The Local Church

The Care of the Body

I grew up in a Christian home. My family loved God and put attending church first. When I was young, the congregation to which we belonged split in two. For years we hopped from church to church. We met with many different denominations. My parents became discouraged, but they continued to attend church meetings regularly. As for me, this experience made me desperate to find a church where I belonged. Throughout my childhood I never felt “at home” or accepted in all the places we attended. No matter how much I got involved, there was something missing. When I began college, I had an opportunity to start over with a new church. This was not easy. There were many different churches within walking distance of campus, and I eventually settled for the denomination that I attended most frequently while growing up. After my first semester at the university, I still had no Christian friends to pursue the Lord with. In high school I had had some friends to study the Bible with, or at least talk to, but in college I had none.

I had not involved myself with a Christian club before because I did not know which to pick. I only knew a few by name including one group that handed out gospel flyers to the students. I was not interested in many of the groups because they were too large and socially oriented for me. I spoke to a girl near my dorm who was passing out gospel flyers and she told me that she attended a Bible study. I found out after meeting with some students for a Bible study that many of those students attend the local church. Nobody asked me to give up meeting at my church, or pressured me to meet off campus or even to meet more than our weekly Bible study. There was no pressure to do anything. Every week we got together to read and study the Bible.

Eventually I attended an all-day conference on the book of Genesis. It was wonderful. I called my mom and shared with her all that I could remember of the messages. I was really happy. I knew that these believers loved the Lord and were as normal as I was. As time went on I realized that the Christians in the local church really cared for me. If I wanted to go to a meeting I could just call one of the sisters in the church. Even some sisters went out of their way to help me when I was having a rough summer. The people in the denomination I was attending never called me. I had not sensed real human care there, so in the summer between my sophomore and junior year I began to meet completely with the local church. It is here that I found my home.

Having Abundant Life

I grew up in a Christian home and was accustomed to reading and studying the Bible. My friends and I liked to talk about God, the gospel, and the Lord's return, but we really had nowhere to turn for our deeper questions. We felt that our pastors were unapproachable and our youth directors did not have the answers, so most of the time we made up our own answers. We really wanted to know more about God, and personally I wanted to know more of the deeper meanings conveyed in the word of God.

I got my first taste of what I was seeking when I attended a one-day conference on Genesis chapter one sponsored by a Christian student organization I had joined earlier in college. I did not know it then, but that conference was based on the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Most Christian conferences I had attended were either to encourage and train a few to accomplish a gospel work or were a mixture of entertainment and broad gospel preaching. In that conference I received a realization of God's plan for man. Without this understanding it seems that there is not much more to being a Christian than getting saved. I really enjoyed that conference. The speaking was on how the successive levels of created life in Genesis one from the plant life to the human life, represent the stages of our spiritual growth after we've received the Lord's life. Each succeeding type of life is higher than the previous one! This gave me a new vision of the Bible and my Christian life. Since that time I've begun reading the books that Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have written, and with each more of the Bible has been opened to me. Now I realize that the Christian life is not merely a matter of receiving eternal salvation but of receiving the divine life. The most impressive thing about the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee is that it leads men to Christ and His abundant life.

Suzanne Reagan | Back to List

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