In the entire time of my ministry, I have not been as burdened as I am in these days concerning how the church should go on. Recently, I became clear that we must begin to take action, regardless of whether or not we feel that we have been adequately prepared. Without any burden of work, it is difficult to have a burden of prayer. The first step we need to take is to contact the saints who are not in the groups which we have. A number of the saints may be weaker and older, and they do not have the capacity to act that much and be in the vital groups. We should not go to contact them first, but go to contact the ones whom we feel can be made vital and whom we can bring into our vital groups. The first step in our action is not to contact the unbelieving sinners or our relatives and neighbors, but to contact the meeting members who are not yet vital. We need to pray and choose someone whom we can contact.
We may also feel led by the Lord to recover certain backsliding ones. Some of us should pick up the burden to recover them and make them vital. In recovering a backsliding one, we should not talk too much. Instead, we should go to visit him again and again. We should be prepared to take one year to recover one person. In these days we need to go to contact the ones who can be made vital, including certain ones who have backslidden. When they become vital, they may be more vital than we are.
On the average each of our groups has about eight persons. When you bring one to your group, this does not mean that he is vitalized yet. He is still not vitalized, but he may like to come to your vital group meeting. When we bring two more to join our group and we reach ten saints, we should divide our group into two groups of five each.
Sometimes the right person can get someone revived just by one contact. A certain brother may be working on another backslidden brother for three years, without anything happening. But someone else may have one contact with this backslidden one, and he may want to go to your group meeting just through that one contact.
Previously we said that we need to wait and consider when the time is ripe for us to bring a new one to the group meeting. In these days I feel that we should not wait. If they want to come to our group meetings, bring them in. When we reach ten saints in our group, we should divide into two groups of five. When a group of five brings a new one in, they should all work on that one to fully recover him, revive him, and make him vital. This is a mutual work.
Perhaps a brother who is being recovered would come to our meeting and ask, “Why has the church become so dormant?” One of the saints may say, “I confess my responsibility. The church became dormant because of me. But, hallelujah, just three days ago I got revived.” This is a kind of teaching and fellowship. Then the others may share their experience concerning being revived or the need to be revived. This is our mutual meeting, our vital group. If the five members of a group work on one saint in this way, he can be recovered and made vital. He may return home from the meeting and tell his wife how impressed he was with the functioning of all the saints and how he was touched by the Lord.
We should preach the gospel in the same way. We can bring our gospel contacts to the group. When they come to our group meeting, we must learn how to behave ourselves so that we do not stumble them. They may not know how to ask questions, but we can ask questions for them, and all of us can function to answer them in order to help them get saved.
Each of our vital group meetings presently has about eight members. When we gain two more and reach ten members, we should divide. We should use one evening each week to come together and bring our new contacts to the meeting. Regardless of how many contacts you have, bring them into your meeting. Then you need to learn. Do not learn to be dumb. Learn to be active. Learn to be vital, to speak. Do not be fearful of making mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, you will never learn. If no one among the five persons in the group says anything, this will be a dormant and dumb meeting. All of us must learn to be active and not be concerned about making mistakes. We all have to function, and we must be prepared to make mistakes and learn from these mistakes to be perfected. In these days we need to pray desperately with a real burden. Now is the time for us to fight the battle and gain those in the church who are not yet vital.
I believe that the way to help us be more vital is for us to contact others. If we wait any longer to contact others, we will never be vital. Every week we should set apart one day in which we contact others. We also need to have a vital group meeting one evening a week in addition to the regular meetings of the church. We still should attend the Lord’s Day morning meeting and the prayer meeting.
We must set aside one day each week for the sake of gaining others. If we have the burden to recover someone who has not been in the meetings for a long time, we need to pray for him. We may even need to fast and pray. Then we will receive the Lord’s leading to contact him, either by phoning him or going to visit him. If there is a will to gain people, there is a way to gain them. We believe this. We must ask the Lord to give us someone to gain for Him. We cannot be idle. We must gain someone who is not yet vitalized. We must bear a burden to vitalize that one, to make that one vital. Then we will realize that we first need to be vitalized.
After we have finished contacting all the non-vital members, including the backsliding ones, we can begin to contact the sinners, including our relatives, neighbors, and colleagues. We have to pray and ask the Lord to give us someone to labor on. If we have such a desire, the Lord will give us the proper persons. We need to pray desperately as we take action with the Lord to contact others. We should tell the Lord that we do not want to be dormant and that we do not want others in the church to be dormant. We need to be vitalized by the Lord and then go to vitalize others.
We have to make our group meetings so interesting. If our vital group meetings are full of truth, are living, and if we intimately love one another in the group, this will be a big attraction. We must have a living, active vital group. Then we should do our best to bring in the middle-aged ones.
Brother Watchman Nee stressed that the priesthood in the New Testament is universal, so he encouraged all the saints to serve, to be priests. We have not yet had a complete success in this matter. After I came to the United States, the Lord showed us that we need to pray-read His Word and call upon His name. We also began to practice having a time in the meeting for the saints to share after a message was given. This helped to bring the saints into more functioning. But the most prevailing way to bring all the saints into function is for them to enter into the group meetings in a living and active way.
Our groups should not be dormant, lifeless, and cold. If our groups are like this, no one will want to attend them. We have to keep our group meetings so interesting, so living, and so attractive. People need a proper social life, but to be social in a worldly way leads to sin. The church social life in the recovery leads to light, to the deeper and higher truths, and to the divine life. I believe if we could get our practice exposed to others, they will be attracted. The group meetings which are living, attractive, and full of activities will be used by the Lord to gain others for the increase and building up of the church.
Everyone should bear a burden for the vital groups. Do not despise your burden and your portion. If a new one comes into a group meeting and all the members of the group meeting speak, he will be surprised and attracted. Our group meetings must be living and active, with all the members in the group speaking.
According to my experience, the most attractive thing is the thorough fellowship. In your vital groups, you must always practice the thorough, intimate fellowship. This brings in the mutual care in love. If a new one comes to our group and sees this kind of intimate, open, thorough fellowship and mutual care, he will be inspired. He would say that he has never seen people who are so one and who love, open to, and care for one another so much. He would say, “This is the place where I should be. I have to be among these people.” This kind of intimate fellowship and care for one another attracts people, so we have to practice this.
We must do everything we can to strengthen the vital groups. We should spend every drop of our blood, every bit of our strength, and every minute of our time to strengthen the vital groups, making the vital groups so beautiful, so high, and so attractive. This is the only thing we should stress to get people. A number of things can attract people, but not so effectively as the vital groups.