For fellowship between the churches and communication between the saints in different localities, Watchman was burdened at the end of 1933 to publish Collection of Newsletters. The following open letter, addressed to the brothers and published as the first issue of this paper, explains its origin:
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November 30, 1933
To the brothers who call on the Lord
out of a pure heart:
The Lord is gracious to us, and for this we thank Him. In this end time He has given us light and enabled us to know that it is His pleasure to manifest through us in this world the characteristics which befit His church in order that He might obtain something for Himself. We also thank Him for bending our hearts and producing in us the willingness to obey Him and please Him. Except for this, we are incapable of generating even one good thought.
In the past few years we have been enabled to see that in order to please Him and manifest the characteristics of the church, we must not meet divisively; but rather, we must meet in His name. (This is a very small matter, but we still thank the Lord for it.) Hence, there are many brothers meeting in the name of the Lord in different localities. (We know of over a hundred of these places.) This is surely a joyful and comforting matter. However, although the assemblies in the Bible all had their own local administration, they still maintained fellowship with each other. There are many assemblies now; yet some of them do not even know that other local assemblies exist. This being the case, they surely could not be aware of what is happening in other places. This cannot be considered as fellowship.
We believe God's will is that we should be local in administration and yet at the same time be open to correction from others. Local administration enables us to bear our own responsibility, while fellowship enables us to receive help and correction from others. This is why in 1 Thessalonians there are such words as "imitators" and "pattern" (1:6, 7; 2:14). Unless we are open to correction from others, we may be wrong without realizing it, and others may advance while we do not know how to follow.
Many brothers have written letters to individuals among us giving news of their respective localities. Also brothers have written asking us for information about certain localities. We feel that such intercommunicating of news is both fitting and urgent, but we have lacked adequate time to write such letters.
When we published the first issue of Notes on Scriptural Messages, we intended to include news from various localities. Later, however, we realized that the majority of the readers of Notes on Scriptural Messages were not walking with us, and for this reason we felt that publishing the news in that paper would inevitably give rise to misunderstanding. For this reason we discontinued that practice. However, the need for intercommunication of news has by no means disappeared. Rather, it has been increasing daily.