The brothers and sisters who have been raised up by the Lord in these days to take the way of His recovery must realize that we must always increase in two ways. We must increase in the measure of life, and we must also increase in the number of persons. This is to increase both in quality and quantity. To be increased in the growth and measure of life is to be increased in quality. However, quality always comes out of quantity. If we do not have the quantity, how can we have the quality? We need the quantity, the increase of numbers.

It is easy for Christians to be unbalanced and go to an extreme. We need to learn to be balanced in several directions. We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number. Life always must grow in all the churches day by day, and our numbers also must always increase. Otherwise, we are unbalanced; we are a “cake not turned” (Hosea 7:8)…

The best way to check whether a commercial business is right or wrong is to look at its accounting. We should not care for the general manager’s or director’s report; we should examine the accounting books. What are the balance, profit, loss, and liabilities of this business, and what kind of turnover has it had in the past ten years? We should look at the statistics and worksheets. In the same way, we should not say that our meetings are wonderful and everything is wonderful. If everything is wonderful for a whole year yet there is no increase, there must be something wrong. We need to check ourselves.

(CWWL, 1964, vol. 4, “Serving in the Meetings and in the Gospel,” ch. 5, pp. 116-117)