How to Gain People, Retain People,
and Perfect People
II. How to retain people:
A. The key to retaining people:
1. The HomeMeetings:
In the Lord’s new move today, the home meetings are a crucial matter. Through our practical experience we can say that gaining the new ones by door-knocking is not a difficult matter. However, to take care of the home meetings is not as easy. This is the heavy burden within us. The primary function of the home meetings is to keep and stabilize the new ones. (Bearing Remaining Fruit, vol. 2, ch. 4)
2. Practicing the perfecting training in home:
Up to now, there are four problems in the whole earth in the Lord’s recovery: (1)How to keep the new believers? (2)How to establish the vital group? (3)How to carry out the teaching in “Begetting, Shepherding, Teaching, and Building”? (4)How to strengthen the function of “Home”? Therefore, Brothers led us to carry out the perfecting training in home. The corporate life training and practicing in home is a new concept of training which has the frame of vital group, combines exhorted reminding serving, and the goal of which is to establish the corporate life. It is not only feeding, teaching, but also perfecting; not only the practice of the vital group, but also the carrying out of the corporate life; not only bearing remaining fruit, and making the fruit becoming the branches of the vine which can bear fruit.
a. Establishing the model of God’s Ordained Way——Perfecting in home
b. Video：the Guide of the Practice of the Perfecting Training in Home
c. Fellowship before Perfecting in home
d. Brief report of the Testimony of salvation of Practice of the Perfecting Training in Home
e. How to deepen, strengthen, realize the Perfecting Training in Home
B. Children
1. We can go to shepherd others according the principle of “from house to house ”and “sendingthe meetings to home”. We need to be active, meet with members of our family in our home, and go to people’s home to enjoy the Lord with others. The breakthrough in serving the children lies in “doing into home, bringing into groups, the whole district doing”. (doing into home, bringing into groups, the whole district doing)
2. Testimonies:
a. Sisters Group to India——Being saved Home by home through Practicing Children’s Group
b. Children’s Group in Gurgaon, India
c. Children’s outdoor blending
d. To be the right Parents in life to shepherd children
e. Soft caring, attentive shepherding
C. Young People:
1. We should endeavor to bring the young people into the practice of the church life through the homes; The influence of the home meetings is most helpful for the families of the saints; from early days the children will be surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere, and will have constant opportunity to see the reality of eternal things. The children in the home meetings will be preserved from drifting with the current of the age; in the end, the family will become proper and normal. (Raising Up the Next Generation for the Church Life, part 5, ch. 18)
2. Testimonies:
a. The Exhibition of corporate God-man Living in Summer in Ethiopia
b. Teenagers’ God-man living in Taipei
D. Campus (practicing the corporate God-man living through students’ house):
1. In every locality the church must also take up the burden to care for the young people, especially for the unmarried brothers and sisters. It is necessary to have many brothers’ houses and sisters’ houses in order to have the best communal life. (The Spirit and the Body, ch. 11)
The brothers’ and sisters’ homes for corporate living are our invention. Although some in Christianity may have practiced this in the past, I did not learn this from them. I learned this way by our own experience. At a certain time I found that for the campus work we need brothers’ homes and sisters’ homes. Otherwise, after we catch a “fish,” we will have no vessel for keeping it. (A Word of Love to the Co-Workers, Elders, Lovers, and Seekers of the Lord, ch. 1)
2. Testimonies:
b. Brothers’ hous in Berkeley, California
d. The Students’ House in North Carolina State University
E. Young working saints:
1. The influence of the working saints to church: indicator of how young the church is; the storing talents for increase; the patterns for the young student; the main resource of the full-timers; opening their homes for the children or campus service; consecration to meet the financial need of the church.
Therefore, we can establish the group life of the working saints. In every district the elder saints can open their home to care for the working saints and to be the tents to shepherd them. They can blend with people and retain people through working saints groups. (The working saints to the Lord’s recovery Powerpoint )
2. Testimonies:
c. In January 2015 the corporate God-man living in the United States Southern California Cerritos
d. Gaining people,Being revival in the vital Group-the website of Taipei church
F. Community:
1. Our homes have several advantages. In America many freshmen attend college away from home. Since they are considered full-grown, they may leave home once they have graduated from high school. Many of them are lonely and homesick. If we invite them into our living rooms fora little snack or perhaps a dinner, they will feel at home and this will open them to the Lord and the truth. Furthermore, people do not have a goal and they are tired of their old manner of life. This situation is sovereign of the Lord. Once a young person graduates from high school, he usually begins to think about the goal and meaning of his life. Many young people today do not have a goal. They are wondering what to do and where to go. They do not have a goal in their human life. The material riches of America cannot satisfy the hearts of the young people. Therefore, we must take this opportunity to fill up the gap in their hearts with Christ. The best way to do this is by opening up our homes. (Preaching the Gospel on the College Campuses, ch. 2)
2. Testimonies:
a. The situation in Papua New Guinea from January to February
b. “How to Shepherd the Lambs Organically”By Borther Sui Liu
c. Intensify propagation for two weeks in Colombo, Sri Lanka
d. Fulfilling the commission by Shepherding (propagation testimony in Vietan)
e. Gaining the homes to be the testimony in kurnool-india
f. Shepherding and teaching, new Believerse were Kept
G. Sisters:
1. Today in the church life we need two kinds of people: one is the watchmen, another is the shepherds. The one who prays is the watchman, and in fact, the watchman is the shepherd. Shepherding is a gift of sisters, and also the function which the sisters should show out in the church life. Before visiting or shepherding we need to pray, because we cannot do anything. We need the Holy Spirit to do the good work in the Saints we will visit. We just cooperate with Him. This is the attitude the one who prays and the watchman should have. After the prayer, we need to cooperate with act – as a shepherd to shepherd the flock of God. Only one chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus himself, and the chief Shepherd has many small shepherds. So whether the taking care of the church life can be comprehensive, has supply, can be built, is closely related to the number of shepherds. So sisters need to raise up, not only be a watchman, even become a shepherd! Brother Lee said that the building up of the church 70 per cent depends on the sisters. Because when Jesus visited the house of Lazarus, there are a brother and two sisters. In our district or group, if the proportion of brothers and sisters is one to two, the church life will be very sweet. (The whole church in Kaohsiung Sisters’ serving meeting—Restoring the Dormant Saints)
2. Testimony:
The whole church in Kaohsiung Sisters’ serving meeting ——Restoring the Dormant Saints
