After two terms of the full-time training, there will be two hundred fifty full-timers. After they complete their training, they will have some time off for rest. Then they will be completely “yoked.” However, this yoke is not a bondage; rather, it is Canaan, the good land. This good land requires us to cultivate it diligently.
Furthermore, some full-timers from other cities also have the burden to stay in Taipei to take care of the home meetings. Regarding this point, I hope that every one of the full-timers will seek the consent of the church from which they came, because the churches are the ones who supported the full-timers to come here. We have already heard the good news that some churches want to stand in one accord with the Lord’s move today in gospelizing Taiwan. If there is the need for some to stay, then they may stay. If some should return to their localities, then they should go back to their respective localities. This all depends on the fellowship of the brothers.
This is a proper word. The original intention of the training was that the trainees should return to where they came from to serve there. Therefore, upon the completion of the training, the full-time trainees must seek the consent of the church in their locality regarding where they are to go. This is in the principle of fellowship. Of course, the majority of the churches are willing to bear the burden together in gospelizing Taiwan. After all, there is only one move of the Lord today on the whole earth. We need to spread from Taiwan to the entire earth, taking Taiwan as the center. However, on this central line, we still must keep the principle of having fellowship with every locality.
In order to gospelize Taiwan, we must first gospelize the communities of Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and then Tainan. After we gospelize all the communities in the big cities, we can then propagate out from the city centers to towns and villages. This is our initial blueprint.
Every year, there are college graduates joining the full-time service, and the training also continues every year. Through these, we need to make the homes of the new ones into Canaan. However, we should not do this in a rigid way. Instead, we should do it in an active, attractive, living, and fruitful way. The result we obtain should not be something rigid but something living and abiding as our Canaan, the good land.
From our past experience in leading the new ones to the corporate Lord’s table meeting, we learned the lesson that the table meeting is short of the word of God. At the end of the Lord’s table meeting there should be the ministering of some short messages. For example, we can first minister on the Lord’s life and His precious blood, then on God’s love, and third on God’s grace. After speaking on God’s love and God’s grace, we can proceed with God as light as the fourth topic and then continue with God’s Spirit, God’s power, God’s righteousness, and other topics.
We who lead the home meetings are already familiar with these messages, so we should share and minister to the new ones a little each time. This can be compared to a dessert after a feast with many delicious dishes. However, we should not serve the dessert in a rigid and inflexible way. As long as a topic is interesting to people, we can serve it according to their need without following a set rule, and we can plant that topic into them. If the Lord wills, we should supply a message every Lord’s Day.
We can never take the old way of degraded Christianity. Not only does history prove this, but the entire situation in today’s Christianity also indicates this. The statistics that we saw earlier, in particular, give us a clear picture of the present trend. The result brought in by the old way of traditional Christianity has been a decline in the number of people. Hence, we must set our goal on the home meetings and labor on them. This is a fierce fight and not a small matter. The work we are doing in these days is not an easy work. To work out a foundation of the home meetings is unprecedented in the history of Christianity. This will turn the age. This is absolutely not a small matter.
We need to pray much more, endeavor in one accord toward this goal, and concentrate all of our strength on the home meetings. The Lord’s work will not hold still. We will continue to study to take the home meetings further so that the Lord will have a way to accomplish His heart’s desire.
(A message given on May 12, 1987 in Taipei, Taiwan)