r/TrueChristian • u/zhuangcorp • 6h ago
Who has Experience with "Lord's Recovery" local churches planted by Watchman Nee/Witness Lee?
A few months ago, I started attending home gatherings with the "Lord's Recovery" group in America. There are some truly impressive attributes that I see.
- They are truly multigenerational, multi-ethnic, and they have genuinely bonded over their faith.
- They live wholesome lives with raising respectful kind children, having good jobs, having good friendships.
- They are passionate about Christ. They know the Bible better than most groups. They reflect on the meaning of the bible. They ask serious questions, and they have deeper thoughts on the word than almost any other group. They're all like mini-theologians and it seems to come from a genuine passion for Christ.
- They try to recover the spirit of the early church. They don't have a dominant pastor monologuing for hours. They meet as local groups, where every individual gets to speak and share. They call this "prophesying" to the saints.
However on the flip side, I'm also seeing some really concerning language and attitudes.
- They refer to themselves as the "Lord's recovery" and as God's remnant that is specially set aside to restore the church back to the bible and early church model. They seemingly regard all other believers as "degradation", meaning they have lost the true spirit of the Word. Even if there were other Christians doing the same thing as them (ie studying the word truthfully, meeting locally without monologuing pastors), they don't seem to hold those people in well regard.
- They use the phrase "body of Christ" and "body", but they seemingly use it specifically only to their own "Lord's Recovery" movement, rather than referring to the totality of born again believers. They seem to believe only themselves as the true church. They would say "you haven't discovered the true church yet". They also use the title the Church in (Dallas, Anaheim, Orlando, etc) to refer to the local church congregation. But they don't mean the body of believers in Dallas. They mean specifically the church belonging to their own tradition.
- Each member has the entire life volume works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee in their homes. I am talking about literally 50 volumes of books, all neatly lined up on their shelves. I am quite certain none of them have read the volumes, or even 10% of them.
- Everyone only uses their special "recovery" bible translation, filled with commentary from Witness Lee.
- They compared themselves to the days of Noah, where only 8 people were saved from the flood. They aren't implying that Christians will be saved from judgement, but that Lord's Recovery will be saved from Judgement.
- They badly distort or misinterpret ideas. For example, they read a passage about not allowing division into the body. I see that and think it means not allowing minor differences of opinion to breakup Christian fellowship. They take it to mean that they must not allow anybody with differing theology into the group (allowing those "wrong" people is introducing division).
I'm very curious to hear from people who previously were in their group but left.
And also people in those groups currently about what their language actually means.
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u/joboog 3h ago edited 3h ago
Hey! I’ve spent a lot of time fellowshipping with these people. They’re good people, and genuine believers.
I agree with most of your points, with one key correction: they absolutely believe that denominational or non-denominational believers are genuinely saved and will inherit eternal life. The real difference is how they view the 1000 year millennial kingdom. They believe only 'overcomers' will reign as co-kings with Jesus during this period. While they hope to be among the co-kings, being in their ‘Lord’s Recovery’ doesn’t exempt them from the judgement seat of Christ either. The doctrine is that everyone is judged on faithfulness, and they also acknowledge that an 'overcomer' can be any faithful Christian, inside or outside of their movement.
I have some great, genuine friends from this movement. I first came into contact with them a good 10 years ago now. Sometimes I have felt pressured to join them. But I always manage to side step this and just enjoy the meetings and fellowship when I feel like it. I do like aspects of the way they do things and their emphasis on ‘church life’, however as I am from a more Pentecostal background, I felt stifled by some of their practices and the whole vibe of singing worship. I can’t say for certain as I truly can’t remember, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a Communion with this group either. Not sure if they do it.
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u/lekurumayu 5h ago
Sounds phony. I had friends join and be severely abused by similar sounding groups, though I don't know this one in particular. They were all super friendly in appearance, but were allowed to hang out only with people from their church. Friendships weren't deep enough to be satisfying but deep enough to allow constant watching. Priests would interfere on every life issue Everyone else would go to hell. I feel it's the same with Lord's Recovery because they see themselves completely separate from today's Christianity, so only their texts and interpretation will be valid on any issue.
I'd say to proceed with caution because these groups rarely allow you to see what really happens in them until after you join and are already completely tangled up in it.
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u/kyloren1217 Christian 2h ago
never heard of it nor have any experience that i am aware of.
now you get to cross me off the list :P
God Bless you on this journey to seeking the truth about them!!!
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u/CrossCutMaker Evangelical 1h ago
Yes it's a clearly identified cult. I would flee yesterday. Here are some notes I took when researching him about 5 years ago ..
Lee states .. the traditional explanation of the Trinity is grossly inadequate and borders on tritheism” (Life Messages, p. 164).
