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Scripture Reading: Acts 4:8; 13:9; 2 Cor. 4:13; Rom. 10:12-13; 2 Tim. 2:22; 2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 14:26; Heb. 10:25; Rom. 10:9; Eph. 5:18-19; Col. 3:16
In the last three years I have been speaking on the new way. The purpose of that speaking was to have a complete rearrangement according to the Bible in the ways of meeting and service that we have had for the past sixty years. I have said before that the big meetings and the small meetings are like the two wings of an airplane; you cannot afford to lose either one. I have also said before that the lack of results in our gospel preaching in the past years, in spite of our labor and diligence, was due to a problem in the way of doing things. If the way of doing things is not effective, then naturally the efficiency will be reduced. We have now found out that the most scriptural and effective way of preaching the gospel is to visit people in their homes. This was determined based on the revelation and pattern seen in the Bible, our study of the gospel preaching methods adopted by the various groups in Christianity in the last two thousand years, and our own history for the past sixty years. This was the foundation established by God in the Bible.
After Adam fell, God did not call him while He was sitting in the heavens; rather, He came to the earth to seek him, and said to him, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Later, when God wanted to bring His grace to His chosen people, He again did not call man while He was sitting in the heavens; He came to the earth Himself to become flesh, to become a man. While He was on the earth, He Himself went to visit sinners from place to place. He went even to that cursed city of Jericho to visit a great sinner called Zaccheus and said to him, “Today I must stay in your house.” Then He said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:5, 9). The Lord also went to Samaria, a place despised and rejected by the Jews, to visit an immoral woman (John 4:3-4).
When the Lord was carrying out the gospel work on the earth, He did not ask His disciples to go to different places to hold gospel conventions so that He could save thousands of people by simply sounding a call. Instead, the Lord sent His disciples to go out. First He sent the twelve apostles (Luke 9:1-2); then He sent the seventy disciples. He asked them to go to city after city and home after home to seek out the sons of peace (10:1, 6). The Lord did not send those who had doctoral degrees, who had positions, and who were capable in order to draw people. Rather, He sent those unknown disciples, two by two, to go out to visit people in their homes. Therefore, our going out today to visit people’s homes to preach the gospel to them, to get them saved and baptized, is something absolutely according to the example set up by the Lord in the Bible.
From a human viewpoint, it is not an easy thing to go out to knock on people’s doors. If you were to invite your friends to attend a big gospel meeting where they could sit inside a grandly built chapel with a stately atmosphere, a piano and other musical instruments, a choir, and a famous speaker preaching, you would feel honored. But concerning the matter of visiting people’s homes to preach the gospel, even the brothers, not to mention the sisters, would feel awkward knocking on people’s doors. They are afraid that after the door is opened, they may be rebuked by people. I stayed before in Shanghai where the door from one house to the next was not more than ten feet away, yet the neighbors would not care for one another. If you were to knock on doors to preach the gospel, nine out of ten times you would encounter rebuke. It is not easy to knock on doors in Hong Kong either, and it is even more difficult in northern Europe.
Preaching the gospel by knocking on doors requires you to be prepared to experience hardship, to look at people’s long faces, and even to suffer rebuke from others yet still to smile at them. This is indeed not an easy matter. This is the reason that this matter of preaching the gospel by visiting people’s homes is not adopted by many Christians even though it is emphatically revealed and testified in the Bible. This way requires us to pay a considerable price, yet human beings would rather avoid the hardship and take the easy way. Today in the Lord’s recovery, if we want the Lord to have a way in the matter of gospel preaching, we must follow this example of the Lord, who was incarnated and humbled to visit people, and go to visit people’s homes to bring the gospel to them. This is the most effective way to preach the gospel.
We should not think that everyone in the church can go out to visit people for preaching the gospel. We only expect that among one hundred meeting attendants, there will be twenty-five who can go out. These should go out to knock on doors every other week. They should go out two times a month, twenty-four times a year. Every year each person can definitely bring eight persons to be saved. By this way twenty-five persons can bring in two hundred new ones. These twenty-five will then bring with them another twenty-five, totaling fifty persons, to lead those two hundred newly baptized ones to regularly have home meetings and attend small group meetings so that they may enter into the church life. In this way, we hope that within one year there will be one hundred new ones remaining in the church life. Therefore, we do not need everyone to go out to knock on doors; if there are one-fourth doing it, that will be adequate. The remaining three-fourths that stay behind need to support and supply them.
