The Problem of Wineskins: Church Structure In a Technological Age

THE

PROBLEM OF

WINESKINS

Other Titles by Howard A. Snyder

One Hundred Years at Spring Arbor

The Community of the King

The Radical Wesley and Patterns for Church Renewal

Under Construction: Ephesians Study Guide

Liberating the Church: The Ecology of Church and Kingdom

A Kingdom Manifesto (Reissued as Kingdom, Church, and World: Biblical Themes for Today)

The Divided Flame: Wesleyans and the Charismatic Movement (with Daniel V. Runyon)

Foresight: 10 Major Trends That Will Dramatically Affect the Future of Christians and the Church (with Daniel V. Runyon)

Signs of the Spirit: How God Reshapes the Church

Models of the Kingdom

EarthCurrents: The Struggle for the World’s Soul

Radical Renewal: The Problem of Wineskins Today

Coherence in Christ: The Larger Meaning of Ecology

Global Good News: Mission in a New Context (editor)

Decoding the Church: Mapping the DNA of Christ’s Body (with Daniel V. Runyon)

Live While You Preach: The Autobiography of Methodist Revivalist and Abolitionist John Wesley Redfield (1810–1863) (editor)

Populist Saints: B. T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodists

Concept and Commitment: A History of Spring Arbor University, 1873–2007

Yes In Christ: Wesleyan Reflections on Gospel, Mission, and Culture

Salvation Means Creation Healed: The Ecology of Sin and Grace (with Joel Scandrett)

Wesley, a Bíblia e o Povo (in Portuguese)

The Radical Wesley: The Patterns and Practices of a Movement Maker

Jesus and Pocahontas: Gospel, Mission, and National Myth

Small Voice, Big City: The Challenge of Urban Mission

Rooted in Mission: The Founding of Seattle Pacific University 1891–1916

The Economy of God: A Practical Commentary on Ephesians

THE

PROBLEM OF

WINESKINS

CHURCH STRUCTURE IN A TECHNOLOGICAL AGE

HOWARD A. SNYDER

With Wineskins Stories by

Christine Pohl • Ron Sider • Timothy Tennent • Clive Calver

Alan and Debra Hirsch • David Bundy • Craig Van Gelder

René Padilla • Bill Pannell • Tom Schwanda • Mike Slaughter

Brian McLaren • Mary Elizabeth Fisher • Scott Sunquist

Robert Banks • David Fitch • Dwight Swanson • Darrell Guder • Joy Moore

Greg Leffel • Ross Rains • George Hunsberger

Paul Patton • Bill Burrows

Copyright 2017 by Howard A. Snyder

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NEB are taken from the New English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TLB taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are taken from The American Standard Version, the National Council of Churches, 1929.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, Cambridge, 1796.

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Strange Last Name

Page design by PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Snyder, Howard A.

The problem of wineskins : church structure in a technological age / Howard A. Snyder. – 40th Anniversary edition. – Frankin, Tennessee : Seedbed Publishing, ©2017.

xxi, 246 ; 22 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and indexes.

ISBN 9781628243390 (paperback : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781628243406 (Mobi)

ISBN 9781628243413 (ePub)

ISBN 9781628243420 (uPDF) BS680.B8

1. Christianity—20th century. I. Title.

BR123 .S713 2017                                             260                  2017948376

SEEDBED PUBLISHING

Franklin, Tennessee

seedbed.com

In memory of my parents,

Edmund C. Snyder

and

Clara Zahniser Snyder,

who first taught me to love the church.

Contents

Acknowledgments

2017 Preface: Reflections after Forty Years

Preface to the 1975 Edition

Introduction: New Wine and Old Wineskins

Part I. A Time for New Wine

1. The Impossible Cataclysm

2. World Come of Age?

3. The Gospel to the Poor

Wineskins Stories: A Spiritual Earthquake

Christine Pohl, Ron Sider, Timothy Tennent, Clive Calver, Alan and Debra Hirsch, and David Bundy

Part II. A New Look at Old Wineskins

4. Churches, Temples, and Tabernacles

5. Are Church Buildings Superfluous?

6. Must the Pastor Be a Superstar?

Wineskins Stories: Let the Spirit Shape Structures

Craig Van Gelder, René Padilla, Bill Pannell, Tom Schwanda, Mike Slaughter, and Brian McLaren

