I give you this background so you will know why I have picked up this burden. In the twenty years I have been in this country, I took no interest in the Chinese side. But since last year my concept has changed a little. I still have no burden to build a Chinese work. My burden, my ministry, is to build the local churches in the United States. On the Chinese-speaking side, my burden is simply to make up the lack. Just in California alone among us there are over five hundred Chinese saints. Perhaps half can manage the English language; these are the ones who graduated from schools in this country. The rest know only the simplest English. They cannot express themselves in the prayer meeting and at the Lord’s table. They cannot understand much of the spoken messages, so they have lacked nourishment. Due to this, some have left and gone to “Chinese meetings.” There are many of these, even here in Orange County. In Vancouver I have heard of one such meeting where there are eight hundred Chinese. The brother who raised it up was with us in Hong Kong before joining the Christian and Missionary Alliance. I felt shameful when I heard this story. We have had a church in Vancouver for years. Yet this brother, who learned so little from us, could bring in eight hundred by himself to listen to him in the Chinese language. In Rosemead, which is a continuation of Elden, there are only a hundred sixty Chinese plus eighty non-Chinese. Consider how many years we were in Elden, yet our numbers are so few compared to this other work in Vancouver.
What has been the fruit of all our work? San Jose has many good opportunities, yet nothing has been done. A brother from Taiwan was in San Francisco for a couple of years, and another was in Berkeley, yet nothing seemed to happen. It has disappointed me; it is a shame to me. Why, when our brothers came, could they not do anything, but when others came, they could accomplish so much? I am more than busy, but I have been forced to do something.
Doctrinally speaking, we are not short of spiritual groceries to feed the churches. I don’t mean that we are a seminary, offering different courses. I mean we are a great family, with groceries to feed our people. Do you know of any groceries that we lack? Please tell me if you do, and I will endeavor to make up the shortage. It seems to me we have more than is needed. But in our cooking there is a great lack.
I have been to the Far East. I have traveled throughout the United States. The meetings I have attended have usually included the giving of a message, followed by the sharing of the saints. The messages are largely repetitions of the Life-study messages, presented in different ways. Then, when it is time for the saints to share, what they have to say, because of the lack of proper cooking, generally lacks the focus of the central goal. I have given about three thousand messages in this country, all focused on the central lane of the Lord’s recovery.
The proper cooking in the churches first of all requires that the leading ones get into the messages on the central lane. I mean that they should live, experience, practice those messages. Then you will be able to do more than just repeat them. Your speaking will be your experience. Only when you present to the saints what you have experienced have you done the proper cooking. The basic point of the proper cooking is this: the leading ones need the practical experience of the words on the central lane. Yes, the three thousand messages were on the central lane. Still, for anything to exist it needs skin and bones. You cannot experience the skin and the bones; you must experience the meat.
There is no need for you to repeat a message which has already been given. What is needed is your experience. Then when you give a message, you present your experience of it and the way in which you have experienced it. This will bring the saints to focus on the central lane and help them to practice living the points of God’s focus. Such a message will provide the help for them to live in the experience of the central lane. These two things—to experience and to help others to experience—will take much time to practice, to learn, and to pray over.
For the present stage of the churches, our meeting should be to train, instruct, help every saint to get into life, the living, of the central lane. This cannot be done in even one or two years. As the system of universal education illustrates, a course of study takes three or four years. Elementary school takes six years, then junior and senior high take three years each, and then a college course of study needs four years. To help a church get into the practical living of the central lane, to set up a foundation, will take about four years.
The brothers of the church in Anaheim realized last fall that I was unhappy with the church meetings here. The meetings had no goal. It was like attending class after class in a university without being able to figure out what the course was about. The classes were just a waste; not only a waste, but even a damage to the appetite.