Witness Lee and the "Local Churches": A Personal Testimony
by Daniel Azuma
Part 1: New Beginnings
Several years ago, I returned, somewhat frustrated, from a Christian fellowship meeting at the university at which I did my post-graduate studies. There had been a small group discussion during which the topic of cults was brought up briefly in passing, and I was amazed at how lightly people often take the subject. It's very easy to joke about getting all your friends together, buying out an old abandoned building, coming up with some secret sacred texts and starting your own little "cult". But I don't think it's funny.
Once upon a time, though, I might have. I grew up in the mass of suburbs blanketing the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically the southern area, known in hi-tech circles as the very cradle of the computer industry: Silicon Valley. Awash in the glow of yuppie culture, roaming the realm of bespectacled geek-heads, it was a place where crime meant corporate espionage, home meant neat little rows of half-million-dollar single family houses, and life meant aspiring to the repeated dream of making millions on the latest techno-gizmo. The poor and homeless were a problem to be vigorously ignored, the outdoors was something I saw once on a vacation somewhere, religion was a distraction from the goal of a comfortable engineering career. And cults? What were those?
Within this culture, I grew up in a partially Christian home. My parents were brought up as Christians, and our family, of Japanese ancestry, attended a rather liberal United Methodist church nearby with a predominantly Japanese-American congregation. I was taken to Sunday school every week, and quickly accumulated a reputation, among the many youth pastors who seemed to come and go every few years, as someone who could always answer a Bible story question. It was not hard. Facts, concepts, equations and logical deductions seemed to come naturally to me even as a youngster, leading my parents, both math majors turned computer programmer, to encourage me along the science and engineering track.
The sheltered environment, however, wasn't perfect for my coming to an understanding of my "inherited" religion. Just who was this God or this Jesus Who was referred to every so often in Sunday School? As a youngster surrounded by a culture that denied the supernatural, I was puzzled by the apparent inability to reconcile a Creator with my understanding of scientific evidence and processes. My church provided little help; its activities seemed largely social or cultural in nature, nor was I entirely happy with the youth programs. They seemed fixated on providing some sort of "teen issues" seminar, and given my personality (I admit it-- I was quite the "nerd" at the time), I tuned most of it out as inapplicable. Furthermore, though my family was active in church, at home we didn't seem to be very active in faith. During my fifth grade year, puzzled by the dichotomy of this environment, I even resolved to try reading the Bible. As I recall, I got as far as part-way through Leviticus before giving up.
It was probably sometime in high school that I finally concluded that "God" probably did not exist as a living entity, but could more properly be described in some new-age fashion such as "the aggregation of all that is good in the human race." Although I continued to participate, church had become a relative nuisance to be cast off once I had left the confines of life under the direct supervision of parents. And as such I graduated in 1993 from one of the esteemed high schools on the west side of the valley, enrolling that fall at the California Institute of Technology, "Caltech," along with an elite few of top prospective scientists. Christianity, I was convinced, was a harmless, or possibly even useful thing to have in the world, but something that had no place in my own life.
It was a conviction that would be shattered abruptly by an encounter I had that November.
Like many new college students, I had an emotionally rough first year. The memories, the friends and relationships I had left behind when I moved four hundred miles away from home to attend Caltech tugged at me like a lost favorite toy. I longed for just one more senior year of high school, and I clung to what memorials and contacts I could maintain.
One of my close friends from back home ended up at UCLA, about half an hour's drive away from Caltech, if you neglected the perpetual southern California traffic. Having quickly discovered email, she and I chatted and reminisced online quite a bit that fall. Then, around the beginning of November, out of the blue, she invited me to a "Christian retreat" with the campus organization she was involved with. It would take place at a small camp in the nearby San Bernardino Mountains a couple of weekends before Thanksgiving. Although my previous experience with religious youth camps hadn't been entirely positive, I was delighted to have the opportunity to see old high school friends again, and agreed to go. I'd figured I'd been to these "Christian retreats" before, and I knew what to expect. It would be familiar; my friends would be familiar; it would be just like home, just like old times-- or so I thought.
My memory of that retreat experience is rather strange. I remember very few specifics, and yet, I remember the atmosphere with amazing clarity. But, although I've tried many times to describe it in just a few words, I've never really come very close. Probably the most accurate, straightforward and factual description I've come up with has been "un-Methodist." It was decidedly un-Methodist, very, very different from everything that I was used to, that I had come to expect from my very narrow experience with Christian churches. I had come expecting to find a seminar on "teen issues" of the kind I had observed growing up-- or perhaps now it would be "college issues"-- but instead I found a place where the Bible played the central role. I had come expecting to find people cringing when asked by their group leaders to give the prayer before a meal, but instead I found a place where people ran over each other in their rush to participate. For the first time, I encountered great crowds of people my age who appeared serious, even excited about their religion, their faith. There was singing and praising; speakers gave messages, and students gave testimonies, all to great shouts of "Amen". There was almost no structure, no liturgy, no candles, no silent prayer, no passivity-- instead, an open, lively, even raucous atmosphere that still somehow fit together neatly into a unified, dignified package of praise. I remember being asked what I thought, and replying, "I've never before found such joy in worshipping."
