Nee's 'Ministry to the House or to the Lord'

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

If the Lord has not revealed to me that there is a problem why do I now need to be introspective as though there is a problem. If the Lord has revealed a problem why can't I deal with that without becoming caught up in this introspection.

You would have loved the GLA ... we were all inflicted with the disease of introspection.

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Ohio

You would have loved the GLA ... we were all inflicted with the disease of introspection.

The other thing I dislike about this message is that he does not speak from his own experience. He doesn't ever illuminate what he is referring to by his own experience. It is a cloaked message of pointing fingers at others and you have no real idea of what the accusation is.

If this message was shared as a personal experience of failure and repentance I would have felt it was much easier to understand and receive.

Another option is to share a story about a saint similar to Mary anointing the Lord. If you are going to point your finger it should be at Mary, if you are going to call for repentance it should begin with your own.

[OBW]

ZNP,

Yes, there is a warning in there. But the discussion in Nee's booklet was not about the warning. It was about the order of ministry.

I'm trying to stick to talking about what it seems that Nee was talking about. Anywhere else you can take the arguments on other points could be great theology (not meaning that they are dead, just that they are well-founded). But it does not respond to Nee's points.

I seem to have spent a lot of time trying to argue away things that are not what Nee was talking about. It should have been as simple as "could be true and meaningful in its own right, but it is not responsive to Nee's discussion." But it never was. Seems that everyone thought I was trying to dispute the validity of other things. I was not. Just disputing that those other things actually had anything to do with Nee's points.

[Indiana]

I started this thread with the upcoming conference in mind on the “ground of the church”, which is a term first used by Watchman Nee. Here in his booklet on ministry to the House he doesn’t mention the ground of the church, but he does bring attention to the most vital aspect of the church life in issuing a call for believers to spend time with the Lord and to strengthen their relationship with Him in their daily life and for the church life. This was the primary objective of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee in all their ministry - to bring believers into the experience of Christ for their service in the church and to the Lord.

Meeting on a proper ground is another aspect of the church life that is important, for it affects the Lord’s will that “they all may be one” that “the world may believe.” Both Nee and Lee noted that without adequate experience of Christ and having a right attitude of heart for receiving others it would be easy for a local church to become a sect. They could have the teaching that they stand on the ground of oneness in their locality with every believer, but, practically speaking, if their relationship is more with a ministry and a cause than with Christ, their receiving of all those God receives is undermined seriously, they limiting themselves in heart to the small, yet special, sphere of receiving only those who attach themselves to the same ministry and cause.

Nee opened in his booklet with

"Let us note at the outset that there is little apparent difference between ministry to the House of the Lord and ministry to the Lord Himself. Many of you are doing your utmost to help your brethren, and you are laboring to save sinners and administer the affairs of the church. But let me ask you: Have you been seeking to meet the need around you, or have you been seeking to serve the Lord? Is it your fellow men you have in view, or is it Him?

From the beginning of his booklet, Nee was focused on Him, as was Witness Lee in his booklet called The Ground of the Church. Both of these booklets and the ministries of Nee and Lee helped the local churches to see Christ with the church in the 60s and early 70s. Christ was clearly in view. The church ground was clearly presented. And, the church life was abundant with signs of inward and outward blessing.


Witness Lee began his booklet with

“For the church life, there are two main and basic aspects. We must be thoroughly clear about these, for without them we have no reality of the church life. The first is that Christ Himself is the life, the content, and everything in the church. It is absolutely not a matter of forms, doctrines, or certain kinds of expressions. Those who are really in the church life are those who are experiencing Christ as their very life day by day. Christ is everything to them; therefore, Christ is their life and content whenever they come together. The practice of the church life is a life of Christ and a life with Christ as everything.

“The second main aspect of the church life is that of the standing or the ground of the church…… What is the ground of the Roman Catholic Church? Without a doubt, it is Rome. The Roman Catholic Church claiming Christ as its foundation is built upon the ground of Roman Catholicism. Upon what ground is the Presbyterian Church built? It is clear that their ground is a certain system of government called the presbytery. They have laid the foundation of Christ upon the ground of the presbytery. What about the Baptists? They with Christ as their foundation are built upon the ground of baptism, baptism by immersion. Then there are the Lutherans. They have laid their foundation upon the ground of Luther and his teachings. You see, all the "churches" claim the same foundation, which is Christ; but they all stand upon different grounds. It is the different grounds that create the problem for the unity of the church, not Christ as the foundation."

BOOKLET – Ground of the Church
www.twoturmoils.com/GroundoftheChurch.pdf

Okay, thank you for this fellowship brother Lee. The Lutherans have laid their foundation "upon the ground of Luther and his teachings". How about the Local Churches today?

