The Progress of the Children's Meeting and the Commission We Should Have Today

Pursuit weeks

Messages for the Perfecting of Parents — "Children's Meeting" Series

Message One

I. Practising in the Vision

In the church there is the flow of the Holy Spirit — this is the work of life, the work of the Spirit, and it all flows within the Body. Through the blending and the fellowship of the Body, many of the notions in our heart that lag behind the age can gradually be measured out, so that we are not merely able to lay them down, but can keep up with the flow of the Spirit's work and go on. May it be that, in the Lord's recovery, He gains the authority of His throne and brings in genuine one-accord. The one-accord is what causes this stream of water to flow out from the temple and become waters to swim in. For this, we all must be measured, and measured again — from the ankles right up to a man fully under — so that we may go forward in this flow. At that point, it will be a light thing. We must know: if this is of the Lord, it surely brings in the spirit of one-accord, and we will go on together. So we ought not to insist upon our own methods or forms — clutching this or that out of contention or attachment — but rather upon what is living, what is organic, what is fitting to time and place, fitting to the persons. The most important thing is that we have a clear vision. We need to see, more and more, that this practice — this very system — is a kind of thought, concept, and vision that the Spirit's work is bringing to us.

II. The Historical Background of the Children's Work

1. The First Stage

Let me sketch briefly the history of the children's work. It began on the mainland in 1949 (in 1984, in Brother Lee's fellowship in Taipei concerning the children's work, he traced it back from Taiwan to Shanghai [Translator's note: source reads 臺灣 (Taiwan); context may suggest 煙臺 (Yantai) but we render as written.]). In simple terms, it began so that parents could be at peace in the meetings, and the children needed to be cared for. Later, as we sensed the need to cultivate the next generation, the children's service came in — children's classes, the cultivation of children's education.

2. The Second Stage

When we came to Taiwan, the whole recovery kept going on; in five to seven years, fifty or sixty thousand were saved, and because the parents were saved, more children were brought in. Beyond merely needing to be cared for, there was even more the need to be cultivated, educated, and perfected; therefore the Lord's Day school was introduced, and children's-class education began. These were the two stages of the children's work in outline. But by 1983, an overall crisis had appeared in the grown-up church life of Taipei: numbers had stalled, and although in that whole year all of Taipei baptized one thousand two hundred, the total meeting attendance had not increased. Because of the direction the church life was taking, the problem came out and a kind of crisis appeared. Brother Lee, with prophetic foresight, sensed that this road was not right, that we could not stagnate here and not go forward. The same was true of the children's service.

I came into the church life in 1972, and from the second week after my salvation I began serving the children. In these years we have seen three "no's" in this work: not living-ised, not organic, not multiplying — and these brought the whole church to a halt; we could not go on. So, when Brother Lee came back in 1984, there was a fresh call. In 1985 he came again to Taipei to fellowship and lead. In 1986 Brother Lee resolutely began the training and the experimentation, entering into the laboratory of the Lord's recovery. In 1987 the first framework of the new way — Gospel · Home · Group · District (福、家、排、區) — came forth. From that point on, throughout the training, we kept experimenting all the way through 1989; and there was also gospel-spread.

3. The Third Stage

From that time on, I coordinated with Brother Chen, and we saw that the children's work had to keep up with the revelation and vision of the age. Our whole concept turned, and we laid down all our old methods, practices, and thinking, and kept up with the practice in the heart of the Lord's servant. This practice can be applied in every aspect, including the children. We discovered a road of spiritual living-isation and organic functioning — for we are not just to gain a few children who only attend meetings yet cannot exercise their function — a road on which the community can keep multiplying. Because of the thinking, the concepts, and the vision the new way brought in, our work for the children gained a glimmer of light and a direction; and so we began week-by-week prayer, seeking continually. This brought us into the third stage of the children's service. Just as the all-inclusive ministry of Christ has three stages — first, the stage of becoming flesh, gaining many; second, the summary stage, for the spread of the gospel and the producing of the church; third, the strengthening stage, strengthening the organic salvation, producing overcomers, completing in the New Jerusalem.