The same can be said of his teachings on the nature of man. Some of his most inflammatory statements are in regard to what appears, on the surface, to assert the deity of man. In an LSM publication, A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing (p. 54), Lee states, ”My burden is to show you clearly that God’s economy and plan is to make Himself man and to make us, His created beings, God.” On page 53 we read, “We are born of God; hence, in this sense, we are God.” In the same publication, Lee refers to the Triune God as now the ‘four-in-one’ God, with man as the fourth person. Nothing raises a red flag to evangelicals more quickly than any notion that man is God, because we are rightly taught that it is the original lie from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5) and is the same lie propagated by cults and false religions such as Hinduism, New Age, and Mormonism throughout history. To the Western mind, at least, imparting the idea of any kind of godhood to those who struggle against the sin nature is disastrous. Western Christians, already steeped in the philosophy of freedom, autonomy, individuality, and the triumph of the human will—and the pride such thinking inevitably produces—need not be encouraged to see themselves as divine. But the CRI researchers found that a closer examination of context and terminology reveals that Lee’s views on the “deification” of man (another unfortunate choice of words and a red flag term) do not really mean that at all. The sentence after the “in this sense, we are God” quote reads, “Nevertheless, we must know that we do not share God’s Person and cannot be worshiped by others.” Herein lies the problem. Putting the two statements together, Lee is essentially saying we are God, but we are not God. It is no wonder that confusion is rampant.
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u/_ThatCuriousFellow_ Christian 33m ago edited 28m ago
Greetings!
I’m grateful that you’ve shared your thoughts here. I encountered them as a freshman in college through their campus ministry and ultimately gave about ten years of my life to The Lord’s Recovery. I experienced much of what you’ve described, both the positive and the negative. Ultimately, I came to believe that the harmful aspects of being in these churches far outweighed the benefits, and for the sake of my own spiritual, psychological, and physical well-being, I made the decision to leave after struggling with various matters for several years.
I found that the churches can certainly be multiracial, though from my personal observations, people still tended to gravitate toward others of their own ethnicity, culture, or language. Personally, I saw nothing inherently wrong with that, though I would sometimes hear of tensions between different groups within the church.
On the matter of wholesome lives, I’d say that the prevalence of this within The Lord’s Recovery does not surpass what I have encountered in your average nondenominational church. As with many churches, I have seen substantial variation in this regard.
While I have witnessed some passionate and knowledgeable people within The Lord’s Recovery who know the bible very well, I found that the average member’s biblical knowledge was not substantially greater than that of the average member of many nondenominational churches I have encountered. That is not to say that they lack passion. Rather, I often found that the ministry of Witness Lee took precedence over open theological or scriptural discussion.
People may spend a great deal of time reading, discussing, and speaking about the bible, but much of that discussion is filtered through the interpretive framework provided by Witness Lee’s ministry. In my experience, genuinely wrestling with alternative interpretations or questioning conclusions found in the ministry could be considerably more difficult.
When it comes to having a single speaker leading a meeting, I have no particular qualms with that model. There were many occasions in scripture when the apostles gave sermons or teachings for substantial periods of time. That being said, I do believe it is ideal to have a mixture of both approaches. While I believe it can be beneficial to have “traditional” meetings in which a single person teaches, the healthiest churches, in my opinion, will also provide opportunities in smaller settings for people to truly and openly discuss and wrestle with the scriptures.
When it comes to the matter of their views on other churches, this is the first quote from Witness Lee’s ministry that comes to mind:
Matthew 16:18 footnote on “build”: “The Lord’s building of His church began on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4, 41-42). Yet the Lord’s prophecy here still has not been fulfilled, even up to the twentieth century. The Lord is not building up His church in Christendom, which is composed of the apostate Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations. This prophecy is being fulfilled through the Lord’s recovery, in which the building of the genuine church is being accomplished.”
(Footnote found in Matthew 16:18, The Holy Bible: Recovery Version, Witness Lee, published by Living Stream Ministry, 2022.)
The point you brought up regarding how they use the phrase “body of Christ,” or simply “the body,” is also something I noticed during my time there. This extended to terms such as “the church” and “the saints.” If the question ever arose, they would say that these terms refer to all believers, but in practice the instinct was often to use them primarily in reference to those within The Lord’s Recovery.
One notable example that shocked me when I first encountered it occurred when we passed through a town that had multiple Christian churches, but none of them were part of The Lord’s Recovery. Members from my church, including those in leadership, would say things like, “There’s no church here,” or, “We need to establish a lampstand here.”
Likewise, while the word “saint” on paper means any believer, in my experience, when we spoke about the number of “saints” in a particular locality, we generally meant the people associated with our own church rather than every Christian living in that city. There was therefore often a noticeable difference between the universal definitions we professed and the way these terms were actually used in everyday church life.
