. Since nearly all the full-timers will come from the college campuses, we should bring in the students. The more students we bring in, the better.
What I have fellowshipped is in the nature of principles. We need to endeavor to study these matters further. In conclusion, there are three points—first, we must use the truth to bring people to salvation; second, we must lead them to break bread; and third, we must lead them to serve by preaching the gospel to save people. The table meeting should not be too long. It should be one hour at most, with fifteen minutes for singing and bread-breaking and then forty-five minutes for a message and sharing. May the Lord grant us mercy that we may have the wisdom to do His work.
Regarding the matter of taking care of the small groups, I hope that you would exercise comprehensive care for the entire leading of the new way. If for your specific service you are leading the students to break bread, caring for a small group, and having personal contact with others, then you should do only the campus work. This is a part of the church life. However, if you still have energy, then you should also serve the saints who meet at the meeting hall in addition to your specific service, faithfully serving in the small group at the meeting hall and helping the small group to go on. If there is the need, you may also lead the small group to break bread. This is also part of the church life. It all depends on how you do it.
The brothers’ and sisters’ houses may also be used for edification and perfection. Many of the high-school and college students are from out of town and need a place to live. The brothers’ and sisters’ houses would not only solve the matter of where to live; they would also serve the purpose of providing a place for mutual edification. You could also use the brothers’ and sisters’ houses as places for the breaking of bread. Everything depends on how you do it.
All those who have become full time have done so in order to learn. If I were to leave you here and not care about you, I would be doing you an injustice. I hope that you would all endeavor individually, especially in studying the truth, learning how to read the Word and how to pray, and pursuing the growth in life. This is something that no one can do for you. You all have studied in school, and you know that regardless of how much your parents love you, they cannot study for you. You yourself must study. Therefore, in reading the Word, praying, and pursuing the growth in life, you have to endeavor on your own.
I truly feel that the Lord has given us an open door in Taiwan. I grew up in Christianity and saw how difficult it was for the Western missionaries who did not have a door opened to them. All over China people simply did not want the gospel. The Western missionaries were called the “big devils,” and the Chinese who received Christianity were called the “second devils.” During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, rioters killed the “big devils” and the “second devils.” My mother tore down all the gospel banners in our house and escaped to the mountains. Those were truly difficult times. Therefore, when one door was opened to a Western missionary, it was considered very precious. Not only so, the majority of those who received the Lord were mostly laborers, unskilled laborers, and the poor. Almost none of them were educated. However, today in Taipei we do not have to spend much effort to get over a hundred people to come and hear the gospel. If we worked harder, we could get dozens of people baptized. Right now the door is open, but the workers are inadequate. It is not the number of workers that is insufficient but the ministry of the word that is inadequate.
I do not like to do anything that excites people. However, now I want to stir up the elders to become full time. What the churches need the most at this time are full-time elders. The church in Taipei has around eighty elders. I hope that at least forty of them would become full time. In this way there would be two full-time elders in every hall. Then if the church in Taipei still does not accomplish anything, there will be no excuse. In order to accomplish something, there needs to be full-timers. The standard of living in Taiwan is going up. If the elders who hold jobs do not work hard and make progress at their jobs, they will be fired. So you have to sympathize with the elders because they truly do not have much time to serve. If the elders want to have time to serve, then they should become full time. The church definitely needs elders to give themselves to serve full time. Their living should be supported by the church. In this way the church can have a future. Otherwise, nothing will be accomplished. Therefore, we need to pray much for this matter.
We hope that on the whole island of Taiwan five hundred young people would begin to serve full time every year. Thus, in five years there would be two thousand five hundred full-timers to meet the goal of the five-year gospelization of Taiwan. This is a difficult task. We need to pray for this, and everyone in the church must take action and give themselves for this. Not only must the saints give their whole being, but the financial support also has to come in. Only in this way can we go on. Otherwise, no matter how hard we push, nothing will move.
I believe that these matters will not be problems to us. As long as we are faithful to move forward, the Lord will be responsible. I am very experienced in this matter. For the past sixty years I have experienced that our Lord is trustworthy and faithful. He will never fail us. The most difficult thing is to produce those who can speak for the Lord. Therefore, I hope that we would grasp this opportunity and exercise to speak for the Lord, not by giving messages on a platform but by leading the small groups and by contacting the saints individually. As far as the service for the campus work is concerned, we should try our best to lead the students to have the Lord’s table and then lead them to also preach the gospel. In this way the Lord will have a way to go on.
