The Meetings and Spiritual Exercise of the Local Church

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

3. Prophesying Meetings of the Local Church

Witness Lee shares the history of the recovery of the prophesying meeting in the local church :

Brother Nee saw the truth concerning the church meeting in mutuality revealed in 1 Corinthians 14 in 1937. His ministry on this is in the book entitled The Normal Christian Church Life. In 1948 he spoke concerning this again in the book entitled Church Affairs. But throughout the years, we did not find a way to replace the system of one man speaking with all of the saints prophesying. In 1984 I purposely went to Taiwan to restudy our situation in the recovery. In that study I was encouraged and strengthened by the Lord to pick up the practice of the church meetings revealed in 1 Corinthians 14.

Eventually, starting from the church in Taipei, we gave up the practice of one man speaking on the Lord’s Day. Now we practice prophesying in the meetings by all the saints. We realize that we cannot do this in very large meetings, so the church in Taipei divided their three thousand attendants into a number of district meetings. Each district meeting has about fifty saints. Today many of the local churches are practicing the prophesying of all of the saints instead of the Lord’s Day message meeting by one speaker.

(Witness Lee, Overcomers, 69)

Witness Lee speaks concerning the benefits of the prophesying meeting:

If you say that nothing has happened or that nothing has been accomplished in our practice of the new way within the past three and a half years, this is altogether not true. First, there has been a success in Taipei. When I went to Taipei in October 1984, the regular attendance at the Lord’s table was about three thousand. After practicing the God-ordained way in only a partial way, there are now five thousand saints attending the Lord’s table in Taipei. Statistics are subduing and convincing. In the past the elders in Taipei had the hard task of getting one speaker to speak in each of their twenty-one halls. The hardest thing for an elder in a local church to take care of was the Lord’s Day morning message. Before October 1984 there were only twenty-one speakers every Sunday morning among about three thousand attendants meeting in twenty-one halls. But now in Taipei they are practicing the biblical way revealed in 1 Corinthians 14, the way of all speaking in mutuality for the building up of the church, and there are about one thousand saints speaking in the Lord’s Day morning meeting among about five thousand attendants every Lord’s Day morning.

(Witness Lee, Messages to the Trainees, 93-94)

Main

Meetings

Lord’s Table

Prayer

Prophesying

Small Group

Gospel

Children’s

OT Type

Spiritual Exercise

Reading

Praying

Singing

Speaking

Thanksgiving

Praising

Serving

Calling

Pray-Reading

Bibliography

Links