"No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, 'The old is better'.  (the words of Jesus, according to Luke 5: 37-39)

So often these words are applied to ideas about church in a lazy fashion, suggesting that new is always better than old. But if you have ever drunk good wine, you'll know different. Given the choice, a good quality, well aged wine is always going to be better than a young one; a wine drunk to soon or not stored properly will always taste inferior, and to have a good wine in 10 years' time you have to be getting it ready now. Meantime, for everyday purposes, there are also some wines that do not improve with age – they are for the moment. The skill is knowing which wine is which, and which one to choose for the right occasion. Or (as is my current good fortune) knowing someone who knows and will part with the infomration.

As with wine, so with Church. Jesus' words (from Luke's gospel) don't praise old over new, or new over old, but show that old and new must co-exist, and that you can't just mix them up thoughtlessly without ruining them both. 

I was set thinking about this today by Jonny's latest post from Australia, where he draws out the relationship between old and established, and new and fresh, with regard to wine and church,

here's a clip from Jonny's post:

…Once you have drunk the good stuff why would you bother experimenting with the new… so if you are in or have people who are drinking at the well of good vintage wine in churches, then great – let them keep drinking. but if there is going to be good vintage in the future we need pioneers who will go and find new soil and plant vines to begin the process of developing new wine. i have been told (not that i know a lot about it) that it might take fifteen years to go through the process of getting towards something decent. on the way there will be experiments that fail, wine that's thrown away. but with hard work, passion, good knowledge of wine making tradions and processes, a bit of good fortune (weather conditions, soil, climate etc), and creativity the new wine will get produced. some wines will fail. that's just part of the process. and sometimes the most unlikely ones will be amazing. if there are things learned, innovations that work, they might also flow back and renew the traditions of winemaking. but it's new alongside the old… in the church of england we call this (thanks to rowan williams who coined the term) a mixed economy. where there is good old keep it going. and alongside that let's develop new. this takes the threat out of it for the old. indeed the old is probably better!