The church in Taipei has made the decision to practice the new system in the one hundred “gospel tents” formed during the gospel festival. The word “tent” was a term used temporarily. For the long run, it would be more suitable to use the term “district.” The one hundred tents will then be the one hundred districts. In the future, in Taipei we will have the home meetings which have the fewest number of attendants, and we will have the group meetings as a larger kind of meeting. When we combine a few group meetings, we will have the district meeting. Then a few district meetings will be combined to form the hall meeting. When all the hall meetings are combined, we will have the meeting of the whole church.
When we begin to practice meeting according to the new system, we will be faced with one hurdle: to overthrow the tradition of one speaking and the rest listening, and to change the situation to everyone speaking and everyone listening, to speaking and listening in mutuality. To speak about this is easy, but to practice it is not easy. We have studied almost all of the history of Christianity, the writings of renowned persons, and biographies of spiritual giants. Therefore, we are fairly familiar with what Christianity has passed through during the past twenty centuries, with what they have, and with what the situation among them has been. I have been asking myself during the past few days, “Since the time of the apostles, has there ever been anyone who practiced this kind of meeting of mutuality?” According to my knowledge, there has been none! In other words, it seems that the meeting as revealed in 1 Corinthians 14:26, in which everyone has equal opportunity to speak, has never been put into practice since the apostles’ time. For this reason, we cannot find a model of the church meeting.
Since 1934, Brother Watchman Nee had been emphasizing that meetings with one speaking and the rest listening are not scriptural. He said that this was to follow the custom of the nations, that it was unnecessary, and that it should not be maintained. For this reason, he sought earnestly to find the biblical way to practice 1 Corinthians 14:26. He felt that if this kind of meeting with one speaking and the rest listening were removed immediately, there would be nothing to replace it. Hence, he established a brothers’ meeting and a sisters’ meeting. During these meetings there was no chairman or leader. Everyone could call a hymn, pray, or speak. When this was put into practice, everyone just gave testimonies. Since there had been no such testimony meetings for a long time prior to this, everyone felt that they were fresh and attractive at the beginning. But after a few months, all the testimonies ran out; there was nothing more to speak about. In the end, these meetings just stopped by themselves. In 1949, we also had brothers’ meetings and sisters’ meetings in Taiwan. The result was again unsatisfactory.
In 1965 I went to visit Brazil. While I was there I visited one free group. The leader of the group had a Pentecostal background. He had the baptism of the Holy Spirit and he spoke in tongues, but he did not bring these things into the big meetings. Even in their small meetings, they did not practice these things very much. They began in 1915. When I visited in 1965, they had already been in Brazil for half a century. Their number was about three hundred thousand. In São Paulo alone they had thirty thousand. In their meetings they did not have any preaching, nor did they use any publications; rather, they had only the Bible. There was absolutely no chairman, pastor, or preacher among them. They did not have any full-timers; everyone held his own job. They did not have a set program for meeting; they only set the day and the time of meeting. Mostly they met on the Lord’s Day at nine in the morning. Not long before the time of the meeting, the people would begin to come in. Some would call a hymn. Everyone would then sing together, with the accompaniment of a lot of instruments. They sang for at least half an hour. There was no set line along which they picked the hymns; they simply continued one hymn after another. In an auditorium of seven thousand, they placed only two microphones in the aisles. After the singing they began to come up to testify, the males on one side and the females on the other. They all waited before the microphone for their turn to testify. Sometimes they would testify from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. After the testimonies, the responsible brother would ask if anyone in the congregation wanted to be baptized. Those that wanted to be baptized had already been saved during their small meetings. Whether the number was large or small, they had baptisms every Lord’s Day. Then the leading brother would read a few verses and follow that up with a few words of explanation. After a brief prayer, the meeting was dismissed. This was how they met in big meetings year-round. During the week, they had small group meetings in the vicinity where they lived. There was no preaching in these meetings either; they were all testimony times. These small meetings were mainly for bringing people to be saved, to love the Lord, and to seek after Him. Their speaking also covered subjects that had to do with the details of daily living, such as the way to dress, the way to raise up children, etc. This is one group which I have seen that propagated and increased itself without any preaching meeting.
During the 1960s, there were great improvements in the Pentecostal movement in America. Although they still practiced tongue-speaking, it was not that strongly emphasized; nor were healing and casting out of demons deemed that necessary any longer. In many of their meetings, they had no chairmen or preachers; instead they gave testimonies one after another. In the beginning, this movement was also quite prevailing. Even the Catholics were affected by them. In the 1970s, I personally attended one of their meetings in San Francisco in order to study their situation. The testimonies in their meetings were quite fresh; the spirit of some were indeed revived. But today they also have gradually declined.
According to my observation during these past years, I have not seen many meetings which are according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. Hence, in conclusion I have to say that I have not seen this kind of meeting either in church history or in the spiritual publications or in my own experience. But the Apostle Paul did speak this word in the Bible. There is not only 1 Corinthians 14:26, but there is Hebrews 10:25 as well. The latter also speaks about mutual exhortation in the meetings. I have been a Christian for over sixty years, but I have seen only meetings with the preachers exhorting the congregation. I have not yet seen meetings with the congregation exhorting one another. Therefore up until now, I have seen only the revelation in the Bible; I have not seen any practical example.