The training in door-knocking and gospel preaching in Taipei is very strict, with definite principles guiding our timing and the content of our speaking. For example, we can leave if the door is not opened within half a minute after knocking. Also, we all should use the gospel booklet “The Mystery of Human Life.” This booklet always hits the mark in preaching the gospel. As for baptism, our practice in the past was to wait after someone was saved until the following week to have a baptism interview with him, and only then baptize him. We can compare baptism to the way sisters stir-fry vegetables. The timing and the control of temperature are very crucial; once you miss the right temperature, the vegetables will not turn out well even if you try to fry them again. The baptisms in the past were too formal. To wait for a week to baptize someone after he believes in the Lord and after he has a baptism interview, is too formal. Baptism is the first step of man’s salvation that he needs to take after he believes, because “he who believes and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). Moreover, when we baptize people, we baptize them into the Triune God. This is the first thing the Lord wants us to do.
The second thing is to establish home meetings, which is for bearing remaining fruit. In the past, whether in Taiwan or in the United States, the fruit we bore rarely remained. Sometimes we baptized more than ten people, yet we could not keep even one of them. This is like a mother, who after giving birth to seven children, cannot keep even one of them alive. Why is this? It is because they are not cared for. After we baptize people, if we do not look after them and feed them, it is the same as begetting children but not caring for them. This is why the newly saved ones never remained.
In practicing the new way, the Lord has shown us that right after baptizing people we should invite them to establish a home meeting. To establish a home meeting is to establish a protection, not only to protect the new ones, but also to protect ourselves. Then we should go back and visit them in two days. There is no mother who does not love her child when she sees him. We all love whom we beget, and we are willing to go and see them repeatedly; the more we see them, the more we want to see them. Therefore, this is a mutual safeguard between us and the new ones. We meet with them in their homes in a very normal way; this is the meeting of the church. How sweet it is when we lead the new ones to break bread and pray together!
In this way, none of the brothers and sisters will be idle. We truly desire to open a way that all may go out door-knocking. After knocking on doors, we bring people to believe and be baptized, and then we establish meetings in the homes of all the new ones. After we have baptized a person in this way, this person becomes a child begotten by us, so we must go and visit him. When we go visit him, even if there is nothing to say, even if we go only to see him, he is still cherished. When a mother has given birth to a child, although the child is not able to speak yet, the mother still plays with him and speaks to him, and in so doing she cherishes the child. Our care for the new ones should be the same.
It is not easy when we first go out door-knocking, but one day, when a person is baptized, this new one will stir us up. After two days, we will go and visit him again, and he will become our responsibility. If this continues, one after another, every one of us will have something to do.
A few days after their baptism, some may want to go door-knocking with us and learn how to preach the gospel. We should then take them through the entire course, going out together to baptize people and to meet, teach the truth, and supply life in the new one’s homes. After a few months they will be able to do so accordingly. In this way all the saints are put into action, each fulfilling his duty, and the clergy system naturally ceases to exist.
However, in order for there to be fellowship among the saints, we can have a gathering of the entire assembly every two months. Perhaps on the first Lord’s Day of every month the whole church can gather together for the breaking of bread, for some messages, and for some fellowship so that the saints may know one another and all may be encouraged.
This way of door-knocking and visiting people to preach the gospel and establish meetings in their homes is absolutely the right way. May all of us practice it. From now on there will not be only the speaking of the elders and co-workers in the churches, which annuls the functions of the saints. That is the old way; that is not meeting in the new way. We all should go out door-knocking to establish meetings one by one in this way. If someone is saved through door-knocking, we should establish a meeting in his home. If another one is saved through door-knocking, we should also establish a meeting in his home. If these two homes are close to each other, after two or three weeks they can have a joint meeting so that they can get to know one another.
In the past our meetings were full of old stories, and after meeting for a few decades we still talked about the same old things. Eventually, we lost our taste and excitement for the meetings; all we saw were the same old faces. The meeting in the practice of the new way does not have idle talk and does not pass the time in boredom. Rather, the meetings are with mutual questioning and answering, all learning the truth together. This is the way we should take today.
(A message given in the Lord’s table meeting on January 18, 1987 in Anaheim.)