We should not think that everyone in the church can go out to visit people for preaching the gospel. We only expect that among one hundred meeting attendants, there will be twenty-five who can go out. These should go out to knock on doors every other week. They should go out two times a month, twenty-four times a year. Every year each person can definitely bring eight persons to be saved. By this way, twenty-five persons can bring in two hundred new ones. These twenty-five will then bring with them another twenty-five, totaling fifty persons, to lead those two hundred newly baptized ones to regularly have home meetings and attend small group meetings that they may enter into the church life. In this way, we hope that within one year there will be one hundred new ones remaining in the church life. Therefore, we do not need everyone to go out to knock on doors; if there are one-fourth doing it, that will be adequate. The remaining three-fourths that stay behind need to support and supply them.
After we have visited people’s homes and helped them to believe and be baptized to be saved, we must lead them to begin having home meetings in their homes. These home meetings will help them to know the Lord’s salvation and other truths concerning a new believer’s living. It is best to have this kind of home meeting once a week. The meeting time should not be too short. In every meeting, the new believers should be brought into a particular item of spiritual knowledge. Besides this, we should lead them to attend the neighboring group meetings so that they can know and have fellowship with other believers for the mutual care of one another. After a few months, we should bring them to the bigger district meetings; sometimes, according to the need, we may even bring them to the corporate meeting of the whole church. Some have misunderstood that we do not need big meetings. This is not accurate.
I hope that all the trainees, the elders from different localities, and all the serving ones can understand the new way that we have seen. When you go to different places to speak of these things, you have to speak clearly. You should not give people the impression that we want every saint to go out to knock on doors, and if they do not, they will be treated differently and marked out as opposing or disagreeing ones. We surely believe that visiting people by knocking on doors is the best and most effective way to preach the gospel, but we still have to consider the situation of the church and lead the saints according to their practical conditions. When all of you go to different places to fellowship about the new way, you should not have prejudice, nor should you fail to mention anything; you should speak accurately and completely so that a complete picture will be presented. Only in this way can misunderstanding and even unnecessary opposition be avoided. The new way is altogether a biblical way; there is indeed no ground for any opposition.
The first step in preaching the gospel, having meetings, and carrying out the service in the new way is to be filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly. In the Bible, the words used for inward filling and outward filling are different. In Chinese we make a distinction between the two. In order to participate in the church life, gospel activities, and all the services, the primary thing needed is to be filled with the Spirit within and without. Therefore, when we go out to knock on doors, we have to confess our sins thoroughly and pray so that we can obtain the filling of the Spirit.
After we are filled with the Spirit, we have to speak by faith. In 2 Corinthians 4:13, this faith is termed the “spirit of faith.” It is spirit, as well as faith. We exercise such a spirit to believe and speak the things we have experienced of the Lord. Every time we go out to visit people to preach the gospel, we must go by this faith. We believe that when we go out to knock on doors, it is the Triune God who brings us with Him to knock on doors. Moreover, when people are willing to open their doors to us, it is God who asks them to open the door. Therefore we speak by the Triune God. This is our gospel preaching in the new way, full of spirit and full of faith, speaking by the spirit and also by faith. If we are this kind of person, spontaneously we will be able to help the newly saved ones, leading them to be filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly, so that they will be able to speak and preach the gospel by faith with boldness and testify to their relatives, friends, and neighbors. This is the first step in our leading people in the new way.