Two years after the church life began to be practiced in Watchman's home town in 1922, he was excommunicated by his co-workers. He was excommunicated because he stood for the truth of the Lord's recovery and protested against the leading co-worker's being ordained by a denominational missionary. Considering his dissent too pronounced, they excommunicated him. Excommunication is a very serious matter, and in this case it was done while he was away on a ministry trip. Most of the believers who met with them sided with him, but the Lord would not allow him to do anything to vindicate himself. That was really a suffering to the natural man.
From the time that Watchman began his work, he was in fellowship with an older sister. She loved the Lord, sought the Lord, and was quite gifted of the Lord. Having gained the respect of Christians from several directions, she began to travel and preach. She became one who continually dissented from Watchman Nee. In January 1934, while he was conducting the third overcomer conference in Shanghai, this sister was in the meetings. When Watchman spoke, she would often shake her head. This was a suffering to him, and this was not the only case. Through the years, in the work and in the churches, this kind of dissension happened to him a number of times.
Among those who worked with Watchman Nee and bore the responsibility with him in the church life, no one approached him in maturity and competency; all the others were immature and incompetent. Fifty years ago in China, Watchman was unique and extraordinary in his knowledge of spiritual things. He went forward much further than all the rest. He saw many things the brothers did not see, and their immaturity and incompetency caused him a great deal of suffering.
The stubbornness of the brothers also caused him to suffer. One day a learned young man came into the meeting of the church in Shanghai and was saved. He intended to go to the United States for further study. However, before leaving China, he desired to be baptized.
Watchman was very clear concerning him and agreed that he should be baptized. But an older co-worker disagreed. His reason was that this young man was too new. He had come to the meetings only once or twice, and he was about to leave for the United States. Such a person should not be baptized. He based his reason upon Watchman's own teaching that nothing should be done in the church life without fellowship, and his fellowship was that this brother should not be baptized. He held stubbornly to this point concerning fellowship and used it to insist that the young man should not be baptized. His concern was that the young man might not be saved. Watchman told him that if to baptize the young man was a mistake, he would bear the full responsibility before the Lord. But still the co-worker stubbornly refused.
In 1933 Watchman began to realize that for the sisters not to pray in the prayer meetings of the church was a great loss. He became convinced that it was proper for the sisters to pray in the meetings. However, the leading ones in the church at that time stubbornly kept the old way. That too grieved him.