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I thank the Lord that in the last few years, especially since 1991, about two years after we started the full-time training in Anaheim, the Lord has been blessing us in many ways for spreading and for revival. Everything is quite encouraging. The one thing we all have to admit, though, is that we are short of fruit-bearing. This is not only our problem. This has been a problem to all Christians throughout the past two thousand years. If each regenerated believer would bear one fruit yearly, within less than twenty years, the entire world would be saved. However, after almost two thousand years of church history, today’s situation related to fruit-bearing is far short of what it should be. Since the end of World War II, the Muslim religion, not Christianity, has been the religion with the most increase. This is a shame to us Christians.
Fruit-bearing is a big problem. I studied this matter for a long time even before 1984, when I went to Taiwan to study our situation and consider how we should go on. I found out, in principle, that fruit-bearing is not something of a mass movement. It does not take place by great campaigns. Fruit-bearing takes place according to two principles. The first principle is seen in God’s creation of man. God created only one man, Adam. Man’s multiplication, man’s fruit-bearing, is not by mass production but by individual persons bearing children to have a family. At the most, in principle, a family can bear one child a year, twins being an exception. After about six thousand years the whole earth has been filled with man. The second principle of fruit-bearing is seen in John 15. Christ is the vine tree and we are His branches to bear fruit. As branches of Christ, according to John 15, our unique responsibility is to bear fruit. Fruit-bearing is by the branches individually. Each branch bears its fruit. This shows that to have a movement to gain fruit by mass production is wrong. The evangelists in Christianity have big gospel campaigns to convert many people, but where are those people today? Even we have the concept to have big gospel meetings. We may bring several thousand people together to hear the gospel, and take many names, but how many of them do we really gain practically? Our churches remain relatively the same in number year after year. The increase is too slow. I read something which said that a Christian group with an honest pastor who faithfully teaches the Bible and preaches the gospel will gain a yearly increase of ten percent. Do we have this ten percent increase? This shows that there is a problem with our fruit-bearing.
The problem, I believe, is not with our spiritual life but with our way. Recently, we have seen that John 4:14 reveals the flowing God. God is flowing. In order for a river to flow, there must be a proper way. This is why we must study our way. When I went to Taiwan in 1984, I thought that we should endeavor to baptize many people. In this point we gained a success, but eventually this did not work so well. We had a big gathering in Taipei to gain people through door-knocking. One day we tried to gain three thousand, and we succeeded. Although we gained so many, not many of them are remaining fruit in the church today. We may say that whether they remain in the church or not, they are still saved persons, but this is not practical. Eventually, I found out that the proper fruit-bearing is by individual believers. This is why I started to speak in the United States concerning the vital groups. The vital groups are for fruit-bearing. They are for gaining people one by one.
The earth is like a great sea full of fish. Since thousands of fish are passing around us day by day, how can we say that we cannot catch one of them within one year? Is it possible for someone to fish for a year and not catch one fish? Yet for many years this has been the situation among us. Because I have shared concerning the vital groups, we still at least keep the name vital groups. Some call themselves vital groups, but are they vital? Some have had “vital group” meetings for three years, but instead of increasing, they have decreased. Because of this, some have reported to me, saying that door-knocking does not work. This is not true. Two great heretical groups in the United States, the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, depend almost entirely upon door-knocking. They have nearly no other way for their increase. They use only the one way of door-knocking. According to their statistics of around 1990, the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Japan say that they need to knock on six thousand doors to gain one person. However, some of us have been going out for only three weeks or three months without gaining one person and then say that door-knocking does not work. I do not believe that the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons have the best way of door-knocking. According to my study, we have a much better way. I have not spoken enough on the vital groups due to the shortage of time. From this time I will speak on the vital groups for a whole term of the full-time training. Through this speaking we will be able to see that the Lord has shown us a much better way to gain people through door-knocking than that of the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
My burden in this chapter, however, is how to work on the campus and how to have the brothers’ and sisters’ homes in particular. The brothers’ and sisters’ homes for corporate living are our invention. Although some in Christianity may have practiced this in the past, I did not learn this from them. I learned this way by our own experience. At a certain time I found that for the campus work we need brothers’ homes and sisters’ homes. Otherwise, after we catch a “fish,” we will have no vessel for keeping it.
