The Practical Building Up of the Local Churches

According to the God-ordained Way

2. Feeding the New Believers

The second step of the God-ordained way for the building of the local church is the feeding of the new believers for their growth in life and truth.

Witness Lee speaks of our need to follow the Lord’s way of visiting new believers in order to nourish them:

Immediately after the new ones are baptized, home meetings should be set up in their home. Following the preaching of the gospel to lead them to believe and be baptized, we must teach them the truth and help them to grow in life. We must minister Christ to them.

Today in the local churches, by the Lord’s mercy, we have the high gospel and much truth and life. Regretfully, however, we have been limited…. We have to take the way which is on the Lord’s heart. We must follow Him. He did not remain in the heavens, but He came down to visit man. He visited Zaccheus in his home (Luke 19:5-7). He went to visit the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-7). The Lord carried out His ministry all the time by visiting people. He visited Martha and Mary’s home (Luke 10:38-39) and the house of Simon the leper (Matt. 26:6). He charged His disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all the creation (Mark 16:15). He also charged them to go and disciple the nations (Matt. 28:19). In Acts 1:8 He told them that they would be His witnesses starting from Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then to the uttermost part of the earth.

(Witness Lee, Eldership (1), 22-23)

Speaking of the nourishing of the regenerated believers for their growth in life in the local churches, Witness Lee writes:

Now, what is the reality of the Body of Christ? In brief, the reality of the Body of Christ is a kind of corporate living, not a living by any individual. This corporate living is the aggregate of many saints who have been redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed by the processed and consummated God within them. By this indwelling consummated God, these redeemed saints have been made actual God-men. In regeneration a person is made a God-man, but he is not a matured God-man. When some babes are born, they are so small and weak that they have to be put in an incubator. But after much growth these little ones can become tall and husky. We have been regenerated, but many of us are still like these little babes. We need to be nourished and perfected so that we can grow in life and become mature. The procedure in the church work is to beget, to nourish, and then to teach and perfect so that the saints may be mature to be built in the local churches for the building up of the Body of Christ.

(Witness Lee, Practical Points, 34)

Preaching | Feeding | Perfecting | Prophesying

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