Why have we not practiced what we saw in the past ten years? There are reasons for this, one inward and the other outward. The outward reason is that all the nations have a Lord’s Day message meeting, and if we do not have one among us, we fear that without a message to listen to many brothers and sisters will go to other places to listen to messages. However, if this is the case, we should realize how few are the priests among us. Many among us still want to be those who are served, and we are not able to be those who serve. To be a priest is not a matter of being served, but a matter of serving. To be one who listens to messages is to be served, not to serve. This is the outward problem.
The inward problem is that if there is not a Lord’s Day message meeting, many brothers and sisters, after being Christians for ten or twenty years, will feel that this is absolutely different from their former habit as Christians. They will feel that being a Christian today is different from what it was in the past. This is also a problem.
Today I want to discuss with the brothers and sisters what we should do concerning this matter. The words that I speak here are only suggestions, not my preaching, because we must see accurately before we can practice.
To this day I have not been able to find the Lord’s Day message meeting once in the Bible. Especially in a local church, you can see that there is no way to maintain a Lord’s Day message meeting. If a local church wants to strengthen the Lord’s Day message meeting, then it must have a worker. Whether you call him a worker or a pastor, it is the same. There is still someone to maintain the Lord’s Day message meeting.
What has our situation become? Among us we do not believe in the priestly system. We are all priests. We do not believe in the priestly system disguised as the clergy system, we do not believe in the priestly system disguised as the pastoral system, and neither do we believe in the priestly system disguised as a system of workers. Hence, if we do not resolve this matter, when we go out, we cannot expect to be able to work in a proper way. We must learn to raise up all the brothers and sisters to be priests. When all come to serve, those among us who are being served will decrease. We must abolish the class of those who are being served. If there are still those who are being served and who expect others to be the priests while they remain simply as God’s people, there will never be a way to eliminate the Lord’s Day message meeting. There will never be a way to have the representation of the Body in that locality, because there will always be those who are passive, who listen to others speak, and who do not speak themselves. If the church wants to be successful as the church and successful as the Body of Christ in a locality, then the entire Body must serve. The service of the entire Body is that all the people, whether five-talented, two-talented, or one-talented, rise up to serve God. Please remember, this is the requirement for a group to become the Body of Christ.
I believe that the way of the church is as follows: Save and gain a person from outside, and after he is saved, immediately put him into the work so as not to produce the habit of listening to messages on the Lord’s Day. We need to change to the habit of working on the Lord’s Day. I believe that our failure over these ten years will be completely changed from today. In these ten years we have taught that it is right for the saints to have the habit of listening to messages on the Lord’s Day; we have not replaced it with something. We did not substitute preaching with working on the Lord’s Day. Today we have found that working on the Lord’s Day is what should be done and what is proper. Because our practice has not been proper, that which is wrong has come in.