A Need For A New Wineskin
Institutions are temporary, yet the Church is eternal. While the wineskin is not sacred, through Jesus Christ we forever have New Wine. The United Methodist Church wineskin is not merely brittle, it’s broken. Here are four reasons we need a new wineskin as United Methodists.
In our Scripture, we see Jesus utilize wineskins as a metaphor for the new covenant to be established. Through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, He is the new covenant.
In this passage and the other Gospels, Jesus declares that the old wineskin of worshipping at temples and sacrifices cannot contain the new wine. There had to be a new wineskin for God's new expression.
The wineskin of our denomination, the United Methodist Church (UMC), is not merely brittle, it's broken. However, let's not forget that while our denomination is temporal, the new wine of Jesus Christ is eternal. So how do we see the brokenness of our wineskin, the UMC, is broken?
The United Methodist Church and the Need for New Wineskins
1) The Brokenness of Our Wineskin As Cited By Our Leaders
Before reading the following excerpts, be reminded that these are not extremists, living on the frays of our denomination. Instead, these comments come from leaders within our denomination. They have been duly elected in differing regions of our country and were vetted before holding their positions.
There is a brokenness in this iteration of our denomination, and it is being bluntly cited and validated by our leaders.
2) The Brokenness of our Wineskin Cited by Our Broken Ecclesiology
Ecclesiology is the theology of understanding the way the church is structured.
If I drive to Wendy's near my home and order a number one, I know what I'm getting. When the cashier hands me my order, there will be a Wendy's single with fries and a drink. Now, if I place the same order at Wendy's in North Dakota, Maine, Oklahoma, or even Seattle, Houston, Charlotte, or Miami, I know what I'm going to get. The outcome will remain consistent and constant.
However, in this iteration of the UMC ecclesiology, I have no idea what I will get when I enter a UMC. There is no consistency. When churches apply their own cultural contexts to Scripture, we get theology by zip code. You never know what you're going to get.
In his letters, the Apostle Paul never wrote for churches to draw from the cultural context. It was never about the church applying itself to the culture of Corinth versus Rome versus Galatia. "You can live out your context of what it means to follow Jesus in your society, while they follow theirs." No, Paul never customized the revelation of God in the way he called the Church to grow into the grace of Jesus Christ.
Imagine you work for a Fortune 500 Company, and the CEO establishes a new initiative for the company. Within this company, 50 regional directors are responsible for overseeing the execution of the new direction. However, half of those regional directors go on record to condemn the decision made by the CEO. Further, 12 publicly go on record to say they will not comply. We all know how this would go. Those individuals would be held accountable for their actions.
This is not the present reality of the UMC. In 2019, the General Conference gathered and voted to strengthen accountability standards within the denomination. However, 26 of the 53 annual conferences voted to condemn the actions of the Conference. Of those 26, 12 said they would actively disregard the discipline completely.
3) The Brokenness of Our Wineskin is Evidenced by the Influential Churches that are Leaving
The brokenness of our denomination is evidenced by influential churches that have already voted to leave the denomination. These are not periphery congregations; instead, they are vital, large United Methodist churches.
St. Stephen United Methodist Church (Amarillo), the largest church in the Northwest Texas Conference, voted 99.2% to disaffiliate.
Asbury United Methodist Church, the largest church in the North Alabama Conference, voted to disaffiliate.
The Woodlands United Methodist Church, one of the largest churches in the Texas Conference, has voted to disaffiliate. (14,000 members).
Faithbridge United Methodist Church, one of the largest UMC churches in the U.S., voted to disaffiliate.
Frazer Memorial United Methodist, one of the largest UMC churches in the U.S., voted to disaffiliate.
4) The Brokenness of our Wineskin Deepens Our Desire for Unity
The sobering reality of our wineskin's brokenness deepens our desire for unity. There are 45,000 denominations globally. Only eight of those 45,000 denominations, all based in Western culture, have officially codified a new definition of marriage and human sexuality. Those churches are:
United Church of Canada: 388,363
Alliance of Baptist: 65,000
PCUSA: 1,193,770
Disciples of Christ: 700,000
Episcopal Church: 1,800,000
MCC: 40,000
ELCA: 3,300,000
United Church of Christ: 773,539
Total: 8,260,672
If we round up, those congregations make up roughly 8.3 million people, and all have a plummeting membership except for one.
