The Normal Christian Church Life (#7) - Chapter Six

Chapter Six: The Work and the Churches

In chapter six Watchman Nee stresses the importance of not confusing the "work" of the apostle (or the "servant of the Lord") with "the churches".

(Keep in mind that the lens through which Nee is seeing "local churches" is that of house churches.)

While God birthed the universal Church (comprised of men and women and children from all races and nations and generations) and THEN appointed apostles (I Cor. 12:28), the order was reversed in respect to the local churches. "The appointment of apostles preceded the founding of local churches... consequently it is obvious that the work of the apostles does not belong to the local churches...we must differentiate clearly between the work (of the apostles) and the churches."

Nee proceeds to develop this theme saying that when God raises up an apostolic ministry that has a particular focus, the local churches that may be planted by this apostle are not to be under the control of that apostle's ministry. Instead, that ministry must serve the local churches. "Every one of God's workmen (apostles) must have a clean-cut line of demarcation between his work and the church in the place of his labors. The work of the apostles and the work of the local church run parallel; they do not converge. When the apostles are working in any place, their work goes on side by side with the work of the church...On leaving a place, an apostle should hand over all the fruit of his work to the local church."

The new believers in an area should be instructed immediately to "take full responsibility for their private reading, prayer and witness and also for the public meetings of the church." In other words, the apostle must not be the one to prepare a place and invite the new believers to meet there but he should encourage them to assemble by themselves so that they quickly become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.

"Wherein lies the failure of missions today? They keep the results of their work in their own hands...instead of building them into, or handing them over, to the local churches. The result is that the mission extends and becomes quite an imposing organization, but local churches are scarcely to be found...to regard a mission as an apostolic company is not definitely unscriptural, but for missions to enlarge their own organization instead of establishing local churches is distinctly so."

The chapter ends with a reiterating of God's end, which is the Church. "All the various God-given ministries have one aim, the establishing of local churches...all His designs of grace center in that one company - His Church..."

The Normal Christian Church Life (#6) - Chapter Five

Chapter Five: The Basis of Union and Division

In this chapter Nee begins by pointing out that although the word "church" is used frequently in the book of Acts, there is nothing said about how a church was formed. After thousands were saved at the time of Pentecost, these believers were automatically referred to as the church in Acts 5:11. Acts 8:1 refers to "the church which was in Jerusalem." Nee says that from this "we know now what the church is. It consists of all the saved ones in a given locality."

"If in a given place anyone believes on the Lord...he is a constituent of the church in that place...No subsequent joining is required of him...his being a member of the local church is conditioned only by his being a believer in the locality...the ground of our receiving anyone into the church is that the Lord has already received that one. (Rom. 14:1,3; 15:7)"

After establishing this, Nee establishes what the simple basis of the oneness of the saints is: "...the Spirit of God dwells in every one of them. This is the secret of the oneness of believers, and this is the secret of their separation from the world...If you have the Spirit of Christ and I have the Spirit of Christ, then we both belong to the same Church. There is no need to be united; we are united by the one Spirit who dwells in us both." We aren't exhorted to have oneness but to keep it (Eph. 4:3). "We cannot insist on oneness of opinions or oneness of experience, or any other oneness among believers, except the oneness of the Spirit."

Seven Factors in Spiritual Oneness
Nee then presents seven scriptural factors to spiritual oneness as given in Eph. 4:4-6:

1. One Body. "If we do not wish to extend fellowship to anyone, we must first make sure that he does not belong to the Body; if he does, we have no reason to reject him (unless for disciplinary reasons as are clearly laid down in the Word of God)."
2. One Spirit. "If he has received the Spirit of Christ, and we have received the Spirit of Christ, then we are one in the Lord, and nothing must divide us."
3. One Hope. "If anyone claims to be the Lord's, but has no hope of heaven or glory, his is a mere empty profession. All who share this one hope are one, and since we have the hope of being together in glory for all eternity, how can we be divided in time?"
4. One Lord. "There is only one Lord, the Lord Jesus, and all who recognize that God has made Jesus of Nazareth to be both Lord and Christ are one in Him."
5. One Faith. "The faith here spoken of is the faith - that Jesus is the Son of God (who died for the salvation of sinners and lives again to give life to the dead)...the children of God may follow many different lines of scriptural interpretations, but in regard to this fundamental faith, they are one."
6. One Baptism. While there are different beliefs about the form of baptism, the significance of the "one baptism" Paul speaks of here is the name into which we are baptized (as seen in Paul's question in I Cor. 1:13). Nee says, "If you are baptized into the name of the Lord, that is your qualification for church membership."
   
7. One God. If you believe in the same personal divine God as your Father, then we belong to one family.

Nee goes on to point out that while these seven factors are the basis for oneness in the "Church" (i.e., believers in all the world) , there is one factor that justifies "division" among believers, and that is physical locality. As seen in the previous chapters, God defines the local church by means of a given geographical location/city (such as the"church in Ephesus", etc.). In the New Testament, churches were not divided by denominational names but simply by locality.

