The Bible says that the church is a family. The population of a family can never be very large. In principle a family is different from a kingdom. A kingdom is a unit of many people, but a family is not. On the one hand, the Bible says that the church is God’s family; on the other hand, it says that the church is God’s kingdom (Eph. 2:19; Matt. 16:18-19). A family is built upon the unit of an individual, while a kingdom is built upon the unit of a family. In order to have a healthy family, there must first be healthy citizens; in order to have a healthy society, there must be healthy families; and in order to produce a strong country, there must be healthy societies. On the one hand, the church is God’s kingdom; on the other hand, it is God’s family. The base of God’s kingdom is built upon the family. Fallen Christianity has neglected the aspect of the family. Since we divided into individual halls, we have not emphasized the family; therefore the increase has been very low. We should follow the Lord’s recovery to come back to the beginning, to the unit of the family. When the family unit is strong, the kingdom is strong.
The components of a family are not differentiated into male and female, old and young, or strong and weak. If there is the differentiation of old and young, strong and weak, that is an army. Sometimes we would like our home meetings to be like an army, with all the members being orderly and each one being a fighter. But that is not a family. Some people have an altogether different view of the home meetings. They think, “My home meeting is a gathering together of ‘small potatoes.’ What can we do? I surely cannot hear a good message.” It is wrong to have the concept of supporting home meetings with the desire of being the group leader, and it is also wrong to have the concept of making everyone in the meetings a soldier. Furthermore, we must turn from the concept of going to the home meetings to hear someone else speak. There are many germs and diseases in such concepts.
I would beg the brothers to be calm in their attitude toward the home meetings. We must see that the apostles went out to establish churches, not to establish an apostolic work. After the apostles established the churches, they did not exalt the elders to a high position. In Christianity, as a pastor or preacher goes out to establish churches, the more he does, the more the churches end up on his own shoulders. People in society see a certain group as the church established by pastor So-and-so, and they see another group as the church of preacher So-and-so. When he leaves that place, immediately the people who remain become a group of orphans, without a father and without a mother. After not too long, the church also disperses and ceases to exist. Among us there are some elders who, when they administrate the church, the more they administrate, the more the church becomes theirs. The New Testament shows us that the church is the church of God, the church of Christ, and the church of the saints (Acts 20:28; Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 14:33). The Bible does not designate the church as the church of the apostles nor the church of the elders.
The apostles said that they preached Christ Jesus as Lord and themselves as slaves of all (2 Cor. 4:5). The apostles are not the lords of the church, but the household slaves in God’s house. The workers are not the masters of the church; they are the slaves of all the saints. The saints are God’s children. Whenever some become co-workers or apostles, they become the slaves of God’s children. This is the truth in the Bible.
In Matthew 20 the Lord Jesus said that among the nations those who are great exercise authority over them, but “it is not so among you” (vv. 25-26). In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus said that the Pharisees love to take the chief seats, but that we should not be so. The greater among us shall be our servant (vv. 6-11). As the Lord was giving these teachings, Peter must have witnessed with his own eyes and heard with his own ears. Therefore, he wrote these words in 1 Peter 5: “The elders...nor as lording it over the allotments, but becoming patterns of the flock...and all of you gird yourselves with humility toward one another” (vv. 1, 3, 5). These words are meant to remind us that the elders and apostles are not masters. The masters of the church are, first, God the Father, second, the Lord Jesus, and third, the saints. The ones who administrate the church, lead the church, and even those who raise up the churches, are all slaves. The apostles are slaves, and the elders are slaves. Only the saints are the masters.
In Christianity it is not only the workers, the clergy, and the ones who administrate the church who do not keep their position, but the saints have also forsaken their own position. The saints willingly forsake their position as master. We must always remember that the church is the church of Christ and the church of the saints. The church is absolutely not the church of the co-workers, nor is it the church of the elders. Such a correct understanding of the church matters greatly. When you know that you are the owner of the church, you will certainly do your best to preserve your possession. For example, if a particular house is yours and you are the owner of that house, you will certainly do your best to preserve that house, repairing places where there is damage and fixing spots where there are leaks. However, if that house is rented by you, you would not care for it with all of your heart. Your attitude might be, “If the house leaks, let it leak. If the house is damaged, let it be damaged. As long as I can lie down and sleep, that is good enough. Anyway, it is not my possession. It belongs to someone else.”