Witness Lee

Witness Lee (李常受, pinyin Lǐ Chángshòu) (1905 – June 9, 1997) was a Chinese Christian preacher associated with the Local Churches movement, and the founder of the Living Stream Ministry. He was born in the city of Yantai, Shandong Province, China, in 1905, to a Southern Baptist family. He became a born again Christian in 1925 after hearing the preaching of Peace Dang Wang. He later joined the work started by the late Chinese Christian worker Watchman Nee. Witness Lee moved to Taiwan in the late 1940s as the Communists were advancing in mainland China. During the 1950s, Lee worked with T. Austin-Sparks, who held conferences with him in Taiwan in 1955 and 1957. In 1948, Lee extended his ministry from Taiwan to cities in Malaysia and Indonesia. In 1950 his ministry reached Manila, Japan in 1957, the United States in 1958, and extending to other countries in the Americas and Africa, including Ghana by 1972.

Witness Lee's teachings emphasized the experience of "Christ as life" and the believers as the Body of Christ. Lee taught that God's goal can only be carried out as believers renounce all forms of sectarianism, adopt the proper standing as a church in their locality, and maintain the oneness of the Body of Christ. These "local churches" were soon established in the Western hemisphere and South-East Asia. In the last decade, a number of churches have been founded in Russia and in eastern European countries. The Local Church movement is now in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.