The practice of the local churches is on the local ground in the oneness of the unique Body of Christ by four steps.
We do not care for soul winning. Our preaching of the gospel is not to win souls but to save sinners that they may be the members of Christ. We have to believe that a good number of the thousands of people living around us are ones whom God has chosen in eternity past. We do not know who they are, but the Lord knows. How can we gain these ones?
The Bible uses the illustration of fishing. To get sinners saved is like catching fish (Matt. 4:19; Luke 5:9-10). If we do not go to the sea where the fish are, how could we get any fish? The principle, the secret, to gaining a sinner is to “go fishing.” There are many sinners, many “fish,” around us in the place where we live. If we go to contact them consistently week after week, we will eventually gain someone. We do not like to go fishing, however, because we do not have enough patience. A fisherman will fish patiently until he catches some fish, and we need to be the same in our labor in the gospel. We may go out for almost a year without any result, but at the end of the year we may gain a whole family. We need to labor consistently and look to the Lord that each of us could gain one person yearly as remaining fruit for the church life.
After you save some to be the members of Christ, they are babes. They need the feeding so they can grow.
The newborn members need the feeding, and the fed ones need the perfecting. So we have to learn how to save sinners, how to feed the new ones, and how to perfect the saints.
Finally, to practice the church life is by prophesying, to speak the word for God and even to speak forth God. This is absolutely different from the practice of Christianity. Their speakers have become a hierarchical group, and that group builds up a kind of rank and system to annul the functions of all the members of the Body of Christ.
We may wonder how every Christian could speak for the Lord. Some dear saints who have been in the recovery for a short time may say that they love the church, but that they do not like to prophesy because it is too difficult. But we need to realize that children learn how to speak by listening to and imitating what their parents speak. Today, spiritually speaking, it is the same. As the new ones come to meet with us, they will listen to our speaking and spontaneously learn to speak. The New Testament condemns the clergy-laity system (see Rev. 2:6 and note 61-Recovery Version). The way to build up the Body of Christ is by the prophesying of all the saints. This is why we must learn to speak. We need to prophesy to build up the local churches for the consummation of the building up of the Body of Christ.
Now we want to see the way to be vitalized. Just as there are many ways to drive from Anaheim to Los Angeles, there are a number of ways to be vitalized. Here I am presenting a general way.
Although we were unclean and evil sinners, God had compassion on us and chose us. As we consider God’s compassions to us and meditate on the Lord’s love in saving us, we will be stirred up in the best love for the Lord through repenting prayers. This will cause us to be vitalized.
In our repenting prayers, we need to make a thorough confession of all our failures, mistakes, wrongdoings, transgressions, trespasses, etc.
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