In short, there are over five thousand saints who meet in the meeting halls, over five thousand new ones who are under our care in the communities, and two thousand two hundred saints who have been recently recovered. Thus, there are around twelve thousand saints total. Besides these, we gained one thousand seven hundred to one thousand eight hundred people through our door-knocking during the feast. This makes the total number roughly fourteen thousand. These fourteen thousand are now the object and goal of our labor. However, according to the statistics from last Lord’s Day, the number of those who now come to the district meetings is close to four thousand. This means that we need to take care of fourteen thousand people, of which ten thousand need to be worked on, brought to the district meetings, and fostered to live a complete and proper church life with all the saints. This will require our corporate labor. Therefore, the majority of our energy at the present stage must be focused on shepherding and taking care of these ones. This burden is extremely heavy.
Having had the tabernacle meeting of the feast, we feel that now is the best time to carry out the change in system. From now on in Taipei our meetings should comprise three levels, the most basic level being the home meeting, the level above being the small group meeting, and the level at the top being the district meeting. The unit of a home meeting should be a household. A small group meeting should have from seven or eight people to a little over ten but not more than that. A district meeting should have fifty people in principle, although a meeting of forty people would also be acceptable. However, if a district meeting has about seventy to eighty people, it should be divided into two district meetings. In this way, our function will be manifested, and at the same time our caring and shepherding will be more thorough. For example, in a district of fifty people there should be at least ten who take the lead, who are responsible, and who take care of others. Ten people should be able to take care of the remaining forty in a thorough and complete way. This is our principle. There should be four groups of people in the meeting—elders, co-workers, full-timers, and trainees. Currently, the number of people in these four groups of people is about one thousand. After adding the college-age young people, this number comes to one thousand three hundred to one thousand four hundred. These categories of people make up one-fourth of the existing four to five thousand people who are meeting, and they may be considered as the pillars. We are responsible to perfect the other saints to function in the district meetings.
If we want to function in the meetings, we must be living persons. The prerequisite to functioning is that we must be living. For this reason, we have many different items and levels of preparatory work. In a mere two to three months we have raised up family propagation groups. These groups have been very useful, and many families have been revived through them. This preparation began a month and a half ago when we were helping the elderly saints, telling them that they should call “O Lord Jesus” every morning when they get up and then pray-read two verses to enjoy the Lord. This practice was greatly welcomed, and gradually, many saints adopted it and formed the propagation groups.
What is it to be a living and functioning person? A living and functioning person is one who, upon rising in the morning, calls on the Lord’s name, lives before the Lord, and enters into the spirit to fellowship with the Lord. He is also one who lives and walks according to the spirit throughout the day and is led by the Lord to speak for the Lord at any time and in any place. This kind of person lives an overcoming life. If a person lives in this way throughout the day, he will surely have a desire to meet, and in the meetings he will be living, he will experience the Lord and have the Lord’s presence, and he will spontaneously be full of words to speak without needing any specific preparation. Most likely, our meetings will not have a specific topic but will be comprehensive, caring for every aspect. They will be similar to a love feast, which is very rich if everyone brings a little food. Our meetings should be the same. When the saints come together, each one should have an exhortation, an encouragement, a question, or a word of consolation. Everyone can bring out what they have in the meeting. This is the kind of meeting that the Bible requires.
First Corinthians 14:26 says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.” Also Hebrews 10:25 says, “Not abandoning our own assembling together...but exhorting one another.” The meetings mentioned in these two verses are meetings in mutuality in which everyone speaks. If no one speaks, how can we exhort one another? From now on, we should recover these two verses by speaking in the meetings. We must confess that the pattern and form of our meetings today are not scriptural. We have not followed the Bible, so we must have a change.