We are not throwing away the big meetings. The big meetings in the temple and the small gatherings from house to house are equally important. When I first started the home meetings I mentioned that there were three hundred people meeting in a meeting hall. This is like putting three hundred players on one court, so that the majority cannot play the game. Now the home meetings have started, and now one meeting place has been distributed into more than twenty places. With each court having eight to ten players playing ball, all can be on the court to play the game. In the long run the way of all coming together onto one court to play ball makes everyone useless. Now there are twenty courts. Even those who do not know how to play have a court. Everyone needs to practice to play. Practice makes perfect.
I remember very clearly that in 1933 when I first went to Shanghai, Brother Nee called the brothers together and said that until that very day our way of meeting had not been completely freed from degraded Christianity. We had not been brought back to what is spoken of in 1 Corinthians 14:26, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation....” He said the word “has” in Greek does not mean that we are going to have or that we will have, but that we already have in our hands. He said that this “has” means that as you fellowship with the Lord day by day and read the Word of the Lord at home, you have the knowledge. Then after coming into the meeting you surely have something to speak.
Later I understood what Brother Nee had said about this point. This is just like the feast celebrated by the children of Israel. They brought the produce of the land and the bullocks and the sheep from their herds and their flocks. They labored all year and were able to bring something from their herds, their flocks, and their fields to the feast. Some brought their bullocks, some brought their sheep, some brought their new wine, some brought the produce. Everyone brought something. This is the normal situation. The meetings among us have not come up to this point. So we still need to endeavor.
At that time Brother Nee mentioned that we needed to set up a ladder so that our way of meeting could jump from degraded Christianity to 1 Corinthians 14:26. He started a brothers’ meeting for the brothers and a sisters’ meeting for the sisters. In the brothers’ meeting there was no chairman or preacher, but they were to practice together 1 Corinthians 14:26. One had this, the other had that, and everyone brought whatever he had. Let me tell you, from the beginning until 1949 when we had the brothers’ meeting in Taiwan, it was never successful. Indeed, the brothers came, yet they all came empty-handed and sat down. Yes, no single person was leading the meeting, but it was just you looking at me and I looking at you. No one had anything to say. Later someone suggested that we give testimonies. In the beginning there were a few testimonies. Gradually all the testimonies were exhausted. Everyone still sat there looking at each other. What kind of meeting is this?
When we could not get through in the brothers’ meeting in Taiwan, we then realized that it was because we had never built up the habit of speaking in the meetings. A habit is accumulated from daily experiences. What has been handed down for years is this habit of one gifted person speaking and others listening. Through many years and months we have developed this habit of listening to someone preach. Among us we do not have the habit of speaking. When the home meetings began we all were not used to speaking. This gave the opportunity for those talkative ones to rise up and speak nonsense.
Today, by the Lord’s grace, we must study how to uplift the standard of the home meetings. I hope those who can supply others will no longer observe quietly and remain silent. I hope they would understand that this is their meeting, their court on which to play ball, and their place to function and minister. I hope that they would turn from objectively observing as a spectator to bearing the burden for the meeting. If this is done, the contents of the home meetings will be strengthened.
We need to build up the home meetings as the foundation of the church meetings. The life pulse of the church depends upon the home meetings. The destiny of the church also depends upon the home meetings. If the home meeting is successful, the church will be strong. It is just like a Chinese saying, that in order to have a strong society and a strong nation the homes must first be kept in good order. Keeping one’s home in good order comes before ruling over the nation and bringing peace to the world. The same applies to the church. It is impossible to have strong church meetings if the home meetings of the saints are not strong. This will then force us to rely on the spiritual giants. When Gideon comes, the church becomes strong. When Gideon is gone the church becomes weak. Then a Samson comes, and the church has a revival. When Samson is gone the church is down again. That was the abnormal situation in the age of the judges. It should not be like this among us. We should not take the way of relying only on the spiritual giants to lead the meeting. We should make the home meeting strong in every house. We should all concentrate our effort to uplift the home meetings. Do not speak when you are not sure that your speaking is from the spirit or that it will supply Christ to others. Those who should not speak, do not speak. Those who are able to supply and able to bear the responsibilities should all speak. Then there will be no more guests, no more spectators, and no one who does not bear some burden in the meeting. In this way the home meetings will certainly become strong.
Let me tell you a real case. The Southern Baptist Church is one of the largest denominations in the United States. Recently we saw a statistic from one of their publications. There are fourteen million on their membership list. The meeting attendance is twelve million. The reason that they are able to retain people is because their Sunday school is the best. They employ the principle of small classes in their Sunday school. They do not first come together in one place. They are first divided into classes, each class being about thirty to fifty people. They have more than a thousand people who write the material for their Sunday school. Their material has greatly improved. They speak about one Body and say that a saved one has two natures. Every Lord’s Day they meet in small classes using the same material.
In one of the cities in Texas there are two Southern Baptist churches. Their environment is the same, and they began to meet at the same time. But because one emphasized the big meetings, that is, one speaking and others listening, and the other emphasized the Sunday school classes, after some period of time the attendance of the one that practiced the big meetings was one thousand; the other that emphasized the classes had over ten thousand. In the same city, two groups with these two lines of big meetings and small meetings started to meet at the same time, and they brought in two different results. If in the past fifteen years we had turned our attention to the home meetings and not stressed the big meetings, and if we had compared the profit and loss today, I fully believe that our number would have at least doubled. May the Lord have mercy on us. We need to pray for this matter to adjust the habit of relying on the gifted brothers. Everyone should function to bring out Christ, that the home meetings would not be low or empty. Nineteen eighty-five is our experimental year. Let us all go into the laboratory to work. I also will follow in to work. I believe we will find a way. We cannot rely on our thirty-year history, keeping the old things, and not be willing to go on. When our number is not increasing we need to wake up to find a way out, like a businessman when the business is not making money. Let us please pray for this together.