According to this vision, today the whole age has entered the third stage: not only to gain many and produce churches, but also to produce overcomers who will bring in the Lord's coming back, and ultimately complete the New Jerusalem. For this reason, the direction of our service must shift. Brothers and sisters, we not only need to gain a great number of children — they must also be educated and perfected; and even more importantly, in this generation, where evil is increasing, we must gain the children from a young age to be the firstfruits, that every household may become an overcoming household, living the overcoming spiritual life.

From these viewpoints, as the thinking has been fellowshipped through, we have received much revelation. In particular, Brother Lee's fellowship and leading of the children's work beginning in 1985 was a turning point, and is also the vision and ground of the children's work and the children's service. From there Brother Lee said that the four hundred homes in Taipei should bring forth four thousand children; three or four years ago we said one thousand homes, ten thousand children. We knew this was a steep slope, very difficult. But if the flow of the Holy Spirit is rushing in our midst, then it is very easy and very light — for these are waters to swim in.

III. The Children's Work in the New Era

1. Turn the Concept; Pay the Price

To advance spiritually, to be spiritually blessed, to be an overcomer is actually very simple — only two notions are needed: turn the concept; pay the price. To overcome, you must keep up. We need to ask the Lord: "Lord, cause me to keep turning the concept and to be willing to pay the price." Once you do this, you are on the road, and you go forward easily. From 1985, when Brother Lee said Taipei was to gain ten thousand children, we had ten or so brothers praying together; toward this aim we kept on researching, week by week, praying and praying, then researching, experimenting. Today these ten of us are still here. We have been closed, then opened, then closed and opened again; until at last we cannot be closed any more — because we know what we are doing, we have a vision, our concepts have been turned by the Lord, and we know that this road is the road for the producing of overcomers, an excellent road. We have seen it, confirmed it; and so we firmly persist in going on, no matter the difficulty — we are simply to keep going forward.

In the whole mainstream of the Lord's recovery today, we need to see one most important thing: that through the vital group (活力排, huo-li-pai) the overcomers are produced, bringing in the Lord's coming back — this is the most crucial road. No wonder Brother Lee has three books devoted to the vital group; we must see this matter of the vital group. The vital group takes the home as its unit. So the flow today is spiritual all the way home, and this requires parents to accompany the children into growth together. Do not look to hand the children off to others; every house, every house must rise up — parents accompanying the children to grow.

Therefore, in the children's vital group we must bring in a right practice, a cradle prepared for the children's interpersonal relationships and bodily living. The flow of the Spirit's water today goes Gospel · Home · Group · District, for the development of the organic function, and is carried out by the practice of the vital group. Since this is so, the children also need to be in this vision and in this center. We are all willing to put this whole stream up; we long that this flow may grow deeper, more rushing, that it may go on still further among us, even to the point that the children also can have five-ring, six-ring gatherings (Brother Lee said the old, the young, the great, and the small all alike, blended together as one); even gatherings of thousands, blended together. May the Lord, through the fellowship of the whole Body, keep going forward. The mainstream of this Spirit-flow — slowly, here, has begun to take shape — and it must keep flowing on. For this we need to pray.

2. The Whole Church Cares Together

In Taipei we have gained one realisation: concerning the next generation of the church, the whole Body must take care together. Recently, the topic in the elders' meetings of Taipei more and more concerns the children and the youth. Across the whole church, every hall is gradually forming a youth service: with full-time saints coordinating, with the elders' care, with the joining-in of saints in the workplace — gradually beginning to care for the families. The same is true of the children's meeting. In the Taipei district we have nearly two hundred children's servers (most of them mothers) gathered, with very rich fellowship, and six or seven elders coordinating — confirming and strengthening this burden again and again. Taipei is like this; I believe in every locality there is the same resonance — beginning, in the Body, for the whole to come together to care for the next generation of the church. This is a pivotal moment.

