From the beginning of the Lord’s recovery in Los Angeles until now, the church service has never been adequately built up among us. Although our church service has gone through a number of changes, not that much has been built up. What do we mean when we say the church service? To say that the church service refers to ministering Christ for the building up of the Body is very good, but it is too spiritual. The service must be a practical matter. Others may say that, in principle, the church service should build up the Body of Christ. But that is the New Testament ministry. The Lord has given some apostles, some prophets, 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 (Eph. 4:11-12). None among us would understand church service to be this. A number of saints consider the church service to be chair-arranging, cleaning the hall, ushering, and preparing the bread and the wine. Although we may say that the church service is to take care of the needy saints and care for the needs of the church, this is too general. We must find a way to put this kind of care into practice.
There are a number of items that are needed for the building up of the church. The first matter is to build up a proper study of the truth. When I came to this country, I was charged by the Lord to carry out His recovery here. This was altogether something new. My first burden was to release the truth, so I traveled. I did not have the time to do other things. Many saints were brought into the recovery through the truth. The truth is our foundation, but among us the truth has not been adequately built up. Even some of the denominations have built up a study of the truth of the Bible.
The second thing that needs to be built up is the growth in life. The preaching of the gospel is a third matter that must be raised up among us. The truth, the matter of life, and the gospel are three anchors which are basic for the building up of the church. If the church is not built up in the truth and in life, and is not preaching the gospel to gain people, there is no future. The church is nothing without the truth, without life, and without the gospel. The eldership in each church is first responsible to build up a locality in truth, life, and the gospel. Through the preaching of the gospel, there is the spreading of the church as the kingdom of God. There are a number of subsidiary things that are also needed, such as the children’s work. The children’s meeting must be built up. In addition, we must do a work among the elementary, junior high, high school, and college age students. These four levels must be built up.
The third subsidiary item that needs building up is the gospel in the community. The community gospel is a particular item that we must build up. When I labored in the church in Chefoo from 1940 to 1943, the strongest item that was built up was the community gospel. There was no need for anyone to come and preach. It was done by the housewives. Whenever we held a conference, there was no need for the elders or the other saints to help the new converts because almost all of the attendants were neighbors of the housewives who were sisters among us. There was a strong community work built up among the saints who were mainly housewives. Immediately after every conference meeting the housewives would accompany the new converts home. During this two-mile walk home which took about thirty-five minutes, there was no talk about anything else except the messages of the conference. The housewives took the opportunity that this long walk afforded to help the others. This became a custom among us.
These six categories which include truth, life, evangelizing, the children’s work, the student work, and the community gospel work, should be our goal in the church life. The church is not here merely for ushering, preparing the bread and the wine, cleaning, vacuuming, or chair-arranging. We can hire people to do the cleaning, the lawn mowing, the tree cutting, and so forth. Then all of the saints’ time can be saved for other things which no hired ones can do. Our church service should issue in the building up of the truth, the building up of the life matters, and the building up of the gospel preaching. In addition, the church service should care for the children’s meeting. The church service should include care for the students. The student work itself has three levels including gospel preaching, feeding the new ones, and perfecting the growing ones.
Even in our neighborhood there must be a children’s meeting that should not be considered as the children’s meeting of the church. This is a children’s meeting work in the saints’ neighborhood. It is easy for us to set up two children’s meetings. Every week one sister can take care of two children’s meetings with four helpers. On one day, two sisters can assist this one to take care of twenty children. Maybe on another afternoon two more sisters may help to take care of another children’s meeting of fifteen to twenty children. We can collect a number of children out of our neighborhood into our home. We can ask the children to sit down on the carpet. We do not even need a piano. There is no need for materials or textbooks, but one living person. She can even sing a song to the children. Within two months we can build up two children’s meetings. Then after six months we will have six children’s meetings. One sister will not need to take care of all the meetings directly because other sisters will follow her example and have their own meetings. There may be ten children’s meetings under the direction of one sister. This would expand to over a thousand children. All of these children are linked to their parents. So through the children many homes will be opened for the church to evangelize. This is the community work. These are the warm doors, and the parents will welcome us. Although people today are occupied by many things and it seems as if they are not open to the gospel, the best way to overcome this is to have a children’s meeting in our own home. The responsibility for this community work lies with the elders.
Since 1932 when a church was raised up in my hometown of Chefoo until today, I have not had the adequate time to build up these things. The first matter that I was burdened to release in this country was the truth. At that time about one hundred churches were already raised up, but the truth had never been released. So I spent at least three months before every semi-annual training to write the footnotes and references. Because that occupied me so much, I did not have the time to help the churches. After I finished the footnotes on the Recovery Version, I realized that I must go to Taiwan to set up an experimental place to study our present practice in the Lord’s recovery. Although we may say that we are rich in truth, most of this truth is on our bookshelves. Actually, the truth has not been built up among us, especially the seeking after the truth, the study of the truth, and the learning of the truth. Among the saints there is not much of an atmosphere of seeking after the truth. There is not much of a seeking spirit after life or the growth in life. The real church service is to take care of the six categories of things that we have indicated. Let us spend our time, energy, and everything on these six items.
The elders of the church may want to bring the saints together for a church service meeting every week. In this meeting the saints would be given the opportunity to share with the others who are present what aspect of service they were involved in that week. If a question is raised up, we should let all of the saints answer it. By this mutual fellowship in the church service meeting, all of the serving ones will pick up a real burden. The beginning of the meeting will be full of prayer, and all of the attendants will be on time. In such a meeting we could see the real church life with the church service.