Yesterday I was meditating on some verses from Mark's Gospel, concerning Jesus and children. This morning when I woke up I felt like I needed to add a statement about the importance of children, our children, and all the children we meet. It is absolutely right for churches to have children's pastors and youth pastors focused on our children! It is essential that we pour resources into them, and their care. It is even more important that we pour into them relationally, so that they feel connected, important and heard in our churches.
I believe it is also essential that we understand the God might be releasing new wineskins for the new wine that are our children. What I mean by this is that often churches want to raise children up in the ways they have known and loved, so that the children embrace the same patterns and liturgical life that we treasure and enjoy, yet the present day statistics coming out of churches show that our children are not growing up to embrace the church models we love. The vast majority of children in America who are raised in the church are leaving the church once they leave home. (For a good summary of the many studies that have looked at this issue checkout this link: http://coldcasechristianity.com/2016/are-young-people-really-leaving-christianity/). The question that we should be asking, and I believe many churches are asking is why? There is much talk out in the world about the different generations, the Millenials, the X, Y and Z generations, and plenty of discussion in the world (See: http://genhq.com/faq-info-about-generations/), but we also must understand these generations as they refer back the Body of Christ.
Clearly something of our value for the church is not transferring over to our youth. Having watched both of my children exit the church, it is a question I have thought long and hard about. Many years back I had an encounter with the Lord one morning and it revolved around the teaching Jesus gave regarding new wine and new wineskins. This teaching is found in all three of the synoptic Gospels, and this morning I am going to pull the quote from Mark 2:21-22 NIV:
[21] “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. [22] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
The understanding the Lord gave me in that encounter was that the wineskin was related to our pattern of life in the church, our ways of doing things and our focus. He talked about blended wines, and taking several distinct wines with distinct flavors and characters and blending them together to create something new and better. The problem was that this new blended wine can't be poured into old wineskins. Not that the old wine and old wine and wineskins were bad, in fact most people prefer aged wine, but it had to do with inflexibility of the structure we are used to for our churches. The problem with old wineskins is that they are not able to flex any more as the new wine finishes its fermenting and they burst. As Jesus says in the verses above, both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. In other words we lose the new wine and the old wineskins at the same time. Thus, if we want to preserve the new wine we must supply new wineskins, and at the same time we will preserve the old wineskins.
So, if the wineskins are our structure, our ways of doing things, our liturgies, maybe even some of our man-inspired beliefs, what do the new wineskins look like? That is, I think, the question of our age. Presently there are many different models being tested and tried. There are the mega-churches, the seeker sensitive churches, the churches that run Sunday services like entertainment shows, with smoke and well orchestrated music and presentations. There are home church models, those that focus on social justice, charismatic, evangelical, young adult focused and everything in between. I don't think there is any one correct answer but I suspect there is one answer that is incorrect, and that is trying to maintain things the "way we have always done it!"
We must be open to new revelation and understanding, new ways of doing things that stretch our comfort level, thinking outside the box of our present way of doing things. We must be willing to listen to the youth and hear what they are saying. We must seek the Lord's direction and counsel, for He loves this new wine, and and it is part of His plan for His church.
From my reading and research, I know that this present young generation is looking for authentic experiences in things that matter. If I listen to my own children they speak of the hypocrisy that they experienced in the traditional church. They were unconvinced by the well meaning, put a good face things, Sunday experience. They saw the fallen, the wounded and unrepentant, the judgment, the back-stabbing and outright harmful treatment of some and they didn't want to have anything to do with that. They saw and experienced the good things, but their perspective was tainted by the ugliness that oftentimes exists in the church. That is just their perspective, but it certainly got me thinking about things.
This morning as I was thinking about this, I was reminded of a relatively new technique that is being used in the whiskey making process. Companies are aging the whiskey in old wine, port and sherry barrels. I know this isn't the same thing as new wineskins, but it is certainly related. These makers have discovered that aging or finishing a whiskey in an old barrel that was used to make a different type of liquor, will impart to the new liquor some of the flavor and character of the previous. The whiskey will take on nuances of the sherry or port and have a very different taste than that which is aged in neutral barrels. One could say the new whiskey is influenced by the old wine, sherry or port, and becomes something new. In this example the new liquid is of a different character than the old (whiskey and wine) and yet the old influences the new.
So, back to the question of the new wineskin? I think that there are two main areas where we have lost our focus in the church, and that must be restored as part of the wineskins, relationship and power. These are probably the two most common themes in my prayer and meditation, and I think they are very important. As Bill Johnson says, 'at some point in our communal history as the church, we have stopped gathering around the presence of God and instead gathered around the preaching'. In other words, we have lost the importance of a personal encounter with the Living God (both relationship and power) and replaced that with listening to someone expound on their experiences or their understanding of the Word (Bible). We have made it ok to be an observant rather than participants. We have focused on programs and entertainment value rather than personal relationship and experience with the Lord! We have shied away from the messy movements of the Holy Spirit, and favored nice clean choreographed services. We no longer expect God to move, no longer expect to hear from Him, no longer expect people to be changed through their encounter with Him on a daily basis. We have lost the sense that God is real and personal and in our midst!
I was reading a book recently and the author was talking about the importance of experience. He was discussing the people that were touched by Jesus in scripture, Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, the woman who touched His robe, the Lepers that were healed, the Gerasean Demoniac, and all the others, and describing how important their experience was to their faith. Imagine trying to convince any of them that they had not been touched by God! Their faith and their experience of God was very personal, and very much affected by God's power. They met Jesus and followed Jesus because they had experienced His love for them personally, and been a witness to His power. My question to the church is how often do we preach and teach about personal relationships and personal encounters with the Lord? Do we enable people to encounter Him themselves? Do we expect Him to speak and move and interact with each of us in our daily lives? Do we make His presence our priority? Do we have times for people to share about their experiences? Do we make way for all to experience, all to share, all to be encouraged, all to be built up, all to be strengthened?
I believe that these are the types of questions we need to ask ourselves and our churches, for in the encounter with the Living God we discover authentic experience as a core component of our faith lives. We no longer are following the wise or charismatic leader because we like them, or because that is what we have always done, but instead we are involved in church because we have encountered God!
Oh Lord, I pray that You would help us to embrace new wineskins, and new wine (Generations) and re-discover how we can gather around Your presence once again, for our sake and the sake of our children!
Amen!
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