Wineskins for New Wine

We shouldn’t be so surprised when the gospel explodes beyond the wineskins of our own making.

What a mess.

What a glorious, sloppy, holy mess we are cleaning up at Journey Covenant Church. Our final service will be on a Sunday coming soon, and I suppose I should be sad, and I am. But hope is holding hands with sadness, and I am leaning forward, anticipating what comes next.

This is what happens when, as Jesus says, wineskins break and spill and wine gets splattered all over the place, staining the carpet and ruining your new shirt. It’s a mess to clean up, and some things get ruined, but it’s not entirely a bad thing, either.

Jesus says you shouldn’t expect to keep new wine in old wineskins, harkening back to an ancient time when wine was actually kept in vessels made from the skins of animals. Put wine into a wineskin, and as the wine ferments, it stretches out the vessel. When the wine is new and the vessel is new, no problem, they expand together. But don’t put new wine into an old, already-stretched wineskin, because the old vessel can’t expand enough to keep up with the new wine.

Eventually, new wine will burst out of old wineskins.

The gospel, Jesus says, is always new, always fermenting and expanding and pushing against man-made boundaries. We create vessels to contain it, carriers to control it, churches and institutions for our own convenience. But we shouldn’t be so surprised when the gospel explodes beyond the wineskins of our own making.

Christendom (our institutions and culture that were constructed to carry the gospel) is being stretched to the breaking point and beyond.

Churches are being shuttered at an escalating rate. Sunday morning attendance is simultaneously shrinking and wrinkling … average attendance rates spike down while the average age of those still attending creeps upward. The fastest-growing religious group in America is those who identify themselves as “none” when asked to state a religious preference.

We’ve been somewhat insulated, here in the smaller communities of the Midwest, from the bracing winds of postmodernism that have so changed the landscape of American culture. As author William Gibson says, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” Among younger generations, in larger cities, on the east and west coasts — and certainly on TV and in popular music — the reality is this: Traditional churches are broadly considered irrelevant, outdated, unnecessary relics of a bygone age. Christians aren’t hated or persecuted; worse, they’re shrugged off and ignored.

The reality also is, that these changes are at our door. Many of our neighbors and coworkers are already living in a postmodern world, for which traditional wineskins of church services, traditions and dogma are simply inadequate. We may not have noticed, or may not appreciate the significance of this cultural shift, especially if we have barricaded ourselves behind stained glass. This is why the church often sounds so tone deaf to the wider culture.

An example, to illustrate what I mean by this shift: Our increasingly postmodern culture values personal experience over professional expertise. In the age of the Internet, when anybody can be an expert because all the knowledge in the world is as near as the smart phone in our back pocket, we don’t feel obligated to silently sit and listen to sermonizing from one man (usually, a man) up on the stage. Postmoderns want to discuss, to engage, to share different perspectives, to hear from everyone. We want to be part of the give-and-take, and we value the integrity of the process just as highly as the end result.

Another example: Postmoderns have no loyalty to institutions (whether religious, or political, or economic), but feel deeply connected to our network of friends and family. We easily walk away from formal church membership, especially if we perceive the church to be intolerant or biased against our LGBTQ or minority friends. We care more about alleviating suffering and promoting justice than about doctrinal litmus tests and judgments about who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out.

Postmoderns are also more comfortable with mystery, ambiguity, paradox, uncertainty. We are suspicious of pat answers and formulaic explanations (including a 4-Step Plan of Salvation or a way of reading the Bible that treats it like “an owner’s manual”). It’s not that truth doesn’t matter, or that there is no such thing as truth; rather, postmoderns appreciate how our culturally-biased perceptions create an illusion of objectivity and certainty. We heed the warnings of past generations who were so convinced about the moral rightness (with a supposedly biblical defense) of patriarchy, slavery, segregation, colonialism, environmental exploitation, etc., etc.

The wineskins that have faithfully carried the gospel for the past 500 years of modernity are showing signs of wear. The seams are splitting. In some places and among some people, they have already worn thin and burst.

To be faithful to the gospel now means replacing old wineskins for new.

This has happened before, for example, when the winds of change and the Spirit gave rise to the Protestant Reformation and dramatically changed the shape of Christianity. Historians say that, about every 500 years, we experience a great cultural transformation, accompanied by a great religious transformation. We are presently in the midst of such a reordering and rearranging of cultural norms and religious expression.

We are in the process of leaving the modern age behind to welcome the postmodern age. This is neither good nor bad; postmodernism isn’t good or evil, it just is what is.

