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The History Concerning the Group Meetings
Verses:
Acts 2:46 And day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord…and breaking bread from house to house… (5:42) And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and announcing the gospel of Jesus as the Christ.
Ministry Portion:
The New Testament shows us clearly that in the beginning of the church life the meetings were first in the homes (Acts 2:46; 5:42). The fact that the saints were meeting in their homes indicates strongly that they met together in groups. There was a group in every home. The larger gatherings were needed, but the larger gatherings were not a daily need. The daily need was the group meetings.
When Brother Nee was raised up, he started the first church meeting in 1922. That first church meeting was surely a small group. I was not there in the first ten years of our history in the recovery, from 1922 to 1932, but when I came into the work, Brother Nee purposely told me the details concerning those ten years. In the first four or five years the number attending the meetings was increasing. This increase was due to the spontaneous practice of the group meetings. In the beginning there was not a large meeting. But after ten years the situation changed. From 1927 through 1932 the church in Shanghai grew in size to about one hundred. After the number reached one hundred, the rate of increase became very low.
In 1933 I began to serve in Shanghai. Eventually, Brother Nee committed to me the responsibility for the church and the work. On the one hand, I was very busy, but on the other hand, from today’s point of view, I was not very busy. First of all, I gave a message on the Lord’s Day. At that time the main thing was the Lord’s Day morning message meeting. If the message was good, the meeting would be a success; if the message was not good, the meeting would be a failure.
The second thing I did was to take care of the weekly meetings, mainly the prayer meeting and a brothers’ fellowship meeting. The brothers’ fellowship meeting was for the practice of 1 Corinthians 14. Because all the brothers were priests, the meeting had no chairman or clergy. Even though I was not charged to take the lead in that meeting, I still was there unconsciously taking the lead.
The third thing I did was to visit people. Although I rarely went out to visit people, and people rarely came to fellowship with me, I did visit, fellowship, and contact the saints on occasion. By studying the past history and our present situation, I have realized that if we had had the way of the group meetings in 1933, we could have gained several times as many people as we gained at that time. This would have made us very busy. (Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, ch. 3)
The church in Zamboanga 