At first, it did not seem easy to have the brothers’ homes. This practice started in the church in Taipei, which has practiced having the brothers’ and sisters’ homes for more than twenty years. They have learned much and experienced much, and now they are enjoying a very big success. According to a recent letter I received, they have one hundred forty new trainees in the current term of the full-time training in Taiwan, most of whom are college graduates from the brothers’ and sisters’ homes. The goal of those who catch and gain new ones on the campuses is to bring them into the brothers’ and sisters’ homes. If they cannot bring a saved one into the homes, they feel that this is a failure. In the Orange County area we have tried to practice the brothers’ and sisters’ homes. The Lord afforded us some houses through some brothers who love the Lord. The church did not buy those homes, but certain lovers of the Lord bought a number of houses for this purpose. I did not go to see these homes, but word concerning them has come to me.
How to bring people from the campus into the brothers’ and sisters’ homes is a big problem. We cannot simply tell students that we have a house closer to the school than their dormitory and that it is better for them to stay in our brothers’ or sisters’ homes. There is nothing wrong with this, but how can we keep them? This is a big problem. Recently in Orange County, the number of young people in corporate living has been reducing in number, not increasing. I would like to fellowship with you that you should forget what you have been doing there. Let us learn a new way. To some extent I do have a new way, which we have learned from the experiences we picked up in Taiwan.
Recently, some young people who live in the brothers’ and sisters’ homes have said that there is a constant demand in corporate living with no supply and no help. This brings us to the principle of receiving the believers, which has been a big problem for nearly two thousand years. Brother Nee spoke with me about the problem of receiving others around 1948 when I was with him in Shanghai. This was a great matter in the Brethren practice. The first division among the Brethren was between John Nelson Darby and George Müller over a discrepancy of opinions. Darby said that all the believers who remain in the denominations are companions of evil. He believed that since all the denominations are evil, as long as one joins them, he is a companion of evil. Therefore, he would not receive anyone who still remained in the denominations. George Müller disagreed, pointing out his friend, Hudson Taylor, who was the founder of the China Inland Mission. Müller asked Darby if he could say that Taylor was a companion of evil. This caused the division between the so-called closed Brethren and open Brethren. Darby was the first of the closed Brethren, while Müller was the first of the open Brethren. The closed Brethren went too far, even saying that if a husband and wife held different opinions, they should not eat together. Recently, there has been another big division among the closed Brethren. One faction says that the believers must examine everyone who wants to come to the Lord’s table. Before receiving him, they have to study and investigate him. Otherwise, they cannot quickly receive him for the Lord’s table. Others, however, say that the believers should simply leave this matter to the Lord and let Him take care of it. These two opinions have existed for many years.
The issue of receiving the believers eventually came to us in China. Brother Nee taught us that according to Romans 14, we have to receive all kinds of Christians, whether or not they keep certain days and whether they eat meat or vegetables. We should not care for those issues or receive people based upon their keeping of days or their eating. Paul says that since the Lord has received them, we also have to receive them. The Southern Baptists, however, do not receive someone unless he is baptized by them, not only by immersion but by their pastor and in their water. They are very strict and do not recognize any other kind of baptism. Baptism by immersion by their pastor and in their water is the requirement of the Southern Baptists for receiving people into their church life.
When we practiced the church life according to Brother Nee’s teaching and according to the Bible, we also faced these problems. Therefore, when I came to this country in 1960, I spontaneously impressed the brothers that we must keep the Lord’s table open. I realized that, especially in the United States, there are many believers who are not only saved and regenerated but who also love the Lord, and they are tired and disgusted with the practice of investigating a person about so many matters. I felt that we should not take this way. We have the Lord’s table, and whosoever will may attend. Even today it is still the same with us.
According to history, the children of many nominal Christians become real Christians. I was one of these children. My mother was not saved; she was merely nominal, but when she was young, she stayed with her grandfather who was a good Southern Baptist, and he sent her to study at a Southern Baptist school. Because of this, she was one hundred percent for Christianity. In our home she taught us stories from the Gospels. She had printed tracts pasted on the wall. That was very unusual in our country. When we were growing up, she wanted us to go to her church. She washed our clothes for us on the Lord’s Day, she prepared better meals on that day, and she brought us to her church. She was not saved, yet my second sister got saved, then I, and then my younger brother. Three of her children were not only saved but also became seeking Christians.
