You need to contact people directly and individually, laboring in the gospel two to three hours every week. You should find out who is available for you to contact and then contact them directly and continually over a long period of time. You will gain one of them. If you take this way of directly contacting people one by one, I can assure you that you will bring two people into the church every year. You should make a decision and tell the Lord that you will spend two to three hours every week in the gospel. Then ask the Lord to lead you to contact people one by one. You should not stop going to the church meetings. You should still live your regular church life. You do not need to promote what you are doing. You just need to go and do it. Then gradually some will see what you are doing, and they will join you.

We have tried many ways in the last six years, and they may work, but they do not work satisfactorily. Only the way of contacting people directly brings a satisfactory result. We need to plan how to contact our acquaintances. We have to keep working on one of them directly, individually, and continuously. To get someone saved and established takes about six months, and to bring them into the church will take another six months. We may think that to bring one or two a year into the church life is too slow. But this slow way is actually the quick way. If twenty are meeting together in a locality, and five of them bring two people into the church life, that is a fifty percent increase. I can assure you that this can be worked out. Any other way will waste our time.

As branches of the Lord, we should give Him three hours a week for the gospel. Then we can pray, "Lord, lead me, teach me, and give me the wisdom in planning, in scheduling my time, in making appointments, and in talking to people." Then we should practice this directly and definitely. Surely we will gain people for the Lord's kingdom.

We have to change our concept concerning having a preacher with a preaching meeting. We ourselves need to labor directly to bring one or two into the church life yearly. This should be a goal in our labor. We love the church, but we may not have brought one person into the church in the past five years. We must have a definite beginning. We must practice contacting people to bring definite fruit into the church. We also need to practice the church life in group meetings and in larger prophesying meetings. This is really needed. But we need the adequate number as a base for our practice of the church life. The elders need to work two to three hours in the gospel every week to bring one or two remaining fruit into the church within a year. If the elders do this, others will rise up to follow. We should not give any announcement about this or promote it. We have been doing this for years, with little result. Promotion does not work. We need to labor ourselves to build up a living example.

This is altogether up to our decision. Would we still remain in the natural way, or would we turn to this way, a way full of the need for learning? A working brother's job may occupy him to the uttermost, but he should still endeavor to save some time every week for definite laboring in the gospel. Many of us have been busy working for years with little result. We must change our way.

We must have a plan for reaching people. We should make a list of all our acquaintances and study their situation. Then we can work on them according to our study. This is the way to gain the proper persons. We should not leave our bearing of fruit to fortune. It is not a matter of fortune but a matter of labor. We all have acquaintances for whom we can pray. We need to consider them and pray for them. We need to study their situation and decide when the best time would be for us to visit them. Farmers do not labor in a loose way. They study the situation of their land, their crops, and the weather, and they labor accordingly so that they can reap a proper harvest. We need to be the same way in our labor to gain people. We must have a plan and a schedule to labor on people two to three hours every week. We need to learn how to gain people.