The group meetings are also for us to participate in the fellowship, interceding, and mutual care with the saints. In a group meeting, a brother may say, “Saints, I must let you know that Brother So-and-so was in a car accident yesterday.” What this brother reports is a kind of fellowship. Then the saints may inquire about Brother So-and-so’s situation. They will ask about how serious his accident was and about whether he is at home or in the hospital. The brother will have to give more details concerning the situation of this brother. Spontaneously and automatically the saints will begin to pray for this brother who had the accident. Others may ask concerning his financial situation, inquiring whether or not he has car insurance. Another sister may say that she found out that this brother lost his job last week. This fellowship will bring in the care and shepherding of this particular brother. Some of the saints will spontaneously bear the burden to supply him financially. An older brother in the group may say, “Maybe tonight two or three brothers could go to see this brother.” Then three brothers could volunteer to go and see the brother who had the accident. Their visit will comfort and shepherd this brother. A sister may say that she feels that this brother’s wife needs someone to visit her. Then some sisters can agree to go see his wife the next day.
This gives us an illustration of the living contents of the group meetings. The living way to have the group meetings is to have singing, praying, and the exercise of the spirit with the Holy Spirit to apply the holy Word. This meeting also includes fellowship. The meeting may begin with fellowship, or the fellowship can be in the middle or at the end of the meeting. Anyway, there should always be the fellowship in a group meeting. This fellowship, as a rule, always brings in the intercession, the prayer for one another. It also brings in the mutual care of the saints. This mutual care can be physical, financial, or spiritual, and it will result in a mutual shepherding. Therefore, the members of this group will not need the elders to do the majority of the shepherding. They will shepherd themselves mutually.
If there are one thousand saints meeting together in a certain locality, the elders cannot be expected to shepherd all one thousand of these people. By the group meetings, however, the mutual shepherding of the saints will be thorough. All the members attending a group meeting know one another. Among them there will be a thorough, loving, and mutual shepherding. If some problems or hardships arise in the group meeting that the members cannot solve, they can refer these matters to the elders. Otherwise, all the problems will be taken care of by the group meeting itself.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:7 Paul told the Thessalonians that he cherished them as a nursing mother. Then in verse 11 he said that he entreated and consoled them as a father. In Acts 20 we see how Paul did this. When Paul was passing through Miletus, he sent for the elders of Ephesus to come to him (v. 17). He told them to remember how he had labored among them for three years (v. 31). This shows that we co-workers have to learn to stay in a place for three years. He told the elders that he had taught them publicly and from house to house (v. 20). To teach publicly, no doubt, is to hold bigger meetings. Paul also taught from house to house, which means that he taught according to the saints’ houses. He went to every house of the saints. He did not cease admonishing each one of the saints with tears, night and day for three years. He did not shrink from declaring to them all the counsel of God or anything that was profitable (vv. 27, 20). This means that he perfected the saints in their daily walk, in the human affairs of their life. He shared with them all the things concerning God’s will, including God’s purpose, God’s plan, and God’s economy. He was teaching the saints how to be Christians and how to know God, to know God’s heart, to know God’s will, to know God’s plan, and to know God’s economy. Within three years, day and night, he did much to perfect the saints. I believe that Paul attended many group meetings.
I would encourage all the churches to set up, to establish, group meetings. We co-workers must cooperate with the Lord, doing our best to speak in the meetings and also to go to the homes of the saints. When we attend a group meeting, we can realize that a certain brother has a problem. It is not convenient for us to address his problem in the meeting because this may expose him. We can go to him and make an appointment with him to see him the next day or at a time that is convenient for him. Paul did this day and night without ceasing. I hope that we could all prayerfully read Acts 20:20-21, 27, and 31. These verses show us how Paul perfected the saints. If we work as Paul worked, the saints will be properly raised up through our instruction, teaching, charge, warning, and admonishing. Then the church life will be strong.
To have merely a Lord’s Day morning meeting with a good speaker in a congregation cannot take care of the Lord’s interest. The Lord’s economy cannot be carried out with that kind of practice. The traditional, unscriptural practice of Christianity just maintains a big congregation as a facade to make a show. In the Lord’s recovery, however, we should forget about any kind of facade. We must work on the saints to instruct them, to warn them, to admonish them, and to console them. Console is a stronger word than comfort. We have to console the saints. They have troubles, and they become disappointed in their faith. They may begin to doubt the Lord. Therefore, we have to stay with them for a longer time to give them the proper consolation. Then they will not only be edified but also perfected.
We must take the organic way to build up the Body of Christ organically. Whether we teach, admonish, warn, rebuke, or console the saints, what we do must be organic. We should not advise the saints in an ethical, philosophical, and logical way without ministering God in Christ to them. If we merely minister ethics to people, our work is in the same nature as the work of someone like Confucius, who had many ethical teachings.
We should not minister mere ethical teachings to the saints. We should minister Christ. We are the ministers of Christ, serving people with Christ. We are the waiters or waitresses who serve people’s “table” with Christ. Christ is the food in our “restaurant,” the food that we serve others. We do not merely teach Christ, but we serve Christ.
We need to serve Christ to the attendants in the group meetings. To serve Christ is to minister life. Whether we fellowship, take care of others, pray for others, shepherd others, ask a question, or answer a question as a teaching, what we do must be a ministering of Christ. It must be organic. Otherwise, we are merely teaching ethics to produce an ethical society, and what we teach will be in the same principle of the teaching of Confucius in the Far East and the ethical teaching of Christianity without Christ in the Western world. I would like to say again that we must minister Christ to people. This is the organic way to build up the church. Because we minister Christ, the embodiment of the processed Triune God, into the believers, the believers will gradually have the increase of God in them. Then according to Colossians 2:19 the saints will grow with the increase of God. This increase is the growth in life, and the totality of the growth in life of all the saints is the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
The truths which I have fellowshipped in this book have to get into us. These points are very new, so we must get into them and practice them. Then we will enjoy Christ, experience Christ, and gain Christ more and more. As a result, we will have the growth in Christ for the building up of the organic Body of Christ.