I have seen many devoted Christians. Among them, one was Brother Nee. Not all of Brother Nee’s brothers were properly saved. Brother Nee’s mother was a sister who loved the Lord very much. It is no wonder that she would weep for her sons. I have seen many others like this. Even among us there are many good sisters who love the Lord very much and pray for their children nearly every day, even though their children do not believe. On the other hand, some parents are not so devoted, yet their children love the Lord. Eventually, I have bowed down before the Lord. The Lord’s word is true. We should raise up our children according to the Lord’s teaching. This is our duty and we should do it, but eventually their salvation and seeking of the Lord depend upon God’s eternal choosing and predestination. If our raising of our children could decide their spiritual future, this would be against God’s predestination.
Isaac brought forth two sons as twins. One was Esau, and the other was Jacob. The Bible says clearly in Malachi 1:2-3, “I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated.” This creates a very big problem in theology. For this reason there is Calvinist theology and Arminian theology. The former says that our salvation is up to God’s choosing, and the latter says that our salvation is our responsibility and according to our endeavoring. The Arminians say that we can be saved in the morning and lost in the evening. The Pentecostals are Arminians, while the Presbyterians are Calvinists. The Lutherans also teach that salvation is not up to us. Whether we go to the theater or whatever we do, as long as we have been chosen, our eternal security is fixed because it depends upon God’s choosing. One day a student came to D. L. Moody, the American evangelist who founded the Moody Bible Institute, saying, “I dare not to go out to get people saved because I am afraid that someone may be saved whom God did not choose.” Moody answered, “On the outside lintel above the gate into heaven it is written, ‘Whosoever will may come,’ but on the inside it says, ‘Chosen before the foundation of the world.’” It is difficult to say who is chosen. We simply must do our duty to raise up our children according to the teaching of the Lord. Whether or not they have been chosen is not up to us. Some may say, “Because it is not up to us, we need not do much.” However, this also is wrong.
According to my observation in Taipei, it is better not to exercise any demand on the young people who live in our brothers’ and sisters’ homes. We have to realize that the arrangement of these homes is to bring people to the Lord and to gain them, just as the Lord came to seek the lost sheep. The Lord comes to seek the lost sheep, not the good sheep. Therefore, the brothers’ and sisters’ homes should have no regulations. To save sinners we also should not have regulations. As long as we have regulations, we regulate people away. We thank the Lord that we have the brothers’ and sisters’ homes as “fishing hooks,” and some young people have been hooked. It is not so easy for us to hook a person, so if we have regulations, they will keep people away. The brothers’ and sisters’ homes may have a regulation that says everyone must return home and turn off their lights by 10:00 P.M., but some young ones may be excluded by this regulation. What shall we do? Should we have no regulation about the time to sleep? We should have a proper kind of regulation, but we should make it clear to the young ones that this kind of regulation is to help them to have a proper physical life. We hope that they would keep the proper regulation, but it is not something legal. In the brothers’ and sisters’ homes, nothing should be legal. There should be freedom, not legality.
Some may ask, “If the young people do not return before 10:00 P.M., what shall we do?” For this we need shepherding. According to the principle in Ephesians 5, the Lord shepherds us by cherishing us and nourishing us (v. 29). We have to shepherd the young ones by cherishing and nourishing them. This requires that we spend time with them. The co-workers may not have much time, but they should train some students who live in our brothers’ and sisters’ homes so that two or three will become their helpers. They have to carry out the shepherding with love. Do not condemn the young ones. Do not say, “Since you have broken the rule, you cannot stay here” and simply look on as they leave. We have to shepherd them.
