3. NOT PROMOTING YOUR PLACE
Do not promote your place. If you promote your place, this means that you damage the entire recovery. If my arm would promote itself, it would become a “monster.” This kind of promotion damages the entire body. The blood and cells of our body must go to every part of our body in proper proportions, but if we promote our place to draw people to our place, that means “the arm” draws more blood cells to itself. This damages the Body, and that particular part of the Body becomes diseased. Because the blood cells are going to the wrong place, this may cause a cancer in that place.
In the past, there has been a certain “promotion” in certain places. It may not have been done by the elders, but it was done by somebody. Otherwise, people would not have come to me. I never made this an issue, and I never considered it as an issue. I always, by the Lord’s mercy, tried my best to calm down the ones who came to me. I charged them not to think in this way, but to go by the proper standing, and not to consider this as an issue. The fact that these ones came to me, however, showed that there was a “promotion” there.
We all must avoid this. Your locality may be the top locality. Let others say this, but you yourself should not say this. You should also watch over whether the saints in your locality are saying this. If they say this, charge them not to say it. This is sectarian. We are not here for any place, but we are here for the Lord’s recovery. We are not here for American churches, Taiwan churches, Philippine churches, or European churches. We are here for the Lord’s recovery as a whole Body. I hope that from now on no more information would come to us from certain saints questioning what is going on in a certain locality. Quite often it was very hard for me to answer these things. I could not justify this kind of promotion and neither would I be that unwise to condemn it before the reporters. If I did that, I would encourage the reporters to make an issue which would be a turmoil in the Lord’s recovery. I would always do my best to calm the reporters down. They might have misunderstood that I was for that kind of promotion. However, I was not for that kind of promotion, and neither would I say any word to encourage the reporting ones to go ahead and talk about it. When this kind of information came to me, I was always put in a corner. It was very hard for me to answer because I cannot play politics and I cannot tell lies. Not only do I not control the churches, but also I always try the best to balance, to preserve, and to keep a calm situation between all the churches.
I beg you all to take care of this. This is not merely my own responsibility. This is our responsibility to keep a calm situation for the Lord’s recovery to go on. If there is a turmoil, nothing can go on. A turmoil is like a storm that comes and the entire nation is stopped. Do not do this kind of thing. You may think this is a small thing, but actually it is not.
This principle we are discussing has two parts. The first part is not to promote your place, and the second part is not to catch people for your place. This has happened among us. Maybe this was not done by the leading ones, but by some of the saints in particular localities. They came out to promote your place and to ask people to go to your place saying that your place had the best church life. This has happened among us. Do not let this go on. This must be stopped. All the saints have their liberty and their right to stay in a locality or to move to another locality. Do not give advice as to where to go and as to where the church life is better or best. Never do this. In the eyes of the Lord all the churches are precious.
(Elders' Training, Book 04: Other Crucial Matters Concerning the Practice of the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
