The terms ministry and work in the New Testament denote a kind of service. The Greek word translated “ministry” literally means “service.” In the New Testament the Lord raised up apostles from among His believers and then commissioned them with the ministry. The apostles went out with the ministry to raise up local churches. Thus, there was first the ministry with the apostles and co-workers, and then there were the churches.
According to Acts and the Epistles, the ministry is regional. When the New Testament was written, there were two regions of the ministry, or the work: Judea, the Jewish region, where Peter, James, and John labored; and the Gentile world, the Gentile region, where the apostle Paul and his co-workers labored (Acts 21:18-19; Rom. 15:16; Gal. 2:8-9). The churches are local. Each church belongs to one locality. The apostles raise up and establish the churches. They appoint elders to bear the burden of the local churches. Like the churches they care for, the elders are local, bearing the local burden. The apostles are regional, bearing the burden of the ministry to strengthen all the churches in a region. Some apostles may also be elders in a church in the center of their region to strengthen the testimony in that church. For example, Peter was an apostle and also an elder in Jerusalem. The church in the center of a region is not higher than the other churches and does not control them but is the center of the work in that region, as Jerusalem and Antioch were in the New Testament.
We need to pray that the Lord would strengthen, increase, and spread the ministry to cover every region. There needs to be brothers carrying out the ministry in every region to strengthen the churches there. We also need to pray that every local church would have adequate elders to take care of the local building. If the ministry and the churches are in a normal situation, the Lord will be able to have a proper testimony. In other words, the need for the Lord’s testimony on the earth falls into two categories. First, the Lord needs more brothers who are useful to carry on the ministry by raising up, establishing, and strengthening the churches in every region. Second, the Lord needs more elders to take care of the local churches, which includes shepherding and teaching for the building up of the church in each locality. If we meet the need for the brothers to carry out the ministry in different regions and the need for the brothers to bear the burden of the local building, the Lord will have a way to go on.
Once we see the sphere and service of the ministry and the churches, we can address the relationship among the churches. All the churches are on the same level; there is no head church. In the past few years there have been three kinds of mistakes in the relationships among the churches. The first mistake concerned the stress that all the churches follow particular “flows.” The word flow has been incorrectly used to denote various outward practices. The right meaning of the word flow is God’s testimony on the earth. We entitled our periodical The Stream and the first article in the first issue “The Divine Stream” to signify the unique flow of the Lord’s testimony on the earth. All the churches are part of this one testimony, the testimony of Jesus, which is the Lord’s recovery in life and truth. This flow is never confusing or demanding.
The second mistake in recent years relates to the interference of local churches with other churches. No local church should interfere with other local churches, just as families should not interfere with other families. Ministering brothers may visit other churches to strengthen them, but they should not interfere. All the saints should blend among the churches, but they should not compare, judge, or express opinions about the churches. In the recent turmoil among the churches much damage was done through such interference.
The third and perhaps greatest mistake in recent years was the organizational transfer of saints and elders between localities. There was a subtle, hidden, evil intention behind these transfers, and they greatly damaged the local churches. Just as different families do not transfer members, neither should the churches transfer members. Even if the parents in a family are poor, they cannot be fired or transferred away, nor can new parents be hired. Transfers cause a local church to become a man-made organization without the nature of a family. Such human maneuvering and manipulating is wrong. These transfers cause the churches to lose the Lord’s blessing. In recent years the churches that did not participate in such transfers received much more blessing than those that did. We must stand against transfers among the churches. Just as different families may have different conditions, local churches may be strong or weak, but their members should not be transferred to try to change their condition.
We must beware of these three mistakes: so-called flows, interference among churches, and transfers between churches. These mistakes may cause us to deviate from the truth. We must respect God’s economy and His ordination of the ground of locality for the churches regardless of the churches’ conditions. The desire to make every local church the same is a human concept and requires human maneuvering. Some people are born tall, and others are born short. If we try to make them all the same, we may damage or kill them. We must leave the churches as they are and not try to organize them hierarchically in order to make them the same. Even if a local church is weak, others should not interfere with it. This is not a matter of pride but of contentedness in family life. A poor family is still a genuine family, and the family members can enjoy their life together. We should be content in our local church because we are a genuine church. In the past year a certain church has had much increase not by transfers or by trying to conform to so-called flows but by enjoying the church life as a genuine local church. This honors the Lord’s headship, His economy, and His ordination.
Even if we have the truth, we must not be careless, lest these things creep in. We should see and learn much from our past mistakes. We must respect other churches. If we visit a smaller, weaker, or poorer church, we should not interfere or even compare. Comparing is a kind of interference. We must leave all the churches as they are and respect them. We also need to avoid transfers. Under the Lord’s sovereign leading, some saints may migrate, but organizational transfers to try to control the condition of the churches are wrong.
When we have dealt with these mistakes and are in a normal condition, the local churches need to learn to receive the other churches. No church should be proud or closed to the other churches. We need not only to receive other churches but also to be open to them. We should be willing to learn from other churches, just as families learn from other families to try to improve their own condition. We should have as much fellowship as possible with other churches but without any interfering. We must realize that in such fellowship all the churches are on the same level; it is not a vertical fellowship among churches on different levels but a horizontal fellowship. If we take care of these few points, the relationship among the churches will become normal.