The Meetings and Spiritual Exercise of the Local Church
The Meetings and Spiritual Exercise of the Local Church |
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Additional Local Church Quotes by Witness and Watchman NeeE. Helping Them to Write Down Their Names After the meeting, help them write down their names if there is the need for them to leave their names. Help them write if they do not know how to write. If some ask why they should leave their names, say, “We want your name so that we can come and visit you.” Write out their addresses clearly. Mark down the area, the street, and the street numbers of their homes so that others can find them when they want to visit them. F. Leading Them to Pray You have helped them up to this point. But your job is not completed yet. You still have to lead them to pray with you. If you cannot make it by yourself, ask other brothers or sisters to help you pray with them. Never be careless. Work on them until you feel at peace to send them home. G. Bringing Saints Along to Visit Them until They Are Saved After your friends have gone home, you have to visit them. The first time you visit, you should bring one or two brothers or sisters along with you. This is part of your job. When the church arranges for visitation, you have to accompany the brothers and sisters to your friends’ house and talk to them. It is not enough for certain people to hear the gospel once. You have to invite them a second and third time until they are finally saved. May the Lord help us take the way of recovery. We should consider the gospel meeting a very important meeting. In this meeting every brother and sister has something to do. Everyone is living; no one is lazy. Everyone is active. Once such an atmosphere is raised up, the church will have a great turn, and the gospel meeting will become a working meeting for the whole church. If the number of people in a local church is small and the format of the meeting simple, one does not have to follow all the details given above. But in principle, every brother and sister should have great regard for the gospel meeting. Everyone is responsible, and everyone should actively advance the gospel and bring people to salvation in one accord. (Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 3, Vol. 48, 194-198) Watchman Nee shares how every one has a part in the gospel meeting of a local church: There is no way for this work to be done without everyone serving. You need to show the brothers and sisters that everyone is a priest; hence, everyone should have things to do. If this is the case, immediately you will see that all the gospel meetings in every place will be quite prevailing. This is the church preaching the gospel. We must pay special attention to this word. It is the church that is preaching the gospel. All the brothers and sisters are working; they all are priests and they all have come to serve. If this is not the case, there is no church. So do not boast that you have the local church in such and such a place. Where is the church today? (Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 3, Vol. 51, 35) Concerning the gospel meeting as a meeting of a local church, Watchman Nee says: The church should have the following kinds of meetings: gospel meetings, new beginners’ meetings, prayer meetings, the Lord’s table meeting, the meeting referred to in 1 Corinthians 14, sisters’ meetings, and children’s meetings. The local church need not maintain a message meeting on the Lord’s Day. (Witness Lee, Seer of the Divine Revelation, 220) |
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