A mother who has just delivered a child needs to cherish and nourish this child. Likewise, we have to cherish and nourish the new believers in their homes. Immediately after baptizing the believing ones into the Triune God, we need to stay with them for at least an hour, if possible, to cherish and nourish them. After we baptize a believing sinner into the Triune God, we can call him “brother.” Just a short time ago we did not even know him nor did he know us, but now we have imparted Christ into him and he has become a new man, our brother. We have also baptized this brother into the Triune God. When we call him “brother,” this cherishes him.
Then you need to nourish him. In order to nourish him, you can tell him: “Brother, now the Lord Jesus is within you. He was crucified on the cross years ago, but after He was buried, He resurrected, and in resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. You have to realize that the Lord Jesus as the life-giving Spirit is now within you because I have presented Him to you, and you have called upon Him. When you called on Him, He came into you like the divine air. Jesus as the Spirit is within you. Furthermore, you also have a spirit. The Lord Jesus is the Spirit in your spirit. He is the Spirit, you have a spirit, and these two spirits are now one. You have a mingled spirit. You can realize this mingled spirit by calling on Him.” Then you can ask him to call on the Lord with you again. He can call on the Lord with you five times, ten times, or fifteen times. The more he calls, the better. We have the assurance that the more one calls on the Lord, the more sensation he will have within. After he calls in this way, ask him how he feels within. He may say that he feels something very sweet within him. Then you can encourage him to call on the name of the Lord Jesus every morning and throughout the day. Tell him he should learn to call on the name of the Lord continuously. Also, you can share with him that when he encounters any hardship or has any trouble, he can tell the Lord—“O Lord Jesus, I don’t feel so good. O Lord Jesus.” Tell him that he can talk to the Lord and that this is what it means to pray. All of this can be his first lesson immediately after his baptism. In such a meeting right after his baptism, he will be cherished and nourished.
The new believers are cherished and nourished by our having home meetings with them (Acts 5:42). Every home will become sweet by having meetings. Whenever we have meetings with others, we have the Bible with us, we have the Spirit within us, and at the same time the precious blood is ready and available for us to apply. We have these three great provisions: the Bible, the Spirit, and the blood. The Holy Spirit is God Himself, the Holy Bible is God’s Word, and the precious blood is for God’s redemption. Before people receive the Lord’s salvation, their home may be like hell, but when we come to them, bringing them God, God’s Word, and God’s redemption, that home will become like heaven. Their home will become a sweet home.
We have seen how we need to nourish the new believers with their first lesson immediately after they are baptized. We need to help them to realize that our Savior, Jesus, is today the Spirit indwelling their spirit. Following this, we have to teach them, not in a legal way, but in a very flexible, living, and organic way. We can cherish and nourish the new believers in their homes by bringing them into the practice of exercising their spirit and calling on the Lord (Eph. 6:18a; Rom. 10:12b) and by teaching them the basic truths of God’s redemption.
Suppose that after you give a new brother the first lesson concerning Christ as the life-giving Spirit indwelling his spirit, he asks you how he can have a happy life. You need to exercise your wisdom to answer such a question. This person just got saved, and he is in the first stage of his Christian life. He knows very little, but he wants to have a happy life. You can tell him, “Brother, the reason that we are unhappy is because we have sins, and we are sinful. If you want to be happy, you have to confess your sins.” This is a very basic word that he needs. He repented, prayed, and was baptized by you, but he did not have the time to confess all of his sins. He did not even have the knowledge that he needed to do this. This is why you need to take the opportunity to give him this basic lesson of the confessing of sins. You can also give him some instructions concerning how to confess his sins. You can tell him that it is best for him to have a time to confess his sins to the Lord privately. Perhaps you can suggest to him that he can have some time with the Lord after you leave. He can tell the Lord, “Lord Jesus, thank You that You are my Savior and that You died for my sins. I want to confess all my sins to You.” Then instruct him to confess whatever he feels is sinful or not good. If he feels that he has offended his wife, he can say, “Lord, I have offended my wife quite often.” If he feels that he owes something to his parents, he can say, “Lord, I owe my parents so much.” Whatever he feels is sinful or wrong, he can confess to the Lord to receive the cleansing of the blood and the Lord’s forgiveness.
We should talk to the new believers in such an organic and flexible way. He may interrupt you and say, “Suppose that I don’t have any feeling of sins or mistakes when I pray to the Lord. What should I do?” Then you can say that he needs to ask the Lord to enlighten him by praying, “Lord, show me all my sins. Expose me in Your light.” You can also read and sing with him a proper hymn related to the confessing of sins. This is the way to cherish and nourish the new believers in their homes.
