As I prayed and considered the situation of the meetings, I recalled the revival that broke out in my city, Chefoo, in 1942. It came after four years of preparation. Before that time, in 1937, the work under Brother Nee’s leadership assigned me to travel throughout the provinces in northern China. Everywhere I went I was welcome. Mostly I spoke and ministered in the denominations. The decision had been made by the work under Brother Nee’s leadership to send the truths we had received of the Lord to the denominations. I remember we had a study on the book of Hebrews in the central station of the China Inland Mission in the province of Shansi. I spent about two or three weeks there to hold that study with their workers. From those experiences I learned that nothing would ever come of that kind of work. I decided not to do that anymore.
Dear brothers, this has been our way to carry out the Lord’s recovery. It has not been by the way of going out to speak. That is the way of revival, the Christianity way. The Catholic Church has never taken the revival way. We never hear of the Catholic Church having a gospel campaign and inviting a famous evangelist to speak. But every year millions are added to them. You may say they are strongly organized. They have their way to keep their people, to teach them. It is hard to turn a Catholic away from the Catholic Church, whatever country they are in. How about our people? Like those from Taiwan, if they just change from one country to the United States, they get away. Why? It is because our work in Taiwan was not solid.
I believe the best way, especially at this juncture, to carry on local church meetings is to cook the groceries and to serve the saints with the proper cooking. It is not sufficient just to pick up the points of the messages, but to experience them. Even I myself like to go back and study the messages; whenever I do, I get the help. Do not think that by reading it over and over you’ll get it. You will not get it, unless you practice it and experience it. This is what the churches need.
I do not oppose reviewing the messages, but I do not think that is sufficient. You can see the result. As I told the brothers in Taiwan, we must realize what the result is of our labor year after year. Then we have to consider. As Haggai says, “Consider your ways” (1:7). You labor, you sow much. How much do you reap? Why do we need to repeat the unfruitful work? We must consider, reconsider, our way. To review the messages is easy. From among the churches to have a few make the abstracts and then have a meeting to go over them is easy. I don’t think a farmer would expect to reap much with this kind of labor. To reap requires heavy labor.
Brothers, I would fellowship with you and encourage you with this one thing. You must sow yourself like a seed in the church of which you bear a burden. You must sow yourself. To be an elder is like being a housewife and mother. If a mother wants her family to be built up, she forgets everything except them. This is what I mean by sowing yourself. You can also use the word sell yourself. When a young woman gets married, she sells herself to her husband; that is she sells herself to the family. She forgets everything except the family.
A housewife should not say she does not know how to cook, that she wants to invite someone to cook for her, for her family. No family or home could be built by hiring others to do the cooking. But today the churches like to invite speakers. They are eloquent, but, sorry to say, they may just tickle your ears. What is the result? Children may like to eat hamburgers bought from a fast-food place, but that kind of cooking will not build them up. They need the mother’s cooking. It may not taste as good, but it is nourishing. We must build up the taste of the saints in the churches so that they will not care for the speakings, teachings, without the experiences of the central lane of the Lord’s recovery.
Then by the Lord’s sovereignty I had to stay in my home town due to the invasion of the Japanese army. For over fifty months I stayed in Chefoo, with only one side trip to Tsingtao for two months in 1942. In those two months two hundred newcomers were baptized, thus laying a strong foundation for the church in Tsingtao. Then, six years later Brother Nee held a training. Some brothers who went to that training afterwards went to Tsingtao. They began preaching. In one day they baptized more than seven hundred. Their work was based upon the foundation of those two hundred who were baptized in 1942. When I went there, I purposely stayed two months, realizing that nothing could be accomplished in a week or ten days. It took two months for something to happen. Those two months were the only time within the fifty months that I was out of Chefoo.
I believe Brother Chang Wu-Chen would give me the freedom to say this. In 1939 he was not even a deacon. I brought him in as a learning deacon. Then after a time I asked him to come to the elders’ meetings, not as an elder but just to sit and watch and learn. That was what he did.
In those four years in Chefoo I took the lead in everything, including the cleaning of the rest rooms, which in China were terribly dirty. I took care of all of the meetings—the prayer meeting, the Lord’s table meeting, the elders’ meetings, and the service meetings, including the visitation and the shepherding. Quite often I went by bicycle to visit the saints in order to see their families and home life. I visited many special gospel cases. A number of families were brought in as a result.
I kept long hours. Before eight I went to the meeting hall to arrange the rooms and to give instructions as to how the serving ones should take care of the different matters. At noon I went home, had lunch, and took a little nap. About two o’clock I went back and stayed at the meeting hall till dinnertime. After dinner at home I returned to the meeting hall for the meetings. Even if there was no official meeting, every night there was some meeting. These lasted till about ten. Then I would return home. This was my way of life every day. I had no day off, no vacation, for fifty months.
Then, when the Communists came to occupy Chefoo, all the leading ones left. This was our policy because we knew that was the best way to face the situation. As long as the leading ones were there, the church would have trouble because the Communists were after the leaders. Here is the point I want to make: Nearly all the leading ones who left Chefoo for other cities became either an elder or a deacon. Tens of brothers left Chefoo and went to Tsingtao or Shanghai. Chang Wu-Chen and Chu Shyu-Min are the two very evident cases; they were both produced in those four years. When I later went to Taiwan, these two were the greatest helpers to me to carry out the ministry in Taiwan.
It takes time to build up such a taste. When I was in Chefoo, even after one year the saints’ taste for other things was lost. They lost their taste for anything except the building of the local church. At that time I did not see much of the central lane. If I had seen it, I believe they would have lost their taste for everything other than the central lane.
I hope that all the churches on this earth today will lose their taste for any kind of speaking or doctrine other than the central lane. This does not mean my intention is to charge or request that all the churches repeat my message. If you think this way, that is your thinking. You bear the responsibility. That is not my thinking.