Part III. Biblical Material for New Wineskins

7. The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit

8. The People of God

9. The Mind of Christ

10. The Place of Spiritual Gifts

11. The Small Group as Basic Structure

Wineskins Stories: Spirit and Structure

Mary Elizabeth Fisher, Scott Sunquist, Robert Banks, David Fitch, Dwight Swanson, and Darrell Guder

Part IV. Church Structure in Space and Time

12. Church and Culture

13. A Lesson from History

14. A Look to the Future

Wineskins Stories: Witnessing to God’s Reign

Joy Moore, Greg Leffel, Ross Rains, George Hunsberger, Paul Patton, and Bill Burrows

2017 Afterword

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

This book incorporates, in somewhat revised form, the following previously published articles by the author:

Church Renewal through Small Groups. United Evangelical Action, 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1971): 29–31.

Do Christians Know Satan’s Strategy for the Battle Now Being Fought? Light and Life, 707, No. 3 (February 19, 1974): 7–8.

Does the Church Suffer an ‘Edifice Complex’? World Vision Magazine, 15, No. 8 (September, 1971): 4–5. Copyright 1971, World Vision, Inc. Used by permission.

The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Christianity Today, 15, No. 3 (November 6, 1970): 4–7. Copyright 1970, Christianity Today, Inc. Used by permission.

The Gospel to the Poor. United Evangelical Action, 30, No. 4 (Winter, 1971): 10–16.

John Wesley, A Man for Our Times. Christianity Today, 16, No. 19 (June 23, 1972): 8–11. Copyright 1972, Christianity Today, Inc. Used by permission.

Misunderstanding Spiritual Gifts. Christianity Today, 18, No. 1 (October 12, 1973): 15–18. Copyright 1973, Christianity Today, Inc. Used by permission.

‘The People of God’: Implications for Church Structure. Christianity Today, 17, No. 2 (October 27, 1972): 6–11. Copyright 1972, Christianity Today, Inc. Used by permission.

Should the Protestant Pastor Be a Superstar? The Other Side, 9, No. 2 (March–April, 1973): 8–11.

A World Come Full Circle. Christianity Today, 76, No. 7 (January 7, 1972): 9–13. Copyright 1972, Christianity Today, Inc. Used by permission.

2017 Preface: Reflections after Forty Years

If you’ve been reading today’s missional church books and blogs, you may be shocked by this book. The new is older than it appears.

The Problem of Wineskins was published in 1975, a year after the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. I was a main speaker at Lausanne, and later expanded my conference paper into the book The Community of the King. Wineskins had largely been completed before Lausanne.

Reviewing what I wrote more than forty years ago, I see much that is still on target. I decided not to revise the original book either for style, clarity, or content. I want today’s readers to see what the first readers saw. If I were revising today I would, of course, replace some infelicitous language here and there and be more sensitive to today’s cultural diversity. I’ll say more about that in the afterword.

This edition of Wineskins (including notes) is thus almost identical to the original 1975 edition. One exception: I now use more inclusive language, following the revisions I made for the 1987 British edition, New Wineskins: Changing the Man-Made Structures of the Church. I noted in the preface to that edition that the use of inclusive language reflected my own growing sensitivity to the presence, gifts, and leadership of women in the church. Except for this, I present the book in virtually its original form so readers can see what the fuss was about.

In addition to the new foreword and afterword, I have included comments by various people who were profoundly touched by the book in its original form. These come from England, Australia, Argentina, Canada, the United States, and indirectly from several other countries. The narrators speak from across the church spectrum including Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Charismatic, Anabaptist, Roman Catholic, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Nazarene, and independent or nonaffiliated. I put these "Wineskins Stories" at the end of each of the four major sections of the book.

Wineskins was published before the Internet, e-mail, and what we now call social media. No personal computers; just big ones in offices, industries, the military, and the space program. The Soviet Union had not yet collapsed. Today’s readers can expect a certain datedness to some of the comments on technology and global trends, but also perhaps some dead-on foreshadowing of today’s world.

In the forty years since The Problem of Wineskins was first published, I have repeatedly been asked whether I still hold the same views. I do. In the afterword I explain how the book likely would be different were I writing it today, though.