Seven Forbidden Grounds of Division
The chapter ends with the Scriptural grounds on which the Church must not be divided (I Cor. 1:10-17):

1. Spiritual Leaders. "It is in keeping with God's will that we should learn from spiritual men and profit by their leadership, but it is altogether contrary to His will that we should divide the Church according to the men we admire."
2. Instruments of Salvation. "Spiritual leaders are no adequate reason for dividing the Church; neither are the instruments used of God in our salvation."
3. Non-sectarianism. While denominationalism is not scriptural, neither is the attitude of exclusiveness on the part of those who will not fellowship with others who are in denominations. "All believers living in the same locality belong to the same church...We dare not alter 'all the believers in a locality' to 'all the undenominational believers in a locality.'"
4. Doctrinal Differences. "God forbids any division on doctrinal grounds...A church of God in any place comprises all the children of God in that place, not merely those who hold the same doctrinal views."
5. Racial Differences. "God has placed believers of different races in one locality so that, by transcending all external differences, they might in one church show forth the one life and the one Spirit of His Son."
6. National Differences. "The Word does not speak of the church of the Greeks (a race or nation), but of the church of the Thessalonians (a city). Scripture knows nothing of the church of the French, but it does recognize the church of the Parisians."
7. Social Distinctions. "In Paul's day, from a social point of view, there was a great gulf fixed between a free man and a slave; yet they worshipped side by side in the same church. Social distinctions are no adequate basis for forming a separate church."

The Normal Christian Church Life (#5) - Chapters Three and Four

This week I'll cover two chapters (3 & 4):

Chapter Three: "The Elders Appointed by the Apostles"
As seen in chapter two, because the apostles were constantly on the move planting house churches, they did not pastor or shepherd the local house churches. Under the leadership of the Holy Spirit they would appoint elders from among the new believers to oversee the local house church:

"The apostolic procedure was quite simple. The apostles visited a place, founded a church, left that church for a while, then returned to establish it...When the apostles left, some of the professing believers would leave too. Others would continue to attend the meetings and would prove themselves to be truly the Lord's, but would make no appreciable progress. (Still) others would eagerly press on in the knowledge of the Lord and show real concern for His interests. Those who had more spiritual life than others would spontaneously come to the front and take responsibility for their weaker brothers. It was because they had proved themselves to be elders that the apostles appointed them to hold office as elders, and it was their business to shepherd and instruct the other believers, and to superintend and control the church affairs."

Nee goes on to emphasize how critical it is that the apostles quickly hand off oversight to the elders: "We (apostles) need to know Christ as Head of His Church in no mere intellectual way if we are to let all its management pass out of our hands at the very outset...All who are engaged in apostolic work and are seeking to follow the example of the first apostles in leaving the churches to the management of local elders, must be spiritually equipped for the task...The Word of God makes it clear that the oversight of a church is not the work of apostles, but of elders...The characteristic of an apostle is going; the characteristic of an elder is staying."

Some other issues related to church elders addressed by Nee are the following:

• The appointment of elders by apostles was not based on personal preference but on those who God had already chosen (Acts 20:28); and the elders were not paid.
  
• On occasion when there was no apparent person and no clear leading of the Spirit when the apostle made his return visit, rather than force something, a "Titus" was left behind in order to see that an appointment was made later (Titus 1:5).
• The elders were the overseers, looking after both temporal and spiritual affairs of the local church. "The ordering of church government, the management of business affairs, and the care of material things are all under their control. But we must remember that a scriptural church does not consist of an active and a passive group of brethren. (I Cor. 12:25) Every church after God's own heart bears the stamp of 'one another' on all its life and activity. Mutuality is its outstanding characteristic. If the elders lose sight of that, then their leading the church will soon be changed to lording it over the church...Christ alone is the Head."
• "In Scripture we see that there was always more than one elder or bishop (another word for elder which means 'overseer') in a local church...To place the responsibility in the hands of several brethren, rather than in the hands of one individual, is God's way of safeguarding His church against the evils that result from the domination of a strong personality."

Chapter Four: "The Churches Founded by the Apostles"

In this chapter Watchman Nee speaks of what the New Testament church was like and points out that this is the pattern that God the Spirit has given us for how to do church.

First he distinguishes between the Church universal and "the churches" (local assemblies). The Church universal is made up of "all the saved, without reference to time or space...all who in the purpose of God are redeemed by virtue of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus, and are born again by the operation of His Spirit." Locality is the scriptural basis for the dividing of the Church of God into "churches." Nee says that "throughout the Word of God we can find no name attached to a church save the name of a place; for example, the church in Jerusalem, the church in Lystra, the church in Derbe..."

