New Wine

Pour new wine into new wineskins (2:22) 
I love fruit trees. Indeed I think my perfect garden would be an orchard with clearings set up so you can sit in the sun and eat. Fruit trees are mostly propagated by grafting the fruiting portion onto a dwarfing rootstock. The reasons are complex but it effectively combines vigour with fecundity. 
This is most people's model of church growth,  I suspect. Keep the best of the old and graft in the best of the new. Take a traditional service and add fresh music. Take a well-trained institution and add fresh practices. It may well be a good model, but it intrigues me that it is not Jesus' model. For him both old wine and new wine are tasty, but if you try and graft the new into the old, it doesn't create vigour and fecundity, rather it wastes the wine and makes a stain on the floor. Now that's a challenging thought.


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