After we have visited people’s homes and helped them to believe and be baptized to be saved, we must lead them to begin having home meetings in their homes. These home meetings will help them to know the Lord’s salvation and other truths concerning a new believer’s living. It is best to have this kind of home meeting once a week. The meeting time should not be too short. In every meeting the new believers should be brought into a particular item of spiritual knowledge. Besides this, we should lead them to attend the neighboring group meetings so that they can know and have fellowship with other believers for the mutual care of one another. After a few months we should bring them to the bigger district meetings; sometimes, according to the need, we may even bring them to the corporate meeting of the whole church. Some have misunderstood that we do not need big meetings. This is not accurate.
I hope that all the trainees, the elders from different localities, and all the serving ones can understand the new way that we have seen. When you go to different places to speak of these things, you have to speak clearly. You should not give people the impression that we want every saint to go out to knock on doors and that if they do not, they will be treated differently and marked out as opposing or disagreeing ones. We surely believe that visiting people by knocking on doors is the best and most effective way to preach the gospel, but we still have to consider the situation of the church and lead the saints according to their practical conditions. When all of you go to different places to fellowship about the new way, you should not have prejudice, nor should you fail to mention anything; you should speak accurately and completely so that a complete picture will be presented. Only in this way can misunderstanding and even unnecessary opposition be avoided. The new way is altogether a biblical way; there is indeed no ground for any opposition.
The first step in preaching the gospel, having meetings, and carrying out the service in the new way is to be filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly. In the Bible the words used for inward filling and outward filling are different. In Chinese we make a distinction between the two. In order to participate in the church life, gospel activities, and all the services, the primary thing needed is to be filled with the Spirit within and without. Therefore, when we go out to knock on doors, we have to confess our sins thoroughly and pray so that we can obtain the filling of the Spirit.
After we are filled with the Spirit, we have to speak by faith. In 2 Corinthians 4:13, this faith is termed the spirit of faith. It is spirit as well as faith. We exercise such a spirit to believe and speak the things we have experienced of the Lord. Every time we go out to visit people to preach the gospel, we must go by this faith. We believe that when we go out to knock on doors, it is the Triune God who brings us with Him to knock on doors. Moreover, when people are willing to open their doors to us, it is God who asks them to open the door. Therefore, we speak by the Triune God. This is our gospel preaching in the new way, full of spirit and full of faith, speaking by the spirit and also by faith. If we are this kind of person, spontaneously we will be able to help the newly saved ones, leading them to be filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly, so that they will be able to speak and preach the gospel by faith with boldness and testify to their relatives, friends, and neighbors. This is the first step in our leading people in the new way.
The second step in leading people in the new way is to lead them to call on the name of the Lord Spirit. We call not only on the name of the Lord but call also on the name of the Lord Spirit. Now our Lord is the Lord Spirit; He is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17-18). The Spirit is invisible, untouchable, yet we can sense Him. The name of this Lord Spirit is Jesus. When we call on the Lord Jesus, we are calling on this Lord Spirit. When you go to lead people, you need to present this clearly. You have to tell people, “Our God is the Savior Jesus Christ. He is the living Spirit today. While I am speaking with you, He is here. Furthermore, I am speaking with you by this Spirit. This Spirit is now in your mouth. Therefore, you have to open up your mouth and call on the name of the Lord Jesus from deep within.” Then you have to help him to call accurately. This is like installing light bulbs. After everything is installed and connected, all you need to do is turn on the electricity, and the light bulbs will shine. When a person calls on the Lord, he should not call merely from the throat, nor should he call merely with a sincere heart; he must call from the depth of his being, that is, from his spirit. In this way he is joined to the Lord, the Spirit. When we go to help the newly saved ones, we need to lead them to call on the name of the Lord who is the Spirit, since this was how they were saved in the beginning.
The apostle Paul wrote an Epistle to Timothy. At that time Timothy had already become Paul’s co-worker. Paul charged Timothy by asking him to “pursue...with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22). This implies that our whole life should be a life of calling on the Lord. We call on the Lord in the morning; we call on the Lord also in the evening. Our daily life is a life of calling on the Lord. This is not a form but a living. Whenever we call, we touch the Lord within who is the Spirit and get the supply. You need to lead the new ones to read Romans 10:12-13 so that they may see that God is so rich and that they need to call on the name of the Lord in order to obtain these riches. We have to lead people to establish a life of calling on the name of the Lord as soon as they are saved.
