However, today we cannot go to the other extreme. Many people do so, thinking that there is absolutely no method in the church. I want you to pay attention to this one thing. You are people who study the Bible. You need to see that there are definitely methods in the Bible. Just look at the arrangement at the time of Pentecost. You will see that there was definitely a method to carry out affairs. Frankly speaking, even if you had only one or two thousand people, you would be unable to deal with the situation. If you were like the apostles with over ten thousand people, there would be total confusion. We see that the record of the Bible, however, only touches the matter lightly and then goes on. There are not too many words, but just one phrase: “Distributed to each, as anyone had need.” It seems very simple. Behind these few words, however, much work was done. Therefore, I want you brothers to be able to see that during the time of the apostles there were methods for doing things in the churches. But God did not want to leave these methods for later generations to imitate. If God’s Spirit is working in a certain place, a method for doing things will naturally come out. If the Lord blesses greatly on a certain occasion, a method will come out spontaneously. When the spiritual blessing dies out, the method for doing things will die out with it. We have no desire that the days of the methods for doing things would be even one day longer than the days of blessing.
We hope, brothers, that you will find a way between these two extremes. There are groups of people, such as the Protestants, who always pay attention to the method. Please remember that the less water a glass has, the more people examine the exterior of the glass. When the glass is no longer used to hold water, it is hung up on the wall as an antique. People always pay attention to external things. We know that God does not allow such things to remain. However, it is not that there are no methods. Chapter six of Acts shows us very clearly that since the problem of a few widows of the Hellenists was not solved, the apostles felt that this matter was not taken care of properly. There were only a few widows who had an unresolved problem among more than ten thousand people. Yet the apostles were not satisfied.
Remember the words that Paul spoke to Timothy. It seems that Timothy recorded the names of the widows in a record book. But in the Bible you cannot find out what a widow’s book is. It was mentioned in a casual way. It seems that Timothy was very familiar with this record book. Paul did not say to set up a record book of a certain size, nor did he say how to fill it in. He did not say any of this. He only spoke of enrolling the widows. This means that at that time everyone knew about this way. Later, he simply said not to enroll anyone in a careless way. A problem was discovered—only those sixty years old and above should be enrolled—and the matter was thus settled. He did not say where this record book came from or where it should go.
I do not know whether you know this way. In the Bible there are arrangements and there is a record book, but the Bible does not emphasize the details related to this record book. God does not want to spend the effort to speak even two more sentences about it. What is there is sufficient for us when we need to carry out some affairs. There is a principle that there is the need for a record book. The principle of a record book is here, but as to the way of setting up this record book, you and I need to pray: “Lord, we know that in the early church there was a record book, but we do not know how to set it up. Lord, teach us how to do it.” We know that there are arrangements in the church on the one hand, and we need to endeavor before God to find the way on the other hand. God is not willing to lay out before us in the Bible a detailed form of a record book that we can conveniently use to know how to do the work so that we do not need to pray at all. Please remember that God is not willing to do this.
Brothers, I want you to see this before God. Do not pay attention to the method for doing things, because that is dead. Once you pay attention to the method, you will make things dull and deadened. The methods will be set up in such a strong way that one day, when the spiritual blessing is lost, the empty frame of a corpse will still remain. Neither do I want the brothers and sisters to be careless, not expending even a little effort to find out how to take care of affairs, nor ever considering a way to do things in the church. This is also wrong. The Bible does not tell us how to work, but there is a principle in doing things. Today we need to seek out that way. It is not that God does not have a way; God does have a way. Let us be careful never to be so spiritual that we do not have any methods at all. There was still a method there—“Distributed to each, as anyone had need.” We still need to carry this out.
If there were only seven or eight believers in a local church or if there were only two or three gathered into the name of the Lord, we would not need a business office. If there are a good number of saints in a locality, one hundred, several hundred, or more than a thousand, it would be difficult and confusing without a business office. This is the first problem. Today we want to see something regarding the methods the apostles used to do things in their time.
From my point of view, the second thing that I want to specifically point out is the principle of the record book. This is the principle of the widows being enrolled in the record book. If the record book were a method instead of a principle, then God would have told us the length and the thickness of it and its format. But God described the record book in a very brief way. Therefore, you are able to know that there is a principle of the record book. If anything in God’s Word is described with only one phrase without any details, then you know that that matter is a principle in the Bible and is, therefore, not in detail.