The Practical Building Up of the Local Churches

Additional Quotes about the Local Church

The following quotes express Witness Lee’s understanding of the God-ordained way to build the church:

2. Feeding the New Believers

The following selected portions from the ministry of Witness Lee focus on the need to nourish the believers for the building up of the Body of Christ:

We must be vital in order to gain sinners for the Lord. After we gain them, we need to feed them. To feed the new believers is even harder than gaining them. Then we have to perfect them by the mutual asking and answering of questions, the mutual teaching, in the group meetings. In order to do this effectively, we have to learn the truths. The recent life-study on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth did not come to me by accident. It came from over a half of a century of studying the Bible and accumulating the truth in the Bible. I am sharing this to impress us that we have to pay the price to learn the truths.

(Witness Lee, Problems Causing Turmoil, 37)

John 4 says that while the Lord was on His way to Galilee, “He had to pass through Samaria” (v. 4). He detoured from the main way to Sychar, near Jacob’s well, in order to contact a sinful Samaritan woman, who previously had five husbands. The Lord foreknew that she would come to the well of Jacob. The well of Jacob is a type of Christ, who is the spring of water gushing up into eternal life (v. 14b). We have to learn of the Lord’s pattern in purposely detouring to Sychar to gain only one person.

To spend three years to gain one person is worthwhile. If you spend three years to visit one person continually, you will gain him. After twelve years you will have four new ones following you to the church meetings. If one hundred saints in a local church practice this, their number can be increased to five hundred after twelve years.

(Witness Lee, Vital Groups, 59-60)

It is difficult to find an adequate definition for the word cherishing, even in the dictionary. The best definition of cherishing is to make someone comfortable and happy. To cherish our children is to make them comfortable and happy. A wife may serve her husband good food, while neither her face, attitude, spirit, nor utterance is cherishing. She is nourishing, but not cherishing. As a result her husband will not feel comfortable and be happy, but hesitate to eat the food.

We must learn to go back to the newly baptized ones with a smiling face, rather than with a stern face. If we command them to come together to have a meeting and demand to know where the other members of the family are, our “nourishing” will make everyone unhappy. We need to learn to cherish people to make them happy (1 Thes. 2:7). Then we can nourish them (John 21:15). Sometimes children are naughty and refuse to eat. But some mothers are very good at cherishing them to get them to eat.

(Witness Lee, Instruction, 38-40)

The elders must have the experience of Christ as life so they will know how to help others. When someone is in need, they should contact him several times, but they should not touch the matter of who is wrong and who is right. They must also not be hasty in helping him. They should not be disappointed after the first contact. Often the first contact may not be very helpful. However, they should continue to go to the person in need. This is to shepherd the saints. Perhaps on the first visit there will be no opportunity to minister anything, but eventually the elders will be able to minister Christ to the person involved. They will help him contact the Lord, and eventually they may have a chance to pray with him and bring him to the Lord in that prayer. Then he will touch the Lord, and once he touches the Lord, his problem will be cared for in the Lord.

When a local church has been established for a period of time, there will be some saints who do not come to the meetings. If we consider those who do not come, we will find that most of them have certain problems. Therefore, there is the need to shepherd them, to go to them again and again. We should not consider that to go to the weaker ones is a waste of time. Rather, this is the way to keep the existing members in the church. We should not expect that we can help them by one visit alone. Rather, we should continue to go to them until we bring them to contact the Lord. Then they will get the help. If we desire that someone be gained by the Lord, we have to go to them, possibly for one or two years. Only the proper contact with people to bring them to the Lord can gain them. There is no other way.

(Witness Lee, Eldership (3), 33-34)

The house of God, the church, cannot be built up with pieces of clay. A house built with clay cannot stand for long. When the storm comes, it will turn into mud and collapse. The church can be built up only with us as the living stones through transformation. Transformation comes only from the growth in life by feeding on Christ. This is why we all have to eat Jesus. Then we will grow and have some transformation to become living stones. When I consider a number of saints among us, I praise the Lord for His gracious work. I can see the real transformation in them.

This transformation keeps us in the divine oneness. Do you think that we could be one by ourselves? If we are one in a muddy way, there will be a split among us when a storm comes. But I thank and praise the Lord for the transformation I have seen in a number of the saints. Through transformation many local churches have been raised up and built up. It is difficult for there to be a split among us when we are daily experiencing the Lord’s transformation. The oneness among us is not something formed by certain teachings and doctrines or by a certain organization. The oneness among us is the issue of an inward transformation.

We grow by eating, drinking, and digesting Jesus. As we give Jesus the free course in our whole being, we have the growth, and by the growth, we have the transformation. Transformation is not a matter of outward correction. The main principle in being transformed is that you have to give Jesus the free course within you. You have to pray, “Have a free course in me, Lord, that I may have the best digestion.” As we eat and digest Jesus, we have the growth in life, and by this growth we have the transformation.

(Witness Lee, Living and Practical, 39-40)

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