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Scripture Reading: Eph. 5:18-19; Col. 3:16
The church in Taipei has made the decision to practice the new system in the one hundred “gospel tents” formed during the gospel festival. The word tent is a term used temporarily. For the long run, it would be more suitable to use the term district. The one hundred tents will then be the one hundred districts. In the future in Taipei we will have the home meetings, which have the fewest number of attendants, and we will have the group meetings, which are a larger kind of meeting. When we combine a few group meetings, we will have the district meeting. Then a few district meetings will be combined to form the hall meeting. When all the hall meetings are combined, we will have the meeting of the whole church.
When we begin to practice meeting according to the new system, we will be faced with one hurdle: to overthrow the tradition of one speaking and the rest listening in order to change the situation to everyone speaking and everyone listening, to speaking and listening in mutuality. To speak about this is easy, but to practice it is not easy. We have studied almost all of the history of Christianity, the writings of renowned persons, and biographies of spiritual giants. Therefore, we are fairly familiar with what Christianity has passed through during the past twenty centuries, with what they have, and with what the situation among them has been. I have been asking myself during the past few days, “Since the time of the apostles, has there ever been anyone who practiced this kind of meeting of mutuality?” According to my knowledge, there has been none. In other words, it seems that the meeting as revealed in 1 Corinthians 14:26, in which everyone has equal opportunity to speak, has never been put into practice since the apostles’ time. For this reason we cannot find a model of the church meeting.
Since 1934 Brother Watchman Nee had been emphasizing that meetings with one speaking and the rest listening are not scriptural. He said that this was to follow the custom of the nations, that it was unnecessary, and that it should not be maintained. For this reason he sought earnestly to find the biblical way to practice 1 Corinthians 14:26. He felt that if this kind of meeting with one speaking and the rest listening were removed immediately, there would be nothing to replace it. Hence, he established a brothers’ meeting and a sisters’ meeting. During these meetings there was no chairman or leader. Everyone could call a hymn, pray, or speak. When this was put into practice, everyone just gave testimonies. Since there had been no such testimony meetings for a long time prior to this, everyone felt that they were fresh and attractive at the beginning. But after a few months, all the testimonies ran out; there was nothing more to speak about. In the end, these meetings just stopped by themselves. In 1949 we also had brothers’ meetings and sisters’ meetings in Taiwan. The result was again unsatisfactory.
In 1965 I went to visit Brazil. While I was there, I visited one free group. The leader of the group had a Pentecostal background. He had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he spoke in tongues, but he did not bring these things into the big meetings. Even in their small meetings, they did not practice these things very much. They began in 1915. When I visited in 1965, they had already been in Brazil for half a century. Their number was about three hundred thousand. In São Paulo alone they had thirty thousand. In their meetings they did not have any preaching, nor did they use any publications; rather, they had only the Bible. There was absolutely no chairman, pastor, or preacher among them. They did not have any full-timers; everyone held his own job. They did not have a set program for meeting; they only set the day and the time of meeting. Mostly they met on the Lord’s Day at nine in the morning. Not long before the time of the meeting, the people would begin to come in. Some would call a hymn. Everyone would then sing together, with the accompaniment of a lot of instruments. They sang for at least half an hour. There was no set line along which they picked the hymns; they simply continued one hymn after another. In an auditorium of seven thousand seats, they placed only two microphones in the aisles. After the singing they began to come up to testify, the males on one side and the females on the other. They all waited before the microphone for their turn to testify. Sometimes they would testify from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. After the testimonies the responsible brother would ask if anyone in the congregation wanted to be baptized. Those that wanted to be baptized had already been saved during their small meetings. Whether the number was large or small, they had baptisms every Lord’s Day. Then the leading brother would read a few verses and follow that up with a few words of explanation. After a brief prayer the meeting was dismissed. This was how they met in big meetings year-round. During the week they had small group meetings in the vicinity where they lived. There was no preaching in these meetings either; they were all testimony times. These small meetings were mainly for bringing people to be saved, to love the Lord, and to seek after Him. Their speaking also covered subjects that had to do with the details of daily living, such as the way to dress, the way to raise up children, etc. This is one group which I have seen that propagated and increased itself without any preaching meeting.
During the 1960s there were great improvements in the Pentecostal movement in America. Although they still practiced tongue-speaking, it was not that strongly emphasized, nor were healing and casting out of demons deemed that necessary any longer. In many of their meetings, they had no chairmen or preachers; instead they gave testimonies one after another. In the beginning this movement was also quite prevailing. Even the Catholics were affected by them. In the 1970s I personally attended one of their meetings in San Francisco in order to study their situation. The testimonies in their meetings were quite fresh; the spirits of some were indeed revived. But today they also have gradually declined.
According to my observation during these past years, I have not seen many meetings that are according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. Hence, in conclusion I have to say that I have not seen this kind of meeting either in church history or in the spiritual publications or in my own experience. But the apostle Paul did speak this word in the Bible. There is not only 1 Corinthians 14:26, but there is Hebrews 10:25 as well. The latter also speaks about mutual exhortation in the meetings. I have been a Christian for over sixty years, but I have seen meetings with only the preachers exhorting the congregation. I have not yet seen meetings with the congregation exhorting one another. Therefore up until now, I have seen only the revelation in the Bible; I have not seen any practical example.
