New Wine in New Wineskins?

“No one pours new wine into old wineskins, because the new wine will burst the wineskins, the wine will be spilled, and the wineskins will be destroyed. Instead, new wine must be poured into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22). This parable is frequently used as justification for new and innovative ways of doing church. “We can’t keep pouring this new wine of the gospel into the same old wineskins of the ways we’ve done church in the past,” or so the argument goes.

But does the parable support this conclusion? The parable occurs in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the context of a question as to why Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees did. Jesus’ answer is two-fold. First, he is the messianic bridegroom in whom God’s Kingdom has come, and fasting in the presence of the groom is inappropriate. Second, in Jesus, God has begun something new, and this new work of God is incompatible with the old way of doing things. To cling to outdated methods would make no sense now that Jesus has come. So this parable is about the incompatibility of the old wineskins (Pharisaism, the law, etc.) with the new wine (Jesus and his church).

To apply this parable to the need for change in the church today would require new wine. But where is the new wine? The point of the parable remains the same today; because of what God has done through Jesus, we relate to God in a new way (through the church, or being in Christ, etc.). The old way of doing things (the temple, sacrifice, the law, etc.) is now inappropriate. Jesus’ parable isn’t about changing to keep up with the times, or changing to make things fresh and new, or changing for the sake of change. The parable is about the change that God brought through Jesus.

But surely the parable still works by analogy. Even if it’s not explicitly what Jesus meant, we still need new wineskins or new methods in our churches today. The parable, however, seems to lead us to the opposite conclusion. Since we have no newer wine than Jesus, we should keep the same wineskins we have been using. In other words, since God is still working through Jesus today just like he was years ago, we should not change, but we should keep the same wine in the same wineskins. All this shows that the parable is not about change in the church; it is about the change in the world that came through Jesus.

Do I think change in the church is bad? No. In fact I think many churches are in desperate need of change. For many churches, the way they have been operating is simply no longer working. And if some churches fail to acknowledge their shortcomings and address their problems, they will die. I just don’t think that’s what Jesus was trying to say in the parable of the new wine and the new wineskins.