Book Club Beginnings

Once upon a time, a young Christian had a thought: How can I have a constraining vision? Constraining. Able to keep me faithful no matter what trials and disappointments I may encounter. Vision. Of Christ and what He loves the most, His church. 

He brought this question to an older mentor, who suggested a book: The Orthodoxy of the Church by Watchman Nee.

This young Christian thought: “Man, reading books is hard.” So he reached out to a few close friends to see if they wanted to read through the book together, one chapter a week. 

These friends didn’t realize that this would be the beginning of something special. One-on-one, they were already friends and even spiritual companions, but through this book club, they became a group that could pray, struggle through hard concepts, and stand for the Lord together. 

So this group of six read through Orthodoxy and then went on to read another book, The Prayer Ministry of the Church. When that was finished, they began on The Universality and Centrality of the Cross.  

When they had finished Orthodoxy, they weren’t ready to move on yet, because the material and the discussions that followed were so good. So, they spent an extra week to write a summary of the book and personal testimonies on different points where they felt the Lord speaking to them. 

This is our summary and personal testimonies of how the Lord spoke to us in our time in The Orthodoxy of the Church. The book talks about the seven churches mentioned in Revelations 2 and 3. Throughout the next seven weeks we will share a bit on each church, including the personal reactions from each member of our group, and how the Lord has affected our lives through this book.

Introduction to Orthodoxy of the Church by Watchman Nee

In the seven epistles to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, we get a glimpse of the Lord’s will and desire for His saints and His church today. Watchman Nee asserts that each epistle is a prophesy of a particular stage in the history of the church. In our lives today, we see not only the prophecy but also its fulfillment. The seven churches are Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Each has its own praise or rebuke from the Lord, as well as a reward to overcomers and a call to those who have ears to hear. We hope that the conditions of each of these churches can serve as sober warnings, and the praises and rewards to the overcomers would cause us to break out of our outward situation and seek a fresh inward reality with the Lord.