3. Three Main Axes for the Next Generation of the Church

Concerning the next generation of the church there are three main axes we must do, and to which we must pay attention — these are the response to some of our past difficulties and the keys for not stalling on the old road.

First, the children, at home, must build with the parents a parent-and-child spiritual relationship; the parents must nourish, shepherd, and coordinate with the children, building up spiritual-all-the-way-home, spiritually shepherded family life.
Second, this vessel — the child — needs the preparation and protection of spirit, soul, and body, and the perfecting and cultivating of character and conduct.
Third, we must prepare for the children's bodily living, cultivating right interpersonal relationships.

(1) The children's parent-and-child vital group is multifunctional

The children's parent-and-child vital group is multifunctional, and a child can have practical reality through spiritual-all-the-way-home. When an adult has been recovered back to the church life, if he has only the Lord's Day meeting, he can hardly build up morning revival, evening prayer, the pursuit, visitation, and so on, because he has only the Lord's Day meeting — the rest of the week is another set of living. But once he begins to take part in the small group, his morning revival starts moving, his evening prayer begins, his pursuit gets on the road; the spiritual reaches all the way home, and there is the practical reality of spiritual life-growth. A man who has only the Lord's Day meeting, by today's Gospel · Home · Group · District index, cannot be enough; he is hardly likely to become an overcomer. Therefore he must come into the small group, walking the way of the age. The same is true of the children: to help him be spiritual all the way home, to live the parent-and-child healthy life, you have to put him into the small group — and his morning revival, evening prayer, and pursuit are on the road, and his burden for his classmates also comes. The children's meeting is the best way for the first item to be brought into reality.

(2) The exercise of character

How can I see a child's character? How can I keep him company through it? How can I detect what he needs? How can I know what is lacking in him? In a children's meeting of twenty or thirty, by the time you have wrestled with them you are flattened; it is hardly possible to know what has happened in any one of those twenty-some homes, or what the child's actual situation or character is, or what he is doing at home. But if there are only five to eight children in your home, with a single look you know — today this child's countenance has changed; he is not quite himself. You can set the others aside for a moment, give two hours to this one, accompany this one. You sit and talk with him, and he knows you love him and trusts himself to you; he tells you that Daddy and Mommy have been quarrelling lately — they are about to divorce; he tells you he had a fight at school. You discover there is something inside this person.

In this way you come to know him; in a year, three Samuels have been gained by you, one Timothy has been perfected by you — that is a great thing. Today, with one hundred twenty children, twenty per class, in five classes, the church does not have so many teachers. But ten homes, twenty mothers — that is formidable; twenty homes cultivating overcomers, each home shouldering ten children — and his conduct, his character-exercise, is right under your eyes, so that within a year you understand him through and through. The practice of the children's meeting brings forward the first two items — the children's living, conduct, character, and discipline-exercise.

(3) The children's meeting also produces a kind of organic function

The children's meeting also produces a kind of organic function. The traditional children's gathering produces children who only know how to attend meetings — children who cannot exercise their function, who can neither preach nor testify. There is one sister who has been doing the meeting for twelve years; her child has now gone to study at university in Beijing, where he leads a small group there and wants to do a children's meeting too — and recently he wrote home asking her to send the materials. Most homes today have only one or two children, and the children become isolated, alone, proud, self-affirming — my toys are mine, everything is mine, my room is untouchable, this can't be done, that can't be done. But just try it: once the home is opened, he will be graced — his selfishness and aloneness are removed; he becomes generous, magnanimous, willing to receive others, to live for others, to look after others, to grow up with you; he becomes one who lives the Body life — and such a person becomes a small member organically functioning.

