| The Local Church | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Christian |
| Orientation | Nondenominational |
| Polity | Congregationalist |
| Associations | Living Stream Ministry |
| Founder | Watchman Nee |
| Origin | 1920s China |
The local churches are a Christian group which was started in China in the 1920s and have spread globally. The basic organizing principle of the local churches is that there should be only one Christian church in each city, [1] a principle that was first articulated by Watchman Nee in a 1926 exposition of the seven churches in Asia in Revelation 1:11. [2] The local churches do not take a name, but some outsiders referred to the group as the "Little Flock" as they sang from a hymnal entitled Hymns for the Little Flock. [3]
From early on, members of this group emphasized a personal experience of Christ and the establishment of a pattern of church practice according to the New Testament. [4] Though assemblies identifying as "local churches" can be found worldwide, there are no definitive statistics available on membership, partly because the largest number of members are in China. Estimates range from five hundred thousand to two million members worldwide. [5] [6]
The development of the local churches can be traced to the conversion of Watchman Nee in Fuzhou, China. Nee began to meet outside of denominations with a small group of believers in 1922. [7] At an early age, Nee committed his life to Christian ministry and began to publish his works on the Christian faith and on church practice after moving to Shanghai in 1927. [8]
Nee appreciated the teachings of the Plymouth Brethren, especially John Nelson Darby, [9] and many of Nee's teachings, including not taking a name, plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, mirror that source. [10] From 1930 to 1935, there was communication internationally between the local churches and the branch of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church associated with James Taylor, Sr. The Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren saw the churches in China as a parallel work of God. [11] However, Nee and other Chinese leaders disagreed with their prohibition of celebrating The Lord's Supper with Christians outside of their own meetings. Matters came to a head when Exclusive Brethren leaders discovered that Nee had broken bread with non-Brethren Christians, including T. Austin-Sparks in London and Thornton Stearns in Hartford, during a 1933 visit to the United Kingdom and North America. After a series of letters exchanged between leaders in New York, London, and Shanghai over a two-year period, on 31 August 1935, the Exclusive Brethren in London wrote to Shanghai terminating their fellowship. [12] [13]
Nee's seminal works expounding his view of local churches—The Assembly Life [14] and Concerning Our Missions [15] —were written against the background of his experience with the Exclusive Brethren. [16] Nee taught that there should only be one church in every city, that Christians should meet together simply as believers living in the same city regardless of differences in doctrine or practice. Nee believed that this would eliminate divisions between Christians and provide the broadest basis upon which all believers could meet. [17] Both Nee and Witness Lee emphasized the New Testament's references to churches by the name of the city (for example, in Acts, the Christians in Jerusalem being referred to as "the church which was at Jerusalem" (NKJV), as well as other verses with the same convention, including 1 Corinthians 1:2; Revelation 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7 and 14). Since Nee and Lee taught that there should only be one church in each city, and that that city was the extent of a church's jurisdiction, members of the local churches usually refer to their congregations as "the church in (city name)." [18] [19] According to Nee, this means that "the church in her locality must be inclusive, not exclusive,” that is, it “must include all the children of God in the whole spectrum of Christian faith and practice." [20]
Though Nee took the lead among the local churches in China, it was through one of his co-workers— Witness Lee —that the local churches spread worldwide. [21] The two men first met in Lee's hometown of Yantai in 1932. Two years later, Lee moved to Shanghai to work with Nee. One of Lee's responsibilities there was the editing of some of Nee's publications. [22] In the following years, Nee published many works and held regular conferences and trainings for church workers. Nee, Lee and other workers established over seven hundred local churches throughout China before the Communist Revolution resulted in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. [23] Near the end of the Communist Revolution, Nee sent Witness Lee to Taiwan to ensure that their work would survive the political turmoil. [24]
The Denunciation Movement that began in 1951 after China entered the Korean War aimed at severing Christian groups in China from foreign influence, including expelling all foreign missionaries. As a side effect of the disbanding of mission churches, the local churches experienced "a spectacular rise in membership." [25] The Denunciation Movement turned to leading Chinese Christians who would not join the Three-Self Reform Movement. Nee, who managed his family's pharmaceutical company, was imprisoned in 1952 during the Five-Anti Campaign and died in a labor camp 20 years later. [26] [27] Meanwhile, the work in Taiwan led by Witness Lee had grown to more than twenty thousand members in sixty-five churches. [28] Witness Lee visited the United States in 1958 and moved there in 1962, settling first in Los Angeles. Today there are 250 local churches in the United States with approximately 30,000 members, [29] and local churches can be found on all six inhabited continents. [30]