My writing since 1975 has been no less radical than Wineskins. Later books build on the foundation of this earlier one and elaborate many of its key themes. If the language in later books seems more tempered, the deep assumptions about the radical nature of the gospel and its radical implications wherever taken seriously in the power of the Holy Spirit remain the same.

I found that rereading Wineskins today had a surprising effect on me. It reanimated my faith in God’s promises and in the effervescent power of the good news of Jesus Christ. It also showed how much still remains to be done! What I wrote in 1975 is still true, still needed, and still hope-awakening, because it is a reflection on the gospel, which is still powerful and full of promise.

Preface to the 1975 Edition

I publish this book at the close of six years of missionary service in São Paulo, Brazil. During this time my responsibilities have included seminary teaching and administration, pastoral work in two local churches, and administrative tasks related to my mission.

Leaving the North American scene and becoming involved in the work of the church in another culture prompted me to a fundamental rethinking of the mission and structure of the church in today’s world. Reading; reflection on my pastoral experience in Detroit, Michigan; my involvements in Brazil; and, above all, direct Bible study have together brought me to the conclusions and (in some cases) hypotheses which I venture to set forth in this book. Particularly helpful was an intensive study of Ephesians during 1971.

Some of this material has been published elsewhere, as previously indicated. I wish here to thank the various publishers involved for making it possible for me, through this book, to present this material to a wider audience.

In July of 1974 I presented a paper entitled The Church as God’s Agent of Evangelism at the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. Chapter 12 of this book incorporates some of the basic ideas and analyses from that paper. Portions of that paper have also been included in the Reaching All congress study guide series, particularly in the booklet Reaching All Together.

The publication of this book owes much to many people. I would particularly like to thank Doug Smith and Laverne Blowers, missionary colleagues in Brazil, who read the book in typescript and offered helpful suggestions, and my wife, Janice, who helped with the proofreading and with encouragement.

Introduction:

New Wine And Old Wineskins

Frankly, I have never had much experience with either wine or wineskins—of the literal variety. But for several years I have been intrigued with Jesus’ words in Luke 5:37–38: And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the new wine bursts the old skins, ruining the skins and spilling the wine. New wine must be put into new wineskins (TLB).

What did Jesus mean? Certainly he did not mean everything that Christians through the years have taken from these words. Jesus distinguishes here between something essential and primary (the wine) and something secondary but also necessary and useful (the wineskins). Wineskins would be superfluous without the wine they were meant to hold.

This is vital for the everyday life of the church. There is that which is new and potent and essential—the gospel of Jesus Christ. And there is that which is secondary, subsidiary, man-made. These are the wineskins, and include traditions, structures, and patterns of doing things which have grown up around the gospel. In this book I am particularly concerned with the relationship between such wineskins and the gospel wine, and with the question of what kinds of wineskins are most compatible with the gospel in modern techno-urban society, for the wineskins are the point of contact between the wine and the world. They are determined both by the wine’s properties and the world’s pressures. Wineskins result when the divine gospel touches human culture.

In the passage about wineskins in Luke 5, Jesus’ critics come to him with a question: Why do your disciples eat and drink, while John’s disciples and those of the Pharisees fast and pray? (see v. 33).

Jesus first answers by speaking of the bridegroom. Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days (vv. 34–35). Jesus himself was the bridegroom, and while he was on earth with his disciples it was entirely appropriate for them to feast and make merry.

But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to speak of new cloth and new wine. Jesus knew where the real problem was. He knew what was behind the question raised by the scribes and Pharisees. They were irritated because Jesus was not obeying all their traditions. They were really asking the same question they raised in Matthew 15:2: Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?

So Jesus says,

No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it upon an old garment; if he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins (Lk. 5:36–38).

The last statement is the key: new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. The old Judaism could not contain the new wine of the gospel of Christ. The Christian faith would have to grow and burst the old wineskins of Judaism. And that is what happened. The church began to spread into the whole world, shedding the old Jewish forms.

We learn two things here. First, this parable reminds us that God is always a God of newness. The gospel is new—always.

The Old Testament frequently speaks of new things. We read of a new song, a new heart, a new spirit, a new name, a new covenant, a new creation, a new heaven, and a new earth.¹ David said, [God] put a new song in my mouth (Ps. 40:3). And we read other statements such as these:

Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them (Is. 42:9).