All parents know that every child is naughty. Some babies throw their rice bowl when their mother is feeding them. What should the mother do? The mother mostly cherishes them to make them happy, and by cherishing them, she feeds them. Parents raise their children by cherishing them in many ways. I have eight children; I have suffered much, and I have learned all the lessons. Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but nurture them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.” When we discipline our children with provoking, our discipline is of no value. If we are going to discipline a child, we must go to the Lord and say, “Lord, take away my provocation.” This is very hard. Some parents whom I have taught in this way have said that without being provoked they cannot discipline their child. To them, punishing a child requires that they be provoked. Parents must remember not to spank their child when they are provoked. If one is offended by his child, he becomes a provocation to him, and he loses his capacity to discipline the child. When one is angry, he should not touch his children. He should leave them, kneel down, and pray. Then, when he is cherished by the Lord, he can go back to his children to cherish them. We need cherishing. When a parent provokes his child and spanks him, the child may leave home and run away. Then the parent needs to spend time to find him and bring him back. After being provoked to anger and spanked, many children leave home and do not want to come back. Eventually, the parent has to submit to them, bowing down his head to beg them to come back home, and he may have to gain them back indirectly through a big brother, a cousin, or some other relative.
Luke 15 first tells us how the Lord as the Shepherd sought for the one lost sheep. Second, the woman, signifying the Holy Spirit, lit a lamp and searched the house to find the lost coin. Third, a father lost his son, the prodigal, who eventually returned. The son prepared an apology for his father, but the father was already waiting to receive him. The son did not first see the father; the father first saw him and ran to him. The Brethren teacher from England under whom I first learned this chapter taught us that in the entire Bible, only Luke 15 says that God ran. God ran only once, and it was to receive a returning prodigal son. In Brother Nee’s preaching concerning the loving father who watched for his son’s return, he once told a story of a naughty boy who ran away after being punished by his father. The father sat in his living room for many nights expecting to receive his son back. One night the naughty boy came back home and was surprised to see his father still sitting there. The father said, “Son, since you left, I have been sitting here every night waiting and expecting to receive you back.” This is a father’s heart. Our brothers’ and sisters’ homes should be like this, full of love and full of expectation.
One day hall three in the church in Taipei had a time with all the parents of the ones who lived in the brothers’ and sisters’ homes. The brothers showed the parents their children’s living room, dining room, dormitory, and beds. Many parents were inspired by this. They went out to tell other parents to send their children to certain schools close to those homes. Some of the unsaved parents were even saved because of that demonstration. We should have this kind of spirit. If we have this kind of spirit, the number of houses that we now have will not be sufficient. The more houses we have, the better it will be. This is one of the ways for us to bear fruit. The brothers in Taipei have the assurance that they can gain people in this way.
When school opens, the brothers and sisters also go to the campus to set up a table and get the names of the freshmen. Then the brothers and sisters work on those persons. In a similar way, the Mormons in the United States teach their young people to speak good Mandarin and send them to the airport in proper attire. They stand at the entry and watch the new young people come in. They greet them in Mandarin and ask if they are students coming to attend school. Then they take their address and offer them a ride. This is the way they gain people.
We must have a clear view about the way we practice the brothers’ and sisters’ homes. For the homes we should keep the principle that we are a loving people. We are trying to gain people, to bear fruit. Therefore, we should not regulate the brothers and sisters. We must study the way we take in the homes. In education there are at least six levels: kindergarten, elementary school, middle or junior high school, high school, college, and graduate school. We treat these six kinds of students in six different ways. What we exercise over the high schoolers, we should not exercise over the kindergarten students. If we do, we may kill them. Likewise, what we practice with the kindergarten students, we should not practice with the elementary students. We have to change our way, or we will spoil them.
No child under six likes to play mainly with adults. They prefer to play with others who are under six. Even on the campus, those who labor there should not be too old. If they are too old, no one will come to them. The students may run away because they are afraid of older people. A young man may feel uncomfortable with old men, but when someone his own age comes, he is happy. This illustrates that we cannot have the same regulation for people of different ages. We must classify people. We should have some homes for those in their first year, and gradually we can advance from there up to the fourth year. Those who have stayed with us for several years have been growing in the Lord, and they can now live a corporate life. In order to prevent some from feeling superior or inferior when we classify them, we must do it wisely. When parents raise their children, they exercise a certain way with each one. To open up a kindergarten is not easy. The government has many regulations for nurseries and kindergartens. A nursery, for example, must care for the children’s health and avoid contagious diseases. We should not take a simple way. We cannot avoid a feeling of superiority among the young people, just as the students in high school feel superior about being in high school. Therefore, we need spirituality. We have to teach them to deny the self and many other matters. This is not easy, and it requires much study. I would ask the brothers who set up the homes for the brothers and sisters to please reconsider the way we take. We cannot do things in a simple way. Educators know the psychology of students; they know the difference between kindergarten, elementary, junior high, high school, college, and graduate school. We must be careful in these matters.
