Old Wine and New Wineskins

We had a spirited discussion in our Men's Huddle last night at church. We had read an article about having "kingdom vision" that was replete with all the current ministry buzzwords. The guys immediately got on to the shoddy use of terms and definitions.

I was reminded again that not everything that is new is good. I heard a pastor say recently that for every current author he reads; he reads two books from authors who are deceased. It was his way of reminding himself that the church is built on the shoulders of some giants of years, decades, and centuries gone by.

The difficulty is that Spurgeon, Henry, Wesley, Luther, Calvin, Augustine and their ilk are simply not easy reading. They write in a dense manner that means the reader must slow down. I've gotten to the point of reading a paragraph and then summarizing its content in the margin. But, these men and women were thinkers (This is not to say that anything modern is of no value. There are many serious writers in our generation that are well worth the read). They brought in a breadth and depth of knowledge that is lacking today. It is not that they are any more right than authors in present generations. But, my reading experience shows that they were not so much caught up by the fads of their day. They wrote with a sense of purpose, with a view to the long run rather than bowing to the god of "what's-happening-now."

I've been in ministry long enough to see trends come around. A recent article in a major ministry publication touted the importance of multi-generational churches. I had to laugh because my church is finally on the cutting edge and we didn't do anything to get there! The reality is that God wants a special operation done in each special place. Each ministry is unique to its own environment. There can be some similarities, but cloning a ministry is a recipe for diminishing returns.

2 Samuel 23-24