The Governing Principles of the Practice of the Local Church

6. For the Building Up of the Body

In his book The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups, Witness Lee states emphatically that the local churches exist not merely for their own sake, but absolutely for the building up of the Body of Christ.

We are not here for our education or for doing a job to make a living. We are not even here for the building up of “our” church. We are here for the building up of the Body of Christ. Many of the elders are selfish for their own church, but they may not be burdened for the building up of the Body of Christ. If we are building up the church in Anaheim, it should be for the building up of the Body of Christ. The building up of the local churches should be for the building up of the Body of Christ.

In the age of the overcomers, God’s intention is to consummate the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12-13). The overcomers of the Lord should pay full attention to the building up of the Body of Christ. Christians are divided today because they do not care for the building up of the Body of Christ; they care only for their own small piece of work. If we are going to build up our local church only, we surely cannot be the overcomers.

An overcomer must be one who overcomes the divisions. To be divisive is easy. If two parties do not like each other, it is easy for them to meet in separate places. But to stay together for many years is difficult. To divorce is easy; to separate is easy; but to stay together for a continuous marriage life is not that easy. This is what it means to keep the oneness. You may be very nice to a certain leading brother, but if he would speak to you in a frank way, you might be offended. You would not leave the church life, but you would not speak to this leading brother either. This is a kind of concealed, hidden, division. To keep the oneness, you need to overcome all of the negative things.

…Eventually, we have to help these perfected saints learn how to prophesy, how to speak for God. Prophesying in the church meetings builds up the churches for the building up of the Body of Christ. If only a few speak in the meetings of the church, the Body of Christ cannot be built up.

We must try our best to perfect and to build up all the saints to prophesy, to speak for the Lord. The more speakers there are in the church meetings, the better it is. This kind of speaking edifies the saints locally and builds up the Body of Christ universally. First, we need to exercise ourselves to speak for the Lord. If we will speak for the Lord every week, we will build ourselves up and we will grow. Then we will become living members not only of one local church but also of the universal Body of Christ.

(Witness Lee, Training and Practice, 10-14)

The following portion from Witness Lee’s book, Satanic Chaos in the Old Creation and the Divine Economy confirms that the spiritual exercise of prophesying, that is, ministering Christ in our speaking in the local churches, is for the building up of the universal Body of Christ.

Finally, we need to prophesy in the church meetings for the building up of the Body of Christ through the local churches (1 Cor. 14:1-5, 12, 31). We need to learn to prophesy, that is, to speak for the Lord and to speak forth the Lord in order to minister Christ to people. If we all exercise our spirit in the meetings to prophesy, we will have living, fresh, uplifted, and rich meetings. Then the universal Body of Christ will be built up through the local churches.

(Witness Lee, Satanic Chaos, 121-122)

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