So, Brother Lee tells us, the children are the seeds of the gospel: in junior and senior high they gain even more little fruit; the fruit becomes seed, and entering the colleges they gain still more fruit. Today we are deeply in debt to the college work — they neither receive what the fruit has brought in, nor what the seeds have sown; so every new term we have to scramble north and south, holding new-student fellowships. If at any one campus we could simply send out a batch of young saints, we wouldn't have to do this — visiting them would be enough. If the children's work is done well, if the follow-up work is done well, the college work would never finish just receiving them in. And the children's work will also keep growing — out into the children's brothers and sisters, parents, relatives. Because of the practice of the children's meeting, Taipei has gained one home — through the children, the mother came in too. Mainly through the children's meeting, more people in the community are gained, and the spread is moved forward.

4. Practising the Children's Meeting; Producing Overcomers

The children's work has now reached the stage of strengthening: that is, to gain men in great numbers and to make them overcomers. The Lord's Day children need to be cared for; but with the Lord's Day meeting now divided district by district, it is impossible — your child cannot be down the mountain while you, on the Lord's Day, are up the mountain. Nor are the meeting-halls every locality has so spacious as to fit everyone, nor do they have so many teachers to come and serve the children. The Lord's Day perfecting, the winter and summer breaks, and the two-day weekends can serve for special perfecting and blending; but the blending of ordinary daily life is in the children's vital group — and the cultivation, the nurturing in the atmosphere, takes place there.

May these three axes be our important direction today. First, spiritual all the way home — living the life of shepherding our children. Second, in the children's character and conduct, having a cultivation and perfecting that is human. Third, practising the children's vital group, cultivating the children's right interpersonal relationships, that they may be healthy, vital, organically-functioning small members. These are the important factors for bodily living and building up, and for bringing in the multiplication of the whole.

Our ground is responsibility — to nurture and to transmit our children; our goal is to let the flow of Christ spread on a house-by-house basis. In this way, the church goes on multiplying with house-after-house. Now then — can a children's meeting be opened? Yes, it can. Will it be closed? If you still have the "closing" notion, that says you have not yet sufficiently grasped the living-ising of Christ. If Christ can be living-ised, there is no such thing as the question of closing. But we must not stop here, lest we fail to attain the glorious spread of which the Acts speaks, and the appearing of "the building of the church" and "the one Body" that the Acts shows us.

A dynamic and multiplying Body life needs the dispensing of Christ, with the home as the unit, and Christ's flow spreading on a house-to-house range. In such a Body life, all the members, by nourishing, teaching, and perfecting one another, are filled with one another and are blended into one. This range of being-blended-into-one becomes the very Christ of the building of the church.

5. The Children Have a Part in the Church Life of the New Way

We want to give the children the most healthy church life — that is, the daily Gospel · Home · Group. The children's Gospel · Home · Group can be concentrated in the group — including bringing friends and individual instruction. Sometimes there is also the need to go individually into the home; this is very flexible. Basically, the children's Gospel · Home · Group is all in the children's group.

The more we go on, the more we feel that the children should from a young age be able to speak for God, able to prophesy — different from our generation (we grew up listening, listening, listening). We want the next generation, from young, to grow up speaking Christ, speaking from infancy a new language. Even if the child today does not yet have much practical reality, that is no problem — as long as he is willing to speak the new language, in time he will be constituted by it.

Most children today speak the language of the world, so that as they grow up they become worldly people, television people. Do not lightly dismiss whatever the child says as having no reality. No! As long as he is able to speak even a little of God and of God's economy, that is a great thing: he is laying up eternity, laying up the New Jerusalem for himself. So we very much have a burden to encourage every child to write a prophesying-script — that is, his little-lamb diary — with the parents acting as reporter and recording. On the Lord's Day, he comes to the bread-breaking with the adults; for in the bread-breaking the old and the young can all be together — for in appreciation there is no great difference.

After the bread-breaking, we let the children prophesy first, one by one with rhythm and order, releasing the spirit and speaking out Christ. When they finish, they break for their meeting; the adults continue the prophesying. We are deeply encouraged and moved to see in the children's hands one notebook after another, full of pages of prophesying-script — week after week, writing prophesying-scripts, speaking for the Lord. This is truly a good storing. So — even on the Lord's Day — we are experimenting how to give the children a fitting meeting, that they may have the most healthy life of an overcomer.