"What is a New Testament church? It is not a building, a gospel hall, a preaching center, a mission, a work, an organization, a system, a denomination, or a sect...A New Testament church is the meeting together for worship, prayer, fellowship, and mutual edification of all the people of God in a given locality, on the ground that they are Christians in the same locality."

What is a Scriptural locality? Ephesus, Rome, Jerusalem, Corinth, etc., were not "countries nor provinces nor districts but simply places of convenient size for people to live together in a certain measure of safety and sociability. In modern language we should call them cities." However, if it's a large city such as London, for example, "the political and postal authorities, as well as the man on the street, regard London as more than one unit. They divide it respectively into boroughs and postal districts. What they regard as an administrative unit, we may well regard as a church unit."

Nee finishes the chapter with the following points:

• Each local church (comprised of house churches in a locality) is independent of other local churches, but they learn from one another.
• Each local church's Head is the Lord Jesus, and it must not be formed around a strong personality nor a particular doctrine. "In the purpose of God, Jesus Christ is the center of all the churches, and the locality is their sphere...the children of God must see to it that they have no center of union apart from Christ..."
  

The Normal Christian Church Life (#4) - Chapter Two

Chapter Two: "The Separation and Movements of the Apostles - Antioch, the Model Church"

Using the church at Antioch ("the first church established on absolutely clear Church ground"), Nee deals with how the apostles were set apart and what their work was like as a model for church life today. I won't include all his detailed background material for the sake of brevity, but if you want to search it out more, his book is available online at Google books.

Keep in mind that when Nee speaks of the apostolic calling, he's referring to a particular calling, not to all believers.

First of all Nee observes that in Acts 13 Barnabas and Saul are actively engaged in local work when they are chosen from among the prophets and teachers in Antioch. "These prophets and teachers ministered so wholeheartedly to the Lord that when occasion demanded, they even ignored the legitimate claims of their physical being and fasted. What filled the thoughts of those prophets and teachers at Antioch was ministry to the Lord, not work for Him. Their devotion was to the Lord Himself, not to His service. No one can truly work for the Lord who has not first learned to minister to Him...It was to the divine call they responded, not to the call of human need...

"...their compassions had not been stirred by doleful tales of child-marriage or foot-binding or opium-smoking..No appeal had been made to their natural heroism or love of adventure. They knew only one appeal - the appeal of their Lord...if the Holy Spirit has not said, 'Set apart that man for the work to which I have called him,' he can never be an apostle. He may be a prophet or a teacher, but he is no apostle...God desires the service of His children, but He makes conscripts; he wants no volunteers. The work is His, and He is its only legitimate Originator...The tragedy in Christian work today is that so many of the workers have simply gone out; they have not been sent (by God)."

Nee goes on to point out that while the direct call of God is imperative for apostolic ministry, it also requires the confirmation of representatives of the local body of believers from which the apostles/workers go out. "God spoke to a representative company in the church, to men of spiritual experience who were utterly devoted to His interest...The call was personal, the separation was corporate...no separation of workers should be done hastily or lightly. It was for this reason that fasting and prayer preceded the sending forth of Barnabas and Saul."
Nee concludes this section of the chapter with strong words saying that these prophets and teachers did not represent a particular church or ministry (no special name, no particular organization, no fixed rules); and this is why there was unity among all believers. "Christian ministry is the ministry of the whole Church, not merely one section of it. We must see to it that our work is on no lesser basis than the Body of Christ. Otherwise, we lose the headship of Christ, for Christ is not the Head of any system or mission or organization; He is the Head of the Church."

The remainder of the chapter deals with what the apostolic ministry looked like in Antioch. To summarize Nee's teaching on this, I will give some simple bullet points:

• "In Scripture we nowhere find that apostles are under the control of any individual or organized company."
• "...constant movement characterized those sent ones....they were pioneers, not settlers. They did not wait till believers were mature before they left them. They dared to leave them in mere infancy, for they believed in the power of the life of God within them...they were filled with the Holy Spirit. The apostles might go, but the Spirit remained."
• They followed the leading of the Spirit, traveling from place to place, preaching the gospel, and planting (house) churches.
• They returned to visit the places where they had planted churches and spent a little time establishing the saints and appointing elders to bear the ongoing responsibility of the church in that place.
• They reported back to Antioch what God had done, but their reporting had nothing to do with raising finances for the work. Their simple and pure aim in reporting was two-fold: to glorify God and to bless His children through the good news of what God had done.

Watchman Nee is always careful to underscore the need for true spirituality in the worker. He ends the chapter with a gentle warning about following the model without a deep and intimate walk with God: "We dare not underestimate the value of apostolic methods - they are absolutely essential if we are to have apostolic fruits - but we must not overlook the need of apostolic spirituality, and we must no fear apostolic persecution."