In today’s age, people cannot do without religion. In the minds of most people, the highest and most genuine religion is Christianity because Christianity worships the true God and also because the Bible is the most superior book. Moreover, there are the Sunday services. When people come into a chapel for the Sunday services, they feel calm and peaceful, with everything in order. After taking their seats in the midst and listening to the choir singing in harmony, they really feel soothed. After that, there is Bible reading for the sermon, with the pastor leading the congregation in prayer. Then another pastor gives a sermon, and finally, the resident pastor gives the benediction. After the meeting, these pastors and preachers will even go to the door to greet the people as they leave. Would you not say that this kind of service is good? If I were short of spiritual enlightenment, I would definitely choose such a chapel. This practice matches the psychology of the congregation and is very much welcomed by people. But such practices have completely choked to death the functions of the truly saved ones. Because the functions of the believers have all been choked to death, the only thing they can do is to send away those who have the desire to become preachers to be educated in seminaries, expecting that after graduation they will consecrate themselves to be preachers or pastors to maintain the Sunday morning services in the various chapels. Hence, they will become the clergymen. With this kind of clergy-laity system, there is absolutely no way for the Lord to carry out His New Testament economy for the building up of the Body of Christ.
The way revealed in the New Testament is exactly opposite to what we have described. Once a person has believed in the Lord and is saved, the first thing we do is to help him pray, call on the name of the Lord, and sing hymns to praise the Lord. The next thing is to lead him to practice speaking, testifying for the Lord. After that, we lead him to meet together with his family members, and with his neighbors and relatives, to speak Jesus to them. He has no knowledge whatever that there are the so-called pastors or preachers. At the present, the practice among us is a combination of the old and the new way. Because we have remained in this way for too long, we are accustomed to the customs of the nations. Hence, once we change the system of meeting from one person speaking to many speaking, some brothers and sisters are not accustomed to such a thing, and they will not necessarily like it. This is our problem. What should we do? If we want to keep the way of meeting as revealed in the New Testament, then we must exercise ourselves in every meeting. How we entered the door should also be the way we walk. Since we were saved through calling on the name of the Lord, then after being saved, we should be those who call on the name of the Lord and speak to the Lord whenever we meet. We should do this even on the way to the meeting, before we arrive. Then we will speak, testify, and preach Jesus to others in the meetings, or we will pray and praise. Whoever comes to the meeting, regardless of who he is, should practice in this way. It should not be something done once in a while, but in every meeting.
There is another vital point about the meetings as revealed in the New Testament; that is, in these meetings, first, there needs to be the word. Everyone should speak the word of God. Second, there needs to be the Spirit. Everyone should exercise the spirit and be living. Third, there needs to be prayer. Fourth, there needs to be singing. These four items, the word, the Spirit, praying, and singing, should be the content of our meetings. The reason our home meetings and small group meetings are not good is that the word is not spoken properly, the spirit is not released, the prayer is poor, and singing is lacking. If these four matters are not carried out properly, our meetings will be finished, and no one will want to come again.
From now on, I beg you trainees and the trainers as well to have more study on how to improve in the matters of the word, the Spirit, praying, and singing as revealed in the Bible. I myself also will study. In the past twenty years, the Lord has led us to practice pray-reading, and we have been helped greatly. Recently, we have had the propagation groups here enjoying the Lord through pray-reading, and the benefits are not small. At any rate, in the meetings of the believers, whether they are home meetings, small group meetings, or large meetings, it is worthwhile for us to study how to practice these four things—the word, the Spirit, praying, and singing—through pray-reading and the propagation groups. I would ask that you bring these points back home and study them thoroughly. May the Lord bless you and bless us. These days are really days of warfare. I hope that some of you would pick up the burden of offering fighting prayers to ward off the enemy’s frustrations. May the Lord have mercy on us.
A message given by Brother Witness Lee in Taipei on October 6, 1987.