HOME MEETINGS
EDIFICATION OF THE CHURCH
Read and pray: “Peter said to them, Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)
Great speakers are useful. Peter was useful. Peter spoke to large congregations, and his speaking brought thousands of people. However, that was only one side. There was another side. They met in their homes, in their houses, from house to house. There was no time to train preachers. There was no time to learn the truth.
They had heard only one message, and that message became their New Testament. On the day of Pentecost, their New Testament was very short—only one message given by Peter, according to Acts 2. But everyone heard, learned, and spoke.
On the day Peter gave the message, all were baptized. I believe that later that night, they returned to their homes and began to meet, repeating what they had heard from Peter. I believe this shows that everyone can teach and that everyone can preach.
If you open your homes for meetings, you will sense that you have to deal with certain matters there. However, if you do not open your homes, you will leave those things there, perhaps for three years. You will go to large meetings without any awareness of those dark and hidden things.
If you open your homes, you will consider before losing patience with your wife. You will think that in half an hour all the saints will be arriving to meet. This is only something on the negative side, but on the positive side, there are many benefits, many blessings.
When the saints enter your home, they all enter with God; they all enter with Christ; they all enter with much prayer to bless your home. One will come in and say, “Lord, bless this home.” Another will say, “Bless this family. Lord, remember everyone.”
The Lord will answer the prayers, and there will be many blessings for you. You may feel very weak, but if you open your home, many will sense that you are not so weak. You may be poor, but those who come are rich. The home meeting will rescue you, strengthen you, and enrich you.
THE NATURAL CONCEPT
The way of meeting in Christianity follows the natural concept. In human history, we can see this kind of gathering. Although the Greek word “ekklesia” was a word for an assembly called out of a city. All the people of the city were called together for a certain purpose; thus a congregation occurred.
This is how today’s Christianity meets—having large congregations is totally natural, worldly, according to human society. No kind of movement or culture has ever invented this way of meeting in every home.
Such a thing exists only in the Bible. From the very beginning of the church life, the saints met from house to house. This is extraordinary. This does not follow the natural way.
Our present problem is that we were born natural. We were born in the worldly way. Before we were saved, when we were invited to go to “church,” we would ask who the speaker would be. If they said that Doctor So-and-So would be speaking, then we would go. This is the natural way.
Even among us, if we announce that there will be a meeting next Saturday, many of us will ask who will be the speaker. It may be that we decide to go depending on who will speak. This is built into our blood.
If we are serious with the Lord and want the genuine increase and building up of the church, we must repudiate the way of Christianity. We must remove this blood from our being.
However, I value large meetings, but if we have only large meetings, we will be like a 747 airplane that has only one wing. How can we fly? We need both sides.
We need the large meetings as well as the small ones. If you ask me, “Without the large meetings, how will we increase?” In the 1960s, when I came to this country, the evangelist Dr. Billy Graham promoted small group meetings.
He knew that many of those attracted by the gospel would scatter into denominations and, over time, grow cold; so he encouraged people to form small groups to have Bible studies and pray together. What he promoted was the same principle as the subject we are speaking about.
Even though thousands of people may be attracted, without small groups, how many of them will remain? There is no way. It is just like drawing water from a deep well and pouring it onto the ground. All the water would be absorbed by the earth.
We may gain an increase, but without the small group meetings, they will not remain in the church to be built up. In Taiwan, more than one hundred thousand were baptized through our preaching, but I doubt that twenty percent remained. We lost much for not having home meetings. This is absolutely different from what was practiced in the early days of Pentecost.
At Pentecost, through the large meetings, people were attracted, and immediately home meetings were established. In those home meetings, they were kept, sustained, matured, and built up together.
We should not despise large meetings, but we must balance the large meetings with the small groups. We should give sixty percent of our attention to the small meetings and only forty percent to the larger ones.
However, I am a little concerned that many give eighty percent or more of their attention to large meetings. Many, according to their concept, would say they prefer to go to large meetings rather than to home meetings.
We need to change that concept! We need both. Without a brother who bought and gathered the materials, we surely would not have built this place. After gathering the materials, we surely needed another brother to deliver them to the builders.
In the construction of this place, we had a good situation, but presently in the building up of the church, we lack it. I say this especially to the leading ones in the churches; what you have done is maintain a situation of church meetings.
If you do not have the small groups, how can you build? It is impossible. Yet I remember meeting with the assemblies of the Brethren for seven and a half years. Every week I attended five meetings. There was not much contact with others.
But we are better than that. After the meetings, we have much contact with one another, but we do not have much positive building up because we lack home meetings. We must see the need for home meetings. Without them, there can be no building up.
🌿 Enjoy more:
Hymn “The Supreme Manifestation – God’s Eternal Purpose”
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