6. The Children Are Perfected to Become Seeds on the Campuses

Because of the practice of the children's meeting, the dream within us is this: the church of our next generation has no problem of "hand-off." If we have the children's meeting, then as he grows into junior high, naturally it becomes the junior-high group. After he has gone through the children's meeting and the junior-high group, he has come to deeply love the Body life. By high school, out of himself he carries a burden, going out to constitute a high-school group.

In particular, from children to junior high, the church should be able very naturally to attain a state in which there is no hand-off problem. For at home, the children have never needed any "hand-off." For them, going from one school to another is the same — they grew up at home, were happy at home; the home is the range of their living. So Brother Lee said: "All the children's progress requires the children's home meeting." In this way, generation by generation, age-band by age-band, they all go up, all able to have their own group-gathering — and their bodily living, in the very midst of it, receives the best perfecting.

IV. The Outlook of the Children's Meeting

In the practice of the children's meeting there are still aspirations yet to be fulfilled.

1. Grandfathers and Grandmothers

First — Brother Lee greatly hoped that all the grandfathers and grandmothers could do the children's meeting. In this we still need to experiment. Grandfathers and grandmothers, having full time, automatically helping their sons and daughters look after the grandchildren — they only have to turn from taking the grandchild to watch Taiwanese opera into a little teaching, a little cultivation in the atmosphere; mutual care between them, and intercession for one another, is enough.

2. Even Those Without Children Should Open Their Homes

Second — Brother Lee said: "If you have no children, see how the Lord may lead you." But he added a sentence: "It is best that you also do a children's meeting." So this kind of nurturing-in-the-atmosphere ought to be a part of our living: we who live in this place should gather the children of the neighborhood into the home, cultivate them in the atmosphere, give them the opportunity to get the Lord.

Brother Lee, in Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord's Recovery, Book 5, ch. 6 ("Concerning the children's work"): "If a home has no children, then it is up to the individual saint to decide whether he would open his home. Nevertheless, it is best to have the burden to open one's home for the children. … They can invite five or six children from the neighborhood to have a children's meeting."

3. Communicating with the Unbelieving Parents — A Path of the Gospel

Third — at present, although the children's meeting has begun to be practised, it is still not widespread. We long that, on this side, there be more research, even fellowshipping with the unbelieving parents of the children, speaking the gospel, asking them what their child does at your home, gradually letting Christ cultivate them in the atmosphere. This is one important road of the gospel — entering many unbelieving homes through the children's meeting.

4. The Need for Materials

Fourth — the matter of teaching materials still needs further research. Through the brothers and sisters the bookroom has produced some materials; but how are they to be used? How, for the new age, for the small-group structure, for the house-by-house concept, are fitting materials to be produced? For example, guidance pamphlets — taking up the impact a child later faces from narcotics, video games, dating, brand-name shoes and the like, and giving the corresponding revelation. These materials need to be researched: we are not only to give our sons and daughters positive material; we also need defensive material to give them. Otherwise, when we say to a child, "This cannot be done," and the child asks, "Why?" — and we cannot answer, do not know how to answer out of God's economy — these all need research.

5. Blending — Gathering the Life and Wisdom of All

Fifth — we need blending, gathering together the life-power and wisdom of all the saints, producing the multiplication and increase of the next generation; we long to come to such a step. From the new-student fellowships we have seen the next generation: in the colleges, in gaining men they are formidable — this is something to be expected. Our next generation can grow up like this.

So the children's meeting is most important; we ask the Lord to bring us into a new realm. The most important benefit of the children's meeting is to release the organic functioning of your child — that is a great thing. Why is it that so many children who came up through the children's class — the obedient ones simply stayed; the disobedient turned away, and then slowly drifted off? It is not that he was disobedient — it is that you never gave him a chance to function; you only suppressed him. But in the children's meeting there are very many opportunities for him; his organic functioning is released. To let a child be released in his function — this is a very great matter.

