Wineskins and new wine in a post-COVID-19 culture
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:37-39)
COVID-19 has changed everything. As technology has changed at light speed over the past few decades, the Church in our country has been blessed to be insulated from seismic changes. Of course, before COVID-19, we added some online platforms and adjusted in mission as technology improved and the Church realized we’d moved from the center of culture to the periphery. (In truth, we were always more peripheral than we wanted to admit, but over the past couple of decades we’ve reframed our missional approach in light of our decreasing authority and influence.)
COVID-19 has been a game-changer. Within days, the Lord served the Church “new wine” in the form of a pandemic. Forms which worked for decades were thrown out the window, and we were all forced to form new skins of streaming services, Zoom small groups, and decentralized missional strategies.
In the midst of this change, the Lord sweetly began to whisper Jesus’ parable from Luke 5 to me over and over. The more he whispered it and the more I chewed on it, the more I began to hear his words of grace in the midst of COVID-19 and cultural change.
Obviously, we all had to form new wineskins. I stood amazed at how Christ Church Charlestown pivoted, attenders became servant-leaders, technologies were implemented, and our depth of community deepened on many levels. How about in your church? What all changed? And, even more amazingly, how rapidly were these changes implemented? New wineskins have been created at lightning speed to contain the new wine of opportunity for the Church.
But here are some other thoughts about wine and wineskins that are equally as important:
We formed the new wineskins because God served us new wine. We can receive this cultural moment as a gift from God — not the virus itself, but the moment the virus has caused — evidence that God redeems evil and brokenness. In all of this ecclesiological and cultural upheaval, let’s remember that the Lord has served us new wine!
Let’s understand that it is God who serves us the wine, but it is incumbent on us to form the skins. This lesson is one that God has gently hammered home to me. We can’t manufacture the wine of God’s Spirit or his movement among us; only God serves the wine. Yet, God does not make the wineskins; we make the wineskins to hold the wine! In the parable, we don’t know who creates the wine, but we do know who is held accountable for forming the skins. In seminary we were taught, “The message never changes; the means constantly change. Models are neutral and adaptable while the mission is fixed.” In other words, we are commanded to be the church and to observe the practices and traits that come with being the Body and Bride of Christ; how we do that is often left up to us. God serves the wine. We are held accountable to stitch the skins.
With that said, just as we all formed new skins for new wine in a COVID-19 situation, we need to understand that the post-COVID-19 world of mission and church will be new wine as well. Spring of 2020 brought new wine; summer and fall of 2020 will be another wine as well. That wine will be just as God-given as this current wine which leads to the most important reality facing us…
Taking the “old skin” of pre-COVID-19 and the soon-to-be old skins of during-COVID-19 and stitching them together — taking our best practices of before and during and morphing them into a new thing — will not work. Let me repeat: It. Will. Not. Work. As an example, thinking we can do a Sunday service and a streaming service and be guaranteed success is quite naive. That may work; it may not. Thinking that adding Zoom groups to our small group set-up may work; it may not. People will emerge from COVID-19 and social distancing protocols more fearful, more economically vulnerable, and more reluctant; many couples will come out of their homes in profound need of counseling; some people will step into the light more dependent on government and some will step out more suspicious and even defiant of government — to both of which the scriptures give clear direction. These new realities are just three of the hundreds of new scenarios we will minister in and traits we will find in the sheep we pastor. We will need wisdom, boldness, empathy, patience, kindness, and so much more! Whatever “normal” was before, we aren’t going back to it as a culture and, consequently, as the Church. New wine of an emerging culture will demand and deserve new skins. Pastors and leaders, let’s not get seduced into thinking we can be pragmatists; we can’t combine two versions of what worked and think it is going to work in our new world. These tight wineskins of the past will stretch, tear, and be rendered useless. We must form new skins.
If we put the post-COVID-19 wine from God into the pre- and during-COVID-19 skins, we will lose everything. Reread Luke 5:37. If we do this, we will lose the wine of what God is doing; we will spill the wine served by God. The cultural spirit we could emerge with could make this generation the next greatest generation. Further, the Church could walk out of this having served well, given sacrificially, and spoken prophetically to find ourselves having piqued the interest of our culture. Let’s not spill the wine of this moment. Furthermore, if we do not adapt but merely stitch pre- and during-COVID-19 skins, we will tear and lose the skins as well; we will see our influence and our witness diminished and possibly rendered worthless in our culture. We will watch our culture slide further from the Church (and probably the Gospel) and more dangerously into secularism and universalism. More than we care to admit, this moment is our now or never moment. Sobering.
Leaders and pastors, the season before us is going to demand even more Spirit-sensitivity than the season around us, this season of pandemic. We need to be the most prayerful and malleable we’ve ever been. COVID-19 forced us into new skins, but the skins didn’t demand ingenuity — we used the technology available to us. The new wine coming will have a myriad of good skins available to contain it — but which will be God’s wineskins? And which will be able to contain the unique God-given wine of our churches’ and communities’ needs and make-up? What works in Charlotte or Oklahoma City will not work the same way in Seattle or Boston or New York City because the ways these communities have experienced coronavirus and the cultural events around it are so unique. In fact, what works in Charlestown where I live won’t work the same way in Dorchester or Natick or Hyannis. Each community will have experienced the pandemic differently and will demand a new skin for new wine. We must each find our unique apostolic, prophetic, and shepherding voices for our unique neighborhoods in this unique moment.
How in the world will we do this? At best, as this new wine is coming, we can prepare but probably can’t even fully plan. We would be better served to echo the prayer of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20: “Lord we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (my translation for my personal prayer life). We need to be more God-dependent than ever and refuse to succumb to the temptation to pragmatically stitch two old skins together lest we see the skins tear and the wine spill. May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ give you more wisdom than you imagined and do more than you can ask. He will not give us the wineskins, but he will give us the wisdom to construct them as we look to him and him alone.
JD Mangrum is the church planting pastor of Christ Church Charlestown in Charlestown, MA.