HAVING A LITTLE POWER AND HAVING CONSTANT CONTACTS WITH PEOPLE (3)
I feel in these days that we must stress one thing: to contact people. As one who is practicing to be vital, you have to contact people—either the saints or the sinners. You have to contact people—either your direct, close relatives or your distant friends. Just contact people. If you are led to go out to knock on “cold doors,” that is all right. You do not necessarily need to wait until you are finished contacting all your relatives, friends, classmates, and colleagues. It all depends upon how you feel. If you feel that now you should go out to knock on cold doors, that might be the leading of the Lord to you.
But I also want to mention another thing as a warning. In spiritual matters we naturally like to choose to do the easy thing. We do not like to do the hard thing. We like to preach the gospel in an easy way with instant results. We may want to pass out some tracts at a bank or a supermarket. Someone who does this may be very fortunate to meet a man who gets baptized the next day, and eventually his whole family comes into the church life. However, such a fortunate thing does not take place often. You may go to the bank for ten weeks and gain no one. You may go to the supermarket for twelve weeks and gain no one. To labor in the gospel you need to exercise your endurance.
The point I am stressing is this: do not get a new one quickly baptized and think that you have finished your job. You should not say, “Hallelujah, I have gained some fruit,” and think that is all you need to do. Yes, you may have gained some fruit, but be sure that this fruit will never remain. This is not the proper way to contact someone. The proper way to contact a person is to make him a constant contact of yours. Whoever you gain should be kept by you as your constant contact. Even if someone has not yet been begotten by you in the Lord, you have to contact him as your child. It may be that he will be begotten by you next week or even next year, so you have to keep him as your constant contact.
Whether the fruit under your hand will remain or not depends upon how you take care of people, from begetting them to feeding them, to perfecting them, and then to building them up to speak for the Lord. That means this one is a full-grown man. Until one reaches the stage where he can speak for the Lord, he is not full-grown yet. To prophesy in the meeting is a sign of full-grown status. Beginning from this day I hope we all will have a resolution in the depths of our heart to contact people through prayer, with prayer, and in prayer and to make each one of our contacts a constant one. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, vol. 2, “The Training and Practice of the Vital Groups”, ch. 9, pp. 333-337)
The church in Zamboanga 