The local churches practice mutuality in their meetings based on verses such as 1 Corinthians 14:26 ("Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up."). Participants are encouraged to request hymns, make brief comments, or offer prayers or praises at will. [31] This is particularly evident in "prophesying meetings" in which members speak one after another usually based on their recent learnings and experiences from their Christian walk and/or what they have studied throughout the previous week from the Bible, usually with the help of the commentary books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, including the periodical Holy Word for Morning Revival published by Living Stream Ministry. [32] [33]
The local churches believe that: [34]
In the first decade of the 2000s, the local churches were the subject of two extensive evaluations. These evaluations were performed against the backdrop of decades of controversy (see Local Church controversies). The first was conducted by a faculty panel at Fuller Theological Seminary. After a two-year study, the Fuller panel stated, "It is the conclusion of Fuller Theological Seminary that the teachings and practices of the local churches and its members represent the genuine, historical, biblical Christian faith in every essential aspect." [35] After a six-year study, the Christian Research Institute published a 2009 special issue of their journal in December 2009 with the words "We Were Wrong" on the cover. In it Hank Hanegraaff, Elliot Miller, and Gretchen Passantino published their findings, which resulted in a complete reversal of earlier criticisms. [36]
John Nelson Darby was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism and Futurism. Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.
The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and Nonconformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where it originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes sola scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the only authority for church doctrine and practice. Plymouth Brethren generally see themselves as a network of like-minded free churches, not as a Christian denomination.
Witness Lee was a Chinese Christian preacher and hymnist belonging to the Christian group known as the local churches in Taiwan and the United States. He was also the founder of Living Stream Ministry. Lee was born in 1905 in the city of Yantai, Shandong, China, to a Southern Baptist family. He became a Christian in 1925 after hearing the preaching of an evangelist named Peace Wang and later joined the Christian work started by Watchman Nee. Like Nee, Lee emphasized what he considered the believers' subjective experience and enjoyment of Christ as life for the building up of the church, not as an organization, but as the Body of Christ.
Restorationism, also known as Restitutionism or Christian primitivism, is a religious perspective according to which the early beliefs and practices of the followers of Jesus were lost or adulterated after his death and required "restoration". It is a view that often "seeks to correct faults or deficiencies by appealing to the primitive church as normative model".
Watchman Nee, Ni Tuosheng, or Nee T'o-sheng, was a Chinese church leader and Christian teacher who worked in China during the 20th century. His evangelism was influenced by the Plymouth Brethren.
Living Stream Ministry (LSM), originally named Stream Publishers when founded in 1965 by Witness Lee, is a non-profit corporation currently based in Anaheim, California. LSM publishes the works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, including the Recovery Version of the Bible. LSM has been a member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association since 2002 and of the Christian Booksellers Association since 1981.
The Recovery Version is a modern English translation of the Bible from the original languages, published by Living Stream Ministry, ministry of Witness Lee and Watchman Nee. It is the commonly used translation of Local Churches (affiliation).
Indigenous churches are churches suited to local culture and led by local Christians. There have been two main Protestant strategies proposed for the creation of indigenous churches:
As a general term in theological use, assurance refers to a believer's confidence in God, God's response to prayer, and the hope of eternal salvation. In Protestant Christian doctrine, the term "assurance", also known as the Witness of the Spirit, affirms that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit allows the Christian disciple to know that they are justified. Based on the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, assurance was historically an important doctrine in Lutheranism and Calvinism, and remains a distinguishing doctrine of Methodism and Quakerism, although there are differences among these Christian traditions. Hymns that celebrate the witness of the Holy Spirit, such as "Blessed Assurance" are sung in Christian liturgies to celebrate the belief in assurance.
Bibles for America (BfA) is a non-profit, religious organization dedicated to distributing free copies of the New Testament Recovery Version study Bible and Christian books by Witness Lee and Watchman Nee in the United States and Puerto Rico.
