Local churches (affiliation)

The local churches
Classification	Christian
Orientation	New Testament, Nondenominational
Polity	Connectional
Region	Worldwide
Founder	Watchman Nee
Origin	1927 China
Ministers	Witness Lee

The local churches are a Christian movement founded in China whose beliefs and practice are based on the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Members of the group believe that Christian believers should emphasize the subjective experience of Christ as well as Bible interpretation concerning Christ and the church. Both Nee and Lee were influenced by the writings of the Plymouth Brethren, T. Austin-Sparks, and others.

Assemblies identifying as "local churches" can be found worldwide and claim several million members.

The development of the local churches can be traced to the conversion of Watchman Nee in Fuzhou, China. At an early age, Nee committed his life to Christian ministry. Mostly self-educated, he began to publish his interpretation of the Christian faith and of church practice after moving to Shanghai in 1927.

Watchman Nee first met Witness Lee in Yantai in 1932. Two years later, Lee moved to Shanghai to work with Nee. One of Lee's responsibilities there was the editing of some of Nee's publications. In the following years, Nee published many works and held regular conferences and trainings for church workers. Nee, Lee and other workers established over six hundred local churches throughout China and Southeast Asia before the Communist Revolution of 1949.

Some outsiders referred to the group as the "Little Flock" as they sang from a hymnal entitled Hymns for the Little Flock. From early on, members of this group emphasized a personal experience of Christ and the establishment of a pattern of church practice according to the New Testament.

Many of the movement's ideas, including plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, were adopted from the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative, low church, nonconformist, Evangelical movement whose history began in Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. From 1930 to 1935, there was communication internationally between the local churches and the Raven-Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren, which saw the churches in China as a parallel work of God. However, Nee and other Chinese leaders disagreed with their prohibition of celebrating The Lord's Supper with Christians outside of their own meetings. Matters came to a head when it became known that Nee had worshiped with non-Brethren Christians, including T. Austin Sparks in London and Thornton Stearns in Hartford, during a 1933 visit to the United Kingdom and North America. After a series of letters exchanged between leaders in New York, London, and Shanghai over a two-year period, on 31 August 1935, the brethren in London sent communication to Shanghai terminating their fellowship.

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Wikipedia