It is clear from recent conferences and trainings that the Lord is burdened to move in North America through migration (see “GTCA” under the “God’s Move” tab). However, the basis of such a move must not merely be individual burdened saints. Rather, it must be the vital groups.
In a recent fellowship, Brother Andrew Yu pointed out that we are automatically disqualified from this move if we are not in a vital group. This serves as a good reminder that while we are burdened for GTCA and migration in general, we must endeavor, even struggle, to work out the vital groups.
So how do we form a vital group? Brother Witness Lee addresses this in Message 8 of “The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups”:
From the beginning I have pointed out that you should not form a vital group. You have to produce a group, not form one. How do you do this? You do not do it by the way of a movement or by the way of propaganda. The way to produce a vital group is by you yourself going to the Lord. You should have a burden because you see that you are old, dead, lukewarm, fruitless, pitiful, and numb, with no feeling. This should cause you to go to the Lord to repent. This is the very start of the vital group. I say again—go to the Lord. Without going to the Lord by yourself, what you do means nothing.
We may all migrate but how will we go?
May we first go to the Lord to be vitalized and grouped, then go all over North America as members of the Body of Christ, as vital groups.
Please share your experience, feelings, and thoughts and/or ask any question by replying below.
Praise the Lord from a brother in New Zealand!
I really enjoy the idea of migrating with a vital group. I don’t preach the gospel very often, but a few days ago I was with some other young people and we were singing songs and handing out gospel tracts, and we visited someone’s house to give him a bible, and I realised it’s exciting to be with a group of saints, living for the gospel! I also realised that if I could live like that, then to migrate with a vital group who corporately live uniquely for the gospel would be the best way to spend your life on this earth. May the Lord raise up the vital groups!
I also really enjoy the idea of migrating as vital groups. It takes a lot of the “burden” away where we think that we have to be able to do it all. Actually Brother Lee’s fellowship in the context of migration to Europe was that one couple with 1-2 single saints would migrate (and even live?) together near the campus to start the church life. Sounds like a vital group to me!
The testimonies from Austin that came out in the recent fellowship during the Winter Training really confirmed this. Two different groups migrated to two different places: one to another part in Austin, one to Florida. Their testimony to me really is this: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Recently, we have fellowshipped about how to effectively gain a number of college students in the campuses and we found out that it should start on one-on-one shepherding with the students. This is what we really need right now. As we just started a few days ago, praise the Lord, its so enjoying to meet new ones who are really open for bible reading daily in their vacant time. May the Lord grace us to continue His work here in a prevailing way.Amen.