Those of us who have left the Local Church Movement have looked back in wonder at our experiences and what they meant. Trying to sort out what the lesson is, we observe the ongoing Local Church movement, and two basic characteristics, existing in tension, come into focus:
- The movement thinks its positive legacy is of paramount importance.
- The movement thinks that the defense of its founders, Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, is essential to this legacy.
In other words, the movement thinks beyond any doubt that many of the spiritual principles they uphold, which they see as neglected in other Christian groups, are absolutely crucial to God achieving what he desires to achieve. Thus they see themselves as stewards of these things. (Some examples are: locality, God's economy, various "high peak" teachings, the principle of Recovery and unity with the move of Recovery).
It is not important to this discussion that you agree with those principles. It is important to understand that the mission of the Church always includes spreading principles. And so, the LC is not wrong for doing that. Whether those principles are valid or not is something that gets worked out in the arena of ideas.
The problem is, the LC for some reason also feels that the defense of Nee and Lee is essential to carrying out their mission. Probably if pressed they would not want to admit that protecting Nee's and Lee's reputations is part of their mission.
Yet, clearly from their behavior they feel they cannot carry out their mission of preserving the principles unique to their movement without also preserving as pristine the reputations of their founders.
The question I have is, Why do they feel this way? If Nee and Lee were onto some things, and I still believe in certain cases they were, then those ostensive truths should stand on their own. They should not be dependent on the reputation of the men who communicated them. Clearly, our failure as servants can blunt the reception of even the most legitimate messages God gives us. Yet, our failures never invalidate those messages. So preserving a myth about a movement founder, even and especially for the sake of protecting the message he declared, is in the end counter to the mission of preserving any legitimate message. Dealing in lies to preserve the truth is a house divided against itself.
The fact is, God did not spare the reputations of his greatest servants. We see clearly the warts of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Paul and Peter, to name some. God did not think he needed to present these men as pristine in order to preserve the incredibly important messages and missions he wished to convey and accomplish through them. Interestingly, the LC cites Noah as an example of the consequences of exposing the sin of a leader, as Noah's son Ham was cursed for doing. Yet apparently this principle was lost on Moses, who when he wrote Genesis included the account, thus exposing Noah! Personally, I think God lets every servant of his fail, to underscore that the important thing is the message, not the men.
There is nothing wrong with trying to preserve and pass along spiritual principles you think are important. We all should do this. And the Local Church is not wrong for doing it either. But that leads to the question, with LCers, is it really about the message, about passing on real spiritual truths from God to the rest of the Church; or is it about preserving the reputations of men, of Nee and Lee? And if the latter, why? As God himself has shown us, he is more than willing to let the facts be the facts, and allow the historic failure of his servants be known. His truth is not dependent on our reputations. It stands on its own. And dealing in lies and myths to preserve reputations is in fact just one more delay to his truth prevailing.
The truth stands. Men come and go. The Bible understands this. It's time the LC did, too--ironically, for the sake of their own message.