V. The Testimony of the Development of the Children's Meeting

1. Practising Step by Step According to the Blueprint of the New Way

From 1990, when Brother Lee began to commission us in this matter of the children, we have been going on according to the blueprint he gave. This burden was already mentioned back in 1985, but at that time the full-time training and the spreading to the towns and rural areas were all in the community aspect, and we had no spare strength to attend to the children. What was to be done about the children? What about the youth? So although for many years we had been doing the work for the next generation, from about 1986 to 1990, in those five years, there was a relatively halted situation; we did not know how to take this burden up. At that time, we kept releasing in Taipei Brother Lee's burden concerning the children's meeting. Brother Lee required us not to call great mass meetings — rather, each one of us is to go and do it, full-time, contacting one homemaker, one grandfather, one grandmother at a time, that they may open their homes to cultivate their own children and the children's neighbors and classmates in the atmosphere.

The road Brother Lee gave us was a bitter road — we had to contact people one by one, transmit and open up home by home, with ourselves as the pattern; and so the children's meetings began in the home. By 1991, in Taipei there was a whole-church demonstration-exhibit of the children's meeting. There was not only the exhibit but also two short sketches: "A Day in My Home — the Children's God-man living, and the three-element norm of the children's meeting." Just a little seed, slowly sown into the hearts of those who were thirsty. By 1993–1994, in Taipei there were over one hundred children's meetings. We wrote a letter to Brother Lee, and he asked me one question: "Are they really that good?" I said: "Whether they are really that good or not, I do not know — but what is written there is real." In 1995, with the redeployment of the work in the recovery in Taiwan, the children's meeting spread to the central region, and gradually also to the south. By 1996–1997, in the children's work experiment, there had come many breakthroughs.

2. Step by Step Seeing the Fruit

Through the practice of the children's meeting, the organic function of the children was indeed being released. The children began to practise preaching the gospel; the serving ones made cards for them; with a feeling of trembling, they did, however, take the Lord's word into their schools. The children can not only invite people; they can also preach the gospel, telling their classmates the Lord they have come to know.

On the other side, we also discovered: to practise the children's Gospel · Home · Group · District, the group must first be put under. Once it is put under, every parent will discover the need of a healthy spiritual life. Because of opening the group, the brothers and sisters knew their own lack; therefore in Taipei and Taichung the Healthy God-man Living trainings were begun — in the central region we did six rounds, over two years. The training was very rigorous: the whole family registers; ten-some homes or thirty-some homes, group by group, going to a fitting place to receive the training. There were courses for the parents, courses for the children, and courses where the whole family was blended together.

In each round of training, we had many practices, and all of these were aimed at the complete building up of one home, one home. Parents must nourish the children, must accompany them in morning revival; even from waking the child up, all must be done in spirit — no shouting and yelling, no thunder-clap, but full of life, full of spirit, full of smile, with the dispensing, bringing the child into enjoyment. There is also parent-and-child exercise. In meal-preparation, the parents do not do it — rather the child carries the dishes to the table; everything having been prepared, he invites the parents to come and eat; then the parents lead the child in a little pray-reading and enjoy the meal. There is the rule for the meal: the child cannot just eat and run. When he has finished, he asks Daddy and Mommy permission to leave; only with permission may he leave. Then he goes to wash dishes — with some children too short and small (only four, three, or two years old), having to stand on a small stool to wash. Practising God-man living from morning till evening like this, they all love it; back in their own homes, they all know they are to wash dishes.

Through this exercise, we saw husband and wife confess to each other; parents and children confess to each other; parents and children recover the life of a healthy God-man family. We also saw the saints, one by one, having breakthroughs in their service in the church, and this all because of the training of the healthy family life. So the more we go on, the more we feel: "Lord — could it be that this is the recovery You want to bring in? — for You to recover one healthy home after another, that Christ may have the first place, that Christ may be magnified." One healthy home, one healthy home, will become the home of Priscilla and Aquila, the home of Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus — the whole family serving the Lord, opening the kingdom of the Lord. Where your home is, there the church can be built up.