The third step in leading people in the new way is to lead the new ones to realize that the meetings of the believers are mutual. Christianity has already brought people to an erroneous situation, that whenever the services of Christianity are mentioned, people immediately have the concept of going to a chapel and listening to the preaching of a father, a pastor, or a preacher. That practice is one-sided, not mutual. But 1 Corinthians 14:26 says that when the whole church comes together, “each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.” This clearly shows us that the believers’ meetings are mutual. You speak and I listen; I speak and you listen. Everyone speaks and everyone listens. We speak to one another and listen to one another. This is the believers’ meeting as revealed in the Bible.
Also, Hebrews 10:25 says, “Not abandoning our own assembling together...but exhorting one another.” From this you can see that the Christian meetings are full of exhorting one another and teaching one another. Even the brothers and sisters who have been in the church for a few decades are not clear concerning this kind of proper meeting. Therefore as soon as we start to change the system, the original habit of meeting becomes a problem. In principle, the changing of the system is not a matter of big meetings or small meetings, but it is a matter of whether one person is speaking with the rest listening or whether everyone is speaking with everyone listening. It does not mean that if you change the big meetings to small meetings that you have succeeded. Rather, you have to change the habit of one person speaking with the rest listening to everyone speaking and everyone listening.
Up to today this habit is still not thoroughly removed. In the concept of most of the brothers and sisters, the meetings are for listening to messages and not for speaking. I am afraid that even you in your subconscious mind also desire to attend a big meeting with one person speaking and the rest listening. Therefore, it is really difficult to change the system. This is because, on the one hand, the habit built up through the many years is not easily changed, and on the other hand, the practice of one person speaking with the rest listening is easily achieved, while that of everyone speaking is not. This kind of meeting in mutuality demands everyone to be prepared. You can no longer be as before—not being watchful, not praying, not preparing the spirit, not exercising faith, and feeling that it was adequate as long as you came to the meeting. Now the new way demands us to be watchful, to live in the spirit, to exercise the spirit, and to speak by the spirit. In this way, when we come to the meetings, we will be able to speak for the Lord. Also, we will be restrained in our speaking, not taking up all the time but allowing others to carry on the speaking. This kind of meeting in mutuality will be fresh and living and full of supply.
I hope that you can pick up this burden of everyone going to the meeting to speak the Lord’s word and leading the newly saved ones to speak the Lord’s word. As soon as a person is saved, you should immediately set up a meeting in his home and lead him to speak so that he can realize that the believers’ meetings are mutual and are not like the situation in the chapels of Christianity. After two or three months you should bring him to the group meeting formed by a number of the neighboring families and also have him practice speaking in that meeting. Gradually, a number of these groups can come together to form a bigger district meeting. In this way, after they have become stable and have attained to a certain level of practice in speaking the Lord’s word, you can further bring them to the big meetings so they will know that there are big meetings as well as small meetings in the church. It does not matter whether it is a small meeting or a big meeting, the principle is to speak to one another and listen to one another and not to have one person speaking and the rest listening.
The fourth step in leading people in the new way is to lead the new ones to understand that the church meetings are for the believers to speak for the Lord and to listen to others speaking for the Lord. First, you can speak by the words in the Bible. Any page from Genesis to Revelation can be used for speaking. Besides that, you can also speak by means of the hymns. Every hymn in our hymnal is a message, full of words of revelation. They are a very good means for us to speak for the Lord. Both Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 mention that we have to use psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to speak to one another, admonish one another, and also sing and psalm to the Lord. This shows us that the hymns are first for speaking, then for singing. Third, you can also speak by means of spiritual publications. We have many spiritual publications among us such as Life Lessons, Truth Lessons, and the Life-study messages. All of these can be used as materials for our speaking. As long as we practice in these areas during our daily living, we will have something to speak when we come to the meetings.
In the regular meetings of the church, there is no need of a definite topic nor the need to be tied down by a topic. The topic is left in the hands of the Holy Spirit. If every one of the brothers and sisters would speak when coming together, the items touched will definitely be very rich, and there will be no need to set a specific topic. This kind of meeting with speaking to one another and listening to one another should be as frequent as twice a week. When everyone comes together, we do not talk about news or stories but speak about the Bible, hymns, and the spiritual publications among us. In this way the meeting will definitely be living and rich. I hope that these words are an explanation of the new way so that everyone can understand the commission the Lord has given us and the goal toward which we should press.
