In the church there are different kinds of meetings. The gospel preaching meeting is one kind of meeting. The local brothers should find a special time for the gospel preaching meeting, perhaps the Lord’s Day morning, to gather together to preach the gospel or to go to various districts to preach the gospel. Always preach the gospel with all your strength.
When you have a gospel preaching meeting, as we have already mentioned, you need to bring people with you. You need to sit with the people you have brought. If you bring two people, you should sit between them and keep them company. You should also talk to them and listen to the message with them. After they finish listening, accompany them home. You should follow up on them until they are baptized.
The preaching of the gospel message should be done in a strong way. At the same time, we need two or three brothers to do their best to send gospel material to the meetings of various localities. We need to compile gospel stories, gospel illustrations, and things which have been used in the past, and send them out so that the various localities will have materials for gospel preaching. By doing so, the meetings in various localities will receive much benefit.
At the same time, the attitude of the brothers while listening to the message in a gospel preaching meeting has to be right. Many times it is our own brothers who ruin the meeting. The brothers need to realize that the gospel is not preached for them to hear. You need to help that meeting and not cause it to become weak, and you need to learn to lead the people who sit next to you to believe in the gospel. Of course you do not need the gospel. But they do. It is much easier on the gospel preacher if the attitude of all the brothers in the gospel preaching meeting is right. Otherwise, the person who preaches the gospel must be concerned about the sinners and also about the reaction of the brothers. You need to realize that he is not here taking a test on gospel preaching, but he is doing his best to get people saved. If everyone would do this, the gospel preaching meeting would have few difficulties.
I hope that the gospel preaching meeting is not too long or too short. To preach for an hour or two is no problem.
Two-thirds of the time of the gospel preaching meeting is always for casting the net, and one-third is for drawing the net. This is a good way to take.
The subject of this meeting is definite; therefore, the preaching also has to be definite.
In every local church you have to find two or three brothers to preach the word in this meeting. There should always be two or three such brothers in a meeting. Sometimes a brother may not feel well or may be absent for other reasons; another brother may then speak in his place.
When the meeting becomes large, divide it into several districts. At this point, there should be a few more brothers responsible for the edification of the new believers.
I hope that the topics used for the edification of the new believers will not be changed, but will be repeated each year. I also hope that the topics and the order of the topics spoken in various places are uniform. Every week there should be speaking on the same topic so that when a person goes to any locality, he can still continue to attend this meeting without interruption. If he goes from Shanghai to Hangchow, he can continue. If he goes from Hangchow to Canton, he can also continue. And if he goes from Canton to Hong Kong, he can still continue. Thus, a new believing brother may be able to continue wherever he goes. In this way he can receive edification in many subjects.
These few years we have realized one thing: The edification that the brothers in our midst have received is not the same; it is really different! Therefore, there is considerable difficulty. This time when I took a trip to the inland area, I had many impressions, even deep impressions. In many places there are those who claim to be brothers among us, who are also quite polite and quite good. I feel that they are brothers. But I found out that they have not even learned the ABC’s. Therefore, many problems have occurred in those places, and difficult situations arose. For this reason, I hope that starting from today, the meeting for the edification of the new believers will be carried out properly. This meeting will enable all the new believing brothers to acquire the basic lessons.