Quote:
Originally Posted by Indiana
"The ministry should be for the church; the church should never be for the ministry. We must be exceedingly clear concerning this principle. We must drop all wrong practices. A gifted brother should keep his hands off the local church… All gifts and gifted persons must be entirely for the local church. This is a tremendously vital matter.” (W. L., The Vision of God’s Building, pp 173-175,1964)
So, Brother Lee, Philip Lee, Benson, et al, took this wrong way, thus causing division everywhere. This “tremendously vital matter” of not pushing a ministry is not heeded in the Local Churches today; they find the ministry of Witness Lee to be “indispensable to our oneness”, and herald their sectarian position before all in their One Publication proclamation, 2005.
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IMHO from the inception of the LC system in America (Witness Lee brand) his ministry was indispensable to their oneness. His ministry was the curriculum for all the churches, his publications were sold in all the churches, people were expected to attend his trainings and conferences, elders were appointed by him, elders and coworkers were expected to attend conferences specifically for them and all decisions of any signifcance had to be fellowshipped with him for his approval prior to implementation. This was true in the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. But in the 1986 what was already true in practice became official when the elders and coworkers signed a document stating that his ministry was indispensable to the oneness. This merely confirmed what already existed for decades.