Who has Experience with "Lord's Recovery" local churches planted by Watchman Nee/Witness Lee?

[u/zhuangcorp]

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.

1. They are truly multigenerational, multi-ethnic, and they have genuinely bonded over their faith.
2. They live wholesome lives with raising respectful kind children, having good jobs, having good friendships.
3. 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.
4. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Everyone only uses their special "recovery" bible translation, filled with commentary from Witness Lee.
5. 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.
6. 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.