The Church looked dramatically different in the modern age than it did in the medieval age. And it is evolving into something dramatically different again for the postmodern age. The ever-new gospel must be carried to this generation in new wineskins suitable for the culture. As at Pentecost, the gospel must be proclaimed in another language understood by today’s listeners.

And that’s just what is happening. Fresh, creative expressions of faith are germinating all around us (usually in small communities, under the radar, outside the visible and traditional church structure).

So about a year ago, leaders at Journey Covenant Church took an honest look at our ministry and realized significant change was required.

“Traditional church” was not a sustainable model for future ministry. Gospel wine was brewing and bubbling and bursting out.

We loved Journey, we loved our people and our building. But our beloved wineskin wasn’t going to keep up with the new wine much longer. Changes had to be made. We agreed that our options were to either change, or cease.

We heard the Spirit calling us to go beyond the walls of our building, to live in the community, to create new environments where friendships could be made, long-term relationships developed, disciples spiritually formed.

We referred to these new environments as “incarnational groups” — “incarnational” because we would be doing life with intentionality among our friends and neighbors. We would follow the example of THE incarnation, when God “made his dwelling among us” in Christ … or as one translator put it, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” Rather than expecting strangers to come to us, we would move in their direction as friends. Rather than trying to attract a crowd with gimmicks and special events and a better show than the church down the street, we would de-emphasize the Sunday morning service in order to focus on reflecting the love of God in the places we live, work, and socialize.

We believed — and still believe — God was sending us to participate in his mission to heal and repair the world.

But change is hard. Often, unpopular. Some of our friends, our brothers and sisters, weren’t willing or able to change with us. Some left in search of more comfortable pastures. Perhaps the problem wasn’t the people, but the wineskin. Perhaps our organizational structure could not transform so dramatically, so rapidly. Perhaps we as leaders didn’t execute the transition as wisely or as well as our congregation deserved. It isn’t necessary, or healthy, to try to pinpoint blame or find fault, but it is helpful to set context.

And so Journey Covenant Church joins scores of other congregations across the nation that are closing their doors, or on the verge of doing so. I am not so naive as to think that the only factor in Journey’s demise was the modern evangelical church’s incompatibility with postmodern culture … or that any single factor, alone, is to blame. Certainly, there were as many reasons as persons, and other issues unknown to me, and forces beyond anyone’s control. It’s often a mystery why some churches prosper and others don’t. But here is one explanation from one person’s perspective:

The wine came bursting through.

That’s how I prefer to think of it, anyway.

The carefully crafted wineskin that was Journey Covenant Church …

the beloved wineskin that so many sacrificed their time, talent and treasure to preserve …

the precious wineskin that blessed so many lives over the years …

reached the end of its useful life.

I like to think that’s an accomplishment, not a failure. Wineskins, by design, don’t last forever. They serve their purpose, holding the wine with which they’ve been entrusted, for as long as they last. But at some point, every wineskin becomes inadequate to carry the new wine that is fermenting within.

The gospel is not the wineskin, it is the wine. Don’t despair the loss of wineskins … continue to cherish the wine, to share the gospel, to embody the love of God.

The loss of building and programs creates space for something new and fresh to grow in its place.

Personally, in the midst of this spillage, I sense a fresh calling to follow Jesus out of the institution and into the neighborhood. Out of the church culture and into the real world. Away from arguments and doctrines and into relationships and serving others.

The wineskins we inherited from our forefathers aren’t evil, just inadequate for the time in which we live. As we continue this transition to postmodernism, the structures of the past will not serve the needs of the present and future.

Our faith isn’t under siege, only our traditional expressions of the faith. Indeed, fresh expressions of faith are thriving in all kinds of unexpected places, in coffee shops and laundromats and parks and restaurants and apartment buildings, and yes, in bars and microbreweries.

I’m convinced this is the future of the church.

There is still a place for those who are more comfortable among stained glass windows and Sunday morning hymns. Many worshipers continue to find deep spiritual meaning in those long-held traditions and lifelong relationships. If it remains meaningful to you, then by all means, receive the blessing. I’m not anti-church or anti-establishment. I’m pro-gospel, in whatever sort of wineskin it is carried. But that expression of faith is growing increasingly irrelevant to our neighbors and co-workers, and especially to our children and grandchildren.

Speaking only for myself, I’m dissatisfied with the old wineskins. I’m done tweaking and tinkering around the edges, patching the leaks, mending and re-sewing. I’m looking forward to this new thing God is doing for the sake of this ever-new gospel.