From the Pledge to the One Publication Proclamation, www.TwoTurmoils.com tells us how the ground for meeting in the Local Churches became Witness Lee and his ministry.


A Leader and a Ministry Becoming a Center

WATCHMAN NEE
Whenever a special leader, or a specific doctrine, or some experience, or creed, or organization, becomes a center for drawing together the believers of different places, then because the center of such a church federation is other than Christ, it follows that its sphere will be other than local. And, whenever the divinely appointed sphere of locality is displaced by a sphere of human invention, there the divine approval cannot rest. The believers within such a sphere may truly love the Lord, but they have another center apart from Him, and it is only natural that the second center becomes the controlling one. It is contrary to human nature to stress what we have in common with others; we always stress what is ours in particular. Christ is the common center of all the churches, but any company of believers that has a leader, a doctrine, an experience, a creed, or an organization as their center of fellowship, will find that that center becomes the center, and it is that center by which they determine who belongs to them and who does not. The center always determines the sphere, and the second center creates a sphere which divides those who attach themselves to it from those who do not.

Anything that becomes a center to unite believers of different places will create a sphere which includes all believers who attach themselves to that center and excludes those who do not. This dividing line will destroy the God-appointed boundary of locality, and consequently destroy the very nature of the churches of God (Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Church Life, p. 184).

A former elder, Kyle, gives his testimony

"...But slowly over time I saw how we had become more and more exclusive and were giving ourselves to a 'cause' and not to Christ. Of course, we still loved the Lord and served Him passionately, but we were in a mixture. The ministry became our focus. It was no longer the ministry for the churches but the churches for the ministry. The atmosphere became toxic, no longer could we breathe pure air, suspicion abounded. "Were we 100% for the ministry? If we were just 98% we should get out." These were basically Witness Lee's words. In the early years I was in local church, I used to overlook the things that bothered my conscience. But after so much became manifested in the late 1980s (financial corruption, immoral behavior of W Lee's son, terrible mistreatment of saints, cover-up of sin, etc.), I cried to the Lord day and night for over a year about what to do. He brought me into the LC and He had to be the one who would bring me out.

Then at a conference in Pasadena, California [1988], I received the speaking that it was time to leave. I saw that we were not the church I had thought we were. We had become another narrow-minded, exclusive, controlling, elitist, sectarian group just like many separatist groups that had gone before us (ex. "exclusive Brethren"). At that conference I witnessed Witness Lee actually spit on a book by G. H. Lang, "Local Assembly." All Lang did was expose centralization. Lee said we were an organism, not centralized. But everyone knew our practice was that we had a centralized organization. I cried all the way home after seeing the awful behavior of this so-called man of God. I felt I was cheated for so many years.

…I cherish the years in the LC, but if I had never left, I hate to think what I would have become.

The Lord is faithful and so good to us to lead us. – end of Kyle testimony

The churches under LSM direction became ministry churches, or local sects, no longer aligned well with the two booklets mentioned earlier. “If we have to advertise our ministry and use great effort to promote it….,” Nee says. What a discrepancy between the message of Nee and Lee over several decades to the churches and what we know to be their practice today.

Steve Isitt
3/19/13

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Indiana

I started this thread with the upcoming conference in mind on the “ground of the church”, which is a term first used by Watchman Nee.

Many of us used to think that here Nee had uncovered the "Holy Grail," the missing link, the long lost truth, the underlying reason why the body of Christ had become a "dismal failure, hopelessly divided, totally unable to fulfill God's eternal purpose," or other equally serious sounding spiritual terminology. But here Steve Isitt points to the obvious -- the "ground of the church," the foundational basis for all Recovery exclusivism and vision, was a term first used by Watchman Nee.

With such all-encompassing Biblical importance, this phrase just begs the question -- why did the Bible never use this term? Why in the world is it absent from scripture? How could the "ground of the church" be so important that the New Testament completely missed out on it? No wonder the rest of the body of Christ is so "hopelessly degraded," as WN and WL ingrained into us. How could they possibly be expected to "see" something that was not even there?

The Bible tells us plainly that Christ is the foundation of the church (I Cor 3.11) and no one can lay another. The song reinforces this, "The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord." Watchman Nee, however, felt that this was inadequate and decided to add something to the Biblical record. He surmised that this foundation needed a "proper site," aka the "ground of the church." For over 1900 years the church had never had this "site," and it sorely needed to be "recovered." This was to become the long lost secret ingredient needed to accomplish God's plan, His economy.

70 years after Nee's original invention, we now have the benefit of hindsight to ascertain the fruit of this new teaching. Instead of bringing oneness, the Recovery is hopelessly divided, quarantining whole regions and countries full of loyal members. Instead of bringing blessing, their numbers are dwindling, marginally replenished by subsequent generations. Instead of impacting the entire body of Christ with high peak truths, the Recovery is known for little more than being the most litigious group of Christians in history.