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Is. 43:19).

And I will give them [a new] heart, and put a new spirit within them (Ezek. 11:19).

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth (Is. 65:17).

In the New Testament the gospel of Christ is similarly described. Hebrews 10:20 says that the gospel is the new and living way. And Jesus said as he instituted the Lord’s Supper, this is my blood of the [new] covenant (Mt. 26:28).

God is a God of newness. On the one hand he is the Ancient of Days, the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (Jas. 1:17), and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever (Heb. 13:8). But this does not mean that God is static or stationary. The history of God’s people in the Bible and the history of the Christian church show just the opposite. In every age the true biblical gospel is a message of newness and renewal.

God has not stopped doing new things. The Bible says, we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13). Many of the Old Testament prophecies already cited were fulfilled in part with the coming of Christ and the birth of the church, but the prophetic fund has not yet been exhausted. Unfulfilled prophecies and promises of new things remain. At the end of the Bible God is still saying, Behold, I make all things new (Rev. 21:5).

Every age knows the temptation to forget that the gospel is ever new. We try to contain the new wine of the gospel in old wineskins—outmoded traditions, obsolete philosophies, creaking institutions, old habits. But with time the old wineskins begin to bind the gospel. Then they must burst, and the power of the gospel must pour forth once more. Many times this has happened in the history of the church. Human nature wants to conserve, but the divine nature is to renew. It seems almost a law that things initially created to aid the gospel eventually become obstacles—old wineskins. Then God has to destroy or abandon them so that the gospel wine can renew man’s world once again.

The gospel is new in our day. It is still the power of God. It is still bursting old wineskins and flowing forth into the world. All I attempt to say in this book grows out of a deep confidence in Jesus Christ and in the renewing power of his gospel.

But there is something else this parable teaches us—the necessity of new wineskins. Wineskins are not eternal. As time passes they must be replaced—not because the gospel changes, but because the gospel itself demands and produces change! New wine must be put into new wineskins—not once-for-all, but repeatedly, periodically. This book is written to emphasize the relativity of church structures and to suggest some bases for the necessary updating of wineskins.

Four Modern Currents

Four currents have been agitating much of the evangelical Protestant church for the past decade or so, producing ferment and change. I believe all of these have been used by the Holy Spirit, and I have incorporated insights from each into this book.

First is the Personal Evangelism Movement, that stream which has been calling Christians to renewed evangelistic and missionary endeavor to fulfill the Great Commission in our generation. This movement has spawned several evangelistic organizations and sparked a host of books on evangelism. This is an essential emphasis, but it is a partial one; and in its zeal for evangelism, the Personal Evangelism Movement has sometimes neglected the church and the question of church structure.

There is, second, the Church Renewal Movement. Numerous speakers and writers have emphasized that the church’s life must be grounded in community, in biblical koinonia, or soul-fellowship. The small group has been rediscovered as a structure for community life. I see this emphasis also as necessary and biblical. But an exaggerated emphasis here can produce an unhealthy, subjectivistic, pulse-taking kind of Christian experience that is ingrown and fuzzy on doctrinal truth. Renewal and community are not ends in themselves.

A third stream is the Church Growth Movement. Sparked initially by Donald McGavran, it has now reached a level of remarkable sophistication and influence. Since the attention of this movement has been primarily directed toward foreign missions, many North American Christians in institutional churches have been largely untouched by it. As a missionary, I have had contact with and benefited from the Church Growth Movement, and bring some insights from it into my discussions in this book. While in essential agreement with the emphasis—which argues forcefully that Christian churches are divinely intended to grow significantly in number—I feel it also needs the corrective of other biblical emphases to keep it from turning into a mere spiritual technology.

There is, finally, the Charismatic Movement, which strongly proclaims the immediacy of life in the Spirit and the exercise of spiritual gifts. I have no doubt that God has used this movement to restore to the church these needed and biblical accents. If the charismatics tend at times to be divisive or too emotional or weak on doctrine, they also have gotten hold of some solid biblical truths the church needs.² I have benefited from this movement.

So evangelism, small groups, church growth, and spiritual gifts all find their place in this book. But more than anything else, the ideas and insights presented here grow out of a continuing dialogue with the Word of God and with others who, like me, have been involved in a spiritual quest to rediscover the true, biblical