The Church in the Place

Unto the church of God which is at Corinth …with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:2

In 1938 Nee published the work known in English as The Normal Christian Church Life, sometimes titled Concerning Our Missions. It is his fullest treatment of church practice, and it is the part of his teaching about which believers most reasonably differ.

The observation

His argument begins with an observation about New Testament vocabulary that is difficult to dispute. Whenever the Scriptures speak of a church in a geographical sense, the identifier is always a place — never a doctrine, a founder, a practice or an emphasis. The church at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Philippi. The seven churches of Revelation are named for seven cities. There is no church of Peter, no church of the circumcision party, no church of those who prefer a particular view of the Lord’s Table. Further, Nee noted, the New Testament never speaks of two churches in one city, nor of one church spread over several cities. The unit is the locality, and within that locality every believer belongs. From this he concluded that division among Christians in the same town has no scriptural warrant whatsoever, and that the very existence of competing societies in one place — however orthodox each may be — is a departure from the apostolic pattern. He noted that when Paul confronted the Corinthians for saying I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas, he did not merely reprove partisanship; he asked Is Christ divided? (1 Corinthians 1:12–13). His practical conclusion was that believers should gather simply as the church in their city, on no other ground than that they are Christians living there, receiving all whom Christ receives.

Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. ROMANS 15:7

What follows from it

Several practical convictions flowed from this, and they shaped the assemblies that grew up under his ministry.

There should be no clergy-laity division, since the Body has many functioning members and no professional class. Elders are local and plural, raised up from among the believers rather than sent in. Apostles — or workers — travel, plant and build up, but do not govern the local churches or belong to them administratively. Meetings should allow for the contribution of the members rather than the performance of one man, on the pattern of when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine (1 Corinthians 14:26). And the work should be supported by God’s provision rather than by solicitation. Whatever one makes of the whole system, several of these emphases have proved their worth in the hardest circumstances imaginable. When the state closed the church buildings in China, the assemblies that survived and multiplied were precisely those that had never depended on paid clergy, denominational structures or property.

Where careful believers differ

Honesty requires the other side, and it should not be softened. Many thoughtful Christians accept Nee’s exegetical observation and reject his conclusion. That the New Testament identifies churches by city may reflect the simple fact that in the first century there was only one Christian community in each city, rather than establishing a permanent law of church order. Descriptive history is not always prescriptive command, and Scripture nowhere states the principle in the form of a rule. There is also a practical difficulty that the principle carries within itself. If the ground of locality is what makes a gathering legitimate, then a group claiming that ground has implicitly denied it to everyone else in the town — and a doctrine devised to end division has become a new and particularly sharp instrument of it. This is not a hypothetical concern. In the movements that followed Nee, disputes over which gathering constituted the true church in a given city produced painful separations, and the history of that is not edifying. Nee himself, it should be said, was in practice more generous than the system might suggest; he received believers from many backgrounds and had warm fellowship with Christians who did not share his views on church ground.

How should an ordinary believer handle this chapter? Take the burden and hold the method loosely. The burden is real, and the New Testament shares it: that Christ has one Body, that our divisions grieve Him, that denominational loyalty must never outrank loyalty to Christ, and that we are obliged to receive every believer whom Christ has received. That much is not a matter of opinion.

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. JOHN 17:21

Whether the remedy is a particular structure of gathering is another question altogether, and Christians of goodwill have answered it differently for a very long time.

What survived

There is a postscript to this chapter which no honest treatment can omit, because history has supplied a kind of commentary on it. When Watchman Nee was arrested in 1952, the assemblies he had served numbered some hundreds across China. Within a few years the buildings were closed, the leaders imprisoned or scattered, the literature destroyed, and public Christian worship as it had been known was effectively ended. During the Cultural Revolution the pressure intensified further. Foreign observers largely assumed that Chinese Protestantism had been extinguished. It had not. When information began to emerge again in the late 1970s, it became clear that the church had not merely survived but multiplied, chiefly in homes, without buildings, without a paid clergy, without denominational structures, and frequently under leaders with no formal training who had been raised up from among the believers themselves. It would be an overstatement — and Nee would have disliked it — to credit this to any one man or movement. Many streams contributed, and much of the growth occurred among Christians who had never heard of him. But it is a matter of plain fact that the practices he had argued for from Scripture proved remarkably well suited to a church under a hostile state. A congregation with no building cannot have its building confiscated. A church with no salaried clergy cannot have its clergy defunded. A gathering in which every member can contribute does not collapse when one man is arrested. There is a lesson in this for believers in every place where the church may one day be pressed, which is to say in every place.

And they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word. ACTS 8:4

The persecution in Acts 8 destroyed the Jerusalem church as a single visible congregation and thereby spread the gospel across the region. What looked like the end of the work was its distribution. Nee did not live to see any of this. He died in confinement in 1972, at the lowest point, with no evidence whatever that the thing he had given his life to had survived. Whatever one concludes about his particular views on church order, this much is instructive: he built in a way that did not depend on his own presence, and it outlasted him by a very long way.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List the believers in your town you would not gladly break bread with. Examine each name and ask whether the reason is scriptural or merely tribal. 2. Do something practical this month across a denominational line — pray together, serve together, give to their work. 3. If you serve in a church, ask honestly whether its structure develops members or spectators. 4. Notice whether your loyalty to your congregation is greater than your loyalty to Christ’s whole Body. Test it by how you speak of other churches. 5. Guard against the irony in this chapter: do not let a conviction about unity become a new reason for separation.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You prayed that Your people would be one, and we have spent centuries dividing. Forgive us, and forgive me.

Teach me to receive everyone You have received — not grudgingly, not with conditions of my own devising, but as You have received me.

Where I have prized my own tradition above Your Body, correct me. Where others differ from me and love You, give me a large heart. Make me a builder and not a divider. Amen.