All of you have to learn to teach the saints. This does not mean teaching them in the meeting, but teaching them one by one in the homes during your visitation. This kind of teaching requires time. You may first pick out from among the brothers and sisters those whom you can lead on more easily. If you perfect two each week, in half a year, you will be able to perfect quite a few. In your small group a few will become capable, and the others will follow and learn. In this way, a good foundation will be laid. I have seen clearly that the success of the new way depends on some willing ones who learn first, and then in turn, pick up the burden to teach others.
In this matter, the full-time co-workers bear a big responsibility. Not only should they teach in the meetings, but they have to go to the homes of the saints and teach them mouth to mouth and one by one.
Those who are under our care in a small group must be able to do what we do. This kind of small group meeting will surely increase in number. When the number increases, we can subdivide the group. The small group meeting is the main part of the practice of the church life. In other words, the practical church life exists in the small groups. You may say that the small group meeting almost equals the church life. The small group has the ability to perfect people, helping them to know the truth, to grow in life, and to function organically. In this way, they will also be able to do what we can do. This is the church life.
Meetings of mutual speaking and listening are the prophesying meetings. The church in Taipei now practices this in the district meetings. In this kind of meeting, everyone has something to supply. In addition, all the prophesying in the meetings is for the building up of the saints and the church. Your prophesying is to speak for the Lord and speak forth the Lord’s riches. Moreover, you have to speak the Lord into people. Hence, there is the need to fully supply others with the riches of Christ.
When the saints are perfected to grow into maturity, being edified in truth and having the experience in life, they are enabled to prophesy. In this way Christ will be supplied to all His members, and the church will be built up organically. The preaching of the gospel by the priests of the gospel to gain sinners for an offering to God, their caring for and nourishing of the new ones, their leading them to grow in life and to present themselves living sacrifices to God, their perfecting of the saints by teaching them in all wisdom, and their presenting them full-grown in Christ to God, are all done for this one goal.
Prophesying is to speak for God for the building up of the church. This is the excelling gift among all gifts in the New Testament and is to be earnestly desired by those saints desiring spiritual gifts. It is what every believer can and must do.
Dear brothers and sisters, these are the crucial verses concerning the new way, the way ordained by the Lord, revealed in the Bible, and discovered by us through our research during the last four and a half years. I have presented them to you to give you a full picture. Since all of you love the Lord, I hope that you would spend some time to pursue and to learn these things. Sooner or later the Lord will have to recover the new way, for this is the word spoken by the Lord in the Bible. In the end times, I believe that the Lord will do this. If we are lazy and loose, we may delay the Lord’s work. But the Lord will not be delayed by man forever. Sooner or later He will find a group of people who put the new way into practice that His will may be fulfilled, that the church may be built, and that the bride of Christ may be fully prepared.
Please press on with this determination in mind. Beginning today, the elders and co-workers should pick up this heavy burden. You should teach not only in the meetings, but one by one in every home. The secret of the three levels of meetings—the home meetings, the group meetings, and the district meetings—lies in your willingness to learn to teach. Let me repeat that this way is absolutely correct. If you and I are faithful and diligent, it will succeed among us. I believe it will succeed.