Quote:
Originally Posted by VolkHenry
Concerning this latter point, it's make a lot of sense to me why Brother Nee developed his ecclesiology in manner he did, given his historical context. In that period of China's history, the mission field was ripe for God's work. Brothers and sisters from every denomination and missionary society were in the country to evangelize the Chinese people... which led to conflicts between ministries within differing denominations and their converts. It seems to me that Brother Nee's doctrine of "locality" circumvented these organizational differences and allowed believers to unite around what he saw was the biblical principle....
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I think that what you see here is about 20% of it. The other 80% is what was happening around Nee, in the larger society, that formed his view, and made it so successful. The easiest way for me to explain what I mean is to recommend reading about the Boxer Rebellion. Western-oriented Chinese Christians were horribly persecuted, even murdered. I think both Nee and Lee had immediate family affected.
Hatred of the "running dogs of the West" bled over to Christianity. Once Nee was able to separate the two, the "local model" took off. Interestingly, Nee did an about-face 15 years later, and declared that he had "recovered" (nyuk-nyuk) the Jerusalem Principle, where all churches had to pledge allegiance to HQ. He was in Shanghai, in the Shanghai Christian Assembly there and controlling the "churches" and "regions" and "work" from that point. At that point, in the LC (as I knew them under Lee) people stressed the "body" and the "vision of the ministry" etc to get you to kow-tow to HQ.
So the whole thing, to me, is bait-and-switch. First sell localism, to separate the believers from any other affiliation. Then, centralism, to get the scattered assemblies to affiliate with your ministry.
Now, I have been on the forum here for some years, and may be biased. Also I don't pretend a scholarly or overly informed view. But this is what I have seen and currently reflect on.
Thanks for posting. God bless your journey.