Insights Into The Covid-19 Church Era – Part XII
“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. 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.” (Mark 2:21-22)
I have pondered how revival might come to this generation. I have experienced revival through the Jesus and Charismatic Movements of the 1970’s. New wine is new wine, so revival comes in new forms and seeks new structures, new wineskins. The institutional church tried to adapt these movements into their old wineskins but it “burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins were ruined.” Feeling threatened by the Charismatic Movement, the church rejected this new wine fearing it would totally burst their wineskins.
I’ve asked, “Can revival happen in our current church structures? Revival requires relationship over religion. Will current church leadership be willing to reevaluate relationally how to do church? We, the Church, could evaluate our wineskins relationally, be open to new wine through a metamorphosis, and become butterflies embracing new wineskins, but that has yet to happen.
The other option: revival could come as a tsunami, a tidal wave or a series of waves that destroy everything in its path. It neutralize for the briefest of moments before receding, violently sucking it debris back out to sea as an awesome, unstoppable force of nature.
Covid-19 is a viral tsunami that has swept over the entire world, closing down entire countries, devastating economies, taxing health care systems, spreading contagiously with no cure, no vaccine. When its curve is flattened, there is a lull, a complacency caused by isolation, social distancing, and the wearing of Personal Protective Equipment and masks, but will a second and third wave be more devastating?
The Covid-19 tsunami closed church buildings, tore at our mega-church mentality, and isolated laity from their “church staff”. Unfortunately, passive pew sitters became passive sofa sitters watching online church service streamed over the Internet. Maybe God is trying to shake us out of our passivity, question our surface relationships, calling us lay down our live for our Christian peers during times of economic distress.
We’ve experienced the initial hit, but immediately ran back to our buildings, our old wineskins, as soon as there was a lull. Why do we fear isolation? It is during our quiet times with God we hear Him speak. He’s supplying the quiet time during this pandemic; are we listening? Will it take a second or third wave of contagious infections before we are willing not to meet in large groups out of habit or tradition? Maybe in these times God is trying to speak to us, teach us, hoping we will put His new wine into new wineskins!
The bursting of new wine out of old wineskins is not new. God sent Jesus, His Son, and later His Holy Spirit as new wine to the Jewish race, God’s chosen people, but by 60 A.D. Herod’s Temple is destroyed, no building, the Levitical Priesthood disbanded, no clergy, and the Sanhedrin, their governing body, dissolved. The old wineskins could not hold the new wine. We may be in another historic period where God is testing His Church to see if she is willing to embrace new wine and be open to new wineskins in preparation for the upcoming Wedding Feast of Jesus returning for His Bride, the Church! The first time Jesus came to earth He brought destruction to Israel’s old paradigms, old wineskins. Is the destruction of today’s old paradigm wineskins forehadowing his Second Coming?
What kind of wineskin am I? Are you? Is the current church structure? What kind of wine do we seek to indwell us? The old wine of centuries of tradition, or the new wine of revival and reform? Historically, we’ve experienced a previous Reformation, but their wineskins are now aged, old. Are we willing to embrace a new Reformation? How the Covid-19 Church responds will determine that factor.