In the exercise of prophesying we have also gradually broken through, seeing that the children can prophesy. At first, we had the children prophesy once a year; later, once every three months; now it is once a week. The child writes at home — some by themselves, others with the mother as reporter helping write — all using the child's voice, the child's words, the child's sentences. They are all able to speak out the Christ they have come to know and experienced.

3. Testifying That the Children's Work of the New Way Is Workable

By 1998, the Spirit had brought us through many experiments, and we have come to see what Brother Lee had seen.

Heb. 8:11 — And they shall by no means each teach his fellow citizen and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all will know Me from the little one to the great one among them.

"They shall all know Me, from the little one to the great one among them" — and to know the Lord is to know the Lord's economy; not only to know the Lord, but to know His economy in the universe; and this knowing also includes experience. So I am very confident: in the church, not only the adults must know the Lord and the Lord's economy — the children too must know it and have a part in it. Our children also are to have their bodily living — that is, their Gospel · Home · Group · District. Their Gospel · Home · Group · District is all in the group, and all under the operation of the group.

For only through the group can the children's mutual exercise of function be released — their mutual intercession, their mutual love, their mutual support, their mutual speaking-of-the-truth. Through this exercise, they learn to take courage in preaching the gospel to their classmates; they also learn to live, at home with the parents, the life of morning revival, evening prayer, and home meeting, bringing in a healthy spiritual life.

So, the axis at the start is still the children's meeting. We encourage every locality, every brother and sister, to practise the children's meeting; in time, the children's gospel will go out, and home meetings will go out too. The Gospel · Home · Group of the children will let the children grow up, having a subjective experience of the Lord; we then need not fear so-called premature education — we need only fear that our children, in their early years, did not experience the Lord, did not exhaust their organic function.

2 Tim. 3:15 — And that from a babe you have known the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Timothy from a babe knew the sacred writings; the more we go on, the more we are persuaded that our children should be recovered to such a state. From infancy, their spirit can respond, and their soul can be single in knowing the true God.

This is the Lord's way, the revelation of Scripture, and our experience as well. Through our experimenting and the Spirit's confirmation — through the response of the churches — we are persuaded that, by the end of 1998, it is time: to formally extend the products of the laboratory out to the churches throughout Taiwan. This is not something we ourselves invented — it is in the ministry that has been released through Brother Lee and brought to us. In the Scriptures, the children are able to exercise their function; the children too can proclaim to the universe: "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" The children can also, with their five loaves and two fish, cause five thousand to be filled; the children too can preach the gospel and proclaim Christ.

From the Scriptures we know — from the Old Testament right through to the New — the children all are to learn the Lord's word in their own home, learn to experience Christ, learn to honor the source; they too are to have their home meetings. The children, even more, have their group — team after team learning to be mutual. The children also can be brought to the Lord's presence to cry out the Lord with us, to proclaim Christ. The children too can be brought before the Lord, that the Lord may earnestly bless them. The Psalmist tells us:

Matt. 21:16 — And they said to Him, Do You hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read, "Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings You have perfected praise"?

In the church life, if there is only the praise of the old hands, the saints saved thirty years, the Lord cannot be satisfied. The Lord delights in the praise of those just graced; the Lord also delights in the praise of the children; He wants to perfect the praise out of the mouths of infants and sucklings. If a whole church is full of the praise of the old hands, the Lord says: "Very good — but it is not yet complete. Today's meeting has not yet been brought to a period." Until one child says, "Lord Jesus, I love You," and the Lord says: "Today's meeting has been brought to its period — the praise has been perfected."

These pictures we did not invent ourselves. As to the Gospel aspect, the children can preach the gospel — they need no long speeches; for him to be designed one short sentence to speak is enough. As to the Home aspect, the children need the life of morning revival, evening prayer, and reading the Word, and the parents need to accompany their own children in meeting at home. As to the Group aspect, the children need most of all their own gathering — that is the gathering where they may be mutual with one another, may commit their difficulties to one another, may exhaust their organic function. We dare not give it up on their behalf; they themselves must not give up the gathering that belongs to them.

