It is very helpful to try your best to make an appointment with certain ones whom you are going to visit through others who know them. You can make an appointment through your relatives, through your classmates, or through your colleagues. After preaching the gospel to your colleague, you may ask him to recommend you to his relatives or neighbors. Then you can telephone this person before going to visit him so that you may get to know him over the phone. We must learn to pick up many ways to go to people to get them saved. This is just like doing business.
The church in our locality may not be stirred up to preach the gospel, yet we may be stirred up. Those of us who are stirred up to preach the gospel need to be careful not to have an attitude that will offend those who have not yet been stirred up. In the church, we must be very general in our attitude, but we must be very faithful in our work. We should neither oppose door-knocking nor be too much for door-knocking. We should always be general in our attitude. There is no need to boast, but rather, we should always exercise not to offend one another. Whatever we do should be done in a wise and proper way.
We should bring the new ones to the church meetings right away. We were cautious in bringing the new ones to the church meetings in Taipei at first because the church meetings had become old. This was a valid concern, but also somewhat of a loss. If you baptize one and only go to his home for a few weeks, it becomes more difficult to bring him to the meetings of the church. It may create a habit in him of just loving and preferring to have home meetings. If you go out today and one gets baptized, you should suggest to him that tomorrow you will bring him to a meeting of the church. You must do everything you can to help him get to a church meeting. The best way is to give him a ride. This is the proper care of the newly baptized ones.
It is also good to invite the unbelieving ones to the church meetings. We can let them know when the church in our locality will have a meeting. We can offer them a ride and bring them with us. It is good to have some tracts or other literature to leave with them which have the address of the church meeting hall. Then on a certain day, the Holy Spirit will work to burden them to go to the church meeting.
Paul said that our labor is not in vain in the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58). If we will labor for the Lord in many ways, some results will issue forth. You may visit someone this week, and it may seem that nothing has happened. Then another gospel team may go to visit them, and they will be baptized. Such a thing happened in Taipei. One man was finally convinced by the fifth gospel team that came to visit him. He got baptized, fully expecting a sixth team to come to him if he put it off longer. He became convinced because of the persistence of the saints. He rejected them four times, but he received the Lord when the fifth team came to visit him. This is a good example of our need to go and to continue to go. We must go until the unbelievers become convinced and subdued. We should not only go to them, but also invite them to come to the meetings. We should invite everyone. We should keep going until they get convinced and subdued. Sooner or later they will receive the Lord and be baptized. We all must be very exercised to see this carried out.
After bringing someone to the Lord and baptizing him into the Triune God, we should begin to have home meetings with him right away. We should not delay in having the home meetings.
After gaining some for the Lord, it is good for us to testify of some of the good cases in the church meetings in order to encourage others. Such testimonies in the meetings of the church will be convincing to others. However, these testimonies should not be too long, or they will become boring. If we will speak for one or two minutes, others will also have time to testify, and more saints will be convinced by many testimonies.
Home | First | Prev | Next