The Meetings and Spiritual Exercise of the Local Church

Additional Quotes about the Local Church by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

Whatever we need will be supplied to us. Submission, patience, humility, love, power, and mercy are all in the divine seed within us. The Body life, the local church life, is included in this godliness. The local church life has been given to us. Perhaps we have seen the New Testament church, so we agree to come together and practice it. But if we do this without the enjoyment of Christ, our practice will be a mess. We need to call on the name of the Lord, be filled within, and enjoy His Word. This is to render Him the adequate cooperation. Then we will enjoy the current of the heavenly electricity flooding us with the riches of life. Spontaneously, we will have the proper church life. The church life comes out of the divine seed within us. It is not something made up by us. The church life is a great item of godliness. We have the church life within already. What we need now is to develop it. The fruit is included in the seed, and the seed has been given to us. If we develop the seed, we will develop the fruit.

In Ephesians 5 there is the Spirit, and in Colossians 3 there is the Word. Eventually, the Word and the Spirit are one. By comparing these two matching portions of the Scripture, we can see that the Word is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the Word. We can make the Word the Spirit by calling on the name of the Lord and pray-reading. Then the Spirit will be consolidated with the Word. We need to be filled in our spirit and let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. God has given, and God has done everything. Now we need to take the initiative to be filled. If we open the window, the air will come in. We have the Spirit and the Word as the key to being filled. Now we need to exercise our spirit to be filled with the Spirit by letting the word dwell in us richly through calling on the Lord and pray-reading the Word.

(Witness Lee, Growth of Christ, 66-67)

Witness Lee declares that calling on the Lord brings us to our spirit, where there is the oneness in a local church:

Jerusalem, the oneness, the ground of unity, is not in your mind. It is in your spirit. When you have trouble, do not try to analyze. Just be so simple and turn to your spirit to call, “O Lord Jesus, O Lord Jesus.”

…You may be very unhappy with certain things in the local church, but if you exercise your spirit to say, “O Lord Jesus, O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah,” for fifteen minutes, you will feel happy with everything in the local church. Whatever the local church does will be wonderful to you.

(Witness Lee, Living and Practical, 57)

Witness Lee explains that calling on the Lord is a practice and not a doctrine of the faith:

We in the Lord’s recovery insist upon the basic doctrines that constitute the faith. If anyone does not hold to these basic doctrines, he is not a genuine believer, and he is not saved. However, apart from the basic doctrines, we do not insist on any other doctrines. Are things such as speaking in tongues, pray-reading, foot washing, and calling on the name of the Lord basic doctrines? Certainly not. None of these doctrines constitutes the faith. Whether or not you practice speaking in tongues, pray-reading, or calling on the name of the Lord does not affect your salvation. As long as you believe that God is one yet triune, that the Son of God was incarnated as a man, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, that He was resurrected on the third day, and that He is coming again, you are saved and you are a member of the church. Someone may never pray-read or speak in tongues; yet if he has the common faith, he is saved. But if you do not believe the basic doctrines, you are not saved, even if your feet have been washed a thousand times.

…It is the same with pray-reading or calling on the name of the Lord. If you do not feel the need to pray-read, then don’t try to do it. No one will exclude you because you do not care to pray-read.

…We should not insist on any doctrines apart from the doctrines that constitute the faith. However, we still need to know the pure Word and walk according to it. We do not want to be sloppy or loose or remain under the influence prevailing among today’s Christians. I hope that we all can differentiate between these two categories of doctrines. The local church is built upon the oneness according to the Spirit and according to the locality. It is absolutely not built on doctrines such as the doctrines concerning the kingdom of the heavens, pray-reading, or the exercise of the spirit.

(Witness Lee, Spirit and the Body, 220-222)

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