For the brothers and sisters to preach the gospel, there must not only be the zeal and the power without the truth; the elders have to spend the time to help them to know the truth. They have to teach them the meaning of repentance, redemption, substitution, regeneration, justification, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for the conviction of men. When the brothers and sisters have the zeal and the power to preach the gospel, they must not preach haphazardly; they must have the basis of the truth with them.
The elders must also help the brothers and sisters to receive guidance regarding the move in the gospel. They should not run without aim, wasting time or beating the air. Instead, they should be able to receive the Lord's leading.
When the brothers and sisters are raised up to preach the gospel, and they have the zeal, the power, the truth, and the guidance, they still need the elders' help in finding the people to preach to and the targets of the gospel. The elders have to point out that with some, the target should be their family, while with others, the target should be their schools. The elders have to teach the brothers and sisters to look for gospel targets among these people. They must help the brothers and sisters to consider everyone they know and those within their sphere as the targets and objects of the gospel. If you are a teacher, your school, colleagues, and students are your gospel targets. If you have a factory, the workers in your factory are the targets and the objects. In addition, all our relatives should be our gospel targets and objects.
The elders must also lead the brothers and sisters to learn the skill in preaching the gospel. If the brothers and sisters do not know how to preach the gospel or are not familiar with the skills of preaching the gospel, the church will not be a proper church. This can be compared to what happens in a family; it is a great joke for the children of a household not to be able even to cook their own rice or boil their own water. If a local church is properly managed, built up, and coordinated, most of the brothers and sisters should be able to preach the gospel. They should all have learned this skill.
For this reason, the elders have to spend time to teach the brothers and sisters to preach the gospel. They should teach them to pray for others, to visit others, to bring others to the gospel meetings, and to take other brothers and sisters along to preach the gospel. These are the outward and rough aspects of the job. Besides this, there are the inward and finer aspects of the work, which deal with the way to talk to people, the way to touch others' feeling during the conversation, the way to impress others' heart, the way to understand others' mind, the way to open up people's understanding, and the way to help others to pray. They should know when to argue, when to advance, when to debate even if the others do not want to debate, and when not to argue. They should know when to use the words of the Bible, when to ask them to confess their sins, and when to ask them to pray. All these require skill.