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Meetings to facilitate the effective sharing of all members for the building up of the body of Christ
Adapted from Witness Lee
but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16. from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Ephesians 4:15-16
Clergy & Laity System
The Lord desires that every member of His Body be a functioning member. Almost all Christian groups practice the system of the clergy and laity. The clergy are the professional preachers, pastors, and ministers, who serve God in place of the other members of the church.
Actually, the clergy replaces the members of the Body of Christ, and this replacement spontaneously annuls and kills the function, the capacity, and the usefulness of the members of Christ. This is an offense to the Lord.
The Lord’s Recovery is for the annulling of the clergy and laity and the developing of the gifts, functions, and capacity of all the members of the organic Body of Christ (Eph. 4:11-16).
Various Talents
According to the parable in Matthew 25:14-30, the Lord has distributed talents to all of us. To some He gave five talents, to some He gave two talents, and to some He gave only one talent. The problem today is not with the five-talented ones, but with the one-talented ones.
Not all churches have five-talented members, but they all have many one-talented members. Moreover, if we add together five one-talented members, they will equal a five-talented member. In a big family, all the members, including the parents, grandparents, and children, must do something for the family. Every member of the Body, regardless of how long he has been saved and how many talents he has received, must speak.
Participation by Every Member
As long as he has been saved, he must participate in the church service.
In 1 Corinthians 14, we see the need of the effective sharing in order to build up the church as the organic Body of Christ. To share Christ is the best way to build up the Body. However, in most Christian meetings, there is a congregation with one or two speaking while the rest listen. The rest of the congregation are “pew members.” After a few years of meeting in this way, the functioning capacity and gifts of the members are spontaneously annulled.
How to practice God’s New Testament priesthood
(Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9).
This way mainly consists of four PRACTICES
These PRACTISES are Spiritual Habits or Spiritual Disciplines
- First, we must PREACH the gospel regularly by visiting sinners. God so loved the world that He gave His Son, the Savior, Christ, that the sinners, the people of the world, might believe in Him and have His eternal life (John 3:16). God desires all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). The Lord’s main charge to His disciples after His resurrection was to preach the gospel to all creation (Mark 16:15). To preach the gospel is the first thing the church must do for the Lord. If we mean business with the Lord in His God-ordained way, we must bear the burden to preach the gospel to get sinners saved.
- Then we must FEED the new believers regularly in their homes. After the new believers have believed and have been baptized, we must consider them as our babies and ourselves as their begetting parents. After their delivery, babies need the adequate care to be nourished and cherished that they may grow. If we help them to be saved and baptized and then leave them alone, they will die spiritually.
- We also need to DISCIPLE the saints in group meetings. After feeding, nourishing, and cherishing their children, parents must educate them. Almost twenty years are needed to effectively disciple children through education. In the same way, we must do our best to raise up the new believers by teaching, instructing, and correcting them through the group meetings.
- Finally, every believer should SHARE in the church meetings for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ. Everyone must be trained to share, which is to speak the Lord, speak for the Lord, and speak the Lord forth into others. All the believers have been charged by the apostle to pursue, to desire earnestly, and to seek to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:1, 12, 39).
Practice 1: Preaching the Gospel Regularly by Visiting Sinners
We all, without exception, must learn these four practices or habits. First, we must learn to bear fruit by visiting sinners. We are the branches of Christ as the vine (John 15:5). As branches of the vine we should bear fruit yearly. Although many of the saints have been listening to the messages for many years, they have not borne fruit. This is a great problem.
God’s way is a diligent way. To maintain a job, one must be regular and on time. Otherwise, he will lose his job. In the same way, we must be very diligent and regular in the new way, the God-ordained way. However, it does not work if we do not work regularly.
We must visit new people for the gospel. We simply can have coffee with our friends, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues and visit them with some other brothers or sisters. Sometimes it is difficult to help our own relatives to be saved, but if two brothers or sisters come with us, they may be saved on the first visit. Then once they are saved, they may have several more acquaintances for us to meet. Ten saved ones will lead to many new acquaintances with whom we can make appointments. This requires our time, but we do not need to use too much time. It is sufficient to go out once a week for three hours, regardless of our situation.
Practice 2: Feeding the New Believers Regularly in Their Homes
After we baptize new believers, we should return to their homes to have home meetings. The home meetings should be in the new ones’ homes; we must go to them to feed them. When we have two or three new ones, we can stop visiting sinners for a while and spend all our time feeding the new ones. We should always have two or three new ones under our care. Some among these new ones will move away, and we will not have the way to take some of them on with the Lord. If this happens, we must go out again to find someone else.
Practice 3: Discipling the Saints in Group Meetings
In all our meeting read a small portion of New Testament scripture. Effective portions for new ones is Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, Romans 4-8 and the 4 Gospels. Avoid teaching and theological debate. Focus on Christ. Always ask the question: “What do you enjoy the most when eating Christ in this portion?”
