If the elders would classify the brothers and sisters according to their condition and would try to make the dead ones alive, how busy they would be! I worked in this way before the revival in Chefoo. For three years, I went to the meeting hall every morning at 10:30 and stayed until 11:30 each evening. This was what I did the whole day long, considering what kind of leading each person needed and whether I should personally lead them or have others help them. Some who are sitting here can testify the kind of stirring, visitation, and fellowship there was in those days! How did we arrive at such a state? It was because one man was there continually stirring others up. To use the language of the world, he kept promoting until everyone had to act and go out! I worked in this way for three years. By the end of 1942, there were at least eighty or ninety brothers and sisters out of one hundred who were very living. In a short time the revival of the church broke out.

I am very clear about the condition of the meetings in all the places today. Although everyone has life, the big question is whether or not they are living. The dormant ones are, of course, not living. But even many of the ones who are able to come to the meetings are not living. How much work there is involved to cause these brothers and sisters to come alive.

Perhaps someone would feel that this is too artificial. If you say this, I can only plead before you in tears that you are too spiritual. If no one beseeches with tears and prays in earnestness, and if no one seeks after the sinners through storm and rain to preach the gospel to them, will they be saved merely by everybody being so spiritual? Let me say this: if you can weep for three days and three nights, and then work for three days to bring a person to salvation, even if this is artificial, it is still the right thing to do. When God works, He needs man's cooperation. We have never seen a place where God has worked while those under Him were lazy. On the contrary, we have seen everywhere that those who are greatly used by the Lord are all diligent. God's work requires man's cooperation.

In Taipei, there are over three thousand brothers and sisters who do not attend the meetings regularly. Even of those who come, I am afraid that less than half are alive. This is one chief work within the elders' administration. You should find it unbearable to see so many brothers and sisters there not being living, yet you are still serving as an elder in peace. You must have a burden within to beseech the Lord and to find a way. I wish to tell the brothers that if you serve as an elder this way, very soon the fat ones will become the thin ones. This is not a joke. Church administration is not an easy matter. It has to do with the life and death, the blessings and woes, of a large number of people.