I expect that I could have a further time with the elders to train them how to behave as elders. I take care of two annual trainings, and formerly I had to write thirty messages for thirty meetings. I also needed to travel much abroad, and recently I became ill due to traveling. Therefore, since I came to this country, I did not have much time to sit down with the elders to speak in this way. The brothers who are elders in the United States are probing for the way to be good elders, but they do not know what to do. Not one of us was born knowing everything. Therefore, we need to learn, practice, and be educated. Even the two-year full-time training makes a big difference, but so many elders have not been trained. I spoke of some of these things in The Elders’ Management of the Church, but I did not have the time to look into all these matters very much. I now question whether management was the right word to use in that book. Our use of this word was also due to my lack of time to look into all these matters. What does the elders’ management mean? The church is not a bank or a corporation that needs a manager. For practical reasons we have a manager in the Living Stream Ministry office, but there is no rank in this office.
We need very much fellowship so that we can learn. There is much profit for brothers from one part of the country to visit another, not to teach or merely to learn but simply to observe. Likewise, it is a big help to travel to another country and stay there for some time. In this way we can learn much. I have been traveling throughout the whole world, and I have learned much. I truly learned something from the Japanese, and I learned something further from the Koreans. We should never merely be natives of our own country. We should try to go out and learn.
To me, shepherding means everything for the brothers’ and sisters’ homes, for the vital groups, for the church, and for the elders. In Christian teaching, nearly no one stresses this matter, but it is a great matter. The Lord is not only our Shepherd and Overseer outwardly; He is also the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls (1 Pet. 2:25). I have stressed this in the Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John.
Today in the United States it is very hard to teach school. Even professors have to study how to shepherd their students. If they do not shepherd them, they may have serious problems. The first point of shepherding is cherishing. Ephesians 5 tells us that the Lord cherishes and nourishes the church, His Body. Without cherishing, nourishing by itself does not work. Today I handle things and do things very differently from the way I did thirty years ago. Within these thirty years I have learned much, even related to dealing with my children. We are touching society, and we are touching human beings. This is not a simple matter, so we must learn.
We may do the work of the ministry, but the unfitting manner in which we behave and conduct ourselves kills our ministry. Recently, a graduate student in a certain university attacked his three professors because they would not pass him. We cannot say that these professors were not responsible in part for this. If they had spoken softly and wisely, their student would not have been provoked to such an extent. Those professors were trying their best to help this student, but the result was the opposite. Many other professors who heard of this tragedy will now learn to be careful in dealing with students. In principle, it is the same with us. The result, the issue, of our work very much depends on our way of conducting ourselves. We are taking care of the brothers’ and sisters’ homes, but how do we conduct ourselves, how do we behave, and what way do we take? Even in caring for our children, if we are angry, we will provoke them. We must not do that. Ephesians is a very high book, but it comes down to say, “Be angry, yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your indignation” (4:26). If we had written Ephesians, we may not have added this word. We may have spoken only the high peaks in the first three and a half chapters of this book, but Paul came down from the high peaks in the second half of chapter 4 and chapters 5 and 6. These portions are very meaningful. Similarly, James says, “The wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God” (1:20).
John 10 and 21 are chapters on shepherding. Chapter 10 speaks of the Lord’s coming as the Shepherd. He is the Shepherd, and He is the door in and the door out to the pasture. In 10:10 the Lord said, “I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly,” and in verse 11 He said, “I am the good Shepherd.” He also said that He laid down His human life for the sake of shepherding. To give life requires shepherding. Without shepherding, it is hard for the divine life to work within us. Chapter 21 is a very important appendix on shepherding. John is a book on the divine life, but the divine life depends upon shepherding. Even in our human life, family life, and marriage life there is the need of shepherding, and shepherding requires cherishing. Husbands and wives need to cherish each other all the time. If a couple does not know how to cherish each other, they will have trouble. Parents also need to shepherd their children. If shepherding could be practiced everywhere, the whole of society would become a utopia. Misunderstandings and oppositions mainly come from the shortage of shepherding. We the co-workers must learn to cherish people.
