Christianity’s way to meet is according to the natural concept. In human history you could see this kind of congregation. Even the Greek word ekklesia was a word for a called out congregation of a city. A call was given that all the city people should come together for a certain purpose, so there was a congregation. Thus, to meet in today’s Christianity way, to have the great congregations, is altogether natural, worldly, according to human society. I have never heard of any kind of movement or any kind of culture which invented this way of meeting in every home. Such a thing is only in the Bible. At the very initiation of the church life the saints met from house to house. This is quite extraordinary. This is not following the natural way.
Our problem today is that we were born natural. We were born into the worldly way. Even before we were saved, when we were invited to come to the “church,” we would ask who the speaker would be. If we were told Doctor So-and-so would be speaking, then we would come. This is the natural way. Even among us, if the announcement is given that there is to be a meeting next Saturday, many of us would ask who the speaker would be. Who will speak may decide whether or not we will come. This has been wrought into our blood. If we mean business with the Lord to see the real increase of the church and the building up of the church we must repudiate the Christianity way. We must get this blood out of our being. I still treasure the big meetings, but if we have only the big meetings we are like a 747 that has only one wing. How could we fly? We need the two sides. We need the big meetings and the small meetings as well.
You may ask, “Without the big meetings how could we have the increase?” In the sixties when I came to this country, the evangelist Dr. Billy Graham was promoting small group meetings. Because Billy Graham found out that many brought to the gospel were scattered in the denominations and eventually became cold, he encouraged people to form small groups to have Bible study and to pray together. What he promoted was the same in principle as what we are talking about. Although thousands of people may be brought in without the small groups, how many of them could remain? There is no way. It is just like bringing the water out of a deep well and pouring it on the earth. All the water will sink back. We may get the increase, but without the small group meetings they cannot remain in the church to be built up.
Even in Taiwan over a hundred thousand were baptized through our preaching, but I doubt if twenty percent are left. So many were lost because of no home meetings. This is absolutely different from what was practiced in the early days after Pentecost. At Pentecost through the big congregations people were brought in and right away they were put into the home meetings. In the home meetings they were upheld, in the home meetings they were kept, in the home meetings they grew, and in the home meetings they were built up together.
We should not despise the big meetings, but we must match the big meetings with the small groups. We should pay sixty percent of our attention to the small meetings and only forty percent to the big meetings. But I am a little concerned that many pay eighty percent or more of their attention to the big meetings. Many, according to their concept, would say that they prefer to go to the big meetings rather than the home meetings. We need a change of concept! We need both. Without one brother purchasing the materials and collecting them, surely we could not have built this hall. But after the collection of the materials we surely needed another brother to assign all these materials to the builders. In the building of the hall we had a good situation, but today in the building of the church we are short of this. I say this especially to the leading ones of all the churches; what you have been doing is just to maintain a meeting situation of the church. As you do not have small groups, how could you have the building up? It is impossible. I still remember meeting with the Brethren assembly for seven and a half years. Every week I attended five meetings. Yet there was very little contact with any of the others. Of course, we are much better than that. After the meeting we have much contact with each other, but we still do not have much positive building because we are short of the home meetings. We must see the need of the home meetings. Without home meetings there can be no building.