In Seventh-day Adventist theology, there will be an end time remnant of believers who are faithful to God. The remnant church is a visible, historical, organized body characterized by obedience to the commandments of God and the possession of a unique end-time gospel proclamation. Adventists have traditionally equated this "remnant church" with the Seventh-day Adventist denomination.
The local churches and the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have been the subject of controversy in two major areas over the past fifty years. To a large extent these controversies stem from the rapid increase and spread of the local churches in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s they became a target of opposition of fledgling countercult ministries. Unsupported criticisms of anti-social behaviors led to three libel litigations. In addition, some criticized the teaching of Witness Lee on the nature of God, God's full salvation, and the church.
The Lord's Recovery is a term coined by the Christian preacher Watchman Nee and promoted by Witness Lee that refers to a cumulative recovery of truths lost during what they refer to as the degradation of the church beginning from the second century. Although Nee and Lee recognized that there were recoveries before the time of the Reformation, their opinion was that the Lord's recovery began with Martin Luther in the Reformation because it was from then that significant recoveries were made.
The Normal Christian Life is a book by Watchman Nee first delivered as a series of addresses to Christian workers who were gathered in Denmark for special meetings in 1938 and 1939. The messages were first published chapter by chapter in the magazine A Witness and A Testimony published by Theodore Austin-Sparks. The first chapter was published in the November–December 1940 issue. This first publication of the book can be viewed in the original magazines on Austin-Sparks.Net. It was later published as a book by Witness and Testimony Publishers in August 1945 and advertised in the Sept/Oct edition of the "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine. The messages were also published as a book by Angus Kinnear in 1957 in Bombay, India.
The Economy of God, first published in 1968, is one of Witness Lee's principal works and is a compilation of messages he gave in the summer of 1964 in Los Angeles. These messages build on one of Watchman Nee's classics, The Spiritual Man, which reveals that man is composed of three parts - spirit, soul, and body. The Economy of God shows how this understanding of the parts of man tie into the central revelation of the Bible, which is God's economy, God's plan to carry out His heart's desire of imparting Himself into man for His full expression.
Margaret Emma Barber or M. E. Barber, was a British missionary in China. She was born in 1866 in Peasenhall, Suffolk, England, the daughter of Louis and Martha Barber. The family moved to 59 St Martin's Lane, Norwich around 1876 and established a carriage-manufacturing business. The family home in Norwich was opposite St Martin's parish church which was intensely evangelical in the 1880 - 90s and must have had an influence on the Barber family. During the course of her life, she lived in China twice to preach the Christian gospel. She left her home and travelled in a lonely way thousands of miles. Barber, who initially went to China as an Anglican, became an independent missionary with informal ties to the Plymouth Brethren. She is best known for her influence on Watchman Nee.
George Henry Lang was an English Bible teacher, author, and biblical scholar.
The Shouters, or more properly the Shouters sect (呼喊派), is a label attached by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to an amorphous group within China that was targeted by the government first as counterrevolutionaries and subsequently as a criminal cult after incidents in Dongyang and Yiwu counties in Zhejiang province in February 1982. "The Shouters sect" became the object of waves of arrests in 1983 and again in 1995. Several 1983 publications with ties to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) accused the late expatriate Chinese Christian teacher Witness Lee of being the leader of "the Shouters sect" and of instigating the disorders. In practice, however, the appellation "the Shouters sect" has been applied far more broadly to many groups that pray openly and audibly and/or do not register or otherwise cooperate with the TSPM. There is considerable reason to doubt the veracity of the reports which led to the condemnation of "the Shouters sect" and the association of them with Witness Lee or the local churches, and the local churches distance themselves from the Shouters.
While both rhema and logos are translated into the English word, in the original Greek there was a substantial distinction. The use of the term rhema has special significance in some Christian groups, especially those advocating the Five-Fold Ministry that God gave of five gifts or callings to some people. Christians denominations that advocate the Five-Fold Ministry include Charismatic Christianity, the Pentecostal Movement, the Apostolic-Prophetic Movement and the Word of Faith Movement.
The Open Brethren, sometimes called Christian Brethren, are a group of Evangelical Christian churches that arose in the late 1820s as part of the Assembly Movement within the Plymouth Brethren tradition. They originated in Ireland before spreading throughout the British Isles, and today they have an estimated 26,000 assemblies worldwide.
