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Originally Posted by Suannehill
I had the vital groups book...very small one...and gave it to someone else. It was definitely the 80's and I believe it was 1985.
Sue
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Yeah, no, the one called "Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups" was definitely from 1991 or 1992 because he says:
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FELLOWSHIP CONCERNING THE URGENT NEED OF THE VITAL GROUPS
MESSAGE ONE
FELLOWSHIP CONCERNING THE PRACTICE
OF THE GROUP MEETINGS IN
THE GOD-ORDAINED WAY
We need to realize that our present situation is very desperate. We have been speaking concerning the God-ordained way in both Taiwan and the United States for seven and a half years, but we have not seen a definite result. The word that we released has been more than clear, stressing that the group meeting is the crucial matter in the Lord's ordained way. We said that the group meetings should constitute eighty percent of the church life, and we also said that the gospel preaching, the nourishing, the cherishing, the feeding, and the perfecting should be done in the groups. But where are the groups, and where are the group meetings? We heard and received the word, and we even prayed much concerning this matter, but where is the definite building up of the groups? Among the churches there are some group meetings, but these are not the group meetings we intend to build up that can occupy eighty percent of the church life.
Witness Lee, Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups
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If he bagan this stuff around October 1984, then this message must have been in 1991 or 1992 probably. And it's a whopper - 25 chapters!
The other title, which I do have, was published in 1986 from messages spoken in 1984 and then republished in 1994. It's pretty small. Just 85 pages in 6 chapters.
I'm really interested to get into the "Fellowship" one at some point but I'm busy with other things at present and I'm pretty sure it won't really provide me any aid in going on with the Lord. The little "Vital Factors" book, though, was clearly the beginning of the end, or, probably more accurately, the end of the beginning of the LSM "universal church" concept. From that point forward, the flag of the "Local Church" whenever it was planted was governed by a defining word about "universal church" in the context of the practical activities of the assembling saints everywhere. My friend Aron here calls it "extra-local." I just call it denominational.
For instance, one important word in this little "Vital Factors" book which became a real brick in building something new among the saints was the clear statement that "the elders are under the apostles." For his support for this notion, Lee appealed to 1 Tim. 5:19-20. There's a bit of interpretation needed here to get that far. First, we have to say that Timothy was indeed functioning as an apostle. OK, let's grant that one. Then, we have to say that Paul's instruction to Timothy was the training of an apostle. I'm not so clear on that but it's a kind of a training and it's directed to Timothy, the maybe apostle, so, OK. What does it say? Don't receive accusations against elders without two or three witnesses and when they do sin, the technique is to call them on it publicly so that "the rest may be in fear." Lee interprets "the rest" to mean "the rest of the elders" although I'm not sure that reading is required, it's surely possible.
So, we can read these verses and clearly say that Timothy was instructed by Paul to publicly call out the sinful elders, but only on the word of multiple witnesses.
And this is supposed to mean that the Bible teaches that "the elders are under the apostles"? What a poor construction THAT is!
For all his tirades against fallen Christianity, Witness Lee somehow never got the fallen religious concepts of "church" and "apostleship" and "eldership" out of his blood. In their reality, and not in their corrupted religious form, these things are not something for us to imitate from out of the Bible but are merely descriptions of the realities we will encounter when we pursue the Lord purely in His way in life.
Just consider the practical implications: What should we do, for instance, should there be no apostle available in order to correct our sinful elders? Allow the widely-known sinning to just go on until the acknowledged apostle arrives in the full authority of his apostleship in order to solve the problem by making a public correction? Is Timothy as an apostle the only one qualified to do this? Or what is wrong with the other elders that they don't deal with it and why doesn't Paul have a word for Timothy to train them how to receive and handle these problems? And, not to suggest that such a thing might ever happen, but what if a designated apostle declines to publiclly deal with the widely-known sinning elder? What should we do then? Shall we call this an abdication of the apostleship in that case? What are we to make of such an apostle? Perhaps we should research whether there has ever been a papal bull on this issue?
The whole concept of titles and institutions permeates and saturates all of Lee's ministry about churches and elders and apostles and such. Of course, Lee isn't unusual in that at all but it is at practical odds with so much of his teaching otherwise that it really might seem difficult to believe to those still on the inside.
To us who have moved on, I think it's more than clear.