Fruit-Bearing / Barrenness

How fruitful we are depends on whether we have an intimate concern

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In 2 Corinthians 7 Paul was very emotional. In verse 13 he says that he “rejoiced more abundantly over the joy of Titus.” …Paul was very human and emotional in his ministering of life. Paul was so emotional because his concern was so deep and intimate. Without this kind of concern, we could never be abundantly rejoicing in the way Paul was. Instead, we may be as cold as a freezer, altogether lacking in concern for the saints. Instead of warming up others, we make them even colder. Nothing can grow when it is in such a frozen condition. We need the weather of spring to come to thaw us out and warm up our life. Once again there is a need for a ministering life. Do you know what a ministering life is? It is a life that warms up others. Learn to warm others. This is to have an intimate concern for them.

Many have read 2 Corinthians 7 without touching the matter of Paul’s intimate concern. If we do not have this kind of concern for others, we will not be fruitful. If I would minister life to the saints, I must have a genuine concern for them, a concern that is emotional, deep, and intimate. I must be so concerned that, at times, I may appear to others to be foolish or beside myself.

(Life-study of 2 Corinthians, message 44)

If we would bear fruit, we must do so corporately

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THE PRACTICAL WAY TO BEAR FRUIT

While we need to enjoy the Lord by pray-reading His Word, this alone is not sufficient; there should be a practical result of our exercise in the Word. The practical issue of our enjoyment of Christ in the Word is fruit-bearing. If we do not bear fruit, we will not have good spiritual digestion. To bear fruit is to pass on to others the portion of Christ that we have enjoyed. Instead of keeping Christ locked up within us, we should pass Him on to others. Bearing fruit is more than simply preaching the gospel. Bearing fruit is the result of enjoying on a daily basis the Christ whom we have received. As a result of enjoying Christ, we spontaneously pass Him on to others, bearing them as fruit.

We should check ourselves in these two areas.

  • First, we should check to see whether we are enjoying Christ throughout the day. If we are enjoying Christ, then we are a branch in the vine.
  • Second, as branches in the vine, we should spontaneously bear fruit.

We need to ask ourselves whether we are bearing fruit or not. Regarding this matter, many of us have a problem. Our problem is that we do not pass Christ on to others. To enjoy Christ is to receive Christ into us; to bear fruit is to pass Christ on to others. Fruit-bearing involves a flow: Christ flowing in through our enjoyment of Him, and Christ flowing out through our fruit-bearing. All the brothers and sisters should bear the responsibility of bearing fruit. None of us has an excuse for failing to bear fruit. We should not say that we have no possibility of bearing fruit.

Forming a Nucleus

Although we have fellowshipped in the past concerning how to bear fruit, a number of saints may not be clear concerning this matter. Hence, I wish to pass on a few points that we should put into practice if we are to bear fruit. First, we need to form a nucleus with the saints to whom we are related. The reason we need a nucleus is that as branches, we cannot bear fruit individually. Trying to bear fruit individually is not effective. If we would bear fruit, we must do so corporately, and the first step in bearing fruit corporately is to form a nucleus.

Praying Together

Once we have formed the nucleus, the primary matter that we should attend to is prayer. It would be very good for the members of the nucleus to meet once a week simply to pray. Such meetings are very important. In principle, these gatherings are just as important as the meetings of the church.

After we have formed our nucleus and have begun to pray, we should list the names of our acquaintances. Our acquaintances include our relatives, classmates, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Each member of the nucleus may have a list that contains dozens of names.

After composing our lists, each of us should pray over our list, seeking the Lord’s guidance so that we can select two or three people—four at the most—for whom we should begin to care. By seeking the Lord’s mind in this way, we will become clear concerning which persons are the right ones for us to care for at the present time. After we have the Lord’s leading concerning certain ones on our list, we should pray for them, contact them, and try to bring them into the nucleus.

