Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
As to how Nee's model did or did not work in China, I wonder if the thing that made it work had nothing to do with ecclesiology outside of the fact that they were not answering to a non-Chinese HQ. Ultimately they all answered to Nee since he was, by default, the only one who had no one who was more spiritual than him. The claim of many cities in China with their separate assemblies was made a lie by the ability of one man to rule them all.
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I think there is a good amount of truth to this. Rogers makes mention of Chinese Christians wanting to distance themselves from Western influences. With all the Western missionaries, I'm sure there was the inevitable element of culture clash. I even wonder if there was a general suspicion of missionaries. Rogers pointed out that M.E. Barber was an independent missionary. I had never considered this before. This could very well have been why Nee placed so much trust in her. If anyone was suspicious of outside influences, it was Nee. Here was a woman who had the appearance of being deeply spiritual, with no "outside connections". Nee was already sold on what she had to offer.
From a young age, Nee gained respect as a teacher. He had a considerable following. What kind of environment would have allowed there be a podium waiting for him to step up to? It might not have been so much a void of other teachers, but rather people wanted a strong leader. Nee was that leader. For all that he was concerned about renouncing names, denominational ties, etc, he was still very much concerned with a centralized work and apostolic authority among the churches. He renounced denominational structure, but he had no problem appointing and assigning workers to different territories. It might be a reasonable conclusion that Nee wasn't concerned with churches having no "ties" at all, he just wanted everything to be homegrown. Granted, he was able to sell his package in a way that led to a general impression of autonomous assemblies, but Lee still was able to take his teachings on authority and run in the direction of having a ministry center and authoritative leaders.