4. NOT ATTRACTING PEOPLE TO YOUR PLACE
Do not attract people to your place. When you go out to minister, to speak, to visit, or to have fellowship, do not exercise yourself in a way to attract people to you or to your place. We all should attract people to the Lord’s recovery. We are not attracting people to our local church or to our work. We do not have our work. We only have the Lord’s work. I do not have my local church. I only have the local churches of the Lord’s recovery. Many of you can testify that I never directed people to come to Anaheim. Of course, people had to come to Los Angeles in the first ten years of the church life in the United States because that was nearly the only church with the ministry in the entire country. Today, however, the situation is different. Thank the Lord that the fishing net of the Lord’s recovery is spread over the entire country and in every corner.
We should not practice in a way that attracts people to our place or to us instead of to the recovery. Let people appreciate the recovery more than your ministry and more than your doing. We are not here for our own work and we are not doing a piece of the so-called Christian work. We are all here bearing the ark and the ark was unique. There was only one tabernacle with only one ark, and today there is only one Christ and one universal church. We are now carrying this tabernacle with this ark. We are not the attracting center but the tabernacle with the ark is. Christ and the church—this should be the attracting center. We are not attracting people to our own work, to our place, or even to ourselves.
5. NOT SAYING THAT YOUR WAY IS BETTER
Do not say your way or what you do is better, even if your way is the best. I do not mean that you should not do things better. The church in Anaheim should try to do things better than the church in Cypress, and the church in Cypress should try to do things better than the church in Long Beach. This is very good, but do not fight. You do not need to designate or consider that your place is better. Probably your locality is not better. We do not need to say that we are better or that we have something better. Try your best to avoid this. This does not mean that you should not practice something better. Try to do something better as long as your doing does not damage the testimony of the Body. Your way might be improved, advanced, and better than all the other ways, yet you do not need to designate it as better, and you do not need to sell, promote, or talk about it. This always causes trouble. Do not say your way is improved and advanced. Do not say that others have deviated in a certain matter and that now you have an improved way. This kind of thing stirs troubling questions.
6. NOT MEASURING OTHER CHURCHES
Do not measure the other churches and especially do not measure people by your experience and by your way. Do not measure the churches by your way. It is very good not to measure and not to go to any place to measure.
(Elders' Training, Book 04: Other Crucial Matters Concerning the Practice of the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
