In this chapter we need to be impressed that the Lord needs to recover the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry. For this perfecting work to be carried out, we need to see the patterns of perfecting presented in the Scriptures.
Christ’s desire, as He promised in Matthew 16:18, is to build up the church which is His Body. He does this as the Head of the Body by giving the gifted persons to the church. The gifted persons surely do what they are capable of doing. The apostles establish churches, the prophets speak for the Lord, the evangelists preach the gospel, and the shepherds and teachers shepherd the church and teach the saints. Along with this work, the gifted persons do another work, that is, they perfect the saints. The Apostle Paul did much work to set up churches and establish elders, and while he was doing this, he perfected all the saints to do the same thing that he did. This perfecting work builds up the church as the Body of Christ.
The Body is not built directly by the Head or by the gifted persons but by the perfected saints. The Head and the gifted persons build the church indirectly, while the perfected saints do the direct building work. We have to see these three levels of building: first, the Head gives the gifts; second, the gifts perfect the saints; third, the perfected saints do the work to build up the church directly. This is clearly revealed in the New Testament, especially in Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 14, but we cannot see such a practice on this earth. We may have known Ephesians 4:11-16 and 1 Corinthians 14 in the past, but we took these portions of the Word for granted, thinking we understood them. The Lord has recently brought me into these two portions of the Word and my eyes have been opened to see their significance. I am burdened to see the real practice of these verses among us so that the Lord can accomplish His heart’s desire to build up His Body.
We have been so slow in practicing the scriptural way because we have been influenced by tradition, and now we are held back by our habit. Our habit is a great hindrance. We may understand Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 14, yet remain the same in our practice. If I had the way, I would go to each one of the saints and take them with me to preach the gospel by knocking on people’s doors. Then I would go with the saints to visit the homes of the newly baptized ones to cherish and nourish them. I would charge the saints to take care of these new ones as they would their own children. If we all did this, there would be a big change in our church life. Our church life today may be carried out merely in a routine way. The elders may schedule the prayer meeting and leave the rest of the week up to the saints for home meetings and small group meetings. They also may schedule the Lord’s Day meeting for us to come together to take the Lord’s table and share with one another. The situation among us, however, may remain the same week after week without the real progression into the Lord’s present recovery.
If we had been brought into Christ apart from the prevailing influence of traditional Christianity, our church life would be much different. Suppose that a group of us come to some people’s door, preach the gospel to them, and baptize them into the Triune God. Then we continue to meet with them twice a week, not in a formal way but in a practical and free way. We open the Bible to these new ones and tell them about the process the Lord went through to become the life-giving Spirit. We also share with them how the Lord is both in the heavens and within us, that is, in our spirit as the life-giving Spirit. Then we teach them and lead them into the practice of calling on the name of the Lord. At first, they may not have much feeling when they call, but as they keep practicing to call on the Lord’s name, they will have some inner sense, some inner feeling. After two months of being visited by us, there will be a big change not only in their concept but also in their daily walk and family life. Then we can tell them that as Christian brothers we should come together in our community, and we can bring them together for a group meeting with three or four other nearby new families, on whom we have been laboring. We can lead them into the proper practice of the Christian meeting, and begin to have the church life with them. We can help them to learn from us, perfecting them to do the same thing that we have been doing.
We should not tell them what an elder is because we do not want to teach them anything that is premature. When parents are raising their children, they only let them know certain things when they are ready to receive them at the appropriate stage of their growth in life. After a certain period of time, the new believers will say that they want to go on further with the Lord. At that point, perhaps when their number has grown to twenty or thirty, you can help them realize that they are the church in their locality, and in the church the leading ones are needed. This group of Christians would be in a situation absolutely different from today’s traditional Christianity. They would go out to knock on doors for the preaching of the gospel and go out to have home meetings. They would go to knock on the doors of their relatives, classmates, and colleagues, and they would perfect the new ones that they baptize to do what they are doing. They would all learn to have home meetings and group meetings, and they would learn to prophesy, to speak Christ. Such a church would be the top church.
Recently in Taipei the brothers have begun to carry out the work to evangelize the whole island of Taiwan. Five teams of twenty saints each went to five cities to raise up the church life. Within less than one week of visiting people door to door, they baptized over one hundred twenty. Each place gained over twenty new ones. I was a little concerned that they might be baptizing too many without enough nursing mothers to take care of the new ones. They told me, however, that according to their experience, about fifty percent will remain out of the ones that they baptize, so they intend to baptize fifty in each locality. After two weeks, two full-timers will remain in each locality to continually visit the homes of all the new ones, and eighteen remaining full-timers will go to a new locality to raise up another church. From the very beginning of their Christian life, the new ones will be brought into the scriptural way to practice the church life. All the new ones will learn how to do the same thing as the full-timers do to raise up the church. Every day the new believers are learning something new that they never heard or saw before. The twenty full-timers are working in each locality as patterns, and the new ones are learning from these patterns.