Weekly Pursuit—Week of June 30, 2024

No human being likes to be isolated. We all like to be flocked together. But in human society, where is a pure flock of people who love one another in an incorruptible way with much encouragement, building up, and help? Every human being would like to join such a group. I feel that we are lacking the proper atmosphere in our church meetings. We need to create such a loving atmosphere in our start of contacting people. We can make appointments with people for the Lord’s Day morning meeting by calling them on the telephone. We should try to do this.

We should also try to invite people to our home and be invited by others to their home. The Lord’s blessing will follow us if we practice this in a loving and intimate way. If a brother received a number of invitations every week, he might not be able to go, but these invitations would encourage him and make him buoyant.

When we invite others to our home, we do not have to prepare a rich feast. We should just prepare a simple meal. We are not getting together for eating; we are coming together for blending. When we come together, we talk about the Lord Jesus, about His holy Word, and about our spiritual experiences. This kind of contact will revolutionize the church. We will convert the church into a new one.

In the last chapter we spoke of the Lord’s need to have a new generation. This cannot take place merely by prayer but by our contacting of people. You should contact me, I should contact you, and we all should contact one another every day, every week, every month, and every year. When we contact one another, we are meeting. To meet is to blend, and to blend is to know each other. Whoever shepherds the Lord’s flock should know every sheep.

We need to be trained to contact people. If a brother is very cold toward the Lord, how can we make him burning? We can invite him to our home or go to visit him…. Our contact with people should not be formal and official but normal and living in every way.

 If certain saints are not coming to the church meetings, we can begin to visit them once a week or once a month in a regular way according to what their situation allows. We can give them some copies of the gospel tracts we have published. We can read a phrase or a paragraph to them. Maybe this will stir them up and give them a desire to come to the meetings. There are many ways to shepherd people. My point is this: we need to build up a habit of contacting others. We should not be limited in our contact. If we have the burden to visit our relatives and acquaintances who are unbelievers, we should do this. We need to practice this one lesson—to contact people. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, vol. 2, “The Training and Practice of the Vital Groups”, ch. 4,  pp. 312-313)