Finally, in the District aspect, in the church we see more and more children, bringing their prophesying-books, coming to the bread-breaking and prophesying meeting. After the bread-breaking, the children stand up one by one and use their prophesying-book to speak for the Lord. The children are able to proclaim Christ — do not assume that what they speak is just doctrine; what they speak is experience. The children are more genuine than we are: we hear of man, lion, ox, eagle, and going home we are still neither man nor lion nor ox nor eagle; but as soon as the child gets home, the hands of man come out, the hooves of the ox come out. These years, we have found that the children's experience of the Lord is real. Looking at our own children, or at others' children, we have discovered that children can change in life very early on; and this change is not a change into a quiet child who does not speak, but into a small prophesier. All of this we have done according to the revelation of Scripture, and according to the picture Brother Lee gave us.

VI. We Have Many Prospects Going Forward

1. The Eight Years of Experiment Should Now Spread to All the Churches

First — these things, the result of eight years of experiment, should now be made universal among all the churches. May we take up the burden, all becoming the women who bring good tidings, transmitting this burden — helping one home after another to open up and practise the children's meeting. As to the practice of the children's meeting, if the schoolteachers in primary schools also come, the children's meetings will not be enough. A teacher will at one stroke bring thirty students to faith; the moment class lets out, all rush to the children's meeting. We still have much resource yet untapped — the grandfathers and grandmothers should also do the children's meeting. We long that, in 1999, we may put this into practice. Let us experiment first in the central region: the older brothers and sisters can on one side, take care of the grandchild; on another, flow the divine love; on still another, transmit Christ. Hereafter, the older ones, instead of taking the grandchildren to Taiwanese opera or puppet shows, will bring them along to practise the children's meeting together. Beyond this, those at home without children should also do the children's meeting. Brother Lee said:

Brother Lee, in Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord's Recovery, Book 5, ch. 6: "If a home has no children, then it is up to the individual saint to decide whether he would open his home. Nevertheless, it is best to have the burden to open one's home for the children."

So those who have children must do the children's meeting; those without children, when their children are grown, may also do it. The children's meeting ought to become our living — just as every parent has a life by which to care for his own life, so we too should consider the spiritual blessing of our children.

2. All Who Serve the Children Are to Be Forerunners in the Stream of the Ministry

Second — we long that all who have a part in the children's service be forerunners in the stream of the ministry. We have not only the children's meeting; rather, through the children's meeting we are to bring our children into the dispensing of the Lord's age. Our children can keep up with the age. They are to be firstfruits; and they cannot become firstfruits by the traditional old way. So they must come to know the stream of the Lord's ministry today. Brothers and sisters serving the children — have you taken part in the special conferences, the winter and summer trainings? It seems perhaps only one in three. Then it is hardly possible for us to lead our children to be firstfruits. Of course, this is not to say that without going to the U.S. you cannot make it; rather, that we ourselves must also taste of it. Not that the U.S. is so much better; only that, by going to the special conferences and trainings in the U.S., you can see the one new man of the universe: there to touch the flow of the Spirit, to keep up with the Lord's timely speaking. We who serve the children are all the forerunners following the ministry; we are to keep up with the Lord's age all the way along.

3. A Whole-Taiwan Blending Conference for Parents, Children, and Servers

Third — if possible, we long that in 1999 there may be a whole-Taiwan blending conference of parents, children, and servers. The age has now reached the point where the colleges have five-ring blending, the high schools have six-ring blending; the children too should have seven-ring blending. That is, all the rings should be blended. As long as you are a brother or sister, you should open a children's meeting. As I understand the picture Brother Lee has given us, the children's meeting ought to become the living of every brother and sister in the whole church — not that you are to set yourself to make a great fuss about anything special, but that, for the sake of cultivating in the atmosphere and spreading the Lord's gospel to the next generation, we ought to open up our home, every house, every house, to practise the children's meeting.

— End of Message One —

Ch. 2