When you go out to visit people, do not care for the number, but care for the family. Our goal is not to get only one individual. Our goal is to get one family. When we talk to people, our talk must pave the way to get the whole family. If it is only a couple, we have to have the goal not merely to gain the wife or the husband but to gain both. If the mother is pregnant, we must have the intention that we will gain this child also. We should gain every member of the family.
This message is very practical. Simply go out and practice. Go out for ten months every year, once a week for two to three hours. Try this with patience. Do not be concerned with the numbers; simply pay attention to practicing continuously. I assure you that you will get ten baptized, and of the ten, two will remain. Do not worry about the other eight. Even though they may not come into the church life, they will be in the New Jerusalem.
When you go, always exercise to gain the whole family. If you are preaching the gospel to a seventeen-year-old young man, you have to consider his parents. By baptizing this young man, you may spoil your work on the whole family. You have to exercise your wisdom to decide whether you should baptize him or not. If you do not baptize him, this does not mean that you give him up. Rather, this is a kind of preparation for you to get his parents and to get his whole family. If you go out persistently, you can gain at least two solid families each year.
We must go out in a way that is according to the Bible. In the full-time training, we have formed the trainees into teams of three. We sent two teams each to about eight new cities and instructed them what to do. They must go there to knock on doors to get people saved and baptized, but without an expectation that they will get a large number baptized. After sixteen weeks of labor, these six saints can gain at least ten to twelve as remaining fruit. When they baptize one, they immediately have to give him some nourishment before leaving. Then they have to make an appointment with him to come back the next day or the day after. In not more than three days, they must come back to visit him. They should immediately begin home meetings with all the newly baptized ones. They must go back regularly and frequently to have home meetings.
When the first Lord’s Day comes, they should bring the new ones from these new localities to the nearby church meetings to give them an impression of the church. Then on the next Lord’s Day, they should meet with all these newly baptized ones in their new localities. The six trainees could meet together on the Lord’s Day to have the Lord’s table with the three or four newly saved and baptized ones in that new locality. In this way, after one or two weeks there will be a new church raised up. This does not mean that all the ones who will come to the Lord’s table with them will remain. On the one hand, the trainees will meet with the new ones in home meetings, in small group meetings, and on the Lord’s Day; on the other hand, they will still go out to get more new ones for the remainder of the sixteen weeks. Because the trainees go out at least three times a week, they can gain at least eight in their new city in sixteen weeks. Then when they go away at the end of the term, there can be a small church of eight to twelve in that city, and the nearby churches may spend some time to help them and teach them. In this way they can have contact with the nearby churches to have fellowship. After about two months, we will have another term of training, and some new trainees can go to help them.
This is the practical way we are taking to form new local churches. After four months, I expect to have seven or eight new small churches established in these nearby cities. The biblical way is for the local churches to be raised up from a small number. Not long after the day of Pentecost, persecution came upon the thousands of believers in Jerusalem and scattered them. Acts 8 tells us that, except for the apostles, all the saints in Jerusalem were scattered (v. 1). We do not know the details, but we are told that these thousands of saints “who were scattered went about the land bringing the good news of the word” (v. 4). Wherever they went they preached the gospel, and no doubt, churches were raised up by them. If you go out to a new city and three or five begin meeting together with you, all of you are a local church. If you practice the God-ordained way, you will see the propagation of the churches. Eventually, every city can have a small church.
My burden in this message is that you who go out to practice the New Testament priesthood of the gospel would not bother or criticize those who do not go out. I would also ask those who do not go out to allow the others the liberty to go out and not to criticize them. Then the Lord will have a way. What I have been sharing with you is only one-fourth of the proper church life. We should go out in this way only once a week. This leaves many days for the remainder of the church life-the big meetings on the Lord’s Day, the prayer meeting, the small group meetings, etc. If we practice the New Testament priesthood of the gospel, the church will be like a vine continually propagating on the earth. We should be simple and take the biblical way, the God-ordained way. We should not try to do too much too quickly. We must be balanced and steady. We should go out faithfully once a week for about two or three hours. While we are practicing, we will learn how to discern people, how to say the right things, and how to prepare the way to gain the whole family.
As a young man or a young lady, you must have a proper bearing when you go to talk to people. Do not talk to people loosely or lightly. Even though you are young, you must have a certain dignity so that people will regard you with respect. Your speaking should win people’s respect. Then they will put their trust in you. Even though they are older and you are younger, they will respect and take whatever you say. You all have to learn this; it is very important. Do not say things lightly or quickly. If you build up trust with people, you can always go back to visit them.
Once you gain a person, do not forget that the goal is to gain the whole family. Therefore, in your wording, in your expression, and even in your tone of voice, you must learn to express gravity and dignity to win people’s confidence. Then you will always be able to go back to visit them. Never expect to have a quick work. Simply labor consistently and persistently, and while you are laboring, exercise your wisdom concerning how to labor. Every day’s work must prepare the way for the future. No farmer expects to sow today and reap tomorrow. This is against God’s ordained principle in nature. You have to be careful and diligent to do everything in the proper way so that your crop will grow. Eventually, you will reap a harvest.
The elders must try their best to stir up the saints to practice the New Testament priesthood of the gospel. They should be able to get at least one-third of the saints to do this. If more would rise up, that would be wonderful. But if the Lord can get one-third of the saints to practice the priesthood of the gospel, the results will be marvelous. We should not try to baptize too many in a quick way. We must preach the gospel and minister Christ to others with much discernment. Then gradually, the church will reap a harvest. After five years, the practice of the New Testament priesthood of the gospel will become prevailing on the earth.
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