We all know that a student’s purpose in studying medicine is to be a doctor, and a student’s purpose in studying agriculture is to research farming techniques. Whatever a person does, he must have a goal. Three terms of the full-time training have already passed, and after these three terms of training, the trainees should know where this training is taking them and what the goal is that the training wants to achieve.
Some of you have joined the full-time training for a year, and some have joined for two years. After this period of training, some of you may go back to school, some of you may work in society, and some of you may desire to serve full-time for the rest of your lives. Regardless of where you go or what you do, you should carry out the new way according to your desire. This training is moving toward this goal, but it has not reached it to the fullest extent.
After two thousand years Christianity has become big, old, and complicated. Its inner condition is chaotic. We saved ones must serve the Lord, and our serving the Lord must not be individualistic. Rather, we must serve in the Body. However, where in Christianity, which is so complicated, can we have the service of the Body? This is the first question. Second, what should we do on the ground of the Lord’s recovery? Today to change the system is not to change our ground but to change our existing method while remaining on this ground. This mainly concerns the matter of meeting. We all admit that the condition of our meetings and the way in which we met in the past did not match the pattern in the Bible. Brother Watchman Nee even said that to have a Lord’s Day message meeting is to follow the custom of the nations, that there is no need to maintain it, and that it is a kind of waste. This word is very heavy and serious.
We who serve the Lord must first see the church, and for us to see the church, we must see the ground of the church. Only when we are on the proper ground can we proceed. Second, as we stand on the proper ground, how should we serve? The most serious matter related to our service is how to meet, because all of our service hinge on the meetings. In other words, if we take the meetings away, we may say that there is almost no need for service. Consider the full-time serving ones for instance. Their service is to invite people to the meetings. They either meet with people in home meetings, invite people to small group meetings, or they themselves join the district meetings. Almost everything related to our service has to do with the meetings.
The purpose of a Christian meeting is to build up the saints individually and from this individual building to proceed to build up the church, that is, to build up the Body of Christ. Today on the whole earth, only in the Lord’s recovery can we see a little building. Many Christian groups not only do not have any building, but they do not even mention the matter of building; they disregard it. This is why the Lord has not yet come back. In Matthew 16 the Lord clearly says, “Upon this rock I will build My church” (v. 18). This word has not yet been fulfilled. Today there are both many Christians and many Christian organizations on the earth, but still we cannot find any building. Even in the Lord’s recovery, there is not much building. This condition is the result of meeting in an improper way.
In the past, almost sixty to eighty percent of the way we met was influenced by the traditions of Christianity. Hence, even though our meetings were different from those in the denominations, the difference was not that great. In the old and traditional meetings, it was hard to see the building. This is why we need to change the system. The change in system will enable our meetings to fulfill their function and to cause the building up of the saints and the church. We have already seen the goal of serving the Lord full-time. First, we must see the church, and second, we must see that the way and system of the service in the church is related to how we meet. Third, we must see that the meetings are for the building up of the saints and the church, the Body of Christ. Our change of the system is toward this goal.
How do we lead the saints to speak in the meetings? We need to realize that if we want a believer to speak in the meeting, he must personally have a certain kind of living as his backing and support. The old way of meeting did not require us to live an overcoming life. Even if our lives were full of failures, we still could peacefully come to the meeting every week. However, the new way of meeting requires us to be overcomers. If we are not overcomers and do not live in the spirit, we will have nothing to say in the meetings. At the most we will be able to listen to others’ speaking, but we will not be able to speak to and supply others.