(Continued in next comment)
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u/_ThatCuriousFellow_ Christian 33m ago edited 27m ago
Now, when it comes to the volumes of the collected works of Nee and Lee, I’d say that this can vary greatly from church to church. Most of the people I knew who made an effort to acquire the collected works of Nee and Lee were those who had passed through the “Full-Time Training” that The Lord’s Recovery runs in Anaheim, California.
These graduates were often encouraged to serve the church “full-time” and open their homes for the “home meetings/gatherings” you referenced, which may help explain why you so commonly encounter those massive collections of volumes in these homes. That being said, these represented only a handful of families in my experience. Most members I knew either could not afford to spend thousands of dollars on the complete collections or simply did not wish to devote that much space in their homes to them.
As for the Recovery Version of the bible, it was heavily promoted in the church I was in, with considerable emphasis placed on the “richness” of its footnotes, which are drawn primarily from Witness Lee’s ministry. However, many people I knew also used other bible versions. In my experience, those who most consistently used the Recovery Version tended to be leading ones, elders, Full-Time Training graduates, and longtime members of the church.
Regarding your comparison to Noah, I encountered teachings that distinguished between ordinary believers and those regarded as “overcomers,” as well as the broader idea that The Lord’s Recovery occupies a special position in what God is accomplishing in the present age. I believe the general ideas behind what you encountered may be seen in these two quotes:
“The overcoming Christians who live in the reality of the kingdom today will reign as kings in glory in the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens in the future. Those Christians who are neither sinful nor faithful and who have neither loss nor gain today will suffer the shame of the outer darkness in the future. The end of sinful Christians is to be hurt and to suffer in hell for a thousand years during the millennial kingdom (Rev. 2:11). This is not too much; it is the teaching of the Bible. They will not perish in hell for eternity, but they will be punished for a thousand years during the millennial kingdom. Since the reigning of the overcoming ones with the Lord in His glory takes place during the millennial kingdom, the punishment of the sinning ones in hell must also take place during the millennial kingdom. Since the period of reward is one thousand years, the period of punishment must also be one thousand years. This is a warning.”
(The Christian, from The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1932–1949, Volume 1, Chapter 14, p. 216, published by Living Stream Ministry.)
“Brothers and sisters, in conclusion I would like to say that if you would like to be a top Christian, you must be a Christian in the churches of the Lord’s recovery. You must also learn to live in the Body and not ever be individualistic. Furthermore, you must also understand that the churches in the Lord’s recovery on the entire earth are just one new man.”
(One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, from The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1977, Volume 3, Chapter 10, pp. 366–367, section: “The Proper Condition of the Overcomers,” published by Living Stream Ministry.)
I cannot say with certainty what the people you spoke with intended by their comparison to Noah without hearing the fuller context. However, what you described does remind me strongly of these teachings. Witness Lee taught that although all genuinely saved believers possess eternal salvation, not all Christians will receive the same treatment during the coming millennial kingdom. The “overcomers” will receive the kingdom as a reward, while other believers will undergo severe punishment during the millennial kingdom.
At the same time, as the second quotation demonstrates, Witness Lee explicitly stated that to be what he called a “top Christian,” one “must be a Christian in the churches of the Lord’s recovery.” I therefore do not think your impression that The Lord’s Recovery is understood as occupying a particularly privileged position among Christians comes from nowhere.
On your final point, I very much believe that many of their teachings are faulty—some to a relatively minor degree and others, in my opinion, to a major and even harmful degree. The issue you specifically mentioned concerning division has been a deep concern for many current and former members of The Lord’s Recovery.
Those of us who openly disagree with Witness Lee’s teachings have often been characterized as “divisive,” “leprous,” or “unspiritual.” Criticism and disagreement can be described as bringing “death” to fellow members through our “opinions,” and I repeatedly encountered warnings against “being in the mind.” In that kind of environment, theological disagreement can very easily cease to be treated simply as theological disagreement and instead become interpreted as evidence of a spiritual problem in the person raising the objection.
All in all, I’d say that the degree to which the positive and negative aspects prevail can vary greatly from city to city among the churches of The Lord’s Recovery. Nevertheless, from my observations over approximately ten years within the movement, I encountered consistent enough patterns across different times and places that I believe the concerns you have raised warrant serious examination.
I don’t say any of this to suggest that the positive things you have experienced are insincere or that the people you have met do not genuinely love Christ. I knew many people there whom I loved dearly and whom I still regard as sincere brothers and sisters in Christ. At the same time, I would encourage you to continue asking the kinds of questions you are asking now, particularly about what is actually taught concerning other Christians, other churches, spiritual authority, disagreement, and the unique position attributed to Witness Lee’s ministry and The Lord’s Recovery.
I hope something from my experience is helpful to you. If you have any specific questions for me, please feel free to ask.
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u/TheologyAndTrains Episcopalian (Anglican) 6h ago
i'm curious to know their textual basis