According to our experience, although the meetings with one speaking and the rest listening can meet certain people’s needs and maintain a certain kind of situation, in reality they do not edify the saints, much less do they perfect the saints as described in Ephesians 4:12. Among us in the past decades, this kind of meeting with one speaking and the rest listening has killed much of the organic function of the brothers and sisters. Consequently, today it is so difficult for them to speak in the meetings. Everyone speaks a lot before the meeting. But once they come into the meeting, they have nothing to speak. Then after the meeting they start speaking again. I have been observing you, the full-timers. Although you do speak in the meetings, your speakings consist only of testimonies or some humorous words. Forgive me for pointing this out, but you have often spoken humorous words to make everyone laugh in the meetings. This is useless. According to Paul’s word, there are “revelations” and “teachings” and “exhortations.” It is interesting that Paul does not mention “testimonies.” The problem today is that what the Bible has, the Christians do not have, and what the Bible does not have, the Christians usually have or would like to have.
This is the reason I told you three years ago that this matter of speaking to one another and listening to one another is a big hurdle. It is a brass door with an iron lock that is very difficult to get through. We have already conducted two terms of training for experimenting and studying the new way. At this point, nothing is in the final form yet; we still need to continue to study. Our training is now in its third term, and the church in Taipei has been preparing itself for over two years. During this period, although some places have used Truth Lessons as material for mutual speaking in the meetings, I do not yet feel that those meetings are according to 1 Corinthians 14.
Simply speaking, the meeting according to 1 Corinthians 14 is one in which we all speak the Lord’s word. We all read the Bible in our daily life. But when we speak, we seldom speak the Scriptures that we have read, and seldom do we speak the Lord’s word; we have not yet built up this habit. Luke 1 shows us that when Mary the mother of Jesus went to see Elizabeth, the mother of John, as soon as they met, they opened their mouths to speak the Lord’s word; their whole conversation was the Lord’s words. Mary did not quote the Scriptures in a dead way; rather, she put together the words of praise in the Old Testament in a living way to comprise a praise to God. This is not something that we can do easily; we have not been guided and taught in this way from the beginning. I have often said that after a child is born, as long as the mother keeps speaking to the child and teaching him, sooner or later, whether the child understands or not, he will be able to speak. But most of us Christians do not have this kind of environment, neither have we seen this kind of situation. All we have seen is someone reading the Scriptures in the meeting and preaching in the meetings. We do not see people speaking the Lord’s word in their daily life or in the meetings.
At least ten years ago I saw that the Bible wants us Christians to speak the Lord’s word. Concerning this matter, there are the clear words from the two sister passages in Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:18-19. Ephesians says, “Be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Colossians says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” This shows us that Paul taught us to speak the Lord’s word. There are two kinds of words of the Lord. One is the words of the Bible; the other is the words of the hymns.
In our experience we do not have the habit of speaking these two kinds of words; therefore, we do not know how to speak. Neither can we find this pattern of practice among Christians during the past nineteen hundred years. For this reason, it is not at all easy for us to speak the words of the Bible and of the hymns in a mutual way in the meetings. This is my heavy burden. Our training here must have a breakthrough in this point. Whenever you go to a meeting, whether large or small, you have to practice speaking mutually to one another with the Bible and by the hymns.
At present, those brothers and sisters who meet regularly in the church in Taipei still need help. Concerning the practice of the new way, we cannot depend on them yet. Those we can depend on are first, the elders; second, the co-workers; third, the full-timers; and fourth, the college students. These four groups are the main force for the practice of the new way. This morning you are all among these four groups of people. You have to bear the responsibility of every meeting. The success of the meetings and of the new way in the coming days depends entirely on you. You must actively participate and function in all the district meetings.
I hope that right away you would practice speaking the Lord’s word. All of you have to build up this habit. It is true that in all the meetings you need the testimonies. But to speak the Lord’s word is needed more. We should also build up an atmosphere among us so that when anyone has a spiritual question, he can ask about it in the meeting. There is no need to wait until the end of the meeting to ask questions. This will encourage the mutual exhortation and encouragement. However, we should not bring these questions of the brothers and sisters outside the meetings and use them as subjects for gossip. That would give Satan a means to damage the church life.
I hope that you will all go back to practice these three things. First, pick up the burden for the meetings. If the one thousand of us go to the meetings passively, without functioning, the meetings will be through. If we learn to pick up the burden for the meetings to speak the Lord’s word, the meetings will be living and rich. We have to perfect all the trainees to function in the meetings and to speak the Lord’s word. However, in our functioning, we must avoid lengthy speakings. Second, not only should we speak in the meetings, but we also should speak the Lord’s word in our daily life. Third, we have to encourage the brothers and sisters to bring all their questions to the meetings in order to arrive at the result of mutual encouragement. If we would practice these three things, I believe that the success of the new way can be expected.