Through our experiences in the past three or four years, we have learned much. When we first began to visit people with the gospel by knocking on their doors, we did it with much speed to baptize as many people as we could. The more baptisms we had, the happier we were. We saw then that preaching the gospel by knocking on people’s doors really works. Later, we discovered that baptizing too many causes much suffering. We may be happy that we baptized so many, but who is going to nourish them? This is why we need to baptize people in a controlled way. In our old way of preaching the gospel, we did not need any control because not many were baptized. In the new way of preaching the gospel by knocking on doors, many are baptized. In Taipei, thirty-eight thousand were baptized within a little over one year. We were only able to adequately take care of about eight thousand of these. This experience taught us a lesson that we should not beget more new ones than we are able to take care of. If a team of three saints baptizes ten, they should stop their preaching and divide these ten new ones into three portions to care for them. They may need to stop door-knocking for two or three months just to take care of the ones under their care.
If your team of three has baptized ten, two saints can each be responsible for three new ones and the other saint for four new ones. When you go back to have home meetings with them, you need a companion. Two saints are sufficient to take care of a home meeting. Since your team is only three saints, what shall you do? There is the need of cooperation in the church life. Besides your team of three, there should be other teams in the church life, so you can share your new ones with them. Two teams for door-knocking can be formed into three teams for home meetings. Two saints can take care of six new ones in the home meetings. It is best at the beginning to visit the newly baptized ones twice a week for the first four to six weeks. If three of your new ones are not promising and will not be remaining fruit, you should go out to baptize some more. Always keep two or three new ones under your care. When you are short of this number, go out to knock on doors and gain more.
The new way to gain people is not difficult, but we have to practice it. In the old way, the saints did not labor much in the gospel. Instead, the church would make a decision at certain times to have a love feast for the preaching of the gospel, and all the saints would endeavor to invite new ones to this time. The new way, however, is a daily way. This is why we need the life before the way. We need to be “lifed,” and we need to live a daily overcoming life. If we get revived early in the morning and live an overcoming life during the day, this life will urge us to gain people for the Lord. We need to labor in this way to have two or three new ones under our care all the time. They can be established within half a year by our visiting to cherish and to nourish them. I believe that within one year we can have two or three remaining fruit. This needs to be our daily work. If we get six baptized within one year, generally, two out of these six will be remaining fruit if we labor on them.
We should not expect that everyone in the church will do this gospel work, but we do expect that at least one-third would do it. If the elders manage the church well, I believe that sixty percent of the saints may be involved. If thirty-five out of one hundred go out, and they each have two remaining fruit, the church will have a seventy percent increase. I believe, however, that if the church is under the proper leading and the saints are faithful to the Lord’s recovery, the church will double in one year. We should not trust in our past experiences. If we can be trained adequately to practice the new way, the new ones will be more prevailing than we are. After a year they will be able to do what we are doing.
In human society the improvements in education and technology are always picked up by the younger generation. In principle the young people gain more up-to-date knowledge than their parents or grandparents. The improvement in society always continues with the younger generation. It is easy for the younger ones to learn something because they are not occupied with old concepts. This does not mean that the older people in society should be put aside. There is the need of fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers. We need families with the functions of three generations. It is the same in the church life.
As an older saint, I do not have enough strength to go out and knock on doors. The way to preach the gospel by visiting people and knocking on their doors is mainly for the young and middle-aged saints. The older saints can pray for the ones who are laboring in the gospel. While Joshua was fighting Amalek, Moses held up the rod of God in his hand on the top of a hill, which typifies prayer (Exo. 17:8-13). When Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, but when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. When the praying stops, the battle is lost. The fighters who knock on doors need the prayers. The older saints should not feel that they are useless. The functions of both Moses and Joshua are needed for the church life. We need the ones who pray and the ones who fight.
I would like to say again that if the leaders manage the church life in a proper way, I believe the church can be doubled yearly. A local church of one hundred saints could increase to one hundred thousand in ten years. This means that this church will increase one thousand times in ten years. Statistics like this expose our real situation and how much time we have wasted. We must admit that to some extent we have delayed the Lord. May the Lord be merciful to us and cause us all to rise up. We should pray, “Lord, this is Your way. I want to be revived. I want to live an overcoming life to take Your way.”
To practice this way, a certain number of saints in the church have to pick up the burden to preach the gospel and save sinners by contacting them where they are. We have tried, studied, and experienced many ways to preach the gospel, and there is no other way so prevailing as visiting people by knocking on their doors. This does not mean that visiting people by knocking on their doors is the only way, but it is the best way. Sometimes, according to the situation or circumstances, we may need to have a gospel preaching meeting, but generally speaking, the best way to get sinners saved for the Lord is to visit them.