[OBW]

I just scanned through the whole of Nee's booklet that is the subject of this thread.

If there was ever a writing that had so little to support it, this was among them. In the online ministry books it takes 9 "sections" to get through the whole thing. Not too much. Until you arrive at the very last section, there is virtually no scripture other than Ezekiel 44, and there only really two or three verses. And even those are hardly truly mentioned. Even when he does mention them, he treats them as if they are talking about something that is not there. Mostly that the most important thing is ministering to the Lord. He begins the book by saying this. He says that it is so over and over.

Then quite some way into the thing, finally comes this story of reading through it with the older woman (Barber?). Somehow this little mention in Ezekiel is driving some revelation of the primacy of "ministering to the Lord" over anything else. It is so central to Nee that any kind of even good Christian work is not hardly relevant. We should be all about ministering to the Lord, then eventually a little bit to people (the house).

There is never a basis given for this insistence on its primacy. He just says it is so. Over and over for many paragraphs.

And when I say there are no other verses, it is essentially true. He mentions one verse in Isaiah in about the middle, but it does not have any bearing on his assertion that "ministering to the Lord" is the central and primary thing to do, exclusive of other ministering.

In the last couple of sections, he does finally mention a little more. And even that is mostly in the last section. The first part is in Hebrews, related to "outside the court." I really don't see the point of that portion relative to what he is trying to say.

Then he comes Luke 17:7-10 which he insists is about God having his servants (us) serve him his dinner before we get to eat ours. In context, this is a difficult position to support. It is immediately following an assertion that our faith can tell a tree to be replanted in the sea. Reading these next verses as relating, without reference to God insisting on us doing our work, then coming in and preparing his meal and serving him before we eat is based upon something not actually found in the passage. And since he makes no effort to explain how he came up with it, I find that it is virtually without support and can therefore be rejected.

On the whole, the ink (and now electrons) used for this booklet are proof that men can say a lot of nothing and people will buy it because of their opinion of who said it. If the opinion is missing, then there needs to be a foundation for what is said. So far, I find no such foundation. It is a lot of opinion based on nothing but that opinion. The claimed scripture references are of no benefit in figuring it out — unless you accept anything that Nee says because he says it.

Then who needs scripture?

[OBW]

Now I know that someone is going to say "there goes that OBW again, dissing Lee and Nee."

And it really is getting that way. But it is not because I don't like them. It is because when I read their works without first assuming that they are correct because I already believe they are, it doesn't stack up.

Read the whole booklet in the Online Ministry Books. Note that Nee says what he says over and over. He just starts in with the assertion that his conclusion is simply true. He never really supports it other than with vague reference to this passage in Ezekiel many paragraphs into the booklet. By then you are either fully on board and need no encouragement or you have quit reading.

But if you start from the premise that everything that sounds lofty or spiritual is not necessarily so, but needs sound reason and support in scripture, then no matter how lofty the writing, it is nothing until it is given a foundation in scripture.

What I find in this little booklet is an effort to assert that God is first seeking sacrifice, then obedience. That despite the scripture's assertions to the contrary.

Now that Steve wants to turn our attention to the "ground of the church," we should be ready to show how that little bit of fantasy is not based on scripture, but on opinion from a few scriptures at the expense of simply ignoring others. Why did we let them get away with it before? Because we were convinced that if Nee and Lee said it, it was right even if it was wrong.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by OBW

Then he comes Luke 17:7-10 which he insists is about God having his servants (us) serve him his dinner before we get to eat ours. In context, this is a difficult position to support. It is immediately following an assertion that our faith can tell a tree to be replanted in the sea. Reading these next verses as relating, without reference to God insisting on us doing our work, then coming in and preparing his meal and serving him before we eat is based upon something not actually found in the passage. And since he makes no effort to explain how he came up with it, I find that it is virtually without support and can therefore be rejected.

Hmmm. I have to say if Luke 17:7-10 isn't about us serving the Lord "dinner" first, then what is it about? You might say that it is more generally about the attitude of a servant, that his master's wishes come first and that the master is not obligated to thank his servant. Yes, but that's precisely what "feeding" the Lord before ourselves means. It's metaphorical. But Nee means it metaphorically, too. It means our attitude should be one of a servant not expecting courtesies from his master.

The fact that 7-10 follows verses about faith in no way require that that 7-10 be about the same subject. Passages containing the Lord Jesus' teachings often make abrupt changes of direction.

I think your rejection of 7-10 as instructions about serving the Lord before ourselves is more arbitrary than Nee's usage of it might be. It's another illustration of your hyper-skepticism.

Still love you though, bro'.