The last item related to spiritual affairs is the care for the brothers and sisters who have moved away and for the brothers and sisters who have come from other places.
After a brother moves away, the writing of a letter of recommendation should never be the last responsibility, as is the situation today, where once a brother moves away, we simply write the letter and everything is over. How is it going with him since he moved away? How is the church where he is? We do not know. This may be how the brother is lost. The brothers in Foochow have suffered in this way. Only letters of recommendation were written, and this is how some were lost. This clearly is a failure of the work of a local church.
I hope that when there is a brother or a sister who moves away from your locality, there would be a number of brothers who would do two things with them. Some must be responsible to correspond with them and inform them of the situation in their former church. This should be something definite. When a brother moves away, we need to investigate who in the meetings was especially close to him and whether anyone corresponds with him. For a long time in Shanghai I felt ashamed, even to the point of condemnation, that one person moved away and no one corresponded with him for five years. That was the end of him. We do not even know the situation with him. We are really ashamed. I thought that there must have been brothers who were corresponding with him. But, as it turned out, no one was corresponding with him, and that was the end of him.
Some people have moved to the villages and have become lost. We would need to spend much labor to recover them. We cannot continue to lose people and at the same time preach the gospel. This is not profitable.
Whenever a brother moves away, there should be some brothers who are assigned to correspond with him. We should write him either one letter a week or two letters a month, but no less than one letter a month. We should always correspond with him by letter to inform him of the situation in the meetings and of the situation of the brothers and sisters. We cannot be loose about this kind of situation. If there were ten letters of recommendation written today, these should be brought to the responsible brothers, who should tell two or three other brothers that a brother has now moved to Peking or Amoy. They should say, “We would like you to write him at least one letter a month. Whether or not you are busy, you need to correspond with him.” This is a service. In our correspondence, we should not write vain things nor should we write in a loose way. We should specifically mention what the situation is among the brothers in the meetings and their spiritual condition.
For each person moving away, there should be at least a few who correspond with him. Or two can be assigned specifically to be responsible for all these ones. They have to be responsible for taking care of the brothers who have moved away. They need to find out regularly if the ones who moved away have corresponded in return and whether they have encountered difficulties; they need to find out how they are doing.
If we work in this way, God will bless us. Every one of these brothers who has moved away will be accounted for, and each one of them will be able to stand firm. We have to labor on this matter attentively. This is something we have learned after suffering for many years. We have lost many people in this way. Therefore, I hope the brothers from every locality will be quite strict in this matter. When a brother among us moves away, we always need to tie a string to him as if he were a kite. A string should always be in our hand. There should always be two or three brothers who have fellowship with him. If this is the case, the problems will be greatly reduced. If he has some special situations in the other place, we can notify the brothers in his locality. There will always be a way to take care of him; otherwise, we will lose him. Then there will be nothing more that we can do.
When there are special messages in the meetings or when there is a good word in the preaching of the gospel, some brothers need to record them. They should record the central point of the message. They do not need to write down everything, nor do they need to record all the messages given in a particular month. They need to write down only the important and central points. At the very least, this can be a supply to the brothers who are absent from the meetings.
Suppose a brother moves from Foochow to Shanghai. Never consider that since you have already written a letter of recommendation, you have washed your hands of the matter. If you do this, after recommending the person, you will not know whether or not the other side has received him. You will not know where he lives and what his situation is, and you will not know the situation of the church there. Therefore, on the one hand, there is the need among us for several brothers to correspond with him; on the other hand, some brothers need to be responsible to record the words spoken in the meetings, whether they are words spoken to believers or words of the gospel, and send them to that brother at least once a month. They can be sent in a letter or as a printed copy. You can tell him that in a meeting a certain brother gave a very good illustration or that in a meeting a certain brother spoke some words that rendered you great help. This can be included in your correspondence. You can also include some word that you felt was weighty. You can either print or copy these excerpts and mail them to him month by month. In this way you can hold on to these brothers one by one.
If we labor on these two aspects, there will be no problems with brothers who move away. Furthermore, there are places in China where there are no meetings. Sending excerpts by correspondence can be very helpful to those who move to these places. Furthermore, there are brothers who go overseas from Shanghai. They frequently ask us where they can attend meetings. We do not dare tell them where to meet. Their moving away like this can cause them to feel lonely and can be quite dangerous. If they are not guarded by God, there is no way for them to grow. If there is no supply, how can we cause them to grow? Therefore, if these messages can go out continually, we can at least cause the brothers who have moved away to be quite stable. Although their condition may not be excellent, at least they can be fairly stable.