Most important to me, though, was the sharp contrast between what I was used to and what I was seeing, a completely unexpected environment that burned away all my preconceptions and left me for the first time with open eyes and curious ears. And so I saw God, speaking in the mouths of the speakers, lifting the hearts of the worshippers, a God of joy and peace who offers us the opportunity to live with Him. And all the scattered facts, histories, concepts and doctrines that I had learned as ritual head knowledge came alive, became real. God was real. And the Christ who was sent to suffer and die so that I might live, He was real-- He IS real. And for the first time, I recognized God's care, the works of His hand in the world around, in my life and the lives of my friends. My musings and questions about my life turned from "why in the world did that of all things have to happen to me?" into "where do I need to go from here, and what is God teaching me now?" I had gone to that retreat expecting to find a taste of home, to relive my past, and instead I had found my future.
A future for the better, and for the worse.
Determined to follow up on my newfound faith, I began doing things with my UCLA friend's church. I found a ride to UCLA every Friday night to meet with her campus club for a Bible study and outreach meeting. I also met another Caltech student who had attended the retreat, and started to meet with him informally, one-on-one, on campus to pray and read the Bible together. It was around this time that I first heard the terms "The Lord's Recovery" and "The Local Churches" used to describe the group. That Thanksgiving weekend, I spent a day or so in nearby Anaheim to attend an international conference, and it was there that I first saw the church's leader, Witness Lee, or "Brother Lee," as he is usually addressed. An elderly Chinese gentleman with a talent for public speaking and a startling sense of humor, Lee gave a series of sermons on the New Testament book of Ephesians and how it related to the church, messages that were met with enthusiastic "Amens" from the more than three thousand in attendance. My new UCLA friends introduced me to Lee that weekend, the only time I have shaken hands with an individual held in such esteem by so many. I even gave a brief talk before the entire congregation during a time of public testimony.
After school let out for the holidays and I returned home to northern California, I encountered my first conflict: with parents. Concerned about my associating with church groups they knew nothing about, they each, on separate occasions, sat me down to discuss my choices. It took much of the vacation to convince them that I knew what I was doing-- particularly because I didn't have a very clear idea myself at the time. Later, when I arrived home for an extended period of time the following summer, the conflict intensified when I expressed a desire to attend a church affiliated with my UCLA friend's "Local Churches" rather than the Methodist church my parents attended. To this day, even though a great deal has happened in the meantime, my parents and I still often disagree concerning the decisions of a spiritual nature I should be making.
It was through one of those conflicts that God began the long series of lessons that would characterize my first year and a half as a follower of Christ. On a particular Friday evening that December, I had a schedule conflict: an event-- a Christmas party-- with the youth groups of my parents' church, and at the same time a Bible study with friends from the "Local Churches." My mother and I, unfortunately, had marked differences in our opinions: I (being a recovering "nerd", after all) preferred a Bible study over a Christmas party, and my mother preferred her church over someone else's. We had one of our classic arguments, and, that going nowhere, I eventually retreated in desperation into a back room to pray, to ask God for a resolution to the dilemma.
To my surprise, God answered me right there, though I see now how silly I was to be surprised, knowing how important it is to listen, recognize and submit to His authority and guidance. However, what surprised me more was what the answer was. I had been sure my side of the argument was right with God-- how much more profitable would a Bible study be over a party? Yet God's answer, given to me even in plain words so that I could not doubt, was: "You need to go to Wesley." Wesley United Methodist Church is the name of my parents' church, where the Christmas party was located. "You need to go to Wesley," the Lord said to me.
With a very reluctant, heavy but obedient heart, I drove the ten miles across the valley to attend the Christmas party. I found solace in silently sulking, seeing myself as the unwitting victim of the whims a God who maybe didn't quite understand me after all. About halfway through, probably during a pointless game of Pictionary, I found the opportunity to sneak off, making my way from the basement into the main sanctuary. There I opened the nice grand piano and began playing. I even remember clearly what I played: one of the songs I had learned just a few weeks before from my friend at UCLA. I very much wanted to be there instead.
It was at the piano that one of the youth group leaders found me around ten minutes later. We began talking, and I explained how I'd had an argument with my mother, how I didn't want to be there, and how God had given me such an incomprehensible directive. And then this youth group leader, one who represented the very element of my parent's church that I felt had betrayed me, told me something I would never forget. People, she said, will say many different things-- friends, parents, teachers, co-workers, your church, your pastors too-- they all have an opinion to give. Many times, she said, you'll be tempted to just accept it without question, on the grounds that they're older, or more experienced, or have been following Christ for longer. She told me: don't. Don't accept it without question. Although these things-- experience, education, and so forth-- are important factors to consider, the most important is to search the Scriptures to find out if they are true, and to go to God in prayer as I had eventually done. For God's Word is the last word.
Looking back on the story now, I marvel at how the Lord God taught me this simple proverb, both teaching through someone I would later come to trust deeply, and at the same time showing me through parable. But even more so, I marvel because of how important it would turn out that I learn this lesson, and learn it quickly. Because, gradually, beginning maybe a month or so later, I started seeing things within the "Local Churches" that bothered me: what was done, what was taught, things that seemed unbecoming for the church. And although the other members, the elders and the local leaders I would soon begin speaking with with would try to dismiss or justify those concerns, very few of those explanations really made sense, and very few truly seemed to hold up to Scripture. A year and a half later, I had left the movement and denounced it as too cultic an organization for me to have any meaningful or profitable association with them.
What happened during that year and a half is a very long story. Although I could never hope in this brief writing to do justice to everything that I observed, experienced and learned while associated with the "Local Churches," I do believe some description is necessary for any kind of understanding of this unique movement and its relation to the larger Christian community.