To preach the gospel in this way, we have to learn the proper techniques. We should not think that we do not need techniques. We need techniques in everything we do. For writing, playing the piano, and speaking there is the need of proper techniques. The work of saving sinners for the Lord is a high and great work, so we need the highest techniques to carry it out. Because we need to learn how to preach the gospel in the highest way, all of the saints need the perfecting.
The church needs to carry out this perfecting work year round. It would be good if the church could have a certain kind of training every month for the perfecting of the saints. Sometimes you may need a training to perfect the sisters for one month, perhaps meeting with them three times a week for four weeks. It is in this way that many of the saints in the recovery will be trained and perfected. To perfect the saints means to equip them and to furnish them. If a young man joins the army, he will be perfected to fight with the proper techniques, and he will be equipped and furnished with weapons, ammunition, and supplies. We have to train the saints in the same way. We did not do much of this kind of perfecting work in the past. All the elders and the co-workers need to reconsider the way that they have managed the church. We have to change our way.
Two hundred years ago, it may have taken one hundred days to travel by mule wagon from New York to California. Today we can fly on a 747 from New York to California in the same day. The way of transportation has been greatly improved. We have been in the old, traditional, and unscriptural way of meeting and serving for years, and we have not seen much result. Shall we remain there? Shall we take the mule wagon or the 747? We have to pick up the improved way, the new way, the scriptural way of meeting and serving. As long as I live and have breath, I will not stop speaking about this until we rise up to take the new way. Sooner or later this new way will be prevailing on the earth. I believe that within five years, most of the churches in the Lord’s recovery will be practicing this. We must learn to preach the gospel in the best way, the “747” way.
Some of the saints are very talented in preaching the gospel by visiting people in their homes, but they may not be so good at having home meetings. On the other hand, some saints are very good at taking care of home meetings, but they may not have the taste for or the interest in knocking on people’s doors. This is a good situation because these two kinds of saints can be matched in the gospel work. The saints who are the experts in knocking on doors to get people baptized can carry out their work, and then they can pass on their fruit, their newly baptized ones, to the saints who are the experts in home meetings. The newly baptized ones that are remaining fruit can be shared as “profit” between the door-knocking experts and the home meeting experts. The ones who are experts in preaching the gospel by knocking on doors share their fruit with the home meeting experts, and the home meeting experts share the result with the door-knocking experts. The church life is a divine corporation in which all the shareholders share the profits. The elders, however, should not control or organize this matter, taking the excuse that without the elders’ control, the church would be a mess and full of confusion. It is better to let the church be free to move in the Spirit. Too much control kills, and too much arrangement becomes organizational. This is not organic.
In some places the elders may wonder why the saints have set up so many meetings without their permission. It is absolutely wrong for the elders to do this. The elders should let the saints have the freedom to set up home meetings everywhere. The saints surely have to regard the elders and respect authority, yet for their spiritual activities, they need to follow the Holy Spirit indwelling their human spirit. The saints, on the other hand, should not take this as an excuse for doing things lawlessly. This is wrong. On the one hand, the believers should be orderly, doing everything under the leading, the guidance, and the control of the Holy Spirit and following the indwelling Spirit organically, without being under any organization or arrangement by the human hand. On the other hand, the elders should have much time to pray for the saints. They should manage the situation but not control. They should lead and guide but not rule. To take the lead and to guide is much better and much sweeter than ruling. We need to take care of these two sides. Then we will see a living church that is serving, meeting, and going on all the time with much profit.
There is the need of cooperation among us when we knock on doors to save sinners and when we have home meetings to nourish the newly baptized ones. We need to cooperate with one another according to the situation in our locality. We should learn to be very flexible and have no flesh, no motive, and no opinion. If we do not learn these lessons, the church will suffer. This is why the New Testament teaches us to bear the cross in order to crucify our self and our flesh with all its lusts (Matt. 16:24-25; Gal. 5:24). We have to learn the lessons of the cross by the Spirit. If we do this, we will be brought into a proper serving condition. Then all of us will be serving, and not one among us will be idle. We will see the glorious result, the increase, for the building up of the Body of Christ.
With the small number of us in the Lord’s recovery today, it is impossible to have the adequate building up of the Body of Christ. We need a bigger number, so we all have to endeavor. This is the burden of us all. All the saints of all ages should bear the same burden to gain people for the building up of the Body of Christ. This is the first step. Without materials, who can build a building? We have to gain the material first. This is why in Haggai the Lord charged His people to go up to the mountain to get material for the building up of His house (1:7-8). We have to go to the mountain—go to the homes, the villages, and the towns—to gain materials for the Lord’s house.