After feeding and nourishing the new believers, we should bring them to the group meetings. We disciple the saints in the group meetings by spontaneously introducing them to the new way which is full of the Spirit, life, singing, and praising.
Share Highlights and Lowlights of the week
In the group meetings, we need to reach out to one another so that we know what is going on in each member’s life spiritually and personally. (Heb. 10:24-25). When someone opens up his situation, the others in the meeting can pray for him. In this way, everyone’s situation is known to the others. The mutual fellowship issues in the need to mutually intercede for one another. Out of this mutual intercession comes mutual care and mutual shepherding.
Mutual questions and Mutual answers
The group meetings should also have mutual questions and mutual answers to carry out the mutual teaching for the discipling of one another (Eph. 4:12). In the past the elders may have divided the saints into group meetings and assigned a leader to be the teacher in each group meeting. That way was not profitable, and we have given it up. The group meetings should have no assigned teacher. Everyone is a teacher, and everyone is a learner. Everyone can ask, and everyone can answer.
Facilitator
For practical reasons we wil need a facilitator for each meeting which must be a mature brother. This brother must encourage everybody to speak and encourage those who speak a lot to keep quiet and wait for the others. The facilitator should speak as little as possible. The purpose of the meeting is to facilitate the speaking of the Holy Spirit through each member (Eph 4 :11-17). The more mature the group is the less the facilitator wil speak.
When we come together in the group meetings, we may firstly fellowship about our present situations. Then we will intercede for one another, care for one another, and shepherd one another. Then we must take care of the teaching, the discipling. The new ones may not know how to ask the proper questions, but we should not teach them. Rather, we should simply take the lead to ask something for their sake. Then the others will answer, and everyone will learn. After twenty minutes of answers from everyone, the question will have been adequately covered. Spontaneously, there will be the discipling. This is the effective teaching. In this way, everyone in the meeting will become interested in asking and in answering questions. This way of teaching will cover many subjects throughout the year. After fifty meetings in a year, everyone will have received fifty teachings. After meeting in this way for two years, the new ones will surely know how to speak for the Lord, and everyone in the group meeting will be discipled.
Learn the truth
For the sake of the group meetings, we must pick up the burden to learn the truth. We have many publications covering many subjects, such as justification by faith, baptism, reconciliation, and forgiveness of sins. We must learn from these in order to equip ourselves with the adequate knowledge of the truth. When a question is raised in a group meeting, no one may be able to answer it adequately. In this case someone can give a longer answer that covers the subject in a good way. Then all the attendants will learn, and no group meeting will ever be in vain. All the attendants can carry out this kind of discipling. After meeting in this way, all the newly discipled ones will be able to speak for the Lord in the church meetings.
Practice 4: Prophesying for the Building up of the Church as the Organic Body of Christ
All of us should desire to prophesy in the church meetings for the building up of the church that the organic Body of Christ might be built up universally for the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose (1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5, 12, 23a, 24, 26, 31; Eph. 4:12, 16; 3:8-10). The prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14 is defined in verse 3: “But he who prophesies speaks to men building up and encouragement and consolation.” The prophesying that builds up the Body of Christ is either to build others up or to render encouragement or consolation.
Prophesying
As we mature in the Lord and in the Holy Spirit more of us will begin to prophesy. Prophesying is the spontaneous speaking of the Holy Spirit through a saint without any pre meditation. This is precious and we should all desire to prophesy as we see in 1 Cor 12-14. More on this later.
In order to share for the building up of the church, we must learn much. When Mary, the Lord’s mother, visited Elizabeth, they prophesied one to another (Luke 1:42-45, 46-55). Mary’s prophecy consisted almost entirely of quotations from the Old Testament. This indicates that Mary was very well acquainted with the scriptures and had learned much. In today’s Christianity it is difficult to find the effective sharing. The learned pastors, preachers, and ministers who have studied in seminaries have become the professional speakers. Many Christians do not know how to speak for the Lord because they have never learned or practiced.
Growing into meetings were all the saints share and some prophesy is essential for the building up of the Body of Christ.
Focusing on the Text and The Cross & The Spirit
Memorization Verse:
3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ” (Romans 6:3–4, NKJV)
It is very important to avoid arguments or theoretical theology.
The group meetings must focus on LIFE. Focus on the ZOE of Christ which we access by eating Jesus and by being baptized into Jesus. We focus on the Tree of Life not Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The facilitator and the mature brothers must be ready to redirect a new one who might be argumentative or might be soulish back into the Spirit. This must be gentle and clear. Ask the person what he is enjoying the most on the text concerning the Life of Christ. Theological debate will subside and Christ will be glorified.