Chart A
Chart B
Chart A represents the 2.38 billion Christians in the world. However, if we extract the eight denominations that codified an extra-biblical perspective, we see that they are the minority (Chart B). They are represented as 0.347087059% of 2.38 billion Christians.
Why Aren't We Unified?
JESUS: "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you." John 17:20-23 (ESV)
Jesus is clearly praying for unity in John 17, so don't we want to be in unity? The answer is obviously yes. However, we want to be united with the entire Church, not a slice of it. We don't want to separate ourselves from the mainstream expression of Christianity in this hour of history. We want to be with the majority of Christians for the last 2,000 years and the majority living under authority that aligns with the revelation of God's heart in Scripture.
When Jesus prayed for unity in His church, He was not praying for unity built around a denomination. Denominations didn't exist when He said this prayer. Instead, he was speaking about the Body of Christ.
"If I could not continue united to any smaller society, church, or body of Christians, without committing sin, without lying and hypocrisy, without preaching to others doctrines which I did not myself believe, I should be under an absolute necessity of separating from that society. And in all these cases, the sin of separation, with all the evils consequent upon it, would not lie upon it, would not lie upon me, but upon those who constrained me to make that separation, by requiring of me such terms of communion as I could not in conscience comply with."
John Wesley, sermon, "On Schism"
This quote shows Wesley admitting that if forbidden to do what God called him to do and stood on his Biblically informed conscious, he would separate from the church.
I've spoken at different United Methodist churches in the last six years about our divide. I've observed and found it alarming that people aren't alarmed. I am concerned that people don't realize what's happening or recognize the profound implications. The Church is designed to be salt and light in the culture. However, many are taking a greater cue from culture than the immutable living Word of God.
Reclaim Our Roots
It's a problem as old as the Garden of Eden. “Did God really say…?”
John Wesley once said, "I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out."
We see brokenness in our country, politics, neighborhoods, streets, mental health, and seemingly every facet of our lives. But if we function like this, we grieve the very power needed when we need to move into an iteration free of this. It's time to reclaim our roots.
We must be reminded that we are the church, and God intervened long before Methodism was birthed. However, in a dark hour when things looked hopeless, God sent a sustained visitation of the manifest presence of His Holy Spirit that birthed and proliferated the Methodist movement.
Jesus once said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Notice He did not say, "Blessed are the peacekeepers." There's a difference. A peacekeeper will sweep things under the rug and declare it's better, yet we can all recognize that's not true. A peacemaker will embrace pain and do the difficult things so you can move beyond dysfunction and into a new day free of brokenness.
TL;DR
The wineskin of our denomination, the United Methodist Church (UMC), is not merely brittle, it's broken.
The UMC denomination is temporal, the new wine of Jesus Christ is eternal.
The United Methodist Church and the Need for New Wineskins
The Brokenness of Our Wineskin As Cited By Our Leaders
There is a brokenness in this iteration of our denomination, and it is being bluntly cited and validated by our leaders.
The Brokenness of our Wineskin Cited by Our Broken Ecclesiology
When churches apply their own cultural contexts to Scripture, we get theology by zip code.
The revelation of God have never been customized to cultures in the way the Church is called to grow into the grace of Jesus Christ.
The Brokenness of Our Wineskin is Evidenced by the Influential Churches that are Leaving
The Brokenness of our Wineskin Deepens Our Desire for Unity
Why aren’t we unified?
In John 17 we see Jesus pray for unity, however, we want to be united with the entire Church, not a slice of it.
Jesus’ prayer for unity was not about denominations, rather it was for unity in the Body of Christ.
Reclaim Our Roots
We must be reminded that we are the church, and God intervened long before Methodism was birthed.
A peacemaker will embrace pain and do the difficult things so you can move beyond dysfunction and into a new day free of brokenness.
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About Christ Church Memphis
Christ Church Memphis is church in East Memphis, Tennessee. For more than 65 years, Christ Church has served the Memphis community. Every weekend, there are multiple worship opportunities including traditional, contemporary and blended services