Since the building up of new believers is a basic training, I hope that all the local churches will have such a meeting—the new believers’ building-up meeting. Let me now cover some practical considerations.
As soon as a sinner has believed in the Lord and is baptized, he is a new believer. Starting from the week that he is baptized, he should attend the new believers meeting. After a year, he will have heard most of the things that he should hear and should have learned most of the things that he should learn. Then we can say that such a Christian has gone through the basic training. From that point on, we can expect him to receive further, deeper building up.
As soon as a sinner believes, he needs to attend the new believers meeting no matter how old he is, how educated he is, how high a position he occupies, or how experienced he is in the world. If his past is not torn down, it will be difficult for him to live a proper Christian life. Therefore, as soon as a person believes and is baptized, irrespective of who he is, we have to treat him as a new believer and invite him to the new believers meeting.
Those who have never gone through this kind of basic training, even though they have been believers for many years, can also attend the new believers meetings if they so desire. The purpose of these meetings is to tear down the old and build up the new. It is not a question of how many years a person has believed in the Lord but of how much of his past has been torn down since becoming a believer. I know a brother who has never confessed his sins to anyone in his whole life. Yet he is now a responsible brother! It does not matter how many years he has been a Christian. As far as his spiritual experience is concerned, he needs a fresh start and should join the new believers meeting.
In making arrangements for the new believers meeting, all the churches should try their best to set aside Wednesday or Thursday. Whether this meeting involves many people or few people, the whole congregation or small classes, it should be on Wednesday or Thursday. This should be done week after week. Whenever a new believer goes to another place that has a church, he should be able to join in immediately and not miss any lessons.
These short-term trainings are conducted by one brother (possibly one of the co-workers) when he gathers together all the brothers in a district or region who are capable of ministering the word. Every short-term training should cover at least ten to twenty lessons. By conducting three or four such trainings, all of the subjects will be covered. When these brothers return to their respective localities, they can bear the responsibility of teaching in the local new believers meeting.
A place such as Shanghai has many new believers. If we divide them into several dozen classes, we would need over a hundred leading ones. In order to take care of this, we can ask one brother to head up the matter by gathering the leading ones every week to train them. On the one hand, they can discuss the problems and the mistakes of the past week. On the other hand, they can study the topics for the following week. The best time to do this is Friday. If Friday is not available, it should be done no later than Monday. This will give them at least three to seven days to prepare their lessons, and they will not lose focus of the main points of the messages.
During the training sessions, if a new learner does not have a copy of the book, he will have to take notes. If he has the book, he must read the lesson carefully. If he comes across anything that he does not understand, he should ask, and everyone should discuss it together. They should consider what the main subject of the lesson is, how many sections it has, what the main points in each section are, and what the crucial words and important teachings in each section are. They should identify the things that need to be torn down and what needs to be built up. They should study the lesson section by section and ask questions while they listen. Then they should go to their respective classes the following Thursday to conduct their own meetings.