Local churches (affiliation)

Origins

The development of the local churches can be traced to the conversion of Watchman Nee in Fuzhou, China. At an early age, Nee committed his life to Christian ministry. Mostly self-educated, he began to publish his interpretation of the Christian faith and of church practice after moving to Shanghai in 1927.

Watchman Nee first met Witness Lee in Yantai in 1932. Two years later, Lee moved to Shanghai to work with Nee. One of Lee's responsibilities there was the editing of some of Nee's publications. In the following years, Nee published many works and held regular conferences and trainings for church workers. Nee, Lee and other workers established over six hundred local churches throughout China and Southeast Asia before the Communist Revolution of 1949.

Some outsiders referred to the group as the "Little Flock" as they sang from a hymnal entitled Hymns for the Little Flock. From early on, members of this group emphasized a personal experience of Christ and the establishment of a pattern of church practice according to the New Testament.

The Plymouth Brethren Connection

Many of the movement's ideas, including plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, were adopted from the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative, low church, nonconformist, Evangelical movement whose history began in Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. From 1930 to 1935, there was communication internationally between the local churches and the Raven-Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren, which saw the churches in China as a parallel work of God. However, Nee and other Chinese leaders disagreed with their prohibition of celebrating The Lord's Supper with Christians outside of their own meetings. Matters came to a head when it became known that Nee had worshiped with non-Brethren Christians, including T. Austin Sparks in London and Thornton Stearns in Hartford, during a 1933 visit to the United Kingdom and North America. After a series of letters exchanged between leaders in New York, London, and Shanghai over a two-year period, on 31 August 1935, the brethren in London sent communication to Shanghai terminating their fellowship.

Nee taught that there should only be one church in every city, that Christians should meet together simply as believers living in the same city regardless of differences in doctrine or practice. Nee believed that this would eliminate divisions between Christians and provide the broadest basis upon which all believers could meet. Both Nee and Lee emphasized the New Testament's references to churches by the name of the city (for example, in Acts, the Christians in Jerusalem being referred to as "the church which was at Jerusalem" (NKJV), as well as other verses with the same convention, including 1 Corinthians 1:2; Revelation 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7 and 14). Since Nee and Lee taught that there should only be one church in each city, and that that city was the extent of a church's jurisdiction, members of the local churches usually refer to their congregations as "the church in (city name)." However, they assert that such statements are not to be taken as a claim of exclusivity, but rather inclusivity. (see Witness Lee, ‘The Basis for the Believers' Oneness in the Church’).

Developments after 1949

The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 led to severe persecution of Chinese Christians, including members of the local churches. Nee was imprisoned in 1952 and died in a labor camp 20 years later. Nee had already sent Witness Lee to Taiwan to ensure that their work would survive the political turmoil. By 1955, the work in Taiwan had grown to more than twenty thousand members in sixty-five churches.

In 1958, Witness Lee traveled to the United States for the first time and moved to Los Angeles in 1962. By 1969, there were local churches in California, New York, and Texas.

In recent years, leaders of the local churches have sought recognition from several organizations and Christian leaders throughout the United States.

Beliefs of the Local Churches

The local churches teach that they hold the faith that is common to all believers (Titus 1:4; Jude 1:3):

The local churches practice what they call "mutuality" in their meetings, based on verses such as 1 Corinthians 14:26 ("Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up."). Participants are encouraged to request hymns, offer brief comments, or pray at will. This is particularly evident in "prophesying meetings" in which members speak one after another, usually based on commentary by Witness Lee studied the previous week."