Every member of the Body can speak for the Lord. Certain saints had been under my ministry for over thirty-five years, but they still could not speak even a short word to save sinners. When the gospel was being preached, they brought their relatives to the gospel meeting. After the preaching, they brought them to the brother who did the preaching. They wanted the preaching brother to talk to their relatives. They felt that they were not preachers and could not say anything. They only knew that the Lord Jesus was good and that they believed in Him and had joy and peace within. They could not speak a word for the Lord. This was the poor situation among us. In certain denominations many lay members not only do not know how to speak for the Lord, but they also do not even know how to pray. When their relatives are sick, they invite the pastor to come to their home to pray for them. We should not remain in this kind of situation.
In 1984 in Taipei there were about three thousand at the Lord’s Day morning meeting in twenty-one halls (later two more were added), but there were only twenty-one speakers among them. There were three thousand meeting, but it was hard for the elders to prepare twenty-one speakers to speak every Lord’s Day. This was a poor situation. We were not happy to remain in that old situation. Those who listened to the same speaker every Lord’s Day may have become bored of his speaking, and the speaker himself may have become tired of speaking. However, today not only has the number of saints meeting increased from three thousand to five thousand, but of these five thousand, at least one-third can and do speak for the Lord. Instead of twenty-one speakers, they now have seventeen hundred speakers. In Taipei on the Lord’s Day, at the same time in different halls, five thousand come together and at least one-third in each meeting speak forth the Lord.
At first, when many in Taipei began to practice 1 Corinthians 14:26, I was not so clear how to help them to improve their speaking and how to help them help others to speak. In June of 1988, however, in my contact with the Lord, I put 1 Corinthians 14 and Ephesians 4:11-16 together. In order to have a meeting full of mutual prophesying according to 1 Corinthians 14:26, we must practice Ephesians 4:11-16. Although I had expounded Ephesians 4:11-16 in the past, they became new verses to me. Verses 11 and 12 say, “And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ.” When 1 Corinthians 14 and Ephesians 4 were opened to me at the same time, I saw the way to help each saint to speak forth Christ in the meetings. The way is the perfecting of the saints by the four kinds of gifts—the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers. In the past we did not see this light so clearly, and we did not practice this perfecting work to a proper extent. On the Lord’s Day, one speaker would give a message, but at most that message only edified the saints; it did not perfect them.
In Acts 20 Paul called for the elders from Ephesus and reminded them: “How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and to teach you publicly and from house to house” (v. 20). That was the real perfecting. The apostle not only spoke the word in public meetings, but he also did the perfecting work in home after home with all humility and tears and trials (v. 19). In Taipei I began to teach the co-workers, the elders, and the leading ones to prophesy and to perfect others and teach them to prophesy. They became the “coaches,” teaching and helping the “players” how to “handle the ball.” Within only two or three weeks of practicing this way of perfecting the saints, we saw the saints rise up. We had a success.