In the fall of 1986, we started to have a formal training in Taipei because there were at least three or four hundred college graduates who desired to give their time to serve the Lord. That training was my laboratory for experimenting with what I had studied in the Bible. We discovered that four things are crucial for the new way: the preaching of the gospel, the home meetings, the small group meetings, and the church meetings.
For the new way, we must preach the gospel. We should not merely meet in our halls, but we must go out to visit people for the purpose of preaching the gospel. That was why we began to visit people for the gospel by knocking on their doors. In Taipei about seven hundred saints among us went out to preach the gospel for about one and a half years. By October of 1987 we had baptized thirty-eight thousand. We discovered that by knocking on twenty doors we could find one son of peace (Luke 10:6).
According to a recent article in a Southern Baptist newspaper, that denomination plans to train eighty-nine thousand of their lay members, mostly young people, to visit people for the gospel. They plan for one million persons to be saved in two months and for seventy thousand to be baptized. For eighty-nine thousand to bring one million people to salvation in two months means that every person will gain, on the average, about one and a quarter persons a week. This is the same statistic that we discovered through our experience in Taiwan. I would like to see them succeed. Perhaps after not too long a time, many denominations will pick up this practice. This newspaper article said that to preach the gospel by visiting people where they are is according to the New Testament plan and will never be improved upon. This is the God-ordained and God-initiated plan. Who can improve upon God’s invention? Visiting people for the gospel by knocking on their doors is not the only way to preach the gospel; the gospel can be preached in a hundred ways. However, this way is the top way.
In order to study our situation, I collected statistics. By these statistics I found out that many of the denominations, especially in England and the United States, have been decreasing in number for over fifteen years. All the denominations are studying how to go on. It seems that the traditional way has brought them to a dead end. They cannot go on. We also have been somewhat at a standstill, but now we must change and drop the old way. Visiting people for the gospel by knocking on their doors is the first matter that is crucial for the new way, and by our experimenting we have found that this is the excelling way to preach the gospel.
The other matters that are crucial for the new way are the home meetings, the small group meetings, and the church meetings. Recently the Lord impressed us that we need meetings full of mutuality according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. The way to have these meetings is in 1 Corinthians 14 and Ephesians 4. It is by prophesying through the perfecting of the gifted persons (Eph. 4:11-12). First Corinthians 14 is a strong encouragement by the apostle for us to learn, to practice, and to desire earnestly to prophesy. To prophesy is the top way and the unique way to have a meeting full of mutuality. Prophesying is the way to meet according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. “Each one has” something by prophesying.
However, even if we desire to prophesy, we will not be able to without learning. We have to be instructed, and we have to practice according to what we have been instructed. I have bought a number of pianos, and I have composed a number of hymns, but I cannot play the piano. The pianos are here, but not everyone can play them. However, if we desire to play the piano, we can. We all can play the piano, but we have to be under a tutor and learn how to use our fingers properly, and we have to practice for years. We must spend the time and energy to learn and to practice. Some may say that to learn is too hard. They may say that if learning to prophesy is like learning to play the piano, they will not be able to make it. However, it is not that hard. If you are under the proper instruction and practice for only two months, you will prophesy quite well.
Some may say that because they were not born with eloquent speaking ability, they cannot learn to prophesy. However, as long as we can speak a natural language, we can also prophesy, which is to speak the divine language. It is not too hard. If we do not care to be instructed or to practice, we will remain in the old way, the traditional way of Christianity, the way of hiring a professional speaker to speak for us while we sit in a pew. We will become “pew members” of the church. We cannot be built up, and we cannot minister anything to build up others in this way. This is the wrong way. This is absolutely not according to the Bible. We must put it away and come back to the Bible. Let us all be faithful to the very One whom we love. We have to be faithful to learn to prophesy.
Many of the older saints in Taipei were saved through the message meetings of the church, the meetings in which one speaker gives a message, and their church life experience for many years has been related to the message meetings. When I first returned to Taipei in 1984, many of the saints expected that I would give them more messages. However, they soon became apprehensive because they learned that I wanted to stop this way of meeting. They thought that there would no longer be a place to meet and listen to messages. Because a good foundation had been built up in our relationship, these saints did not oppose what I was doing. However, they were apprehensive and privately spoke to one another about it.
I did not ask them to stop their way of meeting right away. Instead, for over three years, from October of 1984 to November of 1987, I tried my best to prepare them and help them to realize their need. Then in November of 1987 I told them that we should combine the meetings of the full-time trainees with the local saints and discontinue the message meetings. We should instead practice meeting according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. At that time about four thousand saints were meeting in large congregations in twenty-three halls, so we divided them into one hundred district meetings, each with about forty to fifty saints. Because the saints had been prepared, they were not troubled. They all began to practice a new way of meeting.
Then I charged them to learn. First Corinthians 14:31 says, “For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all be encouraged.” We prophesy that others may learn. Therefore, before we prophesy, we have to learn. A professor of mathematics must first have learned mathematics before he can teach his students. We cannot prophesy without learning. If we have never learned something, we will not be able to teach it to others.
To help the full-time trainees and co-workers to learn to prophesy, I showed them how to compose a three minute word of prophecy. Every day we contact the Lord in the morning by pray-reading at least two verses. At that time we enjoy something, and we see something of the Lord. Each morning we can record what we have enjoyed and seen in a notebook. By Saturday of every week we will have recorded our “harvest” of the past six days. On Saturday night we can look at our notes and combine them into a single point to be used as the subject for our prophesying. We should compose something in spoken form and practice it. If it takes more than three minutes, we should shorten it. When the full-timers and co-workers in Taipei began to practice this, they had a success. If those trainees could do it, we all can do it also. This will not only enrich the meetings, but also increase the meetings. Recently I learned that in Taipei the number of saints in the district meetings has gone up to five thousand.
In the old way of meeting in the church in Taipei, there were only twenty-three speakers in the twenty-three halls, only twenty-three distributors of the riches to four thousand people. Now in the new way, one third of the attendants prophesy. Out of about five thousand saints meeting together there are close to seventeen hundred speakers. Instead of twenty-three dispensers, there are now seventeen hundred dispensers.
If one-third of those in a meeting of fifty saints speak, there can be seventeen speakers. How many riches could one speaker alone have? One may be rich, but his riches cannot equal the riches of seventeen speakers. One speaker can only serve one “dish,” but seventeen speakers can serve a seventeen course feast with many riches.
Many of us have experienced that the best meetings are the meetings in which we speak. When we do not speak in a meeting, we may consider that the meeting was not so good. Even if the meeting was good for others, it was not good for us because we did not speak. Even if a meeting is poor for others, it will be a good meeting for us if we speak in it. If a brother speaks in a meeting and his wife asks him how the meeting was, he will say it was wonderful. If he did not speak in the meeting, he may tell his wife it was a poor meeting. The meeting became poor simply because he did not speak. When we speak, the first ones who get nourished are ourselves. We speak to others, but we feed ourselves. There is a rich benefit in speaking.
It is not hard to learn to prophesy, and it is profitable to the entire church. It is profitable to every attendant, especially to ourselves. Prophesying will change our life. If we speak one time in the church meeting, our life will be changed. When we return from a meeting, we may find something disturbing at home. If we did not speak in the meeting, we may immediately lose our temper. However, after speaking in the meeting, something will remind us that we have just spoken, and this will restrain us from losing our temper.
The new way is the Lord’s move today. In every age the Lord moves and works according to His plan, and His moving is by His speaking. For God’s move there is always His present speaking. In this age God is also moving, and for His work and move He is speaking according to His holy Word. What we are speaking here is absolutely according to the Bible. We all have to rise up to follow the Lord in His present move according to His present speaking. I hope that we all will receive help from the fellowship in this book and will learn to prophesy.