LEADING THEM
TO KEEP MORNING WATCH
(THROUGH THE TELEPHONE AS THE BEST WAY)
WITH THE TWO VERSES WHICH THEY
SHOULD READ IN THE MORNING
We need to learn to use the telephone to help the new ones keep morning watch. Today the telephone is a "modern weapon" we can use. Anyone who is not having a morning revival with the Lord is defeated. All the elders should keep morning watch and should also practice having morning watch with others on the phone. I would encourage the elders to try to do this with others six days a week. We should not do this with the same person throughout the week. Instead, we may have morning watch with six different people on the six days of the week. This will really help people. When we help people in this way, we are the ones who receive the top benefit. There is the urgent need everywhere to help and to stir up the saints to participate in this new way of morning watch.
VISITING THEM ONE OR TWO TIMES EVERY WEEK
TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR SPIRITUAL CONDITION AND NOURISHING THEM AS A NURSING MOTHER
We also need to visit the new believers one or two times every week to take care of their spiritual condition. We need to go to see them. If they are sick or troubled, going to see them will warm up their heart.
We should nourish them as a nursing mother caring for her own children (1 Thes. 2:7). We should not give them too much teaching. Instead we need to nourish them by giving them small portions of spiritual food. This nourishment will cause them to grow. Peter says that the guileless milk of the word will cause the new ones to "grow unto salvation" (1 Pet. 2:2). While they are growing, they are being saved. To grow is to be saved. The way to raise up the new believers is to nourish them that they may have the growth in life which issues in the daily salvation.
In conclusion, I want to stress again that what is needed among us is the practice of visiting people. The full-timers among us should spend ninety percent of their time for visiting, going to see people again and again. We need to visit people regularly according to a schedule. Then the church will be taken care of, and we will gain the increase. By visiting we will gain people; by visiting we will keep people; and by visiting we will help them to grow.
Eventually, the new believers will attain to the experience of prophesying in the church meetings according to what is revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. When the whole church comes together, all can prophesy for the building up of the Body of Christ. The basic factor to bring people into the God-ordained way is to visit them. Visiting will spontaneously carry out the first three steps of the God-ordained way—gaining sinners, feeding the new believers, and perfecting the saints. Then the ones whom we perfect will be brought into the fourth step of prophesying for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ.
(Elders' Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-Ordained Way (3), Chapter 9, by Witness Lee)
