According to James Cheung, Nee espoused an authoritative and inerrant Bible ( Ecclesiology of Nee, p. The larger availability of Nee’s writings has precipitated insistent questions about his full doctrinal orthodoxy, not least his view of Scripture.
Nee expounded his doctrine of the Church in The Normal Christian Church Life, one of more than a dozen books now translated. After forming the first “little flock” in Foochow in 1923 he spearheaded a movement that in sixteen years embraced some 70,000 members in 700 congregations. Nee insisted that none but his “little flock” churches were authentic. He soon ran into conflict with established mission agencies like the China Inland Mission, which, by the 1930s, sponsored about 1,300 missionaries and mission associates in establishing churches. Born on November 4, 1903, in Fuchow, Fukien Province, mainland China, Shu Tau Nee espoused an unsettling concept of the Church: more than one congregation in any given area, he said, is unbiblical. 103).Īs a Chinese national, Watchman Nee also raised questions about Western missionaries, but for very different reasons. “On balance,” he says, “most Western missionaries to China were every bit as dedicated to their mission as the committed Chinese Marxist is to his ideology today” ( Wan-sui, Insights on China Today, p. Actually, according to World Vision staffer Robert Larson, a long-time Hong Kong China-watcher, serious research will some day do proper justice to the Western missionary experience in China.
Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and other revolutionaries deplored Christian missionaries as foreign-controlled agents reflective of Western culture and interests, as imperialist spies and political propagandists. His many small works, particularly those in applied soteriology, or salvation in practice, quickly gained for him an international following. The worsening political climate-Nee spent the last decade and a half before his death in June, 1972, in Communist work camps-spurred interest in his writings. Identified with the plight of underground Christianity in China, he became, especially among many Jesus people, a model for victorious Christian living under adverse social pressures.Īny leader who directly or indirectly founds 700 churches inevitably invites attention, and many persons were understandably curious about this remote Chinese personality and his “little flock” principles. Watchman Nee is well known among evangelicals in many parts of the world.
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