TAKING THE HOME AS THE CENTER TO BRING IN THE FUNCTIONING OF ALL THE MEMBERS
We can bring everyone into function by taking the home as the center. According to the modern way of life, no household hires a cook to do all the cooking for the family. If there are such households they are a small minority. More than thirty years ago, it was very easy to hire servants to keep house and do the cooking. Now, due to the increase in the cost of labor, almost every household cooks for itself and does all the housework itself. The result is that the households are becoming stronger and stronger. Today when Christians consider spiritual devotion and edification, they have to hire a speaker to hold an edification meeting or they do not know how to go on. We hope that after going through a thorough change of system, we will no longer have the thought of hiring a speaker because everyone will be able to speak and carry out all the service in the meetings. This kind of meeting will certainly be strong and rich. If the saints are willing to change their concept and receive the practice of changing the system, I believe that after just a few years all will be drawn by the home meetings. Moreover, everyone will feel that a large meeting in which one person speaks and everyone else listens has lost its flavor. In the past we listened to one person speaking in the meeting hall. After listening for all those years, even though we cannot say that the messages we heard were the conventional sermons of ordinary Christianity, we can say that they were the “conventional” teachings of the local churches. In a few years, however, I believe that in Taipei we will have several thousand homes in which there are meetings and activities. The participants in these meetings will all be able to speak and function and even their children will be able to lead others to sing hymns.
THE FIRST STEP FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE NEW WAY
In order for us to arrive at the glorious future we are describing, we must spend our time and energy. Up to the present, everyone has learned well how to go out door-knocking and lead people to be baptized. In ten minutes you can bring a person to be saved, and in fifteen minutes you can get him baptized. In the past even I would not have believed this was possible, and probably you would not either. Doctrinally speaking, we always feel that baptism should not be so fast. In the Bible, however, there definitely is the clear revelation that no person after believing in the Lord has to wait and attend gospel truth meetings, then pass through a baptism interview in which he has to be absolutely clear about salvation before getting baptized. The only person who was delayed in getting baptized was Paul; in this he was a special case. Therefore, when Ananias was sent by the Lord to carry out the baptism, he said to Paul, “And now, why do you delay? Rise up and be baptized…calling on His name” (Acts 22:16). This is why we should no longer ask people to wait. If a person believes but then wants to wait, we should point this verse out to him and tell him that he should not delay but should be baptized immediately. This is the first step for the success of the new way.
Moreover, most people have the concept that baptism is a very solemn matter which should be carried out at the meeting hall. Acts 8 gives a very clear example about the Ethiopian eunuch, a person who greatly desired to understand the Word and who after hearing the gospel immediately requested to be baptized when he saw a place with water. He was not even baptized in a bathtub; it was perhaps just a pool, a puddle, or a stream of water on the roadside (vv. 36-38). You should not think that a person baptized in this way is probably not reliable. This eunuch is the best testimony.
(The Furtherance of the New Way for the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