Adding People to the Nucleus

Once we begin praying, we should not expect quick results. Only after praying and endeavoring for a period of time will we bear fruit. After we have prayed together for a period of two or three weeks, we should seek to bring those for whom we have prayed into our nucleus one by one (bringing more than one at a time is generally too difficult). From then on, whenever we meet with our nucleus, we should come with new ones. This is the easiest way for us to bring people to Christ. If we succeed in bringing those for whom we are praying into the nucleus, they will be gained for the Lord.

If we put these points into practice, it will be easy for people to be gained. Of course, there are other things that the nucleus can and will do, but they are not nearly as important as the things I have outlined above: forming the nucleus, praying together, and bringing our friends into the nucleus. By praying as a nucleus and inviting our friends to it, our friends will gradually be brought to Christ and into the church life.

The nucleus is like a little fishing boat, and the members of the nucleus are like hooks that can catch people and bring them into the nucleus. To bring our friends into the nucleus is to bring them ninety-five percent of the way to Christ, Eventually, it is through this nucleus that our friends will also be brought into the church life. If we try this, we will discover that each member of our nucleus will bear at least one fruit every six months.

(Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1967, vol. 2, “Enjoying the Lord in the Word to Bear Fruit”, ch. 2)

Abiding is for the sake of fruit-bearing

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“John 15 is a very valuable and deep chapter in the Bible. A number of Bible teachers teach only the abiding in the Lord from this chapter. Actually, however, John 15 stresses the bearing of fruit. Abiding is not for the sake of abiding; abiding is for the sake of fruit-bearing. If you abide in the Lord for your whole life and do not bear any fruit, your abiding means nothing. The stress in John 15 is not on abiding. The key is abiding, but the stress is fruit-bearing. We can have the fruit-bearing by abiding.

For the branch to abide in the vine is the living of a life under all kinds of conditions—the sunshine, the blowing wind, the rain, the heat, and the cold. In other words, to abide in the Lord is to live a life in Him under all kinds of suffering. Actually the vine tree suffers day and night for and until the season when it will produce its fruit (see Hymns, #635).”

(Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, chapter 23)

Two kinds of eating: eating in sowing and eating in harvesting

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“Many of you have testified regarding your enjoyment of the Lord, but all that I have heard pertains to your eating, your enjoyment in sowing. You have not yet reached the level of eating with regard to harvesting. The initial sowing is easy, but the final harvesting is not so easy. After the seeds are sown, whether or not there will be a harvest is still a question. Up until now, your eating of the Lord for enjoyment has been in the initial stage, the sowing stage.

Therefore, I have to make it clear to you, brothers and sisters, that you should not stop at the enjoyment of sowing, but go on to the enjoyment of harvesting. When you sow, you simply bury the seed into the ground. After sowing, you still need to take care of the sprout that it may grow and bear fruit. Only then can you have the enjoyment of the harvest. In our enjoyment of sowing, we receive something of the Lord into us. Whenever we call on the name of the Lord and pray-read His word, we receive a portion of the Lord as a seed into us. Whether this will result in a harvest depends upon our willingness to let the seed grow. If we let it grow, it will surely yield a harvest. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

…Today I want to check with you all. Do you as sowers truly have seeds? Do you as eaters really have bread? Perhaps you have only half a bowl of rice, which is not enough even for yourself. If you cannot feed yourself adequately, how will you be able to take care of others? What is the reason for this? It is because you sow the seed, yet you do not labor to let the seed grow.

We all know that when a farmer labors on a field, he has to remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the soil, add fertilizer, and sometimes apply some pesticides. What do you do? You have done very well eating the Lord and pray-reading His word, but you do not remove the stones, nor eliminate the weeds, nor water the soil, nor add fertilizer, nor apply pesticides. In the end you might as well have not sown at all. If you do not sow, your seeds will remain intact, but once you sow, you lose the only seeds you have. There are some people who indeed have a reserve of a small portion of the Lord before pray-reading the Word, but after they gained the Lord through pray-reading and then are disobedient by not laboring, they lose the presence of the Lord. The Lord went farther away from them.

…Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what do you eat today, manna or the produce of the good land? Some say they eat manna; others say they eat manna as well as the produce. This is true. However, I hope that those who eat manna will gradually stop eating it. Do you know where manna was eaten? It was eaten in the wilderness. Therefore, eating manna is a strong proof that you are a wanderer. Where was the produce of the good land eaten? It was eaten in Canaan! Moreover, the top tenth of the harvest of the land — the firstborn of the herd and of the flock and the firstfruits of the grain — were not to be eaten at home. They had to be brought to the temple and eaten before God. This shows that their wandering had ceased. Do you want to be a Christian who eats manna or a Christian who eats the produce of the good land? Everyone wants to be a Christian who eats the produce of the good land. True, manna is good; but it is not good enough because it is the diet of those who wander about in the wilderness.

…To obtain manna does not require our laboring, but to get the produce of the land of Canaan does. While we are enjoying the Lord and receiving Him into us, He often raises up circumstances and allows many things to happen for our good, so that the seed in us can grow and produce something. For example, a sister, whose husband always makes things difficult for her, prays every day, asking the Lord to cause her husband to love Him as much as she does. However, the more she prays, the less he loves the Lord; the more she calls “O Lord, Amen!” and the more she pray-reads, the more her husband is annoyed…. Let me tell you that all those things that happen are the Lord’s raising up the north wind to blow upon you (S.S. 4:16). Instead of asking the Lord to change your husband, pray that the Lord will grow in you: “O Lord, make me willing to accept Your dealing. O Lord, subdue me from within. O Lord, cause me to submit myself under Your hand and take the breaking.”

…Twenty years ago, when I saw brothers who had good character and proper behavior and who gave good impressions wherever they went, I greatly appreciated them. However, now in retrospect those brothers with good character and proper behavior did not bear any good fruit. On the contrary, some careless and sloppy ones were able to bring people to salvation. The church life, the testimony of the church, is not a matter of behaving well or not behaving well, nor is it a matter of being or not being above reproach. The church life, the testimony of the church, is a matter of eating the Lord as the seed and allowing this seed to grow. Like a farmer, you remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the ground, add fertilizer, and apply pesticides so that the Christ in you will gradually grow into a harvest. This is not a matter of being well-behaved or not; it is a matter in a totally different realm. Behaving and not behaving are in the realm of good and evil. What we are speaking about is the realm of Christ. You are full of Christ, and you bring in your topmost portion before God to enjoy with the saints in the meeting. This is our proper meeting today. The emphasis in the meeting is not on singing, praying, praising, speaking in tongues, or functioning; the emphasis is on bringing in the topmost portion of the Christ that you have produced. I bring my portion, and you bring yours. Apart from any forms, we all present our Christ.

…Now we all have learned to eat. We have learned that there are two kinds of eating. One is the eating in sowing, and the other is the eating in harvesting. The eating in sowing cannot constitute our worship; we need the eating in harvesting. When you bring the eating in harvesting, that will constitute the true worship and the genuine church life. The church needs this. We have to look to the Lord and open up to Him that we all may learn to be exercised in the matter of eating.”

(Eating the Lord, chapter four)

The slower, the better

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PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR VISITING PEOPLE

The instructions I am giving now concerning the new way are different from what I spoke in Taiwan. In Taiwan I charged you to visit people and to get them baptized immediately. But today I do not encourage you to get people baptized in a quick way. Also, when you visit people, do not speak too quickly to them concerning the Bible, God, Christ, or salvation. If you do, people may think that you are too religious and that they cannot come up to your standard. They may be turned away by your enthusiasm. In your first visit with someone who has been recommended to you, do not stay very long; the shorter the visit, the better. A short visit will give the one who is visited a good taste so that he will welcome another visit. Do not spoil the taste of those whom you visit. On the first visit do not speak too much concerning spiritual things.

As you visit a second or third time, you may begin to say something concerning Christ. You may need to go a few times before you are able to get a person saved. The principle is: the slower, the better; the slower it is, the safer it is. The slower the pace is, the more certain it is that you can gain that person.

(Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, Chapter 3, Section 3)

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Something must be improper or wrong if we are not bearing fruit

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“Barrenness is an even more subtle enemy. Some married couples are not able to have children, and this becomes a big problem to them. According to human desire, the meaning of a couple’s life is to have children. Likewise, if we do not bear fruit, beget some spiritual children, there is not much meaning to our church life. Without fruit-bearing, there is no practical church life. Suppose that we baptized fifty-eight new ones in the next Lord’s Day church meeting. All of us would be excited and joyful in the Lord. But we do not have much joy, because we are barren. Barrenness is the biggest enemy that annuls the proper church life.

If we cannot have children in our human life, we can have the Lord as our replacement. But the Lord will not be the replacement for the fruit that we do not bear in the church life. We may feel that we have been enjoying the Lord every day, but a tree is known by its fruit. The real church life can be evidenced only by fruit-bearing. If we have not borne fruit for three years, for five years, or even for ten years, our enjoyment of Christ should be questioned. Something must be improper or wrong if we are not bearing fruit.

In the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Lord touched the deadness with Sardis and the lukewarmness with the Laodiceans, but He did not touch barrenness. This is because He had already dealt with this very seriously in John 15. In the four Gospels the Lord did not deal with deadness or with lukewarmness. But He dealt with barrenness to the uttermost in one chapter—John 15. Some people would say that this is a chapter on abiding in Christ. Actually, however, it is not on abiding but on fruit-bearing. Abiding is for fruit-bearing. The Lord said, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes it away…If one does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is dried up” (vv. 2a, 6a). For a branch to be cast out means that it is cut off from participation in the riches of the life of the vine.

If we do not bear fruit, there is a danger that we will be cut off from the vine tree. This does not mean that we will suffer eternal perdition but that we will lose our enjoyment of Christ as our portion. This proves that if we do not bear fruit, there is a problem with our enjoyment of Christ. This is just like a couple who cannot bring forth children. They may say that they do not feel that anything is wrong with them, but actually something is wrong, which is preventing them from having children. They may even go to some doctors to find out what is wrong with them. This is an illustration of our problem of barrenness. We may feel that there is nothing wrong with us, but based upon the fact that we have not borne fruit, we must realize that something is wrong with our enjoyment of Christ. If we do not have fruit, our so-called enjoyment of Christ can be a self-deceiving matter. It is not so real.

We may think that we have seen a number of saints who have not borne fruit for quite a long time, but we did not notice that they were cut off from the enjoyment of the Lord. My answer to this is that the matter of life is a mystery. There may be a couple who cannot bear children, but no one can see the reason. In the same way it may seem that we are doing quite well, but where is our fruit? This is a test. If we are not bearing fruit, this is evidence that we have lost our enjoyment of Christ. In this chapter I want us to realize that every day, day and night, these three enemies are around us: deadness, lukewarmness, and barrenness.

In the previous chapter I shared that we need to get some companions, at least two or three, with whom we can labor in the gospel. We should never work by ourselves. Instead, we should work by fellowshipping with our companions. The trouble is that we do not like to have fellowship with others. We are self-contented, and some of us may think that we are omnipotent and all-capable. But according to my over sixty years of experience, none of us is omnipotent. Each of us is very limited in his capacity and ability. You need the help, and I need the help. My helpers in the work know how much I need them. I purposely fellowship with them and ask them questions in order that I may learn. I want to be taught by them. If there is no fellowship among us in our work, there cannot be the real one accord. We need to labor in oneness through thorough fellowship. Because of our unwillingness to have thorough fellowship, we are dead, lukewarm, and barren. We must get some companions and open up ourselves to fellowship with them to the uttermost.”

(The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups, Chapter 3, Section 2)

We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number

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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)

My dream is home meetings

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DROPPING THE OLD WAY AND TAKING THE NEW WAY

… After studying our situation, I began to reconsider the Bible in this matter, and I also began to reconsider the history of the denominations. I became clear that all of Christianity, including us, got off from the Lord’s way.

