The Normal Way of Fruit-Bearing and Shepherding for the Building Up of the Church

by Witness Lee

Many Christians throughout the centuries have held to one of two extremes concerning our service to the Lord. Certain ?spiritual? persons insist that to serve the Lord is absolutely a matter of life. They say that since we have life, we will grow in our service, so there is no need of any training. Those at the other extreme insist that we must receive schooling in order to serve. We need the proper life plus the proper training. We should not insist on either extreme. Yes, we need life; without life we cannot carry out the spiritual things. However, this does not mean that as long as we have life we need nothing more. In addition to the proper life, we still need the proper training and practice.

120 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2005

About the author

Witness Lee (李常受, pinyin Lǐ Chángshòu) was a Chinese Christian preacher associated with the Local Churches movement and the founder of Living Stream Ministry. He was born in the city of Yantai, Shandong Province, China, in 1905, to a Southern Baptist family. He became a Christian in 1925 after hearing the preaching of Peace Wang and later became a close coworker of Watchman Nee. Witness Lee moved to Taiwan in 1949 as the Communists were advancing in mainland China. During the 1950s, his ministry extended throughout Southeast Asia and in 1962 Lee moved to the United States, relocating the base of his ministry to Southern California. He gave his last public conference in February 1997 at the age of 91. Many of Lee's spoken messages have been published in over 400 books and translated into more than fourteen different languages. Lee's major work is Life-study of the Bible, comprising over 25,000 pages of commentary on every book of the Bible from the perspective of the believers' enjoyment and experience of God's divine life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Lee was also the chief editor of a new translation of the Bible entitled the Recovery Version.