Now that I am clear about the staying behind or leaving from the training of the full-timers next term, I would like to have a word of fellowship with you, or a charge to you before this term of training is over. This morning, while I am still here, I will speak a few words of this kind.
First, I think many of you already know that the “full-time” service which has been among us the last few years is mainly for the saints who have a heart to pursue further. It is especially for the young college graduates. It gives them the opportunity to devote their lives to pursue God, to dive deeply into the truth, and to grow in life. If I remember rightly, I had already felt this way ten years ago when I was having some fellowship with a group of co-workers in the Bay Area in the United States. I hoped that the brothers and sisters in college or graduate school would take some time after their graduation and before their careers to seek after the Lord for at least a year, and preferably two years. During this time of seeking, some training would be given to them to produce some real perfection in truth and life as well as in the gospel and the church service.
The full-time training we have here was originally for this purpose. I know that you all have really gained something in the two years you have passed through, especially those among you who have been trained for four terms. You have not spent your time in vain. You have, to a greater or lesser degree, been affected by the Lord’s truths and cultivated by life. You have also learned a few things about preaching the gospel and serving the Lord. Furthermore, you have had a taste of human life. These attainments have laid the foundation and made the preparation for your work ahead.
Not only so, these two years have given you the chance to decide for yourselves whether you should get a job or be full-time for the rest of your lives. It was very difficult in the past to determine whether or not a certain one should be full-time; eventually, we could not find a proper way. If we did not let a brother go full-time, we feared that we might waste good material; if we let him do it, we were not sure whether he would be suited to the full-time work. Now, we have finally found a workable way. Coincidentally, it ties in with the new way practiced three years ago when I first came back. By handling the training this way, we have produced full-time serving ones; at the same time it has provided the personnel needed for the Taiwan evangelization work. These two goals joined together complement and supplement one another very well. In the past two years, what we have done here has exactly met these two needs. Thank the Lord. I feel that we have, to a large degree, reached these two goals.
Some of you will probably go back to a job after this term of training. This does not mean that you will have nothing to do with evangelizing Taiwan. I believe that you who have been trained will have a great share in the evangelization work of Taiwan, even though you may not be full-time. The evangelization of Taiwan needs not only a thousand or more full-timers, but also thousands and tens of thousands of saints. Since you have been trained, you have gained something; therefore, you can pass on what you have gained. After you are back in your own locality, if the church formally initiates preaching the gospel, you will be able to cooperate with it. Not very long ago, I mentioned that if two brothers who are trained and have learned to be elders migrate to a place, applying themselves to what they have learned in the training, through prayer, and by relying on and following the leading of the Spirit, the Lord through them should be able to raise up a church of twenty to fifty saints within six months to a year.
You have been trained here. If you go back to your locality, whether you take a job or continue as a full-timer, you can more or less pass on what you have learned in the training to other brothers and sisters. As long as you rely on the Spirit, pray much, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to serve and work, and not put the Lord aside or offend Him, in two or three years you should be able to raise up a church of at least twenty to thirty people. This was the original intention in having the young brothers and sisters attend a period of full-time training after they graduate from school.