… The old way is to always have big meetings, a congregation with a speaker. This produces clergy, a hierarchical class with most of the others not functioning. Taking the way of a big congregation with a speaker produces hierarchy and also produces organization. The organizational way is to have clergy and a congregation and to raise up money to hire trained preachers. People are first brought into this way, and then their function is killed. This is the way of Christianity. Brother Nee told us repeatedly and insisted strongly that we give up the Lord’s Day morning meeting in the churches. He proposed that we use that time to go out to preach the gospel. In Brother Nee’s book The Normal Christian Church Life, there is a section on the home meetings (ch. 9). He told us that we needed to have meetings of mutuality, not meetings where one speaks and the other saints sit there to listen. We tried this, but we never carried it out because of the heavy background and influence from Christianity.

… Therefore, I had the boldness to tell the church there that the old way should be put aside, and that they should take the new way according to what is in the Bible. At the very beginning of the church life, according to the first record of Christian meetings, the apostles spoke in the temple to a big congregation for the preaching of the truth, yet the believers met “from house to house” (Acts 2:46). In Greek this means that they met according to the houses. Each and every house was a meeting place; the meeting number was according to the houses. After the day of Pentecost when they were baptized, they met according to the homes. They did not have hired speakers, but they had the church life in their homes. They also met in the temple, but this was according to their tradition and habit and not according to God’s economy. That was not the church life.

The more we studied the situation according to the truth of the New Testament and according to our experience, the more we were assured that the right way is to have the church life built up in the homes. First Corinthians 14 speaks of the whole church coming together in one place (v. 23). But this is not a meeting of only a few speakers but a meeting in which “each one has” (v. 26), a meeting full of mutuality. The old Christianity way of one speaking and the others sitting to listen kills the church life.

In the full-time training in Taipei, I told the trainers not to bring the new ones to the church meetings. Occasionally, some new ones asked the trainees to bring them to a church meeting. After one or two church meetings, these new ones said they did not want to go to the church meeting again. They liked to enjoy the meeting in the homes. They did not have a taste for the big meetings. But with many of us it is exactly the opposite. We have a taste for the big meetings. When you bring your contacts to a meeting, you may like to have a big hall, a large congregation, and a big, eloquent speaker. All of this is a good façade. We have been meeting in this way in our localities for many years, and what has been the result? We have had hardly any increase, but instead have been maintaining a traditional Christian worship service. People today are quarreling, debating about doctrine and about different practices in Christianity, but I am not burdened merely for the doctrines or for practices. I only care for the New Testament faith, the Christian faith, the New Testament economy. As long as we have this, let us take the new way to have the increase.

… Many of us have become drugged with the old way of having big meetings. When we made the change from having the big meetings in the hall to having the small meetings in the homes, many saints were disappointed. But the newly baptized ones like the home meetings. Some brothers in Taipei got addicted to the home meetings, and many trainees got addicted to the baptism in the new way. If they could not get one baptized every evening, they felt they were short. They got addicted to this practice and found that to baptize people in faith is a real joy. These new ones are growing. They have begun to seek after the Lord and to know the truth.

Many of us have become drugged. We are too satisfied with the old way to have a congregation. But I have seen a view that perhaps after five years in Taipei, the church will just be meeting in many homes.

… We have not had much feeling about our years of barrenness in which we did not bring forth much fruit. One leading brother told me that he did not bring anyone to the Lord for twenty years. However, after he began to practice door-knocking in the new way, he baptized seventeen within four months.

My burden is to wake you up because you have been drugged. The Lord says that as a branch, you have to bear fruit. This is serious. If you do not bear fruit, there is the danger that you will be cut off (John 15:2, 6). The words of the Lord in John 15 indicate that as branches of the vine, we must bear fruit. If you abide in Him, you will surely bear fruit (v. 4). God even took away His kingdom from Israel because Israel was barren, fruitless, and gave His kingdom to another people, the church (Matt. 21:43; Luke 13:6-9). But how about today’s church? Who is bearing fruit?

… Do you not think we have clergy? Do you not think we have hierarchy? We do not call anyone a pastor, but actually we have “pastors.” We have followed Christianity’s way unconsciously. We brought people in and we killed their function by our way. We say we do not control, but in many respects we do control. The leading ones need to ask themselves if they are part of the clergy and the hierarchy among us. Let us all drop the old way, “the old coat!” I am not only telling the elders to drop “the old coat.” All of the older generation must give up the taste of the old way and take the new taste of the new way. For the Lord’s sake, we need to take the new taste.

… The Lord Jesus was not sitting in the heavens sending out invitations, inviting people to come to Him. He came down out of heaven (John 6:41) to visit Zaccheus’s home (Luke 19:5). Then He said, “Salvation has come to this house” (v. 9). He went to Jacob’s well and waited for a Samaritan woman (John 4:6-7). Why would we not follow Him? Why would we just follow Christianity, set up a church building, and be one of the hierarchies, inviting people and learning to speak eloquent things to attract people? Then once they are attracted by you and come to your meetings, they become dead Christians without any function. They may only pull out their checkbook and write some checks to support you in your hierarchy. I am not only talking about Christianity but about us. I believe that after two or three years of our taking the new way, the elders who remain in the old way will be jobless. A brother who wants to be a good speaker with a congregation will not have one since the church life will be in the homes. All the elders and co-workers must learn to knock on doors. The elders must take the lead in this matter.

… Eventually, in the recovery the way of Christianity with a big congregation and one gifted speaker will be completely annulled. For one to minister the Word depends upon whether he has the real burden of some of the truths from the Lord. Such a person is like Paul, who went to Troas and on the Lord’s Day, after the breaking of the bread, spoke the word to build up the saints there (Acts 20:6-7). This is not like today’s pastors giving sermons week by week. Some of us have been giving people messages week by week for years, but what has been the result? I would not say there is no result, but the rate of the result is too low.

We have tasted the old way, we have experienced the old way, and we have suffered from the old way. Now many of us have tasted the Lord’s new way, which is so sweet and so workable. What would you choose? We have been drugged without bearing fruit in the old way for years, yet we did not have any feeling about it. We came to the big meetings year after year with hardly any new ones brought to the Lord. How could we be satisfied? Let us forget about the old way. When a house gets too old, it should be condemned. You need to get a new house to replace it. I was unhappy with our low rate of increase for the last ten years, but I could not do anything.

THE LORD’S MINISTRY TODAY

The Lord’s ministry today is not to build up big congregations. It is to build up the saints in the new way, which involves:
(1) Learning how to knock on doors, how to touch people with the high gospel within a short time, how to baptize them not only in water but also into the Triune God, and how to set up meetings in their homes.
(2) Learning how to feed them with the truths concerning the Triune God, concerning life, concerning Christ, and concerning the church, which means that we have to learn how to teach the truths in homes.
(3) Learning how to help all the new ones to grow in life.
(4) Learning how to bring them into the full knowledge and practice of the church, the Body of Christ.
This will be done not only by me or by some of you; this will be done by everyone. Every door-knocker will learn this.

After two or three years the saints will have another taste. They will tell you that they do not like to have the big meetings. They like to have the home meetings where they could preach the gospel by themselves and where they could teach the truths by themselves. They will not need any kind of organization. What elders have been in mainland China for the past fifteen years? You may say that is a mess, but I am glad for that “mess.” I like to see this kind of “mess.” If there could be such a “mess,” after fifteen years another fifty million will be converted. This would be wonderful.

The big denominations, the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians, have all decreased and are still decreasing according to a recent article. Are we still happy to remain in this degraded situation? Will we not wake up? We should not talk about others but should consider ourselves and drop our old way. I have no interest to take care of the work in the old way. I realize that the old way is the killing way. Would we be happy to remain in this kind of work? I like to see homes. I like this word home — home sweet home. My dream is home meetings. The homes are the basic foundation for the building up of the local churches, not the halls with big congregations. When the saints rise up to go out knocking on doors, they will get addicted to knocking on doors, addicted to baptizing people in bathtubs, and addicted to home meetings and to teaching people in home meetings. They will not care for having big meetings in the meeting hall. They have been meeting in the old way for years, and many are bored of the old way of meeting. All the elders need to be door-knocking elders. They need to take the lead to go door-knocking. May the Lord grant us all the mercy to completely drop the old way and to fully pick up the Lord’s new way.

(Being Desperate and Living Uniquely for the Gospel, Ch. 1)