The Governing Principles of the Practice of the Local Church

9. Receiving All Genuine Believers

The most striking characteristic of a local church is its receiving of all genuine believers in Christ. In the following short excerpt Watchman Nee emphasizes this crucial principle:

A local church should include all the children of God in that locality. The church takes the Body of Christ as its basic unit. If other brothers and sisters will not come, that is their own concern. But the church should not impose any condition upon anyone other than the need to acknowledge the Body. The Body is the only condition for forming a church. A church cannot be smaller than the Body of Christ. In other words, whoever is of Christ should be in the church; whoever is in the Body of Christ may not be rejected.

However, to accept anyone who is not in the Body of Christ or to embrace unbelievers is to go beyond the Body of Christ. That would no longer be the church of Christ; it would be an organization of confusion. In conclusion, whatever falls short of the Body of Christ or goes beyond the Body of Christ is not the church.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 3, Vol. 50, 873-874)

Witness Lee in his book The Spirit and the Body teaches that a local church must receive all saints whom God has received without imposing any special conditions on them, other than their believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation.

There are no such terms for being accepted into the churches. The only condition is that we believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved by faith. As long as you have been saved through faith, you have already been received. The church receives the saints whom God has received without imposing on them any particular terms. If you believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved, you are a saint. A saint is a saved one. As long as you have been saved, justified, redeemed, and regenerated, you are a saint, a holy one. Because you are a saint already, the church receives you without requiring any special conditions or terms. You were accepted by the church when you believed in the Lord Jesus.

We need to be careful of the independent groups that are imitating the churches. These groups claim that they have no special terms for receiving the believers. However, if you examine these groups carefully, you will find some hidden conditions for being accepted by them. But we in the churches can testify that we have no particular terms whatever for acceptance. Some may ask whether calling on the name of the Lord is a term. No, it is not a condition of being accepted. If you enjoy calling on the name of the Lord, then call on His name. But if you do not like it, then do not call. As long as you believe in the Lord Jesus, you are a saint, and we receive you. Others may claim that pray-reading is a term for being accepted into the church. No, pray-reading is not necessary for salvation, and thus it is not a condition of acceptance. I repeat, the churches have no special terms. Any group that has a special condition, either a special teaching or practice, for the receiving of the saints, is a sect.

(Witness Lee, Spirit and the Body, 212-213)

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