In the Lord’s new way to carry out the increase and spread of the church, we have discovered that setting up home meetings is more difficult than going out to knock on doors and baptize people. We must endeavor to learn how to raise up home meetings. We must pray for a living way to bring the new believers onward that they may grow in life, in knowledge, and in function as members of the Lord’s Body. I would encourage you to read the following books on the home meetings which have been recently published by Living Stream Ministry: Key Points on the Home Meetings; The Home Meetings—The Unique Way for the Increase and the Building Up of the Church; The Living Needed for Building Up the Small Group Meetings; and On Home Meetings.
A piano student must follow his teacher’s instructions to play in the trained way. Likewise, we must practice the New Testament economy in the trained way and not in a way according to our natural disposition. Apparently, it is easy to visit people by knocking on their doors, but in recent years we have found that there is a science to knocking on doors. The Lord’s new way is effective, but it only works in the trained, disciplined way, not in the natural way. Once we take the natural way, knocking on doors becomes ineffectual.
We need more training to set up home meetings. We may consider that coming together to meet is easy and can be done in a natural way. Anyone can gather a group of people to have a meeting in a natural or religious way, but to have a proper Christian meeting according to God’s ordained way is not easy. The religious way always teaches people to give reverence to God and to worship Him. Christians and unbelievers can come together to worship God according to their natural thought in a natural and religious way. Many in Christendom are nominal Christians who have many concepts concerning how to worship God. First, they may consider that in gathering to worship God there is the need of a chapel or a cathedral. Then after coming into the place of worship, they would look for the leader. According to Christianity’s traditional way of meeting there must also be a choir. Without the priest or pastor and a choir, some might consider that this is not the proper place to come to worship God. In a traditional service there is usually the formal reading of the Bible, and after the service the attendants wait for a blessing or benediction from the pastor. Without these traditional, religious, and formal things, many would not consider their meeting to be the proper worship of God. The background of our culture, family, and history can have an influence on the way we meet. We must forget about the natural, religious way of meeting according to the traditional way of Christianity. Singing is effective for the new way, but even singing could be made religious if we sing apart from Christ.
In preaching the gospel, teaching the truth, leading people to worship God, and setting up meetings, what is most crucial is that these things be done in the spirit. In John 4:24 the Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit....” God’s substance is Spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit, that is, in our spirit which has been touched, inspired, regenerated, and indwelt by the Spirit of God. Worshipping God is altogether a matter of the divine Spirit and the human spirit. God is the divine Spirit and He created us with a human spirit for us to contact Him as the Spirit.
Some of the fundamental denominations in Christianity do not like to talk about the Spirit. Many preachers do not preach anything concerning the Spirit because to them the Spirit is too abstract. They do not help people to do anything in the Spirit, so it is very difficult for them to have a proper Christian gathering. At the other extreme, the Pentecostals were raised up in the middle of the preceding century. They stressed the Spirit very much, but they did it in an improper way. In 1932 I attended a meeting with Brother Nee in my home province. Some there were clapping their hands, some were jumping, and others were shouting, crying, and laughing. The pastor was not able to exercise any control in the meeting. After about half an hour, he went to the podium and told the people to stop and be quiet. They did not hear him and continued to shout and clap. After he rang a bell a few times, the noise stopped. Then Brother Nee went to the podium and spoke concerning the loving father and the prodigal son in Luke 15, while the congregation waited for the end of his message. Are we going to set up the home meetings in such a way? We must not set up the home meetings according to the fundamental or the Pentecostal way.
Taiwan is mostly a Buddhist country. When we set up Christian meetings there, the new ones realize that they should not do it according to their background of Buddhism. But in the Western world with the background of Christianity it is quite complicated. Some of this background may be hidden in your heart. If you go out to set up home meetings, what kind of meetings will you set up? Some of you have been with the Pentecostals. Are you going to set up a Pentecostal meeting? Some of you have been with the Brethren. Are you going to set up that kind of meeting?
In 1984 I went back to Taiwan to change the way of meeting. I told the saints that they should not begin the meeting by selecting a hymn or by reading the Bible. I likewise said not to begin the meeting by praying or by giving a message as a pastor. That really bothered the saints. They wondered how they could begin a meeting without any of these things. I even told them not to begin the meeting by calling on the name of the Lord. Perhaps even calling on the Lord might be a religion in the churches. In order to take the new way, we have to drop all the old ways we have picked up and all the things we are accustomed to doing.
The New Testament speaks of many meetings. The Lord Jesus met with the five thousand (John 6:10), and He met with a great crowd on the seashore (Matt. 13:1-2). After His resurrection, He met with His disciples in Galilee (John 20:26-31; 21:1-14). We have published a book entitled How to Meet, but the more one reads that book the more he may not know how to meet. Within that book, however, is the New Testament reality of the way to meet. The way to meet is to drop all the natural, religious ways of Christianity by turning to our spirit and living a normal life in the spirit.
Every kind of natural or religious gathering is a performance. The attendants are actors, and their meeting is a “theater.” When they come into the meeting, they come as to a theater to act with a mask. A hypocrite, according to Greek, was a stage-actor, one who spoke with a mask. Such were the Pharisees. They were actors; in the meetings they acted in a manner different from their living. The proper Christian meeting, however, should be a living in the meeting that matches our living at home. There should be no performance. We must live properly, speak properly, dress properly, and express ourselves properly. To behave poorly in our daily life but come to the meeting and behave properly is a performance. That is not genuine. Rather, that is a lie and a cheating to people. The traditional meetings of Christianity are “theaters” where people perform.
The way to set up home meetings is first to forsake Christianity’s traditional, natural, and religious way of meeting. In the four Gospels the Lord Jesus never set up a schedule of meetings, and He had no meeting hall. In Acts also there were many activities and spontaneous meetings, but there is no record to tell us exactly how they met. Acts only tells us that they preached, taught, broke bread, prayed, and had fellowship (Acts 2:42; 5:42). Let us not bring in anything old from Christianity into the new home meetings. We must start to practice the God-ordained way to meet by forsaking the old way.