Now let us consider the content of group meetings. Although in 1986 the number in the small groups increased from three thousand to over five thousand with an increase rate of seventy-five percent, the content of our group meetings has never been uplifted. Our past method was simply to have some refreshments and some casual talk. These activities occupied a large portion of the time. Although it is difficult to avoid having casual talk, I would like you to do your best to avoid this. However, you should not avoid it to the extent that your behavior is as cold and stiff as a piece of rock or a piece of steel when you go to meet in others’ homes. You can be assured that this will not work. We are human, and no human being can be without warmth. As long as we are living persons, we have humanity. Only a dead person would fail to greet others or smile at them. We, however, are living persons, and sometimes we would even smile at cats and dogs. Therefore, we always need to remember that we are going to contact people; since this is the case, we need to do it with a humanity that is adequate.
Christianity has been on the earth for almost two thousand years. Their way of gaining people in general is through preaching, on the one hand, and through the use of other things, on the other hand. These other things are the leaven hidden in the fine flour, as mentioned in Matthew 13:33. In the Old Testament, the fine flour is for the meal offering (Lev. 2:1), and the meal offering signifies Christ as food for both God and man. Concerning the meal offering, God has a strict ordinance that no leaven is allowed. In conjunction with this, things that will ferment, such as honey, are also not allowed (Lev. 2:4-5, 11). Only salt is allowed in the fine flour, because salt kills germs. In Matthew 13, the Lord Jesus likens Himself to the fine flour, whereas the woman is the great harlot in Revelation 17, who is the Roman Catholic Church. She has mixed the pagan practices, heretical doctrines, and evil things into the teachings concerning Christ, and thus changed the nature of their content. In all of the works of Christianity today, there is not much that is without leaven. For example, in the Chinese Christian work in the United States, the thing most commonly seen is social friendship, which is something of leaven. Their workers only render help to people outwardly; they do not bring people into Christ, nor do they bring Christ into people. The messages given do not have much truth, and they gain people mostly through social activities. I am afraid that about eighty percent of those attending their meetings are there for social friendship.
Apparently, Christianity has brought in many people. Actually, their gain is not that large because those who go to them are mostly there for some outward help. This is like what the Lord Jesus said in John 6, “You seek Me...because you ate of the bread and were satisfied” (v. 26). They did not desire the Lord or seek after Him in a genuine way. The situation today is the same. There are, indeed, many hardships in human life. However, when you go to help the new ones, you need to weigh carefully how much outward help you should render to them. You should not think that as long as you do your best to help others, it will be effective. You have to realize that there is no end to people’s demand for help. Therefore, we need to set a limit to this kind of thing, and the limit should depend on the circumstance. If we cannot bring a person into Christ in a practical way, though we have tried our best, we simply have to put this one aside temporarily. We cannot spend all of our effort only to care for this kind of person.
Therefore, when you go out, you should not be bothered too much by these things. On the one hand, you should not be cold and stiff toward people; you always need to cause people to feel warm. On the other hand, you should not be snared by this; otherwise, you will not be able to do anything else. This is something that we have been guarding against for years. It is not that we have no heart to help others, but sometimes we do not dare to do too much. This is the principle of the Lord Jesus. When the crowd who had been fed with bread came to force Him to be king, He retreated to the mountains, Himself alone. The next day they looked all around for the Lord Jesus. Later they found Him by the sea. Then the Lord told them that the Son of Man came not to feed people with bread, but to dispense Himself as the bread of life into men (John 6:24-27). What He did the day before was merely a symbolic act to show people that they are hungry and that He is the bread that came down from heaven to give life to man.
In the same principle, it is not that today we do not care for people; rather, we care for people within a limit. Most people consider the church as a charitable organization with a goal of seeking the welfare of the society. You cannot say that this is absolutely wrong, but this is not the commission we received from God. The commission that we have received from God is to dispense the Triune God into people to be everything to them. This, then, is the real blessing to man. We must hold on to this point firmly.