Quote:
Originally Posted by Friedel
When the churches in Western Europe and the UK under the distinct leadership of the brothers in Stuttgart, particularly John So, dissociated themselves from Witness Lee/ his Office/Living Stream Ministry in 1988, there were about 400 meeting in Stuttgart.
The other large locality was Blackpool in England but not nowhere near the numbers of Stuttgart.
My educated guess is that there were probably around 800 in all of Western Europe and the UK; possibly less. (Eastern Europe came after the demise of the Berlin Wall.)
Only one locality in all of Western Europe and the UK, allied with Stuttgart, did not break away and remained loyal to Anaheim: Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee in northern West Germany. There were about eighteen meeting there in total.
However, Philip Lee had by then already commissioned one Chris Lee (no relation) in London to start a new office. That step effectively killed whatever had been raised up in Blackpool and the rest of the UK over several years.
So the "Office" started on a clean slate. The Local Church started over.
There were Local Churches in England, Ireland, France, Switzerland, West Germany, Spain, (I think) Portugal, Sweden (mainly through migration), possibly Denmark … and that is about it. (I am speaking from memory from very long ago.) Some localities were very small, perhaps less than 10.
|
Interesting, I've never really heard any statistics regarding what Europe was like before. It sounds to me like the 750 number was essentially gaining back what they lost. 3000 is a considerable increase by LC standards, but I'm not that impressed.
I constantly hear the brothers say how Europe is "closed" to the gospel if as that is an excuse for the ineffectiveness of their work. Now, I don't know how "closed" Europe really is, but I think it's fair to say